He Got Divorced

Xie Qingcheng didn't seem to plan on saying much more to He Yu. He only asked, "Xie Xue didn't tell you?"

"No."

"Then she probably thought it was my private matter."

He Yu was quiet for a moment. "You and Li Ruqiu weren't compatible?"

Li Ruqiu was the name of Xie Qingcheng's ex-wife.

He Yu had a very deep impression of the woman who had tied the knot with Xie Qingcheng. He thought she must be off her head — how could anyone willingly walk into the grave of marriage with a man like Xie Qingcheng, so paternalistic and cold?

In his impression, Xie Qingcheng seemed to be a man without desire or want — the sort who should sit at a desk in a neat, proper white coat, with a vast wall of books behind him and the cold, clean scent of antiseptic on him.

He Yu found it hard to imagine Xie Qingcheng loving anyone, let alone anyone loving Xie Qingcheng.

But Doctor Xie had indeed gotten married.

He still remembered the wedding day. Following his mother's instructions to give a gift of money, he'd gone casually, not even bothering to change out of his school uniform. The driver dropped him at the hotel, and he walked in with his schoolbag slung over one shoulder, white sneakers on his feet, hands tucked into the pockets of his school tracksuit trousers.

Xie Qingcheng was greeting guests there.

The wedding team had done his hair and makeup. He stood among the crowd, posture straight, bearing dignified, his dark brows and eyes as if dusted with starlight. The MC was saying something to him, but the surroundings were too noisy, and Xie Qingcheng, being tall, hadn't caught it, so he tilted his head and leaned in so the MC could speak into his ear. Set against the people around him, his face took on a startling translucent pallor — like thin porcelain under a spotlight, liable to shatter at the slightest touch. His lips were faintly coloured, as if blood had frozen beneath a layer of ice.

Skin like a world of glass, lips like red plum blossoms against frost and snow.

Though He Yu didn't like men, he was a person of considerable aesthetic sensibility.

In that instant, a feeling came over him. Though the woman called Li Ruqiu was also very beautiful, in all fairness, He Yu thought that if she and Xie Qingcheng were together, the proposal scene would probably look like this—

Xie Qingcheng would be dressed all in white, his usual ballpoint pen and fountain pen clipped on, hands in his pockets, standing like a flower on an unreachable peak, and then, in a tone infuriating enough to kill, would say to the girl:

"I'm going to marry you. Get on your knees and give thanks."

Of course, he was very good at putting on a front — he wouldn't say anything like that in truth.

He Yu, schoolbag over one shoulder, walked up smiling and stood before the handsome groom and the pretty bride. "Doctor Xie, sister-in-law."

Li Ruqiu: "This is…"

Xie Qingcheng introduced him to his wife: "A friend's son."

He had an agreement with the Heg Family never to tell people outside that He Yu was ill.

Li Ruqiu praised: "So pretty, what a lovely child."

He Yu bowed politely with full gentlemanly grace, his dark eyes smiling: "Not at all, sister-in-law, you're the one truly as beautiful as a flower."

Saying this, the boy took out a sealed red envelope from his canvas schoolbag — a thick one — and said with refined courtesy: "Wishing you and Doctor Xie a hundred years of harmony."

A hundred years of harmony, my ass.

Even back then he'd thought no one could stand a man like Xie Qingcheng, and yet the marriage had really been so short-lived. Now it seemed he had the gift of prophecy?

He Yu, suppressing his schadenfreude, asked without a flicker: "How did you two end up divorcing?"

Xie Qingcheng said nothing.

"I remember she liked you very much back then. After she married you, she came to our house, and in her eyes there was no one but you."

Xie Qingcheng spoke. He said: "He Yu, this really is my private matter."

He Yu's brow lifted slightly.

He studied Xie Qingcheng's aloof bearing and suddenly felt that the man he was seeing again, after a few years abroad, seemed to have many things different about him.

He just wasn't curious about Xie Qingcheng's changes, so in the end he smiled: "Then forget it. Wishing you success on your blind date."

