Embedded Files
Psst! We're moving!
The next day, the two of them went straight to the Civil Affairs Bureau to get their marriage license.
Shen Yihuan had pretty much blacked out from drinking and didn’t remember that she had been the one to bring up getting married the night before. She was still puzzled when Lu Zhou was getting dressed in the morning.
“Do you have something to do today? Why are you so dressed up?”
Lu Zhou turned his head and looked at her, his expression a mix of emotions, as he buttoned his white shirt one by one. “Did you forget what you said last night?”
Shen Yihuan stared at his hands as he buttoned his shirt, not even hearing what he said. Her gaze lingered on his broad chest, which was still damp from washing his face, with water droplets trickling down his collarbone and chest.
She squinted her eyes. “Hmm?”
Lu Zhou buttoned the top button. “Getting the license.”
“What license?”
“...Marriage license.”
“Huh?” Shen Yihuan was stunned. She sat up in bed. “I said that?”
Lu Zhou leaned in, his knee bumping the edge of the bed. He pinched Shen Yihuan’s face, a hint of a threat in his tone. “Having second thoughts?”
“No, how could I have second thoughts?” Shen Yihuan quickly declared her loyalty. “I just didn’t expect that I would be the one to bring up marriage.”
Lu Zhou laughed, his voice deep. He stood up and pulled open the other side of the closet. “Which one are you going to wear?”
Shen Yihuan looked at what Lu Zhou was wearing. “I’ll wear a shirt too.”
They wore matching outfits to the Civil Affairs Bureau.
During the photo shoot, Shen Yihuan was so nervous that she was afraid the pictures wouldn’t turn out well. She asked Lu Zhou several times how she looked before she was finally ready for the camera.
Fortunately, the photos they got at the end were perfect.
When they came out of the Civil Affairs Bureau, Shen Yihuan held the marriage certificate, looking at it over and over, a smile on her face.
Once in the car, she took a picture of the two red booklets and posted it on her Moments. She also took Lu Zhou’s phone and posted the exact same thing for him.
Lu Zhou almost never posted on his Moments. His last post was more than half a year ago, a repost about their high school’s anniversary.
When the two of them posted the same thing early in the morning, their friends went crazy.
Shen Yihuan and Lu Zhou’s decision to get their marriage license was indeed a hasty one. No matter what, they should have first gone to see Shen’s mother and Shi Zhenping, not to mention all their friends on WeChat.
Qiu Ruru called immediately and scolded Shen Yihuan for not even telling her.
But since it was already posted, Shen Yihuan’s constant avoidance of seeing her mother was no longer an option.
After they had lunch, they went directly to the Shi family’s house.
After his business flourished, Shi Zhenping moved to a wealthy suburban villa neighborhood. The area was full of similar villas, with cars coming and going, but no pedestrians.
“The one up ahead,” Shen Yihuan said, giving directions.
They parked the car outside and walked in.
Before going in, Shen Yihuan took a few deep breaths and then rang the doorbell. Lu Zhou held her hand the entire time.
When the door opened, Shen Yihuan was stunned. Before her eyes could even process what she was seeing, she heard the crisp sound of a vase shattering.
Shi Jin, in her high heels, was smashing vases on the floor one by one. The nanny stood by, helpless, only daring to shout warnings from a distance. Shi Zhenping was on the side, trying to comfort her.
The nanny who opened the door saw Shen Yihuan and, for some reason, said, “Second Miss, you should go talk some sense into her.”
Shen Yihuan was speechless.
Shi Zhenping turned around, saw Shen Yihuan, and then saw the man behind her. He was stunned.
Shi Jin’s gaze followed, and then another crisp shattering sound echoed.
Lu Zhou silently squeezed Shen Yihuan’s hand, pulled her behind him, and stepped forward into the doorway. “Hello, Uncle. I’m Shen Yihuan’s...”
He paused. “...husband.”
Since they were married, he was naturally her husband. Shen Yihuan had never called Lu Zhou that before and felt her face flush.
Shi Zhenping didn’t seem too shocked. “Ah, oh. I heard about it from Yihuan’s mother. You just got your license, right?”
Shi Jin shrieked, as if she had gone mad.
