The divorce process after the 2021 reforms was more complicated than before. First, one had to register the divorce and obtain a “Divorce Registration Application Acceptance Receipt,” and then wait 30 days before receiving the official divorce certificate.
Chen Nian and Li Yixun received their divorce certificate in mid-March.
As they left the Civil Affairs Bureau together, Li Yixun breathed a sigh of relief: “It feels like we’ve been divorced twice. After coming here twice, I almost know the Civil Affairs Bureau by heart.”
Chen Nian stared blankly at the red divorce certificate in his hand, his cold gaze almost piercing through the thin booklet: “Including the marriage, we’ve been to this Civil Affairs Bureau three times.”
Li Yixun was taken aback by his cold, factual joke. He wanted to laugh along but couldn’t manage a smile.
“Let’s talk,” Chen Nian suddenly suggested.
Li Yixun also had something to say to him, so he agreed.
The two found a nearby coffee shop, ordered drinks, and sat down facing each other.
This was the first time they were willing to sit down and talk calmly since their argument about the divorce. A little over a month had been enough time for them to stabilize their emotions and think things through regarding their relationship.
Li Yixun could clearly see that Chen Nian had lost a lot of weight, and his complexion wasn’t good. She guessed he hadn’t been eating properly, and wondered if his stomach was still hurting.
She sighed almost imperceptibly. Seeing that he wasn’t taking care of his health still pained her.
She first rummaged through her bag and pulled out something she had prepared, pushing it in front of him: the wedding ring she had never taken off before she filed for divorce, the amulet she had gotten for him in Japan, several of his supplementary credit cards, and a bag of miscellaneous keys of unknown origin.
“It’s all yours, here you go.”
“Chen Nian, although we’ve come this far, I still want to say that I’ve never regretted marrying you. Even though our shared memories over the years haven’t all been happy or sweet, I still think they’re worth cherishing.”
“Thank you for your care and understanding all these years.”
Chen Nian looked at the small ring, his eyes filled with confusion and pain. Only at this moment did he truly feel the reality of separating from Li Yixun.
To try and keep her, he even had his lawyer draft a very unreasonable agreement, deliberately waiting for her to come to him in anger. She agreed to sign it without hesitation.
Then Chen Nian understood Li Yixun’s resolute nature. Even if she didn’t threaten him with company shares, she would find other weaknesses to attack him. He knew she was always ruthless, whether towards herself or others.
In reality, Chen Nian couldn’t bear to lose his career. The company he had built was like his child, as important as she was. Besides, if he lost his career, he would be even more worthless in her eyes. What good was he besides a little money?
The past month had only deepened Chen Nian’s obsession with her.
He couldn’t bear to lose her. After leaving her, Chen Nian moved to the apartment they had shared before their marriage, but he still couldn’t get a full night’s sleep. He would always wake up in the empty room, vaguely imagining they were still living together before their marriage, only to find no trace of her when he got up.
He vowed to win her back, even though he still didn’t understand why he had lost the marriage. But that didn’t matter; he was good at lying low and waiting. He would eventually figure it out.
In the past month, he spent a lot of money to poach suitable management personnel for the company and delegated most of the work he had previously done personally to his subordinates. He needed to leave himself enough free time to win her back; he couldn’t be as busy as before.
There’s always a day when companies decentralize power. While the timing isn’t quite right yet, he’d planned for this long time, so he wasn’t completely caught off guard. He was relatively confident about this management reform.
“I don’t want to be separated from you,” Chen Nian said, looking at Li Yixun, trying to make his gaze appear sincere. “I’ll take the time to win you back.”
Li Yixun was stunned, as if struck by lightning, unable to process what he’d just heard.
Thinking she might be deaf, she leaned closer to listen: “What did you say?”
“I said, Li Yixun, I want to win you back,” Chen Nian repeated firmly.
