Satisfied, the man nodded, picked up his shirt from the bed, and put it on. “I should go.”
“Not staying the night?” The woman threw off the covers, her bare feet touching the cold birch wood floor.
“Not tonight.” By then, the man had already dressed and was pulling on his trousers. “I’ll come see you in a couple of days!” After kissing her forehead, he turned the doorknob and his figure disappeared outside. Two minutes later, a beam of yellow light swept past the window, signaling that his Porsche had driven away.
She rushed into the bathroom, the shower’s strong jets hitting her face and body, washing away the makeup in handfuls. An hour later, wrapped in a towel, she stood in front of the fogged-up mirror. Her fingers traced a horizontal line on the mirror, revealing a thin lip, then a vertical line for a pert nose, two dots for cheeks, and another line for eyebrows and eyes, finally adding a stroke for the shoulder. In the mist on the mirror, she wrote a large character “来” (Come), her face like an incomplete puzzle, fragmented here and there.
Her name was Lai Hui, a kept woman. Her patron was Zhou Yuqian, with whom she had been for five years. She was 26, taken in by him at 21; he was 33, having bought her at 28. It was a clichéd story: she was once a pure, beautiful girl living with her mother, diligent and well-behaved, who got into a prestigious university, had a boyfriend, like in an old movie, those were “sunny days”. But one day, the sun veered off course, her mother fell seriously ill, her boyfriend, though talented, was poor. Faced with dropping out of school and losing her mother, she suddenly saw a narrow beam of light in the darkness. Zhou Yuqian appeared like a deity.
“I’ll take care of your mother’s medical expenses!” He sat elegantly in the sunlight, sipping coffee with an air of nobility.
“Thank you!” She sat in the shadow, drinking plain water, her voice trembling with gratitude.
“I’ll pay for your four years of university tuition!” He grandly tore off a check and smoothly wrote a number.
“Thank you!” She took the check with excitement, giving him a salute of gratitude.
“The condition is…” he continued calmly.
