President Gu, Your Child's Mother Is in South America

I'm Nie Xiaoyao, a photographer who travels all over the world.

He's Gu Yiyang, head of the Gu Group and king of this city.

We should have been parallel lines that would never cross.

Until I pressed the shutter in a bar and captured the moment he walked in.

Half his face was in the light, half in shadow, and his eyes held a loneliness I had never seen before.

He chased me to Dali, carried me by the Erhai Lake, and told me in the rice fields, “You’re mine.”

I thought I had found the person who could make me want to stay.

But there was a woman by his side who had waited for him for eleven years.

She stayed with him when times were hardest and helped him hold everything together when he was exhausted.

All I did was cause him trouble.

He said, “I’ll take care of it,” then kept her by his side.

He said, “You matter to me,” then didn't push her away when she smiled.

The day I found out I was pregnant, she raised a glass at his victory celebration.

I was alone at the hospital, getting an ultrasound.

The doctor said, “There’s a heartbeat,” and I cried.

Not because I was happy, but because he didn't know.

Later, I left.

Alone, carrying his child, I went to South America.

When Gu Yiyang searched the whole world for me,

I was holding his child and watching a lighthouse at the edge of the world.

Five years later, he found me.

He hadn't come for me. He had come to see the child.

He stood in the doorway and stared at me for a long time.

“Come back with me.”

I said, “Mr. Gu, your child’s mother is in South America. She’s not coming back.”