Have You Lied Enough? - Chapter 4

The evening of the twenty-ninth day of the first lunar month—a warm New Year’s Eve.

Even if Fu Wansi was as cold as ice, he still had to join Fu Wanchu to buy a pile of red New Year’s decorations and return home.

The Fu family residence was located at the southernmost tip of Haicheng, over an hour’s drive away.

Fu Wanchu had spent the previous night at her brother’s house. This morning, they both woke up at five and rushed straight to the Fu Residence.

“Well, it’s just wishful thinking to expect even a single person to be home,” Fu Wanchu said, banging on the door again. Even amidst the deafening clamor of gongs, drums, and firecrackers, there was no response.

“Nobody’s home,” Fu Wansi stated.

Fu Wanchu turned to glare at him. “What day is it today, my dear brother? Come on, tell me. What day is it?”

Fu Wansi moved her hand to the doorbell. “Ring it. It’ll make it seem lively. Otherwise, people will think our entire family’s been massacred.”

Instead of ringing the bell, Fu Wanchu clapped her hands. “Well said! Well said!”

They drove back the same way they came, like two long-distance drivers who had taken a wrong turn.

In the car, Fu Wanchu continued to act up, clutching her heart dramatically. “Last year, they still left a nanny to watch the house. Now we can’t even get inside. How heartless! Isn’t a thirty-four-year-old child still pitiful?”

The red light ahead made Fu Wansi brake. “Did you call two days ago?” he asked.

“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” Fu Wanchu muttered, closing her eyes and feeling dizzy with anger. “Mom herself said she’d be home for the New Year today. She lied. She’s the liar, pants on fire.”

“You’re her daughter,” Fu Wansi said, tapping the steering wheel. He looked relatively calm. “She went on a date, didn’t she?”

“If Fu Xianyun goes on a date, Mom wouldn’t miss it. They’re probably competing to see who can date the youngest person,” Fu Wanchu scoffed, her smile forced. “I’d rather be a pug. At least pugs have their mom around for the New Year.”

Fu Wansi lowered his eyelids, remaining silent.

The 34-year-old child was in an uproar. Her relatives had arrived a week early to see her, and when she got out of the car, she was doubled over with stomach cramps.

Fu Wansi, acting like a chief eunuch, listened to her wails and carried her back to his place to nurse her back to health.

“Fu Wansi, the brown sugar water isn’t helping. I’ve told you how many times?”

“Fu Wansi, this ginger is too strong.”

“Fu Wansi, this hot water bottle… Little white rabbit, so white, so white~“

“Fu Wansi…”

Her incessant calls gave him a headache, but he answered every one.

Born of the same mother, Fu Wansi inherited her blunt speech and lack of comforting words for patients. His responses were limited to monosyllabic grunts like “Mm,” “Yes,” or at most, “Alright.”

Every month, around this time, Fu Wanchu became her most vulnerable. When the discomfort hit, she either retreated into herself or came to her brother to nag. Though his words were harsh, he always acted immediately to get her what she wanted, delivering it at top speed.

Fu Wanchu often said that Fu Wansi was “better with a pen than his mouth”, if he wrote a love letter, he could “make anyone swoon.”

“If you don’t like my voice, just close your ears,” Fu Wansi retorted, stirring porridge for His Imperial Majesty in the kitchen while adding wolfberries. “Sweet or savory this time?”

“Sweet, thanks,” Fu Wanchu replied, curled up in a beanbag chair, bundled in a quilt, her face contorted in a wry grin. “Hey! From now on, let’s just communicate through writing. At least what you write sounds better than how you talk.”

“Deal. But pay up first,” Fu Wansi said, scooping a generous spoonful of sugar. “My writing services come at a price.”

“Us? You’d dare charge me?” Fu Wanchu flipped him off.

During her first period in middle school, Fu Wanchu fainted on the playground from the pain. She didn’t even realize she was about to pass out; when she opened her eyes, she was already lying on a hospital bed.