“Are you crazy?!” Confirming she hadn’t misheard, Li Yixun rolled her eyes, her usually intellectual and aloof face now made look ridiculous.
“I’m serious.”
Chen Nian’s stubbornness kicked in. His slight forward lean created a sense of pressure, and his peach blossom eyes, devoid of a smile, stared at her with a kind of obsessive gaze that Li Yixun couldn’t understand.
Li Yixun tried to ignore this intense, almost piercing gaze, and mimicked his monologue: “You can hire a moving company to pack up your clothes and personal belongings. I don’t want to pack for you.”
“Fine, I’ll just throw them all away.”
“I’ll give you three days. Contact me before the moving company comes. No waiting after that.”
Li Yixun finished speaking in one breath, not giving Chen Nian a chance to reply, and grabbed his bag, fleeing the coffee shop as if escaping.
“What a waste of my latte, I didn’t even drink a drop.” Li Yixun drove while talking on the phone with Yuan Yi, her tone full of resentment.
Li Yixun’s phone was connected to the car’s Bluetooth speaker, and Yuan Yi’s laughter filled the car with 3D surround sound. The ear-piercing sound made Li Yixun realize for the first time how good her car’s sound system was.
Yuan Yi laughed for a while before stopping: “The guy, just ordinary yet confident.”
Thinking about Chen Nian’s face, which was indeed far from ordinary, Yuan Yi added, “Handsome guys are a thousand times more confident than ordinary guys.”
“Speaking of which, what are you thinking?”
While waiting at a traffic light, Li Yixun noticed that the ring mark on her ring finger had completely faded, silently marveling that time truly can’t erase all traces.
She glanced at the soft, fluffy clouds floating in the sky, and a lyric came to mind: “You said love is like a cloud, only beautiful when it floats freely.”
Li Yixun then seriously answered Yuan Yi’s question: “My rational mind would definitely be swearing, and I’d be a fool to get on his bandwagon again! I even considered whether throwing scalding coffee would be a criminal offense.”
She paused, a wry smile playing on her lips, “But my love-struck brain says I really want to see him act like a simp, I really want to see how he pursues me!”
Yuan Yi laughed again, asking, “Can’t we do both at the same time? Throw him coffee while asking him to perform his simp act.”
“Hmm…that seems like a good idea, just a bit unethical.”
Both ends of the phone burst into laughter.
Unlike the much thinner Chen Nian, Li Yixun even felt slightly stronger than before in the past month or so, because she had indeed been eating, exercising, and sleeping properly.
When she couldn’t sleep, she would take a melatonin pill, then turn on the bedroom stereo and listen to Joey Yung and Cass Phang’s live version of “Heartbroken” on repeat.
Music and books are powerful tools for humans to find and build spiritual resonance. After projecting her own emotions and thoughts onto the music, Li Yixun couldn’t help but shed tears.
Fortunately, her newly opened eye cream was expensive, so she couldn’t bear to cry. She could only hum along softly to the songs, trying to lull herself to sleep.
“Starting from this minute, through spring breezes and autumn rains,
I’ll give you six months to slowly let my heart grow colder.
Paying off the bills,
Calmly letting my passion for you fade,
A little sadness each day through these hundred-odd nights,
That’s probably enough to send me back and forth between hell and earth.
Breaking up in spring, I’ll get used to it in autumn,
The bitterness will fade away…”
Li Yixun often felt like she was playing a self-destructive withdrawal game. In their once-shared home, listening to breakup songs, her mind replayed those everyday moments with him. Every object seemed to carry his shadow, a memory uniquely his.
But she would overcome the longing; she would stop loving him. Li Yixun drifted off to sleep every day with this positive self-suggestion.
As expected, it was Chen Nian who came to tidy up the apartment last.
When Li Yixun saw him through the peephole, she didn’t even want to open the door. She immediately silenced her phone, pretending she wasn’t home. After all, this was a detached single-level apartment; even if he knocked and broke the doorknob, it wouldn’t disturb the other residents.
