ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎 𝑙𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑝𝑠𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑏𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟ㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑡𝑜 𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑢𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑦𝑎𝑙 𝑜𝑓 𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑚𝑡ℎㅤㅤㅤ
ㅤㅤ༊ 𓆣 ———————————————————— 𓆣 ༊
ㅤ
Friday nights had always been arguably, his favourite time of the week in recent months. Not because it was the obvious time of the week to wind down as they were heading towards the end of it, since his job had no fixed hours given the nature of his trade. Rather, it was one of the few moments of respite he was afforded, as his wife, Xu Sufen (née Hong) - had defaulted Friday evenings as the window for gossips over tea, supper, and a full round of mahjong, with her three other childhood girl friends that had cemented their places into her heart, coming only second place behind the love of her life, Xu Wenhong - or alternatively known as Michael - and her quaint establishment, 玫瑰村 (méi guī cūn - Rose village), which shared the top spot on her podium of priorities dearest to her.
Wenhong and 玫瑰村 were the two most important pillars of her life that defined who she was as a person, and in the latter, she took much pride in having built something right up from scratch.
Sufen toiled and self-funded 玫瑰村 from the very first cent. She always believed it shouldn't have been that way. Her father was filthy rich, and could have sponsored her with a seed fund. But he refused to do so.
玫瑰村 ended up being a statement of defiance against her mogul father, who long had the traditional patriarchal mentality that women should be stay home wives. And most pertinent to him, to bare him grandson - grandsons - that can continue upholding the legacy of the Hong family. Sufen was the fifth and last child, and the only daughter. She was by far, the most successful sibling amongst her other brothers. Yet, her father always had an apparent bias, favouring the four older brothers of hers. This was despite the fact that three of the four turned out to be good for nothings, tainted and proverbially decapitated by sloth, greed and lust respectively. Yet, Sufen was never afforded the full admiration and compliment that she rightly deserved.
Sufen's mother passed on early when she was eight due to a severe case of pneumonia. Since then, she had been living in a testosterone fueled environment, that held a certain set of unhealthy and anarchic beliefs. It was in this lifelong psychological ill-treatment that made her resent her family with a passion, and made her the steel of a woman that she was today. She had resigned to the notion that the world was unfair.
But rather than surrendering to the terms dictated by the world, she had come to a clarity that if she was going to make it out alive and even thrive in the unforgiving society, she could rely on no one else, but herself. The irony, was that she was who she was today, because she inherited the grit and willpower that was most similar and characteristic of her dad.
Sufen hated her father. But deep down, perhaps even to an unconscious extent, she had an inexplicable want to be Daddy's girl, needed to be Daddy's girl. Despite all the injustice she endured, she would go through mindless lengths just to try to please her dad, and try to prove and make him see that she was all that he ever wanted - if only she was a boy, his son. That yearn for fatherly affection was the sole reason why she hadn't already broken off contact with her family, holding onto that faint hope that maybe, just maybe, one day she would earn the respect that she deserved from the man that helped bring her into this world.
For a long time, Sufen was all about that - until she met Wenhong.
It started with a chanced meeting, him stopping by 玫瑰村 to receive some hospitality, as he needed a place to talk business. By the end of that night, Sufen managed to captivate Wenhong into wanting to be a regular patron, as much as he had captivated her with his debonair. Wenhong's paradoxical tasteful brashness reminded her of her father. And in Wenhong, she was able to get lost in a fantasy of what it could have been like to have a man like that that would shower her with the kind of affection that she had longed to receive since she was a baby girl, to be able to constantly coax and pamper her in his strong, protective arms, drowning her in whispers that everything was going to be alright.
Sufen might seemed like a hardy beacon of grace, beauty and independence, much to the envy of many women who admired, or even aspired to be a woman of power in their otherwise, gender misguided society. But at the end of the day, she really was just a girl, who needed someone to lean on. Sufen wouldn't be the woman that she became, if her father had given her what a girl needed.
Shortly after a year since Wenhong was acquainted to Sufen, they tied the knot.
For a while, their relationship was intense and ever-sizzling. At times, too intense. Wenhong was attracted to Sufen's unyielding confidence. She always seemed so sure of what she wanted, and know just what to do. But with that confidence and string of successes, came an air of arrogance that had on numerous occasions, had Wenhong feeling increasingly perplexed and suffocated.
Perhaps Sufen was playing catch up, seeking to enforce dominance over the life of Wenhong as her form of coping mechanism, a means of placating her ever existing inner anxiety of losing whatever fragile grip of control she had over the important aspects of her life. It was one thing to be running her business establishment in the way that she wanted, because she owned it. But Wenhong wasn't her property, but rather, a living being who had his own thoughts, intentions and desire for agency. She even wished to dictate the days of the week she'd prefer that he stuck around town, which was absurd given that he was running a business of his own that required a level of mobility and flexibility that was nothing like running 玫瑰村. Most recently, she suggested that he should consider dropping his trade, as she was confident that she could provide for them.
Wenhong was not having it, as she was literally asking for him to drop his livelihood, all because she was felt a compulsive need to dictate - and for what? He wasn't even sure if her obsession stemmed from her hunger for power, or that she was just simply being insecure. He knew about Sufen's relationship with her family, knew she abhor being treated as second rate, and most recently, he pointed out the irony of her trying to stamp her authority over him in the same way that her dad did to her.
The prideful Sufen did not take it well, irate by the association her husband drew, even though he wasn't wrong at all, and went on a toxic tirade in classic Scorpio fashion, going off tangent at times just to desperately prove and even detract, that she was nothing like her father.
Because as the saying goes, the wife is always right.
