ill-fated relationship

Chapter 8

The torture An Ting inflicted on me was more painful than strangling me to death.

Pei-ching's death was such a blow that I spent more than two months in the psychiatric ward of Kowloon Hospital. When Jie-er died, I was also devastated, but sleeping at my sister's house was nothing like this. White walls, white hospital bed, and faces around me paler than white paper—a shocking white, a despairing, ashen white.

I receive psychological, physical, and even electrical therapy every day.

Those so-called psychologists, they change every day, asking the same monotonous questions over and over again.

I'm on IV fluids every day, but I'm still so weak that my hands and feet feel unsteady.

And then there's that so-called electrotherapy, which involves pushing me around to get an electric shock or vibration all the time, and all I feel is numbness.

I refused to speak.

I reject sentimentality.

I refused to visit.

I just want to be alone under the covers, sleeping from morning till night, and then from night till dawn, or better yet, I'd rather sleep until I die.

I don't want to hear any sound.

I don't want to see anyone.

This included the doctors, nurses, patients around us, my sister and brother-in-law's family, Li Peifen, and my colleagues at the accounting firm.

For more than two months, I spent my time in the hospital, constantly opening and closing my eyes, as if I had never been awake again. Moreover, my chest felt empty, and my soul seemed to have drifted away.

As my spirit and my mind gradually recovered, it felt like an entire century had passed.

If I hadn't met Zhuo Zixiong, I might never have woken up to reality in my entire life.

But when I encountered Cheung Chi-hung, it was another nightmare.

The nightmares were more terrifying than the last.

My story with Zhuo Zixiong, of course, began in a hospital bed.

I can't remember when he came to the hospital, and I have no interest in knowing why he was put in the psychiatric ward.

All I know is that when he cried, his sobs and choked cries echoed through the vast night, and he covered his mouth tightly, trying his best to suppress them, as if afraid that no one would hear them. So his wailing was intermittent, like a baby crying its heart out, which was very distressing to listen to.

Even I, a living dead, was infected by his loneliness and sorrow.

---janeadam

Reply [25]: It was a quiet night when I suddenly woke up and lifted the blanket covering my head. I turned to look at the patient in the next bed, and at the same time, the patient in the next bed also lifted the pillow covering his head. His face was covered with tears.

In just a fleeting moment of eye contact, his expression was one of deep emotion, and my reaction was one of profound shock.

It was as if, in that instant of eye contact, I awoke from a dark, empty, and terrifying world.

He, like someone who had lost their memory, suddenly remembered everything clearly. With tears in his eyes, he greeted me: "Hi!"

I responded with a somber smile.

"How long have you been in here?" he asked.

"It feels like yesterday, yet like a lifetime ago," I replied.

“They insist that there’s something wrong with me.” He pointed to his head.

"If you can find this place without any problems, you're not human!" I pointed to my head.

"You look completely broken."

I feel like I've heard those words somewhere before. Ah! It's Pei-Ching. She described it that way too. Thinking of Pei-Ching, two streams of tears flowed uncontrollably from my eyes.

"I understand, you are in excruciating pain right now."

As he spoke, he got off the bed and sat down beside me. Gently and softly, with one finger, he slowly and gently wiped away the two streams of tears that were streaming down my face.

Then he went back to his own bed.

The tear stains on his face were still not wiped away.

"Heartbroken?" he asked.

I shook my head.

He didn't press further, but simply said, "I am." I scrutinized his face, which was even more handsome than a woman's, and said, "You're even more handsome than Leslie Cheung."

A blush crept across her tear-streaked face: "You said that too."

There was a long, lingering shadow behind me, and in my lucid moments, I was even less inclined to reopen old wounds. It was rare to find someone who didn't ask or bring it up, so I followed his lead, and the two of us started talking in our respective hospital beds in the middle of the night.

"Looking like that, you think you're afraid of getting dumped?"

“But I just had a breakup.” He suddenly turned his face away, and I knew he must have been crying. “I swallowed more than fifty sleeping pills, but I couldn’t die, and the doctors and nurses here humiliated me.”

"Women are nothing, are you afraid of not having any?"

"Woman, I don't want her."

"If not women, then men?"

"Um."

