Su Wenbin cursed a few more times, found it boring, and left. The kitchen was quiet except for the humming sound of the fluorescent lamp overhead. I knelt on the ground and rubbed the rag three times along the seams of the tiles to make sure there were no traces of oil on the ground before I straightened up.
The front of the T-shirt was wet and felt cold against my skin.
I wrung out the rag, put it on the edge of the sink, turned and walked towards the back door of the kitchen. In the Su family's small villa, the chef and nanny lived in the back building, and I, the adopted son-in-law, lived in the side room set up in the backyard. It is said to be a side room, but it is actually a shed for storing sundries, an iron frame bed, a plastic washbasin stand, and old tires and discarded gardening tools piled in the corner.
I opened the door, and the autumn night breeze came in, carrying the fragrance of osmanthus. The moon was very round, and its silvery white light spread all over the ground.
I stood in the light and raised my right hand.
The black iron ring on his finger was dull in color and inconspicuous, just like a ten-dollar decoration on the ground. But the side of it next to my skin felt faintly warm.
My hands are shaking.
My whole body was shaking. From the moment Su Wenbin's pot of vegetable soup was poured on him, he had been shaking uncontrollably. Su Wenbin couldn't tell. He only knew that I was the good-for-nothing son-in-law who didn't fight back even when he was beaten and scolded. He didn't know that I was shaking because of anger, and he didn't know that I didn't take the vegetable soup seriously at all.