Xie Qingcheng's pale gaze swept over him. Without a word of thanks, he turned and walked away.

The dormitory door closed behind him.

Because He Yu had brought up his ex-wife, as Xie Qingcheng walked along, he couldn't help but recall his marriage with Li Ruqiu — a marriage that could only be called a spectacular failure.

Xie Qingcheng actually knew why Xie Xue hadn't mentioned this to He Yu.

Because the reason for his divorce was deeply embarrassing — Li Ruqiu had indeed loved him once, but later she had indeed stopped loving him.

She had been unfaithful.

This was something Xie Qingcheng could not accept. He didn't know what love was, but he knew what family responsibility was, and in certain respects his thinking was very conservative.

But she was different.

She believed the most important thing in marriage was love, not responsibility, so in the end they parted like a broken mirror and a split hairpin. She had fallen for a married man, and when the matter came to light, she had wept and accused him instead, saying his eyes and heart held nothing but work, that marrying him was no different from marrying a cold, impersonal work schedule.

Such accusations were not without reason — Xie Qingcheng knew he was a man without romantic flair.

In this relationship, Xie Qingcheng had never really felt any love. She had pursued him for years, and later he had thought she was suitable enough; after spending some time together, they got married.

After the marriage, the things a husband should do, the duties he should fulfil — he had not shirked a single one.

But this was not the marriage she wanted.

Xie Qingcheng was very dependable, but he was not romantic, and his temperament was somewhat cold. Even between the sheets he could maintain calm and reason — no abandon, no obsession — as if completing a task that came with forming a family, fulfilling his duty, but without much enthusiasm.

Her heart gradually cooled to the bone.

She had the affair, then turned back to him and said: "Xie Qingcheng, you're a man without a heart. Even today you still don't understand — I want love, not just marriage."

But what was love?

Xie Qingcheng felt as though his head was splitting. He didn't know how much strength it took to keep himself from slamming the table in anger. He had looked at her then, for a long time, and finally opened his mouth numbly, his voice as flat as dead water: "Does that man love you? He has a wife and a daughter — how much sincerity do you think he has for you?"

When asked this, she lifted her chin, and in her eyes burned something Xie Qingcheng fundamentally could not understand.

"...I don't care whether he has a wife and children. I only know that when he holds me, at least he's fervent. I can hear his heartbeat quicken. Not like you, Xie Qingcheng — you're clean, you never fool around, you hand me the money and the house, but your heartbeat for me is like a dead man's ECG. All these years of marriage, it's always been a flat line."

"Life is only a few short decades. He was bound by his own unhappy marriage, and so was I. Now I've seen the light — I can do without status, without money, even without reputation. Let people call me a slut or a worn-out shoe if they like. I only want to be with him."

Xie Qingcheng closed his eyes. The cigarette in his hand was nearly burning his fingertips. "Li Ruqiu, have you lost your mind? There's no such thing as love in this world. Love is just dopamine reacting in the body, your hormones playing tricks. But in this world there is responsibility, there is family. You've lost your senses wanting to be with him — is he willing to divorce and live with you?"

Silence.

Then the flame in Li Ruqiu's eyes burned even hotter and wilder. In the end, with tears in her eyes but utterly unyielding, she said to him: "I just don't want to live with regret."

"Xie Qingcheng, love does exist in this world. It may be treasonous, against human morality, it may sink so low into the dirt as to be filthy and unspeakable — but it exists, and it has nothing to do with hormones or dopamine."

"I'm sorry, I can't go on living with you, because now I know what love is. I love him, even though it's wrong."

All these years after the divorce, every time Xie Qingcheng recalled this conversation, he still found it absurd.

If what people called love was something that made a person, knowing full well it was wrong, still break their head against it; knowing one step forward was an abyss, still refuse to wake up; reputation, contempt, morality, life, bottom line — willing to cast aside everything — then in his view, that was probably not love, but a sickness.

He could not empathise with it.

Though his character was hard, he was, after all, a straight man, and somewhat patriarchal. His wife had been unfaithful and run off with a married man — he had been hurt in the end.