Her deskmate, starry-eyed, told her, “Your brother is like a war god! He carried you all the way across campus in front of the whole school, rushed out to hail a taxi, and brought you straight to the hospital.”

As she spoke, Fu Wansi arrived at the ward door. He deliberately waited until she finished praising him before striding in, his pride showing through his teasing.

After a day of agonizing pain, Fu Wanchu was even more listless the next. She asked Fu Wansi to carry her to the floor-to-ceiling window in the living room, saying she wanted to observe the view and draw.

Not that she needed to observe anything. This woman was a wildly popular manga artist. She’d been drawing since her teens, and her pen had never stopped moving.

Compared to Fu Wansi, who could barely squeeze out six words in seven days, she seemed immune to writer’s block.

Fu Wansi was also a fan. His favorite suspense horror manga by her was so beloved he’d bought two copies. One for his collection, the other to read whenever he felt like it.

When the great artist declared she was about to start drawing, the aspiring writer grunted as he hauled over a lazy chair, moved a small table within reach for His Imperial Majesty’s enjoyment, and placed a bowl of red sugar water, a warming patch, and a bowl of hot congee beside it.

Fu Wansi was almost touched by his own efforts, but his guest spent the entire day glued to her phone, watching short videos that left her wincing with laughter. He didn’t see her pick up a pen once.

“Good thing we’re not married,” Fu Wansi suddenly remarked.

“What do you mean by that?” Fu Wanchu asked.

“Having a kid like you…” Fu Wansi took a deep breath. “My blood pressure would spike.”

“Having a kid, my ass! We’re stuck like this for life,” Fu Wanchu retorted, jabbing a finger at him. “Look at yourself, writing all that sentimental drivel about love and passion. Have you ever experienced love at first sight? No, right? How pitiful!”

Fu Wansi didn’t feel pitiful, but the words “love at first sight” made a fleeting face from a single encounter surface in his mind.

She was undeniably beautiful, perfectly suited to his tastes.

But he’d forgotten about her almost immediately. He’d always considered himself someone who wasn’t particularly devoted.

“In books, love at first sight, the kind where you’d do anything for that one person, that kind of all-consuming passion. They call that art,” Fu Wansi said, taking out a cigarette from his pack. Fu Wanchu reached for it, but he held it back, pressing the lighter as he continued.

“In real life, that kind of love? They call that stupidity.”

“……”

Fu Wanchu found his words reasonable. She opened her phone and copied them word-for-word into a social media post.

That evening, after Fu Wansi carried her to the guest bedroom, she lay on the bed and suddenly said, “Don’t you feel our house… a little too empty?”

“Empty?” Fu Wansi didn’t understand what she meant.

“We need a companion,” Fu Wanchu said, even she finding her words absurd. “Do you think we’re at the age where we’re ready to settle down? The more we lack something, the more we want it… Could we be getting old? Is thirty-four too old? When people get old, they get sentimental and nostalgic. We wouldn’t let those handsome young men con us out of our money and hearts, would we?”

“I wouldn’t,” Fu Wansi said, tucking the blanket around her. “Just be more careful when you go out.”

“What do you mean?” Fu Wanchu sighed dramatically.

“Stay away from those health supplement peddlers. It’s like you’re developing early-onset dementia,” Fu Wansi said, snapping off the light.

After two days of menstrual cramps, Fu Wanchu was back to her usual self.

Early in the morning, she took the curling iron from her brother to create big, bouncy waves. With a mischievous look, she announced that her little darling would be coming over later to cheer her up.

Fu Wanchu grew up alongside Song Wen, from adolescence all the way to university. She now stood at 182 centimeters tall, just three centimeters shorter than Fu Wansi.

Her usual public image was worlds apart from the one she presented before Fu Wansi. To those “little darlings,” she was a wealthy, beautiful, mature, and generous older woman; a single glance from her could make their knees go weak.

Fu Wansi casually asked, “Which little darling?”

Fu Wanchu named a local university, mentioning that the student was in their third year and just 22 years old; the prime of youth.