Shi Zhenping’s expression toward Shi Jin changed. He scolded her angrily. “You’re 25 years old and still act like a maniac! What a disgrace!” Then he said to Shen Yihuan and Lu Zhou, “Your mother is upstairs. You can go on up.”
He didn’t pay any more attention to Shi Jin.
After Shi Zhenping’s shout, Shi Jin was quiet for a moment, then shrieked even louder, her screams interspersed with ugly profanity.
Lu Zhou led Shen Yihuan upstairs by the hand. Shen’s mother and Shi Zhenping’s bedroom was on the third floor.
Shen Yihuan pulled on his hand. Lu Zhou stopped and looked at her, thinking she was scared. “What’s wrong?”
Shen Yihuan whispered in his ear, “Do you know who that person downstairs is?”
“Who?”
“Shi Jin. She’s my sister, the one who added you on WeChat last time.”
Lu Zhou just gave a nonchalant “Hmm.”
“You didn’t recognize her?”
“No.”
Shen Yihuan was satisfied.
Aside from his job, Lu Zhou didn’t have a good memory for women’s appearances. No matter how beautiful they were, they all looked the same to him. Shen Yihuan was the only exception.
And it wasn’t a case of love making things beautiful.
He had remembered her face the first time he saw her. After a whole summer, when he saw her on the first day of high school, he recognized her instantly.
It was pretty magical.
Since Shi Jin was making a scene downstairs, Shen’s mother didn’t come down.
Shen Yihuan had expected a good scolding, but to her surprise, her mother was in a very good mood and didn’t say anything that would make her uncomfortable.
Shen Yihuan was quite happy.
“When are you planning to have the wedding?” Shen’s mother asked.
This was a question they hadn’t discussed yet. Lu Zhou asked politely, “Are there any days you’re busy? We’ll make sure to work around your schedule.”
Shen’s mother smiled as she took a sip of tea, crossing her legs. “I’m free, but Shi Jin is going to Europe in two months, so let’s do it as soon as possible.”
Shen Yihuan was taken aback. “I doubt she’ll even want to come to the wedding.”
“Even if she doesn’t want to, she’ll have to watch,” Shen’s mother said, then looked at Lu Zhou. “Didn’t Shi Jin say mysteriously that she had a crush on someone? I didn’t expect it to be you.”
Shen Yihuan suddenly didn’t want to talk anymore.
And she understood why her mother was in such a good mood.
This wave of disappointment was overwhelming. Just a few seconds ago, she was happy that her mother had accepted her and Lu Zhou. Now, she suddenly realized that this apparent happiness was just because her mother felt her biological daughter had “won” against Shi Jin.
It was absurd and laughable.
It was like a blow to the head for Shen Yihuan, who had held a glimmer of hope for her mother.
Shen Yihuan paused, suddenly feeling a headache coming on. She said with a determined and straightforward tone, “We’re not having a wedding.”
“Not having one?” Shen’s mother’s eyebrows furrowed. “How can you not?!”
“I’m too lazy to plan one.”
Shen’s mother turned to Lu Zhou. “You tell me. What decent girl gets married without a wedding? You’re from a military family too. You can’t lose face. Not only must you have one, you have to have a big one. Otherwise, how can I be at ease handing my daughter over to you?”
Shen Yihuan suddenly felt like she was going to throw up.
Her stomach churned.
It was so ridiculous. Was she feeling sick because of her own mother?
She took a deep breath, wanting to say something, but Lu Zhou stood up.
Shen Yihuan also instinctively stood up. Lu Zhou raised his hand and gently placed it on the back of her neck, rubbing it as if to comfort a cat.
Lu Zhou said, “If she doesn’t want to have one, then we won’t. I’ll explain it to my parents in advance.”
Shen’s mother glared at him.
Lu Zhou put his arm around Shen Yihuan’s shoulder and gave a slight nod. “Auntie, we’ll be going now.”
With that, he didn’t care about anything else. He led Shen Yihuan downstairs. Shen’s mother’s curses grew quieter as they went down the stairs.
Lu Zhou didn’t stop. He didn’t say goodbye to Shi Zhenping or Shi Jin. The nanny saw them leave without a word and said, “Huh?” in a confused tone.
As they were about to walk out the door, Shi Jin suddenly rushed over from behind. Lu Zhou instinctively pulled Shen Yihuan behind him to block her. He grabbed Shi Jin’s swinging arm with one hand, his face turning cold, and pulled her away.
