NB Chapter50

I suspect Zhang Mingsheng has also been severely drained lately; he fell asleep the moment he hit the pillow. With a slight tilt of my head, I could hear his breathing.

I quietly led Zhang Xiaoyuan outside.

Those small eyes had long since seen too much in the silence. And he was so intelligent, so composed; so mature, that even witnessing me in that condition didn’t seem to surprise him. He had already seen it all before.

Zhang Xiaoyuan bit his lip. “I think… I should give this to you.”

We maintained a tacit understanding, neither of us willing to break the tension. It wasn’t until I finished reading the file with trembling hands while half-kneeling in front of the boy that my brain seized up. I opened my mouth, trying to speak several times, but not a single word came out. Zhang Xiaoyuan stayed silent; I couldn’t tell how much of the document he understood, or who had even put it into the hands of a child.

We remained in that standoff while waiting for the gears in my mind to stop their piercing grinding, waiting for the throbbing pain in my body to slowly deflate so it no longer filled my chest with needle-like stabs. I don’t know exactly how much time passed, only that the sky outside the window had gradually turned a dusky yellow.

English, Chinese, numbers, the studio’s full engraved name, and the blue stamped seal—I turned it over and over in my hands, trying to make sense of the procedure behind it all. Yet the result was already there in black and white, stark and unmistakable.

I had to ask Zhang Mingsheng for the truth.

I still had to ask even though over all these years he had seldom given me answers, only watching as I fell deeper into the hell of the dull blade he had forged; strike after strike, a slow, agonizing execution of my spirit.

Small animals always have a premonition of disaster; thus, when I tried to push Zhang Xiaoyuan out the door, he stubbornly braced his body against it, refusing to obey. He had grown much thinner; I didn’t know if it was because of his time spent on the run with Ah Shan.

I lost my temper and gave him a shove. He was still so small; with just a bit of force, he tumbled to the floor. As the door slammed shut, his figure vanished from my sight. I turned slowly and walked back with the file still in my hand, each step feeling heavy and dull as if dragging something behind me.

Zhang Mingsheng was awake. His eyes were bleary with sleep, his face expressionless, looking utterly cold.

My previous sluggishness seemed to have been a way of conserving strength; now that I was beside him, I had never been so hysterical, never so vicious. It wasn’t the instinct of a physical struggle but a tearing of the spirit, a pain so profound it forced me to lash out. I couldn’t find words; I simply hurled the paternity test at Zhang Mingsheng and lunged, clawing at his throat. He resisted instinctively; his face still wearies as a flash of ferocity surfacing for only a split second.

Zhang Mingsheng was right; I had too little strength now. He caught both my wrists with ease, though his muffled groan told me the wound on his arm hadn’t healed. My slight struggle was enough to draw a fine sheen of cold sweat across his brow from the pain.

Our struggle didn’t last long. He quickly pinned me beneath him, looking down at me from above, as if I were merely throwing a tantrum. “What are you doing all of a sudden?”

“She’s not my child,” I heard my own voice, which was hoarse and trembling, carrying an unfamiliar volume and tone. “Who is she?”

Zhang Mingsheng’s brow furrowed. He turned to glance at the documents scattered on the floor and muttered, “That Ah Hai…”

“Who is she?” I screamed in rage as I struggled again, trying to drive my knee into his abdomen, but he dodged and pressed down with even greater force.

As if he had finally grasped the whole picture, Zhang Mingsheng leaned down, his presence an overwhelming weight that allowed no resistance. His words landed like an order, “She is our daughter.”

“She isn’t! We don’t have a daughter! We don’t have a daughter!” I couldn’t believe he was still lying even now. “Who did you go to see at the cemetery today? That child died, didn’t she? You buried her there? How dare you… how dare you!”

“What is it that I would not dare to do!” Zhang Mingsheng roared at me. The most frenzied side of his nature finally cracked through the mask of the “gentleman” he had worn for nearly a decade; he rarely spoke at such a volume, and the sound exploded in my ears, triggering a sharp ringing. My heart was pounding violently, and my breath caught as though I had been suddenly struck mute, curling up into a ball on the bed. From outside came a frantic pounding on the door, accompanied by the frequent, high-pitched screams of a child.

It was Zhang Xiaoyuan. In all these years, he had rarely addressed us as father or mother; having endured endless confusion and terror, he had long since lost the ability to voice those words. Following the pounding came a flurry of hurried footsteps. Someone was coming up.

