Seventeenth Day Without Divorce (1)

Liang Yan was still thinking deeply when her mobile phone suddenly rang inside her jacket.

Taking out her phone, she checked the caller ID, only to find an unfamiliar string of numbers flashing.

Jiang Mu asked, “Who is it?”

“I don’t know.” Hesitating at first, Liang Yan still picked it up. “Hello?”

“It’s me.” The person on the other line is obviously a man.

Liang Yan asked again. “Who is this?”

"......" The person on the other line seemed to pause suddenly, then, he finally spoke, “Lu Lincheng.”

“!!!” Because of fright, Liang Yan let go of her phone, it spun around on air a few times before she hurriedly caught it.

Lu Lincheng stayed up all night, so his voice was hoarse as he spoke, “Liang Yan, let’s meet up and talk.”

She originally imagined that Lu Lincheng would scold her to her face or at least stab her a few times with his words to eliminate his anger. Out of her expectations, he sounded normal. It was as if someone else was dragged into the limelight by her and not him.

Actually, Liang Yan didn’t really expect that unfollowing him would explode, dragging Lu Lincheng with her. She felt guilty, so she only spoke a little, very polite. “Okay.”

Lu Lincheng said, “You should be free the day after tomorrow. I’ll come back home at that time.”

“.... home?” She didn't respond at first, but then she realized that the “home” he was talking about was the 200 sq. feet apartment in Nan Jing District. Jiang Mu said they lived there together.

“Mm-hmm…” he hummed faintly, “If there’s nothing else, I’ll hang up first.”

Liang Yan put down her phone and stared at the call record of 1 minute and 30 seconds. It showed that she didn’t dream of Lu Lincheng calling.

Jiang Mu noticed Liang Yan’s reaction and came to the conclusion that the caller was Lu Lincheng. He went over to ask, “What did he say? Did he get angry at you?”

“No.” Liang Yan denied it, shaking her head. “He only said that he wanted to talk to me face to face.”

“In person?” Jiang Mu frowned. “Did he mention what he wants to talk about?”

“Nope.” Liang Yan was shaking her head, but there was already a speculation forming in her heart.

The thing was, Lu Lincheng wasn’t angry about being unfollowed and then dragged into the hot search. His voice was calm when he called, and he wanted to talk face-to-face…

The only possibility was that…

The reason was that Lu Lincheng wanted to talk about divorce face to face, ah.

*****************

Jiang Mu noticed that Liang Yan suddenly grew quiet after the phone call. She looked like a lost stray animal.

Liang Yan sniffed.

Sure enough, he was going to divorce her.

It was as if she was a child all over again. During her childhood, her parents, who were forever quarreling, suddenly stopped. Then, they took her to a restaurant to have dinner together. Liang Yan recalled that her little left hand held her father’s hand and her right hand held her mother’s hand. She was jumping in joy, and she let the two of them bring her to the local gymnasium.

Liang Yan bit her finger as her parents handed her to the teacher in charge of the gymnasium. Her mother squatted and fixed her collar. “Dad and Mom are divorced, and we can’t take care of you anymore. From now on, you stay here in school, and we’ll come to visit you if we have time, okay?”

Liang Yan didn’t grow up as a pampered little girl that had the ability to act spoiled and capricious.

Knowing that these words were the last gentle actions her parents would give her, with red eyes, she said, “Yes.”

Then, she watched the man and woman walk out of the gymnasium as strangers, going their separate ways. Liang Yan watched the two figures moving away. Her small fists clenched. She did something bold.

Sobbing, she suddenly ran after them, her shouts heartbreaking. The two people seemed to hear her cries, but neither looked back.

The iron gates of the sports school were mercilessly shut.

At first, she waited for them to visit her, training hard every day so she could show them her accomplishments when they visited. When they left, her parents told her they would come if they were free, but she waited and waited for them until she finally lost count of how many years it had been, but they never came.

Since then, Liang Yan had been afraid of abandonment. When she was still a child, she would wake up from nightmares frequently, always with the same old iron gates that separated her parents from her.

Liang Yan buried her head.

Perhaps because she was scared of being abandoned again, she has never taken the initiative of divorcing Lu Lincheng despite losing her memory.