“I picked twenty-two of the biggest peaches, wiping them all over my clothes. But then I thought, how could I possibly eat them all by myself…”

Zuo Chi rested his chin in his hand, lowering his head to read aloud slowly from the book in his hands, enunciating each word deliberately.

The book was pristine, its pages untouched except for the slight creases left by Zuo Chi during his recent readings. When he first obtained it, the plastic wrapper was still intact. The cover was a warm orange, with faint, blurred images of pale pink peach trees. In the corner, the words “Mountain Peak” were written in a soft, flowing script.

The title was quite amusing: Mountain Peak.

Zuo Chi’s eyes immediately fell upon the book when he entered Cheng Bo’s office. The surrounding books were all too solemn, uniformly black and white, resembling a stack of hastily scribbled memorial scrolls from a distance.

Mountain Peak wasn’t a story about village life; it chronicled a warm yet poignant love tragedy, difficult to let go of.

In the end, everyone drifted away like the wind, and the peach trees on the mountain peak had long since vanished. The reader, like someone emerging from a distant, hazy dream, had followed a pair of children as they grew up, married, had children, and passed away.

Living one moment, disappearing the next.

Except for the peach pit left on the mountain peak, which slowly sprouted into a sapling.

Zuo Chi was already on his second reading. He felt the sapling would never grow tall, and he suspected the author felt the same.

Perhaps because life was so bleak for everyone, the compassionate author, having written of their deaths, added a final glimmer of hope at the end, hinting to readers not to despair. The sapling remained a witness to the man and woman’s love.

Zuo Chi chuckled inwardly at his own thought, lowering his head with a stifled laugh.

“What are you thinking, you didn’t even hear the knocking?”

Zuo Fanglin stood at the door with his hands clasped behind his back, not stepping inside.

The old man, nearing seventy, had fallen down the stairs two years prior and now always carried a walking stick.

Zuo Chi didn’t answer, merely glancing up at him before returning his attention to his book.

Zuo Fanglin moved behind him and peered over his shoulder. His aging eyes could only make out a few words: “love,” “husband,” and “flower.”

“Heh heh,” the old man chuckled, surprisingly modern in his thinking. “Falling for someone? What’s the point of reading romance novels? Go out and find someone you like then boldly pursue them!”

Zuo Chi didn’t deny wanting to fall in love. The author of this book was quite impressive; in fact, this was the first time he’d ever considered romance.

Though he’d had numerous sexual partners, he was old-fashioned at heart and preferred to plan carefully before embarking on something new.

For instance, he needed to plan who he’d pursue in this romance.

“Where did you go yesterday?” Zuo Fanglin patted Zuo Chi’s back twice. When Zuo Chi stood up, the old man plopped down into a chair, grumbling about how tiring it was to stand.

Zuo Chi didn’t answer, casually pushing the book aside and sitting directly on the table with a mischievous grin. “The more you worry, the faster you’ll age.”

“Bullshit,” Zuo Fanglin glared at his son, the real thing even more infuriating than those posers outside.

Zuo Chi patted his back, helping him calm down, and rambled like a cartoon chipmunk: “May you enjoy both blessings and longevity, live a hundred years, outlive the southern mountains, bask in boundless fortune, be as indestructible as a diamond, and have legs that never break…”

Zuo Fanglin interrupted, “Why haven’t you been checking on those small shops you opened? Weren’t you so enthusiastic about them at first? Now you’re complaining about the trouble?”

“No time,” Zuo Chi said, tapping his fingers on the table, citing his busy schedule.

“You’ve finished your studies. If you don’t secure a stable job soon, what decent family will take you seriously as a partner?” Zuo Fanglin disapproved.

Zuo Chi picked up a book, flipped it open, and held it up to cover the lower half of his face. Peering over the pages at his father, he grinned. “Whichever family’s unlucky enough to get stuck with me.”

“Nonsense!” Zuo Fanglin’s head throbbed with frustration.

Support Have You Lied Enough?