The Collapse of Lies

They all say that I, Chen Lin, have won at life. A second marriage and a child, yet I’m cherished by an “honest man” like Li Gongxiang. He has no car or house, only a beat-up electric scooter, but he takes Yueyue out to play every day and says, “From now on, we’re a family.” He paints a picture of a “blue ocean” in marriage, and together we build “Zhenxiang Catering,” simmering love and ambition into a rich soup called “home.” Until the day he brings me a bowl of chicken soup himself. I take one sip and vomit on the spot. I taste the lie, rank and foul as mud. That’s when I realize there is no “home” in the way he talks about “our home.” The shares in the “business we built together” have already been secretly transferred by him. Even on the nights he says he’s “out entertaining clients,” he comes home smelling of different women’s perfume. I used to think I could swallow every bitterness for my child’s sake. Until New Year’s Eve, when he abandons my daughter and me in the freezing cold for that woman. Looking at my daughter’s little face, red from the cold, I smile. Li Gongxiang, you have no idea. A woman fed on lies can taste every bit of hypocrisy, and she can also… bring your empire crashing down with her own hands. That’s when I realize the house he calls “our home” is registered in his parents’ names. The shares in the “business we built together” have already been secretly transferred by him. Even on the nights he says he’s “out entertaining clients,” he comes home smelling of different women’s perfume. When he tries to leave me with nothing, even calling the police to falsely accuse me of theft and attempting to have me committed to a psychiatric hospital, I look at his still “sincere” face and smile. Li Gongxiang, you have no idea. A woman whose bones have been crushed can taste every lie, and she can also… make you pay the most terrible price.