Later, the two of us separately called our best friends.
Judging by the sound of cars parking downstairs, Qin Di and Liang Ze arrived almost back-to-back.
Qin Di had a key, given to her by Changxia.
Rushing into Changxia's and my bedroom, the two of them were left speechless by the chaotic scene and our bruised, battered faces.
"Xu Zhi, you bastard!" The moment Qin Di processed what she was seeing, she lunged at me.
Liang Ze, standing beside her, reached out and grabbed her arm. "Let's treat their wounds first."
"Talk. What happened between you two?" Qin Di carefully wiped the blood from the corner of Changxia's mouth while glaring at me furiously.
Neither Changxia nor I said a word until our injuries were tended to.
Seeing the two of us culprits sitting in silence, Liang Ze suggested we eat first.
Since I had spent hours in surgery that day, Liang Ze—the only one among the four of us who could actually cook—was too exhausted to move, so I asked Aunt Lu to come over and help prepare dinner.
When Aunt Lu arrived, her young granddaughter came along with her.
Once the meal was ready, Liang Ze and I ate at the dining table, Changxia and Qin Di ate back in the bedroom, and Aunt Lu and her granddaughter ate in the kitchen.
"Grandma, why do the uncle and auntie have bruises on their faces?" the granddaughter asked.
"Xiaoxing, eat your food. When you're in someone else's house, just do your job and speak less!" Aunt Lu said sternly.
"Okay, Grandma."
What an old-soul of a little girl, backed by such a reliable grandmother.
As Aunt Lu was getting ready to leave, I spoke up to ask her to stay. "Aunt Lu, the master bedroom upstairs needs to be cleaned. Are you available right now?"
From her conversation with Xiaoxing, I gathered that Aunt Lu was a woman of discretion.
Some matters called for confidentiality, which made her the right person to help clean up the mess Changxia and I had made.
"This..." Aunt Lu hesitated.
"It is getting quite late, I know. How about I pay you extra?" Ever since Changxia gave up on the idea of a divorce and Qin Di dropped the issue of that night at the nightclub, Father Xu and Mother Xu had been so overjoyed that they increased my credit card limit.
"Mr. Xu, you misunderstand. It's just that Xiaoxing still has her homework to do..."
"That's fine, you can go clean up, and Xiaoxing can do her homework in the living room," I said.
"I couldn't possibly..." Just as Aunt Lu was about to say more, Xiaoxing chimed in.
"Oh, Grandma, you don't need to worry about me. I'll do my homework properly and wait for you." Xiaoxing acted coquettishly, shaking Aunt Lu's hand.
"Alright then. We're troubling you, Mr. Xu."
"It's no trouble at all."
"I'll go get started on the cleaning right now, then."
"My wife and a good friend are also upstairs, though not in the master bedroom. Just let them know when you see them."
"Understood, Mr. Xu."
While Xiaoxing obediently did her homework in the living room, I casually flipped through some of her textbooks out of boredom.
Seeing a poem called "Rhyming Song", I was reminded of Zhao Zhao's musical adaptation of *Phonetic Enlightenment*, and hummed a few lines to myself.
"Uncle," Xiaoxing called out.
"I'm sorry, Xiaoxing. Was I disturbing you?" Here she was studying while I sang—I quickly apologized.
"What Uncle sang sounds different from the textbook."
"Ah? Oh, this is a song a singer made out of *Phonetic Enlightenment*. It's a bit different from the 'Rhyming Song' in your book."
"It sounds really pretty. Can Uncle teach me?"
"Sure, but you have to finish your homework first."
"Okay."
Half an hour later, I opened the music app on my phone and sang *Phonetic Enlightenment* together with Xiaoxing.
After a while, Aunt Lu finished cleaning.
As they were getting ready to leave, Xiaoxing called out to me, "Uncle."
"Hmm?" Assuming the singing had brought us closer and the little girl was reluctant to part with me, I turned around.
"You wouldn't go back on your word about paying Grandma extra, right?"
