With a creak, the rusty iron gate was pushed open from the inside with great force. A woman with short hair, dressed in navy blue and black cloth shoes, walked out slowly. Following closely behind her was another woman with short hair, wearing a green police uniform.
"Sutan, take this incident as a lesson. In the future, you must ensure you aren't swayed by money in your work!"
Sutan’s dark eyes were misty, much like the drizzling, overcast weather. "Officer, could you give me a certificate stating my innocence?"
"It’s already been prepared for you!"
The policewoman handed the certificate to Sutan, her gaze filled with pity. "Sutan, you must learn to cut your losses in time. This time he managed to send you to a detention center; next time, he could send you to prison!"
A minute or so later, the sound of the large iron gate creaking came again. Sutan looked up. The fine drizzle had just a moment ago turned into heavy, bean-sized raindrops pelting down. They struck her face like pebbles, as if to make sure she learned her lesson well.
With a deep rumble, a crack of thunder was followed by a flash of lightning. Sutan carefully tucked the certificate of innocence into the innermost layer of her clothing, held her hands over her head, and bolted toward home. The dense rain blurred her vision. On the wide road, one could occasionally spot a person or two holding an umbrella.
Twenty minutes later, Sutan stood outside a courtyard wall. A soft, delicate voice drifted from within, and Sutan pulled back the hand she had raised to knock. Her willow-leaf eyebrows arched, and she caught sight of some bricks not far away. Stepping through a puddle, she gathered a few bricks, stacked them against the wall, and climbed up.
"Jianfeng, it’s raining so hard outside. Why don’t you go pick up Sutan?"
"I already feel terrible for bringing Taotao here to trouble you. Now, you’ve even sent Sutan to the detention center just to get me a good job. Sutan is bound to throw a fit when she finds out!"
"Let her try. Once a woman is married, she should listen to her husband. Since she’s disobedient, she needs to suffer a little bit. I’m doing this for her own good, so she’ll stop being so stubborn!" The speaker was a man, his voice low and rich, like a cello.
"But you two were only just married. Sutan is better educated and more capable than I am; she just doesn’t know how to speak or act properly. If word gets out, people will gossip about us. Jianfeng, for my sake, please don't hold anything against her, no matter what she says. I can endure any grievance, as long as you two are happy!"
The clean glass was blurred by raindrops, and Sutan could only see the woman's indistinct face. A cold sneer tugged at the corner of her mouth.
She was an obscure actress from the twenty-first century. A few days ago, she had taken a role in a short drama titled "Memories of the Eighties," playing the lead character, Sutan—who shared her name. In the story, Sutan’s birth family was wretched. She was the second of four children, with an older sister, a younger brother, and a younger sister; she was neither loved by her father nor doted on by her mother. Her brother-in-law owed Zhou Jianfeng a favor, so her older sister had forced the original Sutan to marry him.
Zhou Jianfeng was a deputy director at a meat processing plant. He was twenty-five, six feet tall, square-jawed, and had thick brows and large eyes—a handsome man, all things considered. Seeing that he looked decent and had a steady income, and that his family situation seemed simple—just an unmarried older brother and a sister-in-law—she had agreed to the marriage after meeting him just once.
Who would have guessed that on their wedding night, Zhou Jianfeng wouldn’t even return home? The Zhou family mocked her for being unable to control her own man. A week later, when Zhou Jianfeng did return, he immediately forced her to hand over her job to the woman mentioned inside—Qin Hongmei.
The original Sutan had been full of suppressed resentment. Upon his return, Zhou Jianfeng didn't explain his absence; he simply demanded she give up her job the moment he walked through the door, leading to a heated argument. In a fit of rage, the original Sutan flipped the table, and Zhou Jianfeng beat her until her face was bruised and swollen. Before leaving, he told her he was going to teach her a lesson so she would remember it well.
Before the original Sutan could recover from the shock of the beating, two police officers had arrived at her door and taken her away. That detention lasted for half a month. The original Sutan was an accountant at the Textile Mill and had been framed for embezzling public funds. She was interrogated repeatedly and disclosed everything she could, yet she was never let out. The thought that her life had been stained and that she would be pointed at for the rest of her days drove the original Sutan to such despair that she literally died of indignation.
And she, having become too immersed in the script, had also died of anger. Then, she had transmigrated here.
Sutan curled her lips into a cold, derisive smile. She picked up a brick from under her feet and smashed it against another, snapping it in half. Clutching the broken piece, she took aim at the window inside and threw it.
*Clang!* A scream of pain from the woman followed immediately.
Sutan quickly tossed the brick aside and curled her thin, small frame into a corner outside the main gate. With half her body hidden and half exposed, she wrapped her arms around her shoulders, looking like a homeless, abandoned woman. Hearing movement on both sides, Sutan cleared her throat.
"Jianfeng, take me to the hospital, quick! I’m going to be disfigured!"
"Who’s throwing bricks in broad daylight? Go check, and make sure you catch them and send them to the police station!"
Following this was a bout of barking. Hearing the sound of gates opening on both sides, Sutan fell silent. She shimmied her body further outward, looking like a ghost—soaked to the bone as she was.
"Ah... who are you? Why are you crouching in front of our house? You scared the life out of me!"
Qin Hongmei opened the gate and stumbled back in fright at the sight of the person huddled there. She spun around and threw herself into the man's arms behind her. Zhou Jianfeng naturally pulled Qin Hongmei into his embrace, shifting his black umbrella to shield her exposed shoulder. His dark eyes, sharp as blades, locked onto the woman at the door.
"Who are you?"
Whether from the cold or fear, Sutan shivered and slowly stood up.
"Su... Sutan? How did you end up looking like this?!"
Qin Hongmei caught a clear look at the woman's face and gasped in shock. Sutan had only been locked up for half a month, yet she was thin as a rail; her face, which hadn't had much flesh to begin with, was now completely gaunt. Her eye sockets were deeply sunken, and her under-eyes were bruised and dark. Her hair, which she had once envied, hung limply against her scalp. Her clothes were soaked through, and rainwater dripped from her hair onto her cracked lips.
Sutan reached out and licked them. "Zhou Jianfeng, if you wanted my job, you could have just told me. Why did you have to send me to the detention center?"
Sutan’s voice sounded as raspy as an old bellows that had been used for years. Her pitch-black eyes seemed as though they might fall from their sockets at any moment. She looked like a vengeful ghost from the depths of hell.
Qin Hongmei hid in Zhou Jianfeng’s arms again, terrified. "Sutan, how can you slander Jianfeng like this? These past fifteen days, Jianfeng has been searching everywhere, trying to get you out as quickly as possible. Look at him, he’s lost so much weight!"
"How can you splash mud on Jianfeng the moment you get out?"
"Jianfeng is your husband! What good does it do you to ruin his reputation?"