Liang Chengmin's fainting spell frightened Luan Mingrui half out of his wits. He scooped her up and ran straight for the hospital. She came to briefly in his arms, felt too unwell to stay awake, and closed her eyes again. When they arrived, the emergency room doctor took one look and said, "Dr. Liang, what happened to you?" The doctors and nurses, hearing that Dr. Liang had collapsed, and with few patients around at the moment, gathered to look her over. The ER doctor, experienced enough to diagnose at a glance, saw it was simple exhaustion combined with low blood sugar, and turned to scold Luan Mingrui. "Is this how you take care of your wife? Letting her eat badly, sleep badly, and now faint on top of it? What good are you as a husband? She'd be better off with someone who actually knows how to look after her!"
Luan Mingrui stood there and said nothing. Divorce, dignity, none of it mattered anymore. His heart was breaking.
When the dizziness passed and Liang Chengmin opened her eyes to find him sitting beside her, all her old grievances rushed back at once. Her mouth crumpled and the tears came fast.
Luan Mingrui took her hand and said quietly, "Don't cry. I'm sorry."
"Sorry for what? You haven't done anything wrong! Weren't you dead set on divorcing me? Just wait until my father brings back the paperwork, I'll go through with it."
"You're the one who brought up divorce," he reminded her.
"So the moment I say divorce, you just agree to it? When I said I wouldn't marry you, why didn't you listen to me then?" She was practically in tears from the injustice of it. "I am divorcing you!" She was so furious with him she could have died right there, and this fainting spell had only hardened her resolve. An apology now? Too late.
After her glucose drip, Liang Chengmin walked home with Luan Mingrui trailing a few steps behind.
"Stop following me! I don't even know you!"
He didn't answer, just kept following. Back at her house, she blocked the doorway. "You are not coming in."
Luan Mingrui looked at her, then craned his neck and called out, "Ma!" Liang Chengmin's mother came out, saw the two of them squared off at the door, and said, "If you're going to fight, fight inside. Shut the door behind you." Grown adults, the both of them. If these two stubborn fools really wanted a divorce, they'd have gotten one long ago instead of putting on one scene after another.
Like children playing house.
Mother Liang had seen enough of life, weathered this small town's storms, taught for decades, and had a clear read on most things. She glanced at them once and said, "I'm going to buy some oil," and left.
That left the two of them alone in the room. Luan Mingrui reached for her hand. She pulled away and hid it behind her back. "Don't touch me."
"I can't touch my own wife?"
"Who's your wife? We're getting divorced!"
"I won't do it."
"Too late. I have to." Liang Chengmin's eyes went red. "From now on you can eat your rice and I'll drink my wine, and we'll have nothing more to do with each other." She threw his own harsh words right back at him, unchanged.
Luan Mingrui was so angry it made him laugh.
He had always been the one who made others angry, until he met Liang Chengmin, this hard case. And how hard was she? Luan Mingrui thought he'd only ever met one person like her in his whole life, neck held stiff, refusing to bend even at the cost of her life. Tougher than him. More unyielding than him.
He had no idea what to do next.
He just looked at her for a long moment and finally said, "I'll come back once you've calmed down. If you still want the divorce then, I'll go along with it." He turned and walked out.
Everyone's got their pride, Luan Mingrui thought. The next day he packed his things and left town.
Luan Mingrui had married close to thirty, and he didn't understand that sometimes a woman just needed to be coaxed, that a man had to set aside his pride and win her over properly. In his heart, he simply felt Liang Chengmin shouldn't have gone drinking with a male classmate from medical school. Part of it was that her family had once pushed her to marry a doctor, a teacher, or a factory worker. Part of it was something Luan Mingcheng had once mentioned, that Liang Chengmin had been involved with a doctor before. He'd never believed it possible, back then he'd thought she understood nothing about such things. But seeing that doctor holding her up while she was drunk had made him wonder if it was true after all. He didn't know why it bothered him so much. Probably because between the two of them, it had always been him pursuing her, while she seemed reluctant. She never showed much enthusiasm for their marriage, and he assumed it was because she'd reached the age to marry, her family had pressed her hard, and then he'd come along, persistent to the point of shamelessness, and so she'd married him.
His business was no easy thing. Trading in seafood was hard, physical work, and he often had to load and unload goods himself, leaving him bruised and marked more often than not. In the past, whenever he traveled, he would write to Liang Chengmin or send a telegram, thinking of her every day. This time he sent nothing. No letters, no telegrams. The two of them simply went cold.
Luan Mingrui was miserable and didn't know how to put it into words, afraid she would mock him if he tried. Those two weeks passed like a stretch of hell. He genuinely didn't think he could keep living like that.