But even the best-laid plans can go wrong. Besides forgetting to have the property management remove Chen Nian’s facial recognition access to the elevator, Li Yixun also forgot to remove his fingerprint access to the building and change his password. After all, who knew that her respectable ex-husband would be so rude as to trespass on his ex-wife’s property?
After Chen Nian entered, she fiddled with her phone for a while, then sent a message to the property manager, asking her to immediately remove all of Chen Nian’s permissions within the complex, including his vehicle access.
The manager was very professional, only replying “okay,” without asking any questions about the resident’s personal affairs. Li Yixun was very satisfied and decided to give the manager a five-star rating for this quarter.
After Li Yixun finished sending the message and looked up, she found Chen Nian still standing there dumbfounded. “Weren’t you here to collect your things? Are you just standing here like a statue?”
Chen Nian had no choice but to look away from her and began to pack slowly. His usual efficient work ethic was completely gone; he dawdled here and there, much like her little nephew, who didn’t want to do his homework but was pinned to the table.
Li Yixun sat on the sofa watching him with interest. She had never seen Chen Nian so slow at work before, and she wanted to see how long he could dawdle.
Chen Nian noticed Li Yixun staring at him and felt embarrassed to dawdle any longer, so he obediently packed at a normal pace. Chen Nian had a lot of clothes at home, all regularly tidied and neatly folded, so packing only required boxes. He quickly filled six large boxes.
Under Li Yixun’s watchful gaze, as if he were a supervisor, he could no longer delay. He pulled out his phone and called Assistant Lin downstairs: “Have the moving company come up and take these boxes away.”
Li Yixun forwarded the temporary elevator access QR code to Assistant Lin, who quickly brought several staff members up and emptied all the boxes in one trip.
Looking around, there was no trace of the male homeowner left in the house; it was as if a part of his heart had been missing along with the moved items.
When they looked at each other, they both saw complex emotions in each other’s eyes, both knowing the other was unsettled.
“I meant what I said last time,” Chen Nian cleared his throat and emphasized again solemnly.
Li Yixun laughed, deliberately provoking him: “If you’re so serious, you could have stayed in the marriage, instead of only saying this after all your shares are now yours. That seems insincere.”
Chen Nian didn’t take the bait, instead feigning a pitiful look, his voice drooping: “But if I were unemployed, you’d look down on me even more, and I’d have to beg with you.”
Perhaps because he was packing, Chen Nian was dressed casually today, in a black long-sleeved T-shirt and light blue ripped jeans. Coupled with his noticeable weight loss, he did look a bit like a street artist.
She stroked her chin, nodding seriously: “You’re right, but I admire strength. A CEO of a small, unlisted company like you isn’t good enough for me.”
“…” Chen Nian was speechless.
Li Yixun prided herself on not being the type to remain friends with an ex after a breakup. After so many years, their relationship wasn’t over, but she had no intention of being friends with him either.
She stopped beating around the bush and asked Chen Nian directly, “Chen Nian, have you figured out why we divorced?”
Although Chen Nian tried his best to hide it, Li Yixun hadn’t missed his momentary confusion and panic, so she didn’t need his answer.
Li Yixun patiently guided him, like a good teacher leading a question: “Then do you remember what question I asked you the most?”
Chen Nian pursed his lips, turning his head away to avoid her gaze, his expression slightly unnatural.
He knew what the question was, of course—a question he didn’t want to answer.
Li Yixun suddenly smiled; his reaction was exactly what she expected.
Her smile held an indescribable bitterness: “That’s my answer to the question you asked me about <being serious>.”
“Only when you can answer the questions I ask you will you have the right to say you’re serious.”
Li Yixun forcefully approached him, staring into his evasive, alluring eyes, forcing him to meet her gaze. Her smile deepened, tinged with clear sarcasm: “To put it simply, Chen Nian, you’re not qualified to pursue me right now!”