For a while after the divorce, Xie Qingcheng went on working, writing papers, mentoring students — outwardly showing no sign of distress. But everyone around him could see with their own eyes that he was rapidly losing weight, his cheeks slightly hollowing, his voice carrying a hoarseness when he spoke.

His superior, out of concern that "if he drops dead, the university will trend on the news," fussed over him: "Professor Xie, if you're not feeling well, take some leave and go home to rest for a while. Don't push yourself."

Who would have expected Xie Qingcheng to toss him a stack of compressed PPT files — the latest lecture materials, so meticulous in content and so condensed in structure that the superior, asking himself honestly, doubted he could have completed such a project in so short a time even at the peak of his mental clarity and physical vigour.

"Still want me to go home?" Xie Qingcheng leaned back in his office chair, his long slender fingers interlaced. A man thin as tissue paper, gaunt as a wisp of smoke, yet when he lifted his eyes to look at someone, they were still clear — even, one might say, coldly sharp.

"I do want to rest, but please confirm whether, apart from me, there's anyone else who can put together a first lecture like this."

Naturally, there was no one else who could.

The superior also read, from those torch-like eyes, that his university would not be trending on the news anytime soon — those were not the eyes of a man about to wither away.

But almost no one knew that, in order to keep working properly, in order to bury his shattered emotions deep in his heart, Xie Qingcheng, the moment he got home, would sit in his room and smoke — smoking until he coughed uncontrollably and still refusing to stop, nearly blackening his own lungs, nearly turning the whole house into a paradise of nicotine.

His state, witnessed by the neighbour Auntie Li, pained her terribly.

The Xie Family had originally been quite well-off — his parents were both very senior police superintendents — but later a serious blunder in a case got them both demoted to the grassroots. Around that time his mother fell ill, and to pay for her treatment they sold the big house and moved into a small alley in the Old Town Area of Luzhou City. Life became modest, but they got to know many warm-hearted neighbours.

When Xie Qingcheng's parents passed away, he was still underage and had to shoulder the responsibility of head of household. The neighbours, pitying the children, looked after them well, and among them, the one who was best to Xie Qingcheng was this Auntie Li.

Auntie Li was a little younger than Xie Qingcheng's mother. She loved children but had never married and had none of her own. She had almost treated the Xie siblings as her own treasures, and especially after Xie Qingcheng's parents had gone, this woman adrift like duckweed and wild grass, and the two children abandoned by their parents, had each found in the other something they could not let go of.

When Xie Qingcheng divorced, Auntie Li cried for a good while, then, like a heartbroken old mother, pulled herself together and tried to introduce girls to him.

He, not wanting to hurt Auntie Li's feelings, went to all of them, but he was really just going through the motions. And for those girls, he wasn't exactly a great choice either—

When Xie Qingcheng married the first time, his circumstances were quite good — he was handsome, tall, a doctor at a top-tier hospital, in his early twenties, in the prime of his youth, with boundless prospects.

His only material flaw was his less-than-good family background and lack of money.

But now he was on his second marriage, his university professor's salary was lower than when he'd been a doctor, and he was no longer so young — so his flaws had become conspicuously, jarringly pronounced. A divorced man, approaching forty, no good house, no good car, and with an unmarried sister who needed his care dragging him down.

No matter how handsome his face, he wasn't a celebrity — looks couldn't be traded for the money needed to live on.

How could the girls' parents not mind?

Blind dates and dating are different. What looks at first glance like chemistry is really a composite of conditions, so the conversation usually goes like this:

"Your job's pretty good, right? Can you look after the family?"

"No. Because I'm a professor at Medical School, the lecture content needs to be very careful, no errors allowed, and students have many questions. I often work overtime."

"Oh... then, your salary's decent, right?"

"It might take about three more years of teaching before there's any improvement. But I'm not sure whether I'll still be in academia three years from now."

"I see... do you have any other family?"

"...I have a sister."

"Is she married?"

"Not yet."

...

The probing is often sharp and blunt, dissecting a person's conditions like a knife, and shaving clean away whatever hopeful smile the other had at the start.

