When I saw Tiểu Đồng again, she was wearing a hospital gown and hobbling along on crutches, one step at a time. When she saw us, she looked up and gave us a sad smile. “So you finally came.”
I quietly studied Tiểu Đồng. Her eyes were sunken, her face pale, and there was a long scar on her left cheek. She looked nothing like the person I remembered.
“What… happened to you?”
Tiểu Đồng froze, turned around, and slowly made her way to the sofa before dropping heavily onto it. “My husband beat me,” she said flatly, as if it were nothing.
I frowned. “Why didn’t you call the police? Or… get a divorce?”
I remembered what the old gardener had told me: once, he’d seen her husband drag her in from outside the gate, her limbs trailing limply behind her. Domestic abuse happens either never or over and over again. It can’t be forgiven.
Tô Tiểu Đồng gave a bitter laugh. “Oh, miss, I’m just a maid’s daughter. It took me so much effort to land a rich husband. What would I get divorced for?”
The way she addressed me, the sarcasm in her words… How had Tô Tiểu Đồng changed so much? A thought suddenly crossed my mind: Could she have been possessed too, just like me?
“Are you… really Tiểu Đồng?”
Tô Tiểu Đồng sneered. “What? You’re not used to it without your little servant trailing after you anymore?”
“A servant?” I murmured. “So all this time, that’s how you saw our relationship?”
Back in school, there were two kinds of people who really stood out: the smart kids and the rich kids. Tô Tiểu Đồng was in the first group; the moment she enrolled, she ranked first in the entire grade. I was in the second. My grades were terrible, and I’d only gotten into the school because my father had pulled some strings.
We should have had nothing to do with each other, but we became friends because we both hated Tống Tinh Trì. Tô Tiểu Đồng was the one who approached me and helped me study, tutoring me in all sorts of things. I thought we were best friends. Now I knew I was the only one who’d thought so.
I smiled bitterly. “What did I ever do to hurt you? Why would you do this?”
“Everything! Just having you around made me jealous! I hated you!” She sneered. “We both crossed Tống Tinh Trì, but he didn’t do anything to you. Instead, he found other people to bully me. Maybe it’s because I don’t have a good father like you do!”
“I got close to you like some little dog looking for someone to shelter it, wagging its tail and begging… I’m sick of it!”
Standing beside us, Tống Dịch was furious as he listened. “You don’t hate the person who hurt you, but you resent the person who helped you?”
She gave a cold laugh. “Tống Dịch, I wasn’t born as lucky as you. We’re both cut from the same cloth, so how come you get to marry the young lady you love and live happily, while I struggle to land a rich husband, only to find out he’s a hypocrite who beats his wife every day? Why don’t you just drop dead? You’re all better off dead!”
“You’re crazy!” I shouted.
“Yeah, I’m crazy. You people drove me to it!” Her face twisted. “When he got drunk, he beat me. When he lost at gambling, he beat me. And in the end, he wanted me to raise his stepson. I refused, so he grabbed me by the hair and smashed my head against the wall, then shoved me down the stairs. He almost killed me.”
“Hahaha! I guess even Heaven couldn’t just stand by, so it let us switch bodies. I wanted to ruin your lives, humiliate you, and make you shamelessly act like Tống Tinh Trì’s dog. You know, those three months were great!”
She sneered and looked at me with icy eyes. “Too bad I almost got you to find out what it feels like to jump off a building.”
I couldn’t take it anymore. I rushed forward and slapped her hard twice.
“Tô Tiểu Đồng, I’ll never forgive you!”
Tô Tiểu Đồng’s husband was the second son in his family. He had a sensible older brother above him and a doted-on younger brother below him, leaving him stuck in the middle.
At his company, he couldn’t measure up to his older brother, so he branched out into entertainment instead. With his family’s backing and resources, he became famous too. For the past few years, he’d taken on advertising campaigns for the family business and expanded its domestic market, earning himself a modest foothold.
Tống Dịch went to his house to discuss a major business deal. With the Tống family backing him and helping him expand his market, maybe he could finally compete with his older brother. But Tống Dịch’s condition was that he leave his wife and let his mistress take her place.
Mạnh Văn Châu, Tô Tiểu Đồng’s husband, agreed at once, without the slightest hesitation. Tô Tiểu Đồng refused to accept it. Annoyed, he left his mistress to fight it out with his wife and went straight off himself. The mistress had originally only planned to have a baby to get money out of him, but when she heard she might become the legal wife, she was thrilled. She rushed straight to Tô Tiểu Đồng’s house to provoke her, nearly making her faint.
Driven to the end of her rope, Tô Tiểu Đồng posted all of her husband’s dirt online. The news spread like wildfire, and the evidence was clear as day; the story shot straight to the top of the trending searches. The whole country was abuzz, and shares in the Mạnh family’s company took a hit.
Mạnh Văn Châu hurriedly called. “Rest assured, Mr. Tống. My family’s PR team is ready. What’s happening online won’t affect our partnership.”
“I’m sorry, but if you can’t even handle something this trivial, I have to question your competence. We can discuss the partnership later.”
“Please, don’t. It was just an accident. I never expected that crazy woman to dare cross the Mạnh family. Don’t worry, I’ll definitely—”
Tống Dịch didn’t listen any further. He hung up.
Curled up in Tống Dịch’s arms, I asked, “The Mạnh family is really good at spin. Can they get him out of this one?”
Mạnh Văn Châu had been embroiled in a scandal before, but the story had been pinned on someone else before it could spread very far. In the end, he’d been made out to be the victim, earning sympathy from viewers and a whole lot of fans.
“No. Think about it—who provided the irrefutable evidence this time?”
I froze, then suddenly understood. “Could it have been his older brother?”
“Yeah. As long as Mạnh Văn Châu stuck to the entertainment industry, his older brother would help him, and they both benefited. But now he’s gotten greedy and wants to go up against his older brother. He’ll only end up being crushed.”
In the end, no PR team came to Mạnh Văn Châu’s rescue. Instead, he received notice that he’d been kicked out of the company. There was no place for him left in the entertainment industry either. Overnight, he lost everything.
He blamed Tô Tiểu Đồng for everything and tormented her day after day. The two of them were like sworn enemies, arguing constantly and never knowing a moment’s peace.