Chapter 9 The Pulled Tie
I stood in a corner of the banquet hall, watching Fu Siyan not far away, surrounded by a crowd.
I couldn't tell what joke that group was telling.
Lin Ximo looked at Fu Siyan with a shy face. The people around them all wore ambiguous smiles.
"This woman really doesn't know how to disappear."
A voice suddenly showed up by my ear and startled me.
I glanced sideways.
I saw my best friend standing beside me with her arms crossed, and surprise hit me.
"Fu Qing, why are you here?"
"My brother told me to come. He said he was afraid you'd feel awkward alone, so he asked me to keep you company."
Fu Qing clicked her tongue and sat down on the high stool next to me.
"I thought once Lin Ximo went abroad she wouldn't come back. I didn't expect to see her again."
I froze.
"You know her?"
"More than know her. I actually find her pretty annoying."
My best friend took a glass of champagne from a waiter and took a sip.
"Lin Ximo was my brother's junior at school. She used to come to our house looking for him all the time, and she'd stay for half the day.
"I don't like girls who talk in that pinched voice and put on an act, so I never talked to her much."
So that was how it was.
Those past days of theirs were something I had never been part of.
I had to admit, it did bother me a little.
"Then... did they ever date?"
"They probably did. I'm not too sure."
Fu Qing's words left me stunned.
My thumb rubbed the rim of the glass without thinking. The water rippled hard.
I used the bathroom as an excuse and went to pull myself together.
I had wanted to message Fu Siyan, say I wasn't feeling well, and go home first.
I didn't expect that when I passed the stairwell, I would see him by accident.
Fu Siyan and Lin Ximo stood face to face. I couldn't hear what they were saying.
The woman's hand tugged his tie in an ambiguous way, her red lips curving slightly.
The distance between them shrank at once. The air looked thick with tension.
And Fu Siyan showed no sign of pushing her away.
My feet nailed themselves to the floor.
The scene looked so heated it could have been a couple in the middle of a honeymoon fling.
A sharp sourness wrapped around me at once.
We had been married this long, and Fu Siyan and I had never been that intimate.
I had even thought Fu Siyan was just cold in that way.
Only now did I find myself ridiculous.
A man that cold hadn't pushed her away the way he used to push me.
Wasn't that enough?
If the same thing had happened with me, Fu Siyan would have already driven me off with a cold face.
It felt like Lin Ximo was different to him after all.
I let out a bitter laugh.
What made it worse was this.
The tie on Fu Siyan was the one I had put on him myself that morning.
I had picked it out for a long time, as a gift for our wedding anniversary.
Now another woman was tugging it open and playing with it as she pleased.
The thought pressed on my chest until I could barely breathe.
Everything in front of me turned foggy.
I didn't look at them again. I turned and left without hesitation.