He had no idea how she'd spent the time while he was away. He assumed she was doing just fine without him.
By the time he came home, the trees in the small town had all put out new buds.
What a beautiful spring it was that year. He meant to find Liang Chengmin first, went to the hospital, and learned she had the day off. He went to her house instead and paced outside the door for a long while, unable to make himself go in.
So he went to his parents' house for dinner.
"Should we ask Minmin to come eat with us tonight?" his parents asked. "While you were gone, she always came by to look after us."
"Looked after you how?"
"Plenty of ways. Ask her yourself."
After dinner, Luan Mingrui went home. He set his bags down at the door, pushed it open, and saw someone in the courtyard airing out a quilt, standing on tiptoe with her arms stretched to smooth it flat. Two thick braids. Who else could it be but Liang Chengmin?
She heard the gate and turned to look at him. How had he gotten so thin? Had he not been eating properly at all?
He walked in and shut the door behind him.
"Not working today?" he asked.
"No."
"Then hear me out."
"Go ahead." Liang Chengmin had missed him unbearably. She'd never known before that loving someone felt like this, this whole ordeal had left her nerves in shreds. She'd insisted on the divorce, and then he'd vanished without a word, and she'd missed him anyway. Sometimes, wanting to know how he was doing, she went to his mother's house, and his mother would bring out his letters to show her.
They had simply known each other too briefly before marrying.
Neither of them really understood the other, neither knew how much they truly weighed in the other's heart. Each assumed the other had married out of resignation. Neither realized: which of them was actually the one settling? If either could have settled for someone else, would they really have waited this long to marry at all?
"I missed you a lot these past two weeks," he said.
"If you missed me, why didn't you write? Why didn't you send a telegram?" she asked. "Is that what missing someone looks like to you?" Even a single word would have told her he was safe, where he was, given her some direction to look when she thought of him.
"Didn't you say you wanted a divorce?"
"I did, and I still want one." Liang Chengmin had been stubborn since childhood, her heart burning hot even as her mouth refused to admit it. At the hospital, she'd be worried sick over a patient and it would still come out sounding like a lecture.
"Then let's go get it done right now."
"Go where? Look at the time, everything's closed!" She glared at him, amazed he still hadn't figured out what he'd done wrong. She turned, went inside, and came back with a letter. "Read this. Now."
Luan Mingrui opened it and recognized her handwriting. She had written him a self-criticism, the gist of it being that she should not have accused him unfairly, that Liang Chengmin had every right to eat a meal with a man (so long as they weren't alone together), and that he ought to trust her.
The parenthetical struck him as funny.
He handed the letter back. "I won't read it."
"You haven't gotten to the second page yet."
"I'm not reading it. I don't want to." Luan Mingrui would rather die than bend. "If you're only calling off the divorce because I read this letter, then let's skip straight to the paperwork. I won't read it."
Liang Chengmin finally understood exactly what kind of man Luan Mingrui was. Everything people had ever said about him was true. He really was this stubborn, this unbending, even though the second page held her own confession. That she shouldn't have drunk so much in front of a man and let him walk her back to her dormitory alone. That she shouldn't have thrown the word divorce around so carelessly. And that she missed him terribly.
"Fine, I'll read it myself." She flipped to the second page. "Once I'm done, we're getting the paperwork done first thing tomorrow morning."
She'd barely gotten past the first line when Luan Mingrui stepped forward and pulled her into his arms. She kicked him, bit him, felt so wronged she could have died. People called her a tough iron lady, and yet he'd made her cry more times than she could count.
"I have to divorce you. You've missed your chance. I won't spend my life with someone as foul tempered as you, I won't spend my whole life biting my tongue just to stay married to you!" She struggled against him, but he wouldn't let go, just kept saying sorry, sorry.
"Stop reading, Liang Chengmin." He held her tighter. "It hurts to hear."
They were both the kind of people who would break before they'd bend, but a marriage held plenty of things that didn't need to be spelled out, and it didn't always take someone giving in to fix them. His eyes went red, her tears fell, and both of them carried the same unspoken sorry. No one starts out knowing everything about the other.
Full of regret, Luan Mingrui wiped her tears away. "Liang Chengmin, from now on you can do whatever you like. I won't try to control you. I'll only work on controlling myself."
"I never wanted you to stop caring what I do. I wanted you to trust me."
"I trust you."
"Liar. If you trusted me you never would have acted this way!" She cried, sobbing now, and he cupped her face in his hands and bent down to kiss her.
"Don't you dare kiss me," she said, even as her hands gripped the front of his shirt and her eyes drifted shut.
