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TBA Chapter 17

The Confession of a Cheating Man

Lolita, my light of life, my fire of desire, my soul, and also my sin.

Meeting Xiao Miao began with me slapping her across the face.

Our final encounter ended with her slapping me hard.

She didn’t know that her slap hurt much more.

I will never forget that morning when Xiao Miao, with her mouth full of a greasy fried dough stick dripping with soy milk, asked me through her chewing, “How old are you?”

I had to think hard before remembering that I would be forty in a month. Like most middle-aged men, I had a slight belly, and my hair had started thinning.

“What about you?” I asked. She smiled, held up both hands, raised one finger on her right hand, and eight on her left, proudly tilting her chin up. “I’m eighteen.”

Her pointed fingertip sparkled as if it held a star. Perhaps it was because of her clear nail polish.

Wanqiu never wore nail polish. Her hands, rough from digging in the soil and endless household chores, were covered in calluses. The skin on the back of her hands was loose, her fingernails slightly warped, and a faint scar lingered on her wrist.

At night, I was always in the habit of tightly holding her hand. I spent months of my salary on the best scar creams and repair lotions for her, but still, a faint mark remained.

Wanqiu and I met through friends. I had been working for two years at the time, and work was my entire life. I went to work alone, came home alone, ate alone, and slept alone. My days were as plain as water. I was someone who enjoyed lively company and wanted a family, wanted a child, so I decided to get married.

I was surprised that Wanqiu liked me and wanted to be with me. She was two years younger than me in school and said she had liked me since college, so she had asked a friend to introduce us.

We got married, and in the second year, Wanqiu was diagnosed as infertile. I was disappointed, but the blow was much harder on her. I comforted her, saying I didn’t really like children, and if she wanted, we could adopt one.

Life returned to normal, but without a child, our family always felt incomplete. I threw myself into my work, but dealing with overbearing bosses, backstabbing colleagues, and constant financial pressure, my dreams and ambitions slowly eroded over time. I became withdrawn and sullen.

Wanqiu was a good woman, the perfect wife, but I always felt something was missing. In all those years, she never argued with me, never threw a tantrum. I feared that out of guilt for me, she was trying too hard to please me. But it seemed that this was just her nature—gentle to the point of having no personality. Her only hobby was gardening, so every holiday, I would buy her various plants, always with roots.

Since childhood, I had loved to draw, and people always praised my talent. I once dreamed of becoming a designer, but now I was just an ordinary, unsuccessful engineer, drawing tedious blueprints from morning to night.

After finally saving enough to buy a house, I decided to design it myself. But once it was done, I realized that all the talent, creativity, passion, and inspiration I had once been proud of were completely gone, not a trace left.

At thirty-three, in the seventh year of my marriage to Wanqiu, I was working when the tunnel collapsed, and I was buried underneath. The rescuers saved those they could first, but for those of us whose locations were unclear, they didn’t dare to dig recklessly for fear of triggering more collapses. I was fully conscious at the time but didn’t cry out for help. I wasn’t trying to die—really, I wasn’t. I just suddenly felt tired. I didn’t want to move or speak.

Trapped for three days without food or water, just as I thought I was going to die, I heard chaos outside, and faintly, a woman’s desperate cries. Suddenly, I felt afraid, and I started tapping on the rocks to signal for help. When they rescued me and took me to the hospital, Wanqiu was there too. She had slit her wrists at the very spot where I was buried.

I was shocked and terrified. I had never known that the seemingly gentle Wanqiu could be so resolute. I thought we were just companions, but she loved me deeply. After living together for so many years, I realized that I still didn’t know her at all.

Life continued its silent march forward. I once thought that choosing death was my last remaining dignity, but for Wanqiu’s sake, I could only continue to live this hollow, pitiful existence.

Year after year passed, and just when I thought this would be my life, Xiao Miao appeared.

She was stressed out from her upcoming college entrance exams and spent the night playing games at an internet cafe. When she left, a few hooligans followed her. I was on my way to work at the time.

I wasn’t the type to get involved in others’ business. My heart had long been numbed by a mediocre life, the kind of person who wouldn’t give up their seat to an elderly person on the bus.

But Xiao Miao’s frightened and helpless eyes softened me. I frowned, walked over, and slapped her hard, yelling, “Where have you been? Your mom and I have been looking for you all night!”

Xiao Miao immediately started crying, probably because it hurt. She clutched her face and squatted down, sobbing.

Maybe my sternness scared them off because the young men left awkwardly. Otherwise, I, with my old bones, wouldn’t have been able to handle them.

“I’m sorry.” I said, handing her a tissue before turning to go to work. All these years, I had never once been late, never taken a day off, never gone on a vacation. Even when I was in the hospital, I was back at work, limping, after less than half a month.

