Chapter 14 When I Let Go
Actually, on the first day I was hospitalized after the miscarriage, I had already sent Zhou Yang a message:
【周漾，我们离婚吧。】
But maybe because I had just finished surgery and was under the weight of emotion, my mind was not that clear.
Or maybe because Ruoyu's WeChat avatar looked so much like Zhou Yang's, that message went straight to Ruoyu.
By the time I noticed, the message could no longer be recalled, and she never replied.
Only on the second day, an obscure industry lawyer who specialized in divorce cases suddenly came to the hospital to find me.
Even if I truly had the thought of divorce, toward this uninvited stranger who showed up without my permission, I still felt offended.
So at the time I refused that lawyer's goodwill.
But because of that, afterward, the news that Zhou Yang and I were going to divorce spread on its own.
Some media, tying it to Zhou Yang and Ruoyu's daily interactions, began to guess whether the breakdown of the Zhou Group head's marriage had anything to do with Qin Ruoyu.
Because Zhou Group could not bear even a shred of negative talk about Ruoyu, and because Zhou Yang's marriage was tied to Zhou Group's stock price,
later, while I was still in the hospital, relatives who benefited from the Zhou family came under all kinds of pretenses to see me. Shareholders and even core employees followed, one after another.
They said, in careful words, that Zhou Group was at a critical stage, and at a time like this I could not make a scene about divorce with him.
They spoke with earnest faces. They wanted me to weigh the pros and cons. They told me to think of the bigger picture.
They came one after another with their purposes, then left in a hurry.
He did not even know I was in the hospital because of a miscarriage.
Some of the gifts people brought were actually crabs, which miscarriage patients were not supposed to eat.
Through the whole short confinement period, I was disturbed again and again.
And when my mother learned the news, she had me discharged early and coaxed me out to a villa under the Song family's name on the far edge of the city.
She said it was so I could rest quietly.
But the moment I moved in, she confiscated every tool I had for contact, then arranged people to watch me strictly and forbade me from leaving that villa even half a step.
"You stay here. Recover properly, and reflect properly.
"I'd like to see if you dare make a scene about divorce with the Zhou family again!"
What was Zhou Yang doing then?
After he stayed with Ruoyu until her foot injury healed, he packed a tight schedule of fashion weeks and film festivals abroad with her, then took her traveling all over Europe.
Only after they came back satisfied did Zhou Yang learn that our child was gone.
On the day he took me back from my mother, I had already been worn down by days of fear from being locked away.
Later, he proposed to me again in front of reporters, took me to reshoot Wedding Photos, and even contacted a wedding company on his own, saying he would hold a makeup wedding for me.
I accepted it all in a numb way—his amends born from guilt.
He also said that once this stage passed, he would terminate the contract with Ruoyu.
He promised me again and again that from then on he would never let me suffer.
But I waited and waited, and what came was a crowd of media starting to market the CP chemistry between him and Ruoyu.
Those netizens who believed "looks are justice" dug up the pale photos of me after the miscarriage and attacked me personally.
They said I had no looks and no virtue, that I did not deserve the CEO of Zhou Group.
They said Ruoyu and Zhou Yang were the real Match Made In Heaven, talent and beauty side by side.
They said I only used the miscarriage to morally blackmail Zhou Yang.
They also said I was the eyesore standing between him and Ruoyu.
I understood, actually. Ever since they knew my marriage with Zhou Yang carried risk, some shareholders of Zhou Group had long started guiding public opinion and paving the road for Ruoyu.
And of all that, from everything I saw, Zhou Yang knew every bit.
The only reason he never stopped it, as I saw it, was because of my own words—"No matter what happens, I will never leave you."
The real breaking point was the press conference where he and Ruoyu signed.
He truly did not renew the agency contract with Ruoyu, because Ruoyu became a shareholder of Zhou Group outright.
They bound themselves to each other in another, tighter way.
And from beginning to end, I was kept in the dark.
After she finished signing, Zhou Yang even said straight to the reporters:
"She is the most important person in my life."
"The most important person."
What a heavy definition.
When I saw that line, I was unpacking the Wedding Photos that had only just arrived because of a delay in production.
Those intimate poses and smiling faces on the photos
suddenly turned, right in front of me, into one nauseating, mocking expression after another.
I finally broke completely. I found the axe in the toolbox and dragged them out into the yard.
I smashed them with everything I had.
I smashed them hard.
It seemed people could only grow by paying a price.
Wasn't it just that I could not bear to give up the sunk cost of so many years?
Wasn't it just that I refused to step aside like that and fulfill that little wish of Ruoyu's, and make myself look like a loser?
Wasn't it just the white moonlight of years of secret longing?
In the end, wasn't it just a man?
Why did I have to degrade myself like that, humiliate myself like that, and turn myself into a joke?
After I thought all of that through.
I finally discovered that letting go was only a matter of one moment.
Letting go, it turned out, was truly light.