"Liang Chengmin." He spoke the words against her lips. "Every day I was away, I missed you. I want you to feel the same way I do, that this marriage was never just settling."
She opened her eyes at that. "If I were the type to settle, I'd have married years ago."
"Say that properly."
"I'm just saying I wasn't settling."
"Then why did you marry me?" He held her face. "Why? I married you because you were the one in my heart, no one else would do. If it hadn't been you, I'd have stayed single my whole life. What about you?"
Her lips brushed his. "Because I love you. You can kiss me now."
Whenever they'd been apart, she had missed him terribly, an ache lodged somewhere in her chest. She'd go home and her mother would ask if Mingrui had written, and she never knew what to say. Work was manageable, at least there was something to occupy her hands. But coming home afterward to an empty house was another matter.
Back then, Luan Mingrui had firmly refused to live with his parents after the wedding, and just before they married he'd moved into the old family house. When she went there, it felt hollow and empty. When she went to her parents' house, there was no trace of him anywhere. So in the end she always went back to their own small home.
He never wrote, and she couldn't very well ask his family where he'd gone, so she was left to sit with her thoughts alone, thinking of him until it physically hurt.
The day he came back, both of them were desperate for each other, a young couple not long married, who had fought bitterly and then spent so many days apart, every part of them wanting this. He carried her into the bedroom, kicked the door shut behind them, and began pulling at her clothes.
She was like water in his hands, letting him gather her up and set her down however he liked, giving herself over to him entirely.
At the height of it, she had the strange sensation that something inside her had just taken root.
After that day, the good between this young couple was real good. Liang Chengmin became like his shadow, trailing after him once work ended, going wherever he went. Luan Mingrui loved taking her around the streets, and whenever they ran into someone he knew, he'd say, "This is my wife, Liang Chengmin."
A little over ten days later, Liang Chengmin retched as she got out of bed one morning.
Luan Mingrui, who was putting on his shoes, turned to look at her. "What's wrong?"
"If I'm pregnant, what should we name the baby?" She was a doctor herself, and had suspected for a few days already, though she hadn't bothered to confirm it.
His heart skipped. Still, he told himself it couldn't happen that fast. But he thought it over seriously anyway. "Luan Nian."
"Why that?"
"It sounds nice."
She really was pregnant. Counting back on her fingers, it landed on the very day they'd made up, the day she'd felt something, felt everything around her suddenly full and rich.
Her whole pregnancy came with constant nausea, which wasn't typical. Most women's symptoms faded or eased after the third month. Hers didn't. Even past three months, she still threw up whatever she ate.
The pregnancy wore her down until she barely looked like herself.
Most women filled out a little as they went along. She only grew round in the belly, her arms and legs staying thin as ever.
It worried Luan Mingrui sick, and he was thoroughly unimpressed with this child. Sometimes he couldn't help poking her belly and muttering, "Just wait until you're out here. I'll deal with you then."
"Why don't you have any sympathy? Do you know how hard it was on your own mother carrying you? Can you please stop tormenting me?"
As if on cue, the baby gave a kick, like a protest.
"I have a feeling," she told him, "this one isn't going to have the best temper."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because sometimes when you're harsh with him, he doesn't like it."
"What does he know?"
Worried for her, Luan Mingrui asked what she wanted to eat. "Shrimp," she said.
So he rolled up his sleeves and cooked her shrimp, varying the recipe each time so she wouldn't tire of it. Everyone in the Luan family was particular from top to bottom, and he was no exception. When he cooked, the color, the smell, the flavor all had to be right, as if he were carving a piece of art rather than making a meal.
For the shrimp, he'd devein them first, steam them halfway, then finish them off in hot oil. Oil-flashed prawns came out a beautiful color, and he'd pair them with a stir-fried vegetable and a glass of milk.
Down south there was osmanthus, and his mother had found a way to preserve some. Whenever the family could get hold of milk, the children got to drink sweet osmanthus milk.
He made a batch for Liang Chengmin, and she loved it especially.
The year she was pregnant, Luan Mingrui stopped traveling for business entirely so he could look after her. He'd get up first to make breakfast, see her off to work after she'd eaten, then head to the goods yard, and rush home again by ten to cook lunch, always a proper balance of meat and vegetables. He'd carry it to the hospital in a ceramic food box, sit with her while she ate, talk with her a while, then head back out to handle paperwork at various offices, check on shipments at the yard, and give instructions to Luan Mingcheng. Then he'd go collect her from the hospital when her shift ended.
Not a single day missed.
The staff at the hospital, seeing the two of them together every single day, liked to tease, "Tsk, tsk, look at the two of you, sweet as ever."