I didn’t expect to see Xiao Miao again the next morning in the same place. This time, she was wearing a school uniform and carrying a backpack, squatting by the roadside waiting for me. Her face was still swollen on one side, and I felt guilty for hitting her too hard. When she saw me, she stormed over. I thought she was going to slap me back, but instead, she stomped on my foot and demanded I buy her breakfast as an apology.

Unable to shake her off, I bought her soy milk and fried dough sticks from a street vendor. She ate slowly, talking non-stop the entire time, asking me all sorts of questions. As a result, I was late for the first time.

After that, she waited for me on her way to school every morning, and I started treating her to different breakfasts. Though I hesitated, deep down, maybe I was hoping for a change in my monotonous life, so I didn’t refuse.

We met in the mornings and chatted over breakfast. The rest of the time, we talked on QQ. I never used QQ before; it was something for young people. At most, I used email for work. But she insisted on setting up an account for me, using her birthday as the password.

Habits are a terrifying thing. Just like I got used to seeing her wait by the roadside, I got used to waiting for her on QQ.

Xiao Miao always looked at me with a mix of admiration and infatuation. I knew that, in her eyes, a man my age seemed mature, stable, and charming. And to top it off, I had swooped in to save her. In her mind, she would keep romanticizing and idealizing that day’s encounter, like something out of a TV drama, thinking she had met her Prince Charming.

But only I knew how mediocre and boring I really was.

When Xiao Miao confessed her feelings to me, I wasn’t surprised. But then I thought of the scar on Wanqiu’s wrist, and I didn’t have the courage. The next morning, Xiao Miao couldn’t find me. She couldn’t reach me by phone and ended up flooding me with messages on QQ.

I wasn’t worried about her. Young girls fall in love passionately but move on just as quickly. I was just a passerby in her life. I was grateful she had brought a bit of excitement and color to my dull existence.

But when I saw her message saying that if she didn’t see me at a specific time and place, she would kill herself, I started to worry. Wanqiu’s wrist flashed before my eyes. I didn’t know if Xiao Miao was bluffing or serious, but after witnessing another woman’s determination, I didn’t dare gamble. Besides, Xiao Miao was just a child, and it was possible she might really do something rash.

I held out until the last moment, but in the end, I went. Half of her body was already dangling off the building.

“I knew you’d come.” she said through her tears, looking smug. She kissed me, her lips as soft as the cotton candy she always secretly stuffed into my pockets.

But my hands were trembling from fear. Why were the women in my life all like this?

——This was the fourteenth year of my marriage to Wanqiu. We had survived the first seven-year itch but couldn’t make it through the second.

When I made love to Xiao Miao, I was always careful. She was still so young, not even an adult yet. I was both delighted and tormented. This was both salvation and deeper sin.

But then she got pregnant. I nearly lost my mind. Xiao Miao, however, stubbornly refused to abort the baby. We had one explosive argument after another.

God knows how much I had always wanted a child of my own, especially one that Xiao Miao, whom I loved dearly, would give birth to.

But Xiao Miao was still just a child herself. Right now, she was blinded by love and didn’t care about anything else. But what about later? Putting aside whether I would leave Wanqiu and be with her, or what we would do after the baby was born, the most immediate issue was that she couldn’t skip the college entrance exams!

Everyone grows up. I would grow old, and she would move on. She would go to university in another city, meet better guys, and realize that I was just an old man. Her feelings for me would fade. Although I was her whole world right now, by then, she would regret everything she had done.

Feelings can fade and disappear. One day, you’re in love; the next, you’re not. One day, you’re together; the next, you’re gone. But what about the child? I wasn’t afraid of having the baby. I could even muster the courage to divorce Wanqiu. But I didn’t want Xiao Miao to end up hating me one day.

I could indulge her youthful, reckless love, but I couldn’t ruin her entire life.

Xiao Miao cried endlessly, almost begging me on her knees to let her keep the baby. She said she wasn’t afraid of the hardships or suffering. But maybe my firmness and coldness broke her spirit because she packed her things and ran away.

I found her before her clueless family did, pretending to agree to keep the baby. I brought her back but drugged her drink and took her to the hospital, posing as her father, to have the abortion.

I knew she would hate me forever, that she would never forgive me. But I had no other choice.

As I waited in the hospital corridor, it was the first time in my life that I cried. I had just killed the child I had longed for, and with it, the love between me and Xiao Miao.

For so many years, I had been living like the walking dead, and at that moment, I finally broke.

Xiao Miao sobbed her heart out in the apartment we had once called our love nest. The hero she had idolized had turned into a cruel, heartless monster.

She slapped me hard, and the pain was so intense I almost lost consciousness. Staggering, I barely managed to stay on my feet as I left.

But if I had to choose again, I still wouldn’t regret it. Time heals all wounds. She’s young, and she’ll move on, while I grow old, with a heart as desolate as a barren wasteland.


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