"Huh? Oh, oh, I won't go back on it. You can check the accounts with Aunt Lu later—if anything's missing, come find me, and I'll pay back double the difference."
True to form, she was still the little girl who had demanded "extra pay."
"You child, you really have no manners," Aunt Lu said, looking somewhat displeased.
"It's fine, Aunt Lu. Children are at an age where they're just being innocent," I quickly placated her.
In childhood, some people are triangles, some are quadrangles, and others are five-pointed stars... I didn't want all children to eventually be hammered into circles.
After offering a few more apologies, Aunt Lu led Xiaoxing away.
Once I saw them out and turned back around, three sets of eyes were fixed on me.
"Let's talk this through!" Qin Di said.
In the living room, Changxia and Qin Di sat together, while Liang Ze and I took separate single-armchairs.
"You two should just get a divorce," Qin Di said bluntly. "You can't stay with a man who commits domestic violence."
I glanced at Changxia's swollen mouth, which looked utterly out of place on her pretty face.
"It's better to tear down ten temples than to break up a single marriage!" Liang Ze urged reconciliation. "Qin Di, you're an outsider, so let the husband and wife decide for themselves. Stop adding fuel to the fire."
"Men are always so quick to empathize with other men. Domestic violence either happens zero times or a million times," Qin Di retorted.
"Is this even domestic violence? Looked more like a mutual brawl to me. Can't you see Zhi is injured much worse?"
"Is a man getting hurt the same as a woman getting hurt? Liang Ze has thick skin; he'll be bouncing around again in a couple of days. Look at Xiaxia—her mouth is swollen like that, how is she supposed to face people? The swelling probably won't go down for half a month."
...
Qin Di and Liang Ze went head-to-head, one urging divorce and the other reconciliation, neither willing to yield. Changxia and I maintained a stony silence throughout.
Amid their argument, I thought of the matter regarding Director Qu. But with Qin Di so red in the face from shouting, I had no idea if she'd be willing to share the results of her search, and I found myself growing rather annoyed.
"Let's talk alone," Changxia finally said, turning to me.
"Alright." I agreed to talk in private; after all, life belonged to us, not anyone else.
"Did you really not fall in love with someone else?" Aunt Lu had finished cleaning, and Changxia was now sitting on the edge of the master bed, asking me this question.
"Why do you keep fixating on this? I didn't fall in love with anyone else," I replied with a hint of impatience.
"Then do you want to have children?"
"No."
"Why?"
"I have zero interest in raising kids. Besides, life is short, so we should seize the day and enjoy ourselves. Wouldn't it be better to spend more time on things that make us happy?"
* "You want to be DINK?"* *(Double Income, No Kids)*
"I don't know. I certainly don't want any right now."
"And yet you seem to like children quite a bit."
"When did I? Dealing with kids is the most annoying thing in the world."
"You were so gentle and patient with Xiaoxing just now."
"That was playing with someone else's kid—is that the same? You play with them when you feel like it, and when you don't, you leave them alone. Can you just walk away from your own kid like a handsomely paid boss? Even if they turn out to be a piece of stinking fermented bean curd, you can't complain; you still have to shovel them back into your own bowl and sniff them."
"What kind of analogy is that? Besides, it's not like you're the one who has to raise them..."
At this point in the conversation, I had a vague inkling that Changxia actually wanted children.
So I probed tentatively, "Do you want them?"
"I don't particularly want them either, but Mom and Dad say I'm already thirty and I need to hurry up. The later you have them, the harder it is for your body to recover, which is bad for both the mother and the baby."
Five years from now, Xu Zhi would be dead. Changxia would be thirty-five then—that posed quite a tricky problem.
"Why did you stop talking again?" Changxia muttered.
Looking at this petite woman and her swollen lip, a flicker of pity stirred in my heart, yet I was utterly powerless to do anything about it.
I truly did not want children.
And, truth be told, I didn't want to sleep with Changxia either.