Zhang Mingsheng turned his head toward the door and barked, “Ah Hai, take him away!”

Part of me wished it wasn’t Ah Hai so that Zhang Mingsheng’s command would go unheeded. Yet another part of me hoped for Ah Hai’s appearance; only that would prove he was still alive. My life is a knot of such contradictions. Amidst the distant screams, I drifted into a daze, my cheeks growing cold. I was crying again, pathetic and weak.

But Zhang Mingsheng had no intention of letting me go. Pinning my wrists, he lowered his head and dropped his voice, imbuing every word with a force like iron nails being driven into my skull, “Aren’t you a cop? Officer Yu, aren’t you supposed to be so good at questioning things? How can a single piece of paper, a single sentence, make you doubt your own daughter? In truth, you’ve known all along, your body is fundamentally incapable of bearing a child; don’t you know that yourself? Time and again you wanted to die, yet time and again you hesitated, pinning your hopes on some miracle. Deep down, you really want to live, don’t you? You want to experience happiness, to have a family, don’t you? Well, of course I’m going to satisfy you!”

“What does it matter if she’s yours by blood or not, Officer Yu? Why bother lying to yourself? Do you mean to say you don’t love that child who was just pounding on the door? Your junior brothers and sisters aren’t your biological siblings either, yet don’t they still go to pay respects at a grave that holds the ashes of a stranger every year?!”

 

“Yes, I did go to see the dead child. In truth, she couldn’t even really be called a child, but I buried her anyway and gave her a headstone. Did you know? She doesn’t even have a single photograph. Your junior asked me who was buried there, and I told her it was my daughter and that she died just after she was born. She was so clever, so understanding; she realized immediately, apologized, and even comforted me. She said it was for the best that the child wouldn’t have to suffer in this world and had perhaps returned to the heavens to be immortal, and that her time on earth was just a passing visit. Your own junior sister said that to me. At the time, I really wanted to tell her: how wonderful would be if only your senior brother thought the same way.”

Finally, his voice softened as if offering comfort, “Officer Yu, you know the truth about many things deep down. Why do you cling to them with one hand while trying to tear them apart with the other, making things miserable for both of us?”

I shook my head violently, wanting to interrupt him, to refute him, but all that escaped me were incoherent sobs. My eyes were flooded with tears, blurring everything until I could no longer see Zhang Mingsheng’s face. I hated him, I hated him for treating me this way and hated him for mercilessly exposing those deep-seated anxieties and premonitions of mine.

I knew our home wasn’t perfect, but I never imagined it was fractured to this extent; that every one of us was a shard picked up from the outside with jagged edges that could never form a whole mirror no matter how one turned them.

I gasped for air, trying to stifle the surging sobs, and spoke in broken fragments, “You’re right about everything, Zhang Mingsheng. You’re right.”

“All these years,” I said with a bitter smile, “I’ve been lying to myself.”

“Officer Yu, you think I am seeking revenge against you,” Zhang Mingsheng said, “but that is merely a negligible part of it.” He moved closer as if intending to embrace me. “I will not allow you to leave. Not even in death.”

“I won’t be dying for the time being,” I said as I picked up the documents and shook them gently. “Someone has invited me to watch a grand show.”

There were the signatures of Zhang Yaonian and members of the Zhan family on the second page beneath the paternity test.

Zhang Mingsheng immediately straightened, withdrawing a little from me, and looked at me with guarded eyes.

“You and Zhan Weiqing were betrothed before birth.”

“…But both of you are men,” as I spoke, I actually burst into laughter. “If I didn’t exist, you would have married him, wouldn’t you?”

“…Because you wanted to break free from your grandfather’s control, because you refused to let him arrange your marriage. Zhan Weiqing was an option, but not a good one. He could help you thoroughly break free from your family’s constraints, but if you did that… you could never return to the Zhang family again…”

“…How wonderful, Mr. Zhang. God is always helping you. Just when you were dissatisfied with that choice, a new one appeared.” I coughed twice while looking at the complex expression on Zhang Mingsheng’s face and spoke with a smile. “But Zhan Weiqing isn’t satisfied, is he? He wants more. He wants to ruin you, ruin Keke; he wants to leave Zhang Yaonian without an heir, to help the Zhan family completely dismantle your empire.”

“Congratulations, Mr. Zhang. You’re just like me; you’ve provoked a madman.”

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