Under The Sunset, She Kissed Me. - Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Ms. Y, my wife—she is like a vast, towering mountain. She embraces all my flaws and heals everything within me. Meeting Ms. Y is the greatest stroke of luck in my entire life.

Before meeting Ms. Y, I always thought love was an optional, dispensable thing. After meeting her, I finally understood the greatness of love. Love makes us brave; it transformed me from a gloomy squid into a cheerful, crispy fried squid—a strange analogy, perhaps, but it is my true reflection and thought. My dear Ms. Y, I hope time slows down. Let us walk from spring through to winter, cycling through the four seasons with you always by my side.

Ms. Y has a very fashionable sense of style. For a while, her company required female employees to wear high heels, and during that period, our home was always filled with the tap-tap-tap sound of her footsteps. Because of my work, I need a quiet environment and am quite sensitive to noise, so whenever I heard the sound, I would want to go and check. I don’t know if you can imagine it: my wife is a radiant, stunning beauty with a brilliant smile. In a black fishtail skirt that accentuated her figure, seven-centimeter red heels, and a pair of sparkling earrings that swayed with every step—my heartbeat swayed right along with those earrings. At that moment, seeing Ms. Y was like a dog seeing a juicy bone.

Ms. Y loves vibrant, vivid colors. The day after she finished her college entrance exams, she dragged me to dye our hair. She chose red, and I dyed mine blue to match hers. I don’t particularly like dyeing my hair, and I didn’t bother with it once it started fading. Ms. Y is the exact opposite; she loves changing her hair color, and during our three-month vacation, she changed it four times. After we moved in together, sometimes looking at Ms. Y’s rainbow-colored hair, I sighed, thinking I had started dating a bag of colorful candies.

Ms. Y loves reading novels. She often stays up all night reading. When we were in school, she would buy physical books, finish them in class, and then read at night. After graduation, when we moved in together, she would curl up under the covers with her phone. Ms. Y hates being disturbed when she’s reading; she often kicks me out of the master bedroom to the guest room to write. I hate that phone so much, yet I can’t take it away from her, or she’ll get really angry. Honey, look at your little Ruru-baby, crying, crying, sobbing.

Sleeping in bed with Ms. Y is an ordeal; she tosses and turns into eighteen different positions all night. We can never actually fall asleep, and in the end, we both just drift off clutching our own phones. This is nothing like the life we imagined when we first moved in together.

If Ms. Y is a bright, fiery, enthusiastic puppy, then I am a human-machine filled with a faint scent of cockroach. That is why I often feel that getting close to my wife is like getting close to the sun—so dazzling and warm that I can’t keep my eyes open.

A few afternoons ago, Ms. Y was feeling a bit down. I asked her what was wrong, and she said she felt she wasn’t good enough for me. I asked her why she thought that, and Ms. Y said it was because I am talented and have become a well-known writer, while she is just a small employee at a company. I patted Ms. Y’s head and told her not to overthink it. My wife is strange sometimes; she can be as confident as the Star of the Ocean, knowing she is one-of-a-kind, and other times she feels as self-deprecating as a chimpanzee, thinking she is an unintelligent fool.

That afternoon, I held her as we sat in the chairs on the balcony soaking up the sun. Ms. Y counted off all the mistakes she had made in recent years while shedding tears. The tears rolled down onto my neck, and I wiped them away slowly. I coaxed her like a mother coaxing a baby. Ms. Y looked like a crushed bitter melon, her tears shifting from a small stream into a waterfall. When she finally cried herself tired, she just whimpered and tucked her chin onto my shoulder, whispering “sorry” in a small voice.

After she finished crying, she felt a bit better, and that’s when I spoke up: “Honey, I love you so much. It was only after I met you that I learned life could be this beautiful.”

Before I wrote this novel, I loved sharing stories about my wife elsewhere. Occasionally, there would be some nasty comments. Regarding that, I want to say: even if my wife hadn’t met me, she would have met someone else who liked her, someone perhaps even better than me. They might have lived a peaceful, prosperous life and perhaps even had two children. It was I who dragged her into this dead end; sometimes I even hate myself for pulling my wife into a blind alley. But I never expected that even then, people would still curse my wife. I am truly despicable and shameless. I want to wait until I die and go to hell, where I deserve to suffer through the eighteen levels of torture. Even if she isn’t with me in the next life, even if I am reborn into the animal realm, I will never let her go in this life. Actually, after I successfully confessed to Ms. Y, I bought all sorts of Buddha statues and placed them around the house. I pray to the gods and Buddhas; I pray that even after I die, I will be with her. Let all the hardships and suffering come to me; just don’t hurt her. It was my love at first sight, my stubbornness, my seduction. I begged the Buddha to bless us so that we could be buried in the same grave in this lifetime. So, to those saying Ms. Y only has a good life because of me, I will block you directly. This is the first time I have lost my temper with you all, and I hope it is the last. I love my wife very much, and Ms. Y loves me very much. We will just keep loving each other like this until death.