Shen Yihuan’s reaction wasn’t as fast as Lu Zhou’s. She watched for two seconds before realizing that Shi Jin had almost hit her.
Shen Yihuan tilted her head and looked at Lu Zhou. “Why didn’t you hit her?”
Lu Zhou raised an eyebrow slightly.
Shen Yihuan rolled up her shirt sleeve and took a deep breath. “Never mind. I’ll do it myself.”
Shi Jin glared at her with a ferocious expression. It was the first time Shen Yihuan had seen her like this. It probably wasn’t because she liked Lu Zhou so much—after all, she should have realized by now that Lu Zhou had already deleted her—but because she saw that the person who had deleted her was now with Shen Yihuan.
Shi Jin had never liked her from the start.
Although Shen Yihuan didn’t know what there was to be jealous of back then, Shi Jin was indeed jealous of her and always loved to snatch her things.
Speaking of snatching her things.
She remembered that she still had a camera in Shi Jin’s room.
“By the way,” Shen Yihuan said, looking at her. “My camera is in your room, isn’t it?”
“Get lost,” Shi Jin said, word by word, viciously.
“I won’t,” Shen Yihuan said, deliberately flashing a very annoying smile. “My things are my things, and my man is my man. You’ve tried to take them all, and you know how that turned out, don’t you?”
“You!”
Shi Jin looked at her with the same scornful and mean look she usually gave her, her chest heaving with anger.
When Shen Yihuan took a step to go upstairs, Shi Jin grabbed her shirt and pulled her back hard. Lu Zhou was about to step forward, but Shen Yihuan had already slapped Shi Jin across the face.
The motion was so fast that he barely saw it.
After all, fighting was a daily occurrence for Shen Yihuan. As a girl, she wasn’t as strong as others, so she was an expert at being quick, ruthless, and accurate. She could stun someone with a single blow.
Shi Jin didn’t expect the sudden attack. She flailed her arms in the air a few times before falling backward.
Her high heels scraped the floor tiles, making a sharp sound. Her ankle twisted, and she was in so much pain that she couldn’t get up from the floor.
After the argument between the two women and since Shi Jin was in the wrong, Shi Zhenping had stood on the side without saying a word. Now, he glared at Shen Yihuan, his voice full of anger. “Shen Yihuan!”
It was the first time Shen Yihuan had heard Shi Zhenping say her name so angrily.
He was finally tearing off his mask of false kindness.
Shen’s mother, hearing the commotion, rushed downstairs and was also stunned by the scene.
Shen Yihuan didn’t pay any attention to anyone. She turned and went upstairs. Shi Zhenping shouted from behind her, “Where are you going?!”
She answered without turning back. “To get the camera my dad gave me.”
Shi Jin’s room was right next to the stairs on the second floor. As she walked in, she heard Shen’s mother downstairs saying to Lu Zhou, “Why aren’t you controlling her! Are you just going to let her act so crazy?!”
Lu Zhou nodded and even smiled faintly. “Let her be crazy.”
Some things had to be done by Shen Yihuan herself to get her revenge. The years of grievances she had suffered in the Shi family had to be reclaimed by her to feel a sense of relief.
That’s just the kind of person Shen Yihuan was.
He wasn’t worried that Shen Yihuan couldn’t handle it. Shi Jin was nothing. If Shen Yihuan were truly ruthless, there wouldn’t be a trace of Shi Jin left.
Shen Yihuan retrieved her camera from Shi Jin’s room.
When she came downstairs, she saw that Shen’s mother had already helped Shi Jin up and was standing next to her, softly comforting her.
“Stop right there!” Shi Zhenping roared.
Shen Yihuan stood on the steps, her eyes lowered, looking down at him. The cold and disdainful look in her eyes and her arrogant demeanor made Shi Zhenping almost not recognize her.
The Shen Yihuan he remembered was passive and would endure anything. Sometimes, she would resist and have an embarrassing fight with Shi Jin, but she would still be forced to apologize by her mother.
To be honest, he really enjoyed those apologies.
After all, she wasn’t his biological daughter.
But now, Shen Yihuan’s expression stunned him, and he didn’t say anything.
She curled her lips, walked down the steps to Lu Zhou’s side, and handed him the camera, her back straight and her attitude arrogant.