When Auntie Li found out, she was frantic: "Sigh, on a blind date you have to sell yourself! These are the unwritten rules. Everyone else brags, and here you come right off the bat talking yourself down — people would think the real thing would be even worse than what you say with your mouth, who'd have known you'd go the other way!"

Xie Qingcheng had originally wanted to say: "I don't want to get married again."

But meeting Auntie Li's anxious, somewhat wounded eyes, the words on his lips changed to: "...I'm used to it. I'm sorry."

Auntie Li stared at him, and as she stared, her voice began to choke: "Child, you're so good — why won't the Buddha bless you... I burn incense and pray every day, just begging Heaven to find my treasure another good match, then I could die happy..."

"Auntie Li, you mustn't talk like that."

"What have I, this old bag of bones, to fear? You're different — you're still young. If you don't do well later, when I go down below, how could I face your father and Muying..."

Auntie Li thus kept insisting on finding all sorts of girls for him, always hoping to bring about a match.

Xie Qingcheng felt very uncomfortable about it. He was a proud, stubborn man who refused to lie and would not submit to being picked over. Moreover, for various reasons, his state of mind was now entirely different from when he'd gone on blind dates with Li Ruqiu back then — he was now quite certain he would never share the rest of his life with anyone.

But with his kind of head-of-household temperament, how could he bear to see his family and friends grieve and weep for him? He could only accept that they would be happy under his protection and care.

So even though the outcome was predictable, he would, just to make Auntie Li a little happier, agree to attend those job-interview-like blind dates.

.

This time, the girl he was being matched with was a very young woman called Bai Jing. She had a relative who taught at University — reportedly at a well-known Medical School. She herself worked as a sales associate at a luxury counter in Luzhou's most fashionable mall.

In this gilded coastal city, there was no shortage of billionaires. The girl, immersed day after day in the money-showering world of high-end luxury counters, listening to the lofty chatter of the male and female clients passing through, inevitably developed the illusion that she herself was also exceedingly noble and cool. She held her chin high when looking at people, first checking the logo on their clothes, mentally stamping every boy in Adidas or Nike as a pauper — at the very least, one needed to be wearing Prada to be worth her conversation.

When Xie Qingcheng arrived at the café, Bai Jing was on the phone with her best friend: "Oh yes, you have no idea, I run into those kinds of douchebags every day at work. Today a mother and son came in — the son was wearing god-knows-what, probably something off Taobao. If it weren't for my professionalism, my eyes would have rolled to the sky. Ugh, coming to our counter in Taobao clothes — aren't you embarrassed?"

Her pinky finger, adorned with diamond chips, lifted as she stirred the coffee in her small cup. Bai Jing listened to her best friend's reply on her Mobile Phone and covered her mouth, chuckling.

"What could they possibly buy? They definitely can't afford anything. A pair of slippers at our counter probably costs them half a year's wages. Oh, babe, and let me tell you — do you know what that boy came up and said to me? He said, 'Do you sell baseball caps here? My mum likes sports, it's her birthday today, I want to buy her a baseball cap.'"

Bai Jing laughed so hard she shook all over.

"I just told him straight up, sorry, our brand has never made baseball caps, sir, aren't you familiar with our brand? Hahahaha — you should've seen his face! So priceless... Oh wait, I think the guy I'm meeting just arrived, I'll talk to you later, let's go check in at Bvlgari for afternoon tea later, babe, love you! Mua!"

Unfortunately, the café was noisy with chatter, and Xie Qingcheng was looking around for someone, so he didn't hear her grand pronouncements.

Bai Jing, seeing him looking around, and matching the matchmaker's description of "very tall, very handsome, peach-blossom eyes, but a very cold air," immediately waved at him: "Hi! Are you Professor Xie Qingcheng?"

Xie Qingcheng walked over: "Mm. Hello."

Bai Jing looked him up and down, her gaze finally settling on his simple T-shirt, and suddenly her face bloomed into a smile, her voice going sugary by several degrees: "Hello hello, I'm Bai Jing."