Wenhong loved Sufen, admired her remarkable achievements that few women could replicate. At the same time, she had been progressively driving him up against the wall with her princess attitude that had gotten worse of late, along with her knack for being unreasonable. She was taking the notion of a husband should pander to his wife all too literally, and it annoyed and infuriated the hell out of the man, who was himself, a fiercely opinionated Taurus.
Their most recent heated argument happened only just over an hour back, before she left the establishment for her weekly girl's night. Again, she left them hanging on a sour note, fond of using the cold shoulder treatment as her way of getting back at her husband. Sufen knew he hated being ignored, and was probably by far, the most effective method of making him feel pain.
Perhaps that would teach him a lesson and wear him down into submission.
For the rest of the evening, Michael indulged himself more than he would typically do. And by more, it was a modest stick of cigar, and no more than two shots of Gao Liang. He wasn't an abuser of either substances, and generally only consumed them predominantly in times of networking and, or deal making. That night however, he knew he needed the both of them to help dull the ache that his heart and mind was feeling.
The consumption of Gao Liang in particular, had forced him to be less aware of his surroundings, and in an inexplicable fashion, caused his attention to be narrowed, but hyper vigilant towards the female performer on stage. For the man drinking alone by himself, nothing else within vicinity demanded his attention more than the voice of an angel, coming from the Rose of the night, which was essentially what all the performers associated with 玫瑰村 were called - Roses (玫瑰).
Having self taught himself music for a pastime, he was scrutinizing every single note that the lady was pitching and enunciating, as if he was qualified to do so. But he could not even find a single fault with her flawless performance. She was so good - too good to be stuck around wasting her talent at 玫瑰村, he reckoned. Her vocal style wasn't exactly traditional Chinese, as the manner in which she jazzed up her notes, which were much more akin to the western interpretation - of which, he was familiar with, and had previously been exposed to on numerous occasions when he had been abroad to Europe during his trade runs. He then gazed around the vicinity, and scoffed at most other patrons' lack of culture, for not appreciating the work of art that was being played out live right in front of their eyes and ears, and were much more concerned about their own private matters.
Michael felt so sorry for the Rose on stage, that by the end of her set, he led the charge, the first to elicit thunderous claps the moment he smacked his two hands together, both of them arched to form a hollow space between the heart of his palms for maximal acoustic integrity. And just like that, he kickstarted a loud, persisting flurry of applause, even though at least half the crowd blindly followed the commotion. There was a reason why Xu Wenhong was able to ascend and assume a position of power - the man was well liked by many. He understood the nuances of interpersonal relationships, and the greater society at large, and mastered the art of manipulating the phenomenon of social conformity to use it to his own advantage. He could not be classed as a criminal for being a puppeteer of many peoples' mind. But one could not deny the fact that there was something beneath his charm that made him seem like he was not so much as altruistic a person, as he was morally grey, in spite of him being a charitable presence to a few fortunate recipients of his generosity. After all, part of his trade involved stealth imports of opium, despite knowing the harmful effects it could present to a person's body.
As far as he was concerned, money always talked in any day and age. And like many young men, he was simply looking to build a comfortable life for himself in the cutthroat dog-eat-dog world that they lived in. Especially in a rapidly evolving Shanghai, where the authorities could not keep pace with the growth spurt, it was the perfect breeding ground for greed and illicit activities to flourish. Men seeked to harvest the equivalence of a new goldmine unearthed. Like the Californian Gold Rush, it was every man for himself to reap and exploit the opportunities that was presented up for grasp.
His eyes never left the Rose of the night, as he watched her make her way off stage. He had heard in passing that his wife had recently talent scouted a new performer. At that time, he didn't really pay attention. That changed however, when he actually got the chance to listen in on this new recruit, and saw for himself, the beauty that beheld. He supposed the Rose who had just performed was likely the girl that was the latest talk of the inn, as he didn't recognise her from before.
Sufen would normally be livid if he ever tried to start a conversation with any of her Roses, even if his intentions were nothing more than platonic. Socialising was the equivalence of breathing air for the man, who feeds off the energy of others in his external environment. Michael was a highly atypical extrovert, whose usual calm and somewhat cold and stern demeanour had him looking like he was too intimidating to approach for many. He couldn't help it that he was born with a resting bitch bastard face - a very handsome bastard, for that matter.
But that evening, Sufen was out of town. And he had a rare free night to himself, in which otherwise, he would be working his socks off. He found no reason not to look after his own sanity, to give himself an opportunity to live for himself - not like he wouldn't do the same even if his wife was around, for Sufen had already gotten used to the fact that Wenhong was a wild stallion that no mortality crafted leash could keep him in check. Sufen was not anywhere close to yielding, of course. But that night, her absence made things a lot easier for a moment of respite.
Wenhong would justify to himself that he was merely interested in getting to know a new face. Although, he would be lying if he said he wasn't in part, motivated to do so because of her beauty, and of course, talent. He got up from his seat, and made his way over to a narrow corridor that would lead to the back stage. He knew where the dressing room was. But he had enough decorum to allow the Rose of the night some time to herself after her exquisite performance. Instead, he took the back door and drove his black Ford right up until it was by the doorstep.
It was his smart guess that eventually, the Rose of the night would take the back exit once she was ready to officially knock off from work for the night, like how the other Roses would typically prefer to avoid the front crowd and needing to deal with potential creepers, ironically, like himself.
And so Michael waited, and waited. Hands both tucked into his pockets, eyes avoiding the glare of the bright lit facade of the establishment casting onto him and the moonlit floor. It was perhaps, the only time of the night that his sun glasses truly served a meaningful purpose.
𓆣 ——————————————————— 𓆣
|
|