“Shen Yihuan,” Shen’s mother said, frowning at her. “How could you hit your sister? Hasn’t your uncle been good to you?”
Shen Yihuan felt she could have predicted her mother’s words.
“Why can’t I hit her?” she said with a laugh. “You might not know, since you never paid attention to me, but I’ve hit a lot of people in my life. That was a light tap.”
She looked at Shi Jin, and the warmth in her eyes disappeared. “It’s not like I haven’t made anyone bleed before. If she dares to provoke me again, it won’t be as simple as a slap.”
She pulled Lu Zhou and opened the door.
“Shen Yihuan!”
“Shen Yihuan!”
The voices of her mother and Shi Zhenping.
Then, the Shi family’s front door closed, blocking out all the voices behind it.
Shen Yihuan suddenly felt a sense of freedom she had never felt before.
It was like breaking free from shackles and chains.
The people in that house could live their lives distorted by convention, but not everyone had to live that way.
...
Lu Zhou drove straight back to the apartment.
After they closed the door, Shen Yihuan nuzzled his neck, her voice as light as a sigh. “After getting the license, we came straight home for dinner?”
Lu Zhou’s movements paused. He stroked her face. “I thought you were tired. Should we go out to eat?”
“No, let’s just eat here. I want to eat at home.”
After Shen Yihuan’s earlier fit of anger, she now felt a bit empty.
After this whole ordeal, her relationship with her mother and the Shi family was pretty much severed. There was nothing to be sad about, just a bit of disappointment.
How could she not be disappointed?
After all, she had grown up hearing, “Only a mother’s love is true.”
“Lu Zhou, I want to eat noodles,” she said, pressing the heel of her hand against her eyes.
“Okay. I’ll make noodles. You can come into the kitchen and watch me.”
Lu Zhou usually didn’t let Shen Yihuan into the kitchen, afraid the smell of oil would bother her. But today, he didn’t want her to be alone outside.
Lu Zhou took some noodles out of the cabinet.
He stood at the kitchen counter, and Shen Yihuan stood behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist as she watched him make noodles.
He realized that Shen Yihuan seemed to love hugging him like this. The few times she had been in the kitchen, she had stood behind him and hugged him as she watched him wash vegetables, chop them, and cook.
She would follow him wherever he went, like a koala.
“Do you want eggs?”
“Yes, two.”
Lu Zhou took three out of the fridge, cracked them into the pot, and stirred them with chopsticks. “Two for you, one for me.”
Shen Yihuan loved this kind of life with a strong domestic feel, but she had never really had it growing up.
“No wedding,” Lu Zhou asked softly. “Do you have any regrets?”
Shen Yihuan said, “I just don’t want our wedding to become a tool for her to show off. Lu Zhou, my thoughts are pretty nasty right now. I just don’t want to see her happy in that way. I don’t want her to be happy.”
“Okay. I just want you to be happy,” Lu Zhou said.
Shen Yihuan’s lips curled up.
“But—” she tilted her head to the side, “we still have to take wedding photos. When are you getting busy with that military project?”
“Not for a while. Should I go with you to try on wedding dresses tomorrow?”
“Okay.”
After dinner, they went straight to bed.
Shen Yihuan was probably exhausted from the overwhelming disappointment today. She usually had to play on her phone for a while before she could fall asleep, but today she fell asleep very quickly.
Lu Zhou couldn’t sleep.
He couldn’t accept that Shen Yihuan couldn’t have what other girls had.
If she truly didn’t want it, that would be one thing. But she clearly did. Lu Zhou couldn’t miss the pauses in her words.
Why should Shen Yihuan miss out on something everyone else had?
He quietly took Shen Yihuan’s phone and walked out of the bedroom. He entered the password, opened it, and found Qiu Ruru’s number in her contacts and called it.
It rang twice before she picked up.
“Yo, you’re calling me on your wedding night? Is Lu Zhou no good?” Qiu Ruru’s cheerful voice came through.
“...” Lu Zhou pursed his lips. “It’s me.”
Qiu Ruru was speechless.
She switched the phone to her other hand and immediately changed her tone. “Ah, you’re looking for me? What’s up?”
Lu Zhou briefly explained what happened today to Qiu Ruru. “So I need you to do me a favor.”
Google Sites
Report abuse