Compared to luxury goods, I prefer gold, while Ms. Y prefers gemstones, diamonds, and jade. Every time we go to the mall, we always head to the jewelry store first to admire the soaring gold prices. Then, while Ms. Y sneaks off to the restroom, I buy her a jade bracelet. Then, she sneaks off to the restroom and buys me a gold necklace. Every shopping trip is like this. We swear every time we finish shopping that we won’t buy each other secret gifts again, but we are all liars. In some ways, my wife and I share a different kind of telepathy.

Before I met my wife, I didn’t believe in love at first sight at all. After seeing her, I realized that wherever she stands, that is where my gaze is fixed.

In high school, we didn’t take many photos. During university, we were at different schools, so joint photos were pitifully rare. After we moved in together, I bought all kinds of cameras to record our daily lives. Memories may fade, but photos make up for that. My dear Ms. Y, the future is long—having you is enough.

When Ms. Y thinks I’m being cute, she loves to bite my face. It’s not really a bite; it’s more like a tiny nibble, grinding lightly with her teeth. It feels ticklish, and she leaves my face covered in saliva. I don’t mind; I don’t know how many times I’ve already eaten my wife’s saliva, so I don’t care. But Ms. Y always wipes it off with a tissue afterward, saying I’m not clean. Yet, if I dodge her the next time she tries to bite me, she gets angry, saying I don’t love her. Ah, she’s hard to handle, really hard to handle.

When Ms. Y is nervous or spaced out, she loves to bite her fingernails. To help her break this bad habit, I often take her to get manicures. Later, she realized what I was doing and asked if I just didn’t want her “handling” me. I looked at her with total confusion and asked if her brain was filled with nothing but dirty thoughts. She said, “Well then, why do you keep taking me to get manicures?”

“You love biting your nails, it’s not clean. This prevents you from biting them, and you look good with them done. I see so many of your colleagues changing their designs every month, and you don’t even do it once a year. I want to be good to you; I don’t want you to lose out to anyone else.”

Ms. Y looked at me, moved, and said, “Honey, you’re so good to me. I’m willing to be your wife for a lifetime, and in the next life, I’ll continue to be with you.” Tsk tsk tsk, fickle woman.

Ms. Y is very beautiful, with a radiant, healthy, and wholesome appearance. Every time I stand next to her, I feel an inexplicable sense of pride. Look! Someone this beautiful is my wife! Especially when someone comes up to ask for her WeChat, Ms. Y will take my hand and say, “This is my wife.” That feeling—sigh, a bunch of single folks would never understand.

I don’t like posting on social media, but when I do, it’s always a record of life with Ms. Y. Friends ask me if I’m a “simp,” but no, no, no—I am Ms. Y’s brain. You don’t understand her charm at all. Later, one of Ms. Y’s colleagues fell for her and confessed his feelings. She rejected him, but he kept pestering her. It made me so angry I grew a canker sore overnight. The next day, when Ms. Y saw the sore, she laughed so hard she could barely stand, teasing me for being a “jealousy-monster.”

My family taught me from a young age that when problems arise, you don’t cry; you solve them. So, I rarely cried growing up. Since meeting Ms. Y, I’ve become a frequent crier. Sometimes I wonder why? Now I realize it’s love, it’s heartache, it’s the inability to let go. Ms. Y loves me, so she permits all my emotional lows; she permits me to cry and make a fuss. Ms. Y feels heartache for me, so whenever I am the one being hurt, she always cries before I do. Ms. Y doesn’t want me to suffer or be taken advantage of, so she always plans my future before I do. Having met such a wonderful Ms. Y, how could I not be happy and cry? It’s just that this time, they are tears of happiness.

Ms. Y gets off work at 5:30 and gets home around 6:10. Every time she comes home, she brings flowers. She hides them behind her back and makes me guess what color they are this time. If I guess right, Ms. Y gives me a massage at night; if I guess wrong, I give her a massage. I always guess right, and she asks if I have superpowers. In reality, I just love hanging out by the window to watch for her, so I can always guess. Of course, I occasionally guess wrong just to serve her.

Before we moved in together, we were in a long-distance relationship for a year and a half. In that time, we only saw each other once, during Chinese New Year. Her career was taking off, so there was no way she could come home. The breakthrough was on my end; I was a science student who majored in Computer Science. I went back home to find work, but the issues at the company made me incredibly frustrated. A year and a half later, I quit and went to Kunhe to be with Ms. Y. Of course, I also had my “side hustle”—writing. Even though it didn’t pay much, it was enough to live on. I remember the first thing Ms. Y said when she saw me was that I had lost weight. That scene inexplicably overlapped with the moment we met in college at different schools. From then on, aside from death, I don’t think I will ever leave you again.

I have always known my aesthetic sense is ugly. The few times my taste has been “on-line” was when I fell for Ms. Y. Every time I go out with her, it’s like a refined city lady and her little dirt-dog. Later, Ms. Y helped improve my style, successfully turning me from a “little dirt-dog” into a “big dirt-dog.” How to put it? One reason is that I don’t know how to do makeup, and another is that Ms. Y is just too beautiful; standing next to her makes me look pathetic. I never felt that my style was shameful; as long as my wife is beautiful, that’s enough. My wife is breathtakingly, soul-shatteringly beautiful. Ms. Y is my wife, you know? Hee hee, thinking about that feels pretty damn good.