"You...you're doing this..."

"cut."

"Everyone has their own way of life. Being gay is just a homosexuality, it doesn't mean they're going to kill or commit arson."

"I thought that after I told you the truth, you would look down on me."

"Alas, I've also given up on pursuing women." Every word I spoke came from the bottom of my heart. "Now I'm even afraid to get close to women. I can't be intimate with them anymore. I don't want to implicate innocent people anymore. I'm afraid that even if I live a lonely old age, I'll never be able to shake off that shadow..."

"Ha! You're afraid of women, and I don't like women, so we're kind of like-minded, aren't we?"

Aren't you afraid of AIDS?

Everyone dies eventually.

"It's clear you're a natural-born freak."

---janeadam

Reply [26]: "What about you? I don't believe you've never truly loved?"

"Me? Didn't you say I looked completely broken? Even if I still had feelings, I was shattered into dust."

"It sounds like we're reciting a literary dialogue."

We talked from a distance of about ten feet, and although we tried our best to keep our voices down, a few words still came out a little too loud, disturbing the nurse on the night shift, who came to intervene. So the conversation stopped, and we looked at each other for a long time before we both drifted off to sleep.

The following week, I recovered quickly, got out of bed, ate, and was able to answer the questions from doctors and nurses. When I saw my sister, brother-in-law, colleagues, and Li Peifen, I even managed a forced smile.

On the day my application to be discharged was approved, I wrote down my address and phone number for Zhuo Zixiong. He said with emotion, "Although we have different illnesses, we sympathize with each other and can be considered friends."

On the fifth day after being discharged from the hospital, he came to our door.

The two locked themselves in the room and first looked at each other and smiled.

I joked, "The hospital hasn't even successfully brainwashed you yet, and they're already letting you out?"

He lunged at him, pretending to pounce: "Watch me tear your mouth apart!"

I begged for mercy: "I can't stand your coquettish appearance, you're even more seductive than a woman!"

His expression immediately darkened: "It's a pity you can't handle it."

I grew bolder: "So what if I can stand it? So what if I can't?"

He said seductively, "If you can stand it, you can do whatever you want; if you can't, I can't do whatever I want."

A thought suddenly occurred to me.

The images of Jie'er and Pei Jing immediately came to mind.

I stared at him for a long time, feeling the heavy pressure emanating from An Ting, which had choked me. The pent-up emotions in my chest and the unbearable pain had reached their peak.

I shed sorrowful tears.

He didn't say anything more, but simply took a step forward naturally, and gently, softly, with one finger, slowly, gently wiped away my tears that were streaming down my face.

The same heartwarming gesture had already been made once at the hospital.

I couldn't hold back any longer. I grabbed one of his hands and desperately covered my mouth with it, not wanting my sister outside the room to hear my crying.

I saw pity and tenderness in his eyes.

And so, Zhuo Zixiong and I started walking together.

I've quit my job at the accounting firm and even made an excuse to move away from my sister's place. I want a new environment and a new life.

Before her death, An Ting made a vow filled with deep hatred: "If I fall in love with any other woman, I will kill her for every one I pursue!"

Jie'er is dead.

Pei-Ching also died.

But Zhuo Zixiong is not a woman; he is a man.

Shen Anting never said that if I fell in love with a man, she would kill him!

Therefore, I presumptuously and recklessly fell in love with Cheung Chi-hung.

More than once, after my sister urged me repeatedly to go to her house for soup, she would invariably burst into tears, saying, "Little brother! Of course I understand how you feel, but you don't have to degrade yourself like this! I prayed to the gods and Buddhas to save your life, and now you're hanging out with that Zhuo guy, aren't you just sending yourself to the tiger's den again? There's no cure for AIDS..."

I always answered calmly, "I'd rather die from AIDS than be tortured to the point of being half-dead by Shen Anting."

The older sister couldn't stop it.

No matter how unacceptable society may be, the world is vast, and there's always a place to build a nest. So, Zhuo Zixiong and I naturally settled down together.

---janeadam

Reply [27]: Of course I have no regrets, but I have accepted my fate since things have come to this.

It's just that Shen Anting is so hateful; she doesn't even spare men!

Cheuk Chi-hung died three months later.