Not long after we married, he vanished. Once he was gone, I waited in that forest where it was so easy to get lost. That wait lasted half a year.
I finally waited for him to return, but after cooking a meal for me, he left again. Before he left, however, he gave me a bronze mirror, telling me that if anything happened, I should call out to him through it so he could keep me company and talk to me. If I called to him through the mirror, would he come back to keep me company? I didn't ask, because deep down I knew he wouldn't. He left again, and after he was gone, I couldn't help wondering if I wasn't good enough for him—which must be why, even though we had bowed to heaven and earth, he refused to take me home to meet his parents. Or perhaps he already had a wife at home, in which case, what was I? A kept mistress?
I spent another three lonely years on East Wasteland Junji Mountain, and he never came back. The longer I waited, the more terrified I grew, afraid that by the time he finally returned, I would have grown old. When he left, he said he had urgent business at home, but could it possibly take three whole years? Sometimes I even grew angry, thinking that if I had known marriage meant living all alone, I never would have married him in the first place. But I quickly consoled myself: at least by meeting Yehua, I had something to hope for, a reason to look forward to the day he would finally come back to stay with me.
Chapter 259