Page 113 of He Is My Bride

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Hanjun said and pressed kisses on Li Ying’s forehead and hair.

Li Ying was content with that. He wrapped his arms tighter around Hanjun and looked at his lips, until the man understood and kissed him again. Li Ying encouraged him, demanding more until Hanjun’s touch had erased the memory of Wang Guosheng from his skin.

While they made love, the night outside came alight with fireworks, colorful lights filling the skies above Huangpu River, and the distant booms followed with a delay. Li Ying grabbed Hanjun’s face and turned it back towards himself.

“Happy New Year, love! Kiss me, quickly!”

Hanjun obliged, and Li Ying took it as a promise for good things to come for the comingyear—and beyond.

Chapter 22: The Fat Pig Arrives Early

Wang Guosheng went to the gym every morning as part of his strict regime. No matter what, no matter if it was the first day of the new year. There was no excuse.

He was perpetually disappointed in his family for lacking his level of discipline, but Wang Hao’s continuing mediocrity in particular had been a disgrace to his father’s name lately: to let himself be humiliatedtwiceby the same foreign element? Being publicly seen with upstart whores?Beaten by Wu Hanjun?It made them all look weak.

Guosheng was lying on the bench, pressing a heavy barbell up with a grunt. His broad chest and arm muscles strained as he pushed himself. Sweat stained his tank top where it pooled on his solar plexus. He would have to keep pushing.

He got a phone call. He replaced the barbell on the hooks and crunched up, taking out his phone: it was his security.

“Talk.” He didn’t appreciate being interrupted unnecessarily.

“Mister Wang, you are being delivered a personal package.”

“I’m not expecting a delivery. Search it.”

“Yes, sir.” After a brief silence, Guosheng heard the man say to other people in the room, “You two, leave.”

Wang Guosheng waited for another short while until the man spoke to him again, “Sir, I’m describing what I see: in the box there is a plastic bag, and in it are a fresh head of a pig and two butchered piglets.”

“Don’t touch anything, I’m coming.” Wang Guosheng ended the call and got up.

He showered before going to the checkpoint. Once in the security office, he saw a large cardboard box on the table next to a small X-ray baggage scanner. The box was unmarked except for his name and address handwritten on it. Without stopping, he proceeded to the box and looked in. It was as the man had described: an entire head of a pig and two suckling pigs. They seemed professionally butchered, fresh. Their dead, bleary eyes seemed to taunt him.

Without a warning, Wang Guosheng grabbed the pig’s snout and pushed his bare hand inside its mouth, feeling around.

“Mister Wang?”

Nothing. Guosheng grabbed each piglet, turned them around, and felt around their gutted insides. Nothing. No other message. But he just knew:

Wu.

—

The city was full of performances and fireworks displays, lion and dragon dancers, and festival goers took over the streets, and people visited temples and their families. To Li Ying,thiswas a proper celebration.

At noon, Hanrong picked them up and he, Hanjun, and Li Ying went together to visit the three family matriarchs to wish them a happy New Year and to bring a traditional gift of mandarins for prosperity.

They started at Madam Wu’s, where Yiyi was also visiting with his family. They dropped in for tea, and little Madam Wu offered themcream prune candies from a decorated tin. Li Ying saw Yiyi struggle to eat ‘one more’ as his great-grandmother kept pushing them.

Next up was Madam Wang.

Hanrong rang the doorbell, and Li Ying could hear the familiar sound of barking inside. The one who opened the door…

Wang Guosheng.

It was odd to see him dressed down and domestic in a black cardigan, and a fur ball of a dog in his arms—one of his mother’s Malteses. The sight of that man holding something so cute so gently was outright grotesque to Li Ying.

“Ah, Wu Hanjun, Wu Hanrong. Li Ying.” Wang Guosheng smiled crookedly. “Too bad you didn’t arrive sooner, I was just about to leave.”