124 Who is Fu?

Mei Zhen cut the call before Jia Li could mention anything about Tang's injury or memory loss. She didn't want Fu to know about the circumstances under which he was in Moganshan. Nor did she want to tell him that he was actually staying at a hotel and not her house, as her words had suggested.

"I am sure you recognised your ex-wife's voice clearly, right?" her voice held malice.

She looked at his dazed expressions and allowed herself a triumphant smile. She had found the perfect shoulder to hoist her arrow. Jia Li's days as everyone's centre of attention were over now.

He sat down on the chair with a thump. All this while, he had consoled himself with the thought that if Jia Li didn't belong to him, she wouldn't be with anyone else either. Never in his worst nightmares, had he imagined that his nemesis would come back to haunt him.

He HATED Tang, hated him with every fibre of his being. In the initial days of his friendship with Jia Li, he would see her eyes light up the minute she would talk about Tang. He always dreamt about her reacting the same way, one day towards him. Unfortunately that never happened, but at least he managed to get one up on Tang by marrying her.

Since childhood, Fu had been a loner. He came in his parents' life in their near old age, an accidental child. By the time, he was in middle school, his father had already retired from his job. He couldn't find much in common with them. At school, he was extremely popular amongst the girls, which made the other boys envious of him. As a result, he found himself at the receiving end of various pranks pulled by those jealous bullies. Irrespective of how much that upset him, he never let it show on his face. He always thought that he was much superior to them, both in looks and brains but he kept a subservient attitude publicly.

The need to elevate himself from his parents' middle class background had him work real hard both, at school and then at work. Till Jia Li came into his life, he had not managed to form any meaningful connect with anyone.

But she was different, right from the start. The warmth and genuineness which she exuded had made him possess her. He remembered the acute disappointment in the first meeting itself when she had informed him that she had a childhood sweetheart firmly placed in her heart. Under normal circumstances, he would have withdrawn his attention immediately.

All through the years, it had been the women chasing him. He wasn't the kind to run after someone who wasn't interested. But he couldn't bear to let Jia Li walk out of his life. He felt happy around her. So he became her friend, her confidant. He worked really hard to win her trust. It seemed that the Universe had come together to help him in the endeavour.

Tang screwed up big time after his father's fiasco. And suddenly Jia Li's emotional dependence upon him increased multi-fold. Fu had convinced himself that once they got married, he would make sure that Jia Li forgets everything about Tang, including his name. But within the first few weeks, he realised the futility of his ambition.

The woman whom he had married was like an empty shell, a polite artificial look-alike of the woman that he had fallen in love with. No matter how he behaved, she didn't give a reaction. It was as if he wasn't important enough for her to bother about. Even in bed, she waited politely for him to reach his satisfaction. There was nothing that she felt for him, physically or emotionally. And that frustrated him beyond measure.

The first time he went out and slept with someone else, he made sure to leave enough hints about it at home. He did it all to make her jealous. All she did was display disappointment in her eyes. So he did it more, anything to extract a reaction out of her. Unfortunately, that method led to their divorce.

Throughout those five years, he had been careful to not let his obsessive side be exposed in front of her. Filming Jia Li when she wasn't even aware, was the one pleasure which he allowed himself through those years of living with her. No matter how much they fought or argued, he kept a tight leash on his real emotions and the reasons for his behaviour. His real traits surfaced in front of the worthless women who were there as Jia Li's poor substitutes, required to take care of his basic needs. He was sure that Jia Li would end up spending her life as a single woman once the news of Tang's wedding reached them. Post that, he was more than happy to play the understanding ex-husband cum friend but she kept him at a polite distance.