The Moonlight Falls on the Substitute

"I didn't say anything last night, right?" He asked me this on the second day of our wedding. I applied my lipstick very slowly in front of the mirror. "No. You were in a deep sleep." I didn't tell him. He held me in his arms all night, but he called me by another woman's name. Three years later. "She has returned to China. Can you move to the guest room first?" I held the stomach cancer report sheet, folded it in half, and put it in my pocket. "Okay." Paper airplanes flew out of the window. He didn't see it. Until he took down the portrait in the study. On the wall are words I carved with my fingernails three years ago, with dried blood seeping around the edges—— "Love is a heroic dream in a tired life. And I am his deserter."