Congratulations on Your Wedding - Chapter 4

Chapter 4

My mother and stepfather both had work waiting for them, so they returned to the city the day after Grandma was buried.

I owned a small gallery and had a flexible schedule. After arranging things with my assistant, I decided to remain in the village for two weeks.

Song Chenzhi stayed as well.

Every morning, I found a fresh bouquet of roses outside my door. He would be leaning against his car not far away, watching me steadily.

He knew I liked sweets, so every afternoon he made a dessert and brought it over.

Each time, right in front of him, I gave the roses and pastries to the village children.

As if he needed to prove something to me, the next time Chen Qing called and threatened suicide, I heard him answer with merciless indifference.

“Then die.”

Chen Qing was a lunatic. She immediately found my new number and began harassing me again.

“You think you’ve won? Stop dreaming.”

“I’m the only person he loves. It can only be me!!!”

On Saturday evening, Song Chenzhi was not hovering around as usual. I had no idea where he had gone, so I visited Grandpa’s old studio.

It was still the way I remembered it: clean and orderly, filled with the scent of gouache and green plants.

In high school, the studio had been Song Chenzhi’s and my secret place. Back then, he was my model.

Grandma once told me that whenever he came to visit her, he would spend the entire night there.

But that wasn’t why I had come today.

A neighbor had casually mentioned something troubling.

“That day, I went with your grandmother to the studio to pick something up. She seemed to be arguing with someone on her phone. She was clutching her chest and gasping, and then she fell before I could stop her.”

Grandma’s phone must have fallen somewhere in the studio.

I found it easily, at the bottom of the wastebasket where old pencil shavings were thrown.

But I never could have imagined who had been the last person to speak to her.

It was Song Chenzhi.

That day, Grandma had messaged him.

“Xiao Song, what happened? Why did Xixi cancel the wedding?”

He did not answer.

Five minutes later, Grandma started a video call.

The call log showed that it lasted one minute.

Song Chenzhi had ended it.

Grandma seemed to have seen something. She sent several voice messages in quick succession.

“Who is that woman beside you?”

“What are the two of you doing?” Her voice was embarrassed, disbelieving, and furious all at once.

“How could you do this to Xixi?”

By the end, she was almost crying.

I stared blankly at the screen.

Then I heard a long, familiar female cry—half pleasure, half pain—from upstairs.

Lightning split the sky with a deafening crack, swallowing the sound almost at once.

All I could hear was my own heartbeat, each thud louder than the last.

Grandma had told me that she eventually gave Song Chenzhi a spare key to the studio.

I had not seen him anywhere all day.

Something detonated inside me.

Terror descended so completely that my movements turned stiff and slow as I climbed the stairs one step at a time.

Two familiar figures lay on the hardwood floor.

“Why didn’t you want to do it downstairs today?” Chen Qing asked.

“Were you afraid of defiling your precious secret hideaway? Or were you hoping your Xixi might suddenly walk in?”

She wrapped herself around Song Chenzhi’s arm and giggled.

“Song Chenzhi, do you know how much of a hypocrite you are?”

“You told me she used to sketch you here in high school.”

“But ever since you brought me here for the first time three years ago, we’ve defiled every last inch of this place.”

Lightning flashed again, illuminating Song Chenzhi’s cold face and the desire still smoldering in his eyes.

Chen Qing straddled him and bent to kiss him slowly.

“The truth is, you want her to walk in right now. You want her to see it with her own eyes.”

“Cheating while the woman you love might catch you makes it more exciting, doesn’t it?”

Song Chenzhi said nothing. He drew streaks and smears of the oil paint I used for my work across Chen Qing’s body.

Disgust churned violently in my stomach. I gripped the banister and retched.

When it passed, the room had gone deathly still.

I raised my head and met Song Chenzhi’s eyes.