Page 57 of He Is My Bride

“It’s true,” intercepted another girl from the group that had arrived on the deck. She was the other of the two models who had been with them earlier. “I was actually with her, she was attacked first.”

“What, did you see it?!” someone else asked.

“Well, no…”

Li Ying forced a smile. “That woman just came at me from the crowd with the bucket of blood and then tried to run, so I caught her.” No one got that on tape?

It had happened so fast, it was unlikely there was footage of how it all started. It was anyone’s guess what the rumors were at this point.

“How awful…”

“But why was Lin Yong all bloody then?”

The crowd was surrounding them now. Hanjun held Li Ying tighter, looking at them warily.

“Well, you see…” Li Ying started, pushing himself off Hanjun as he had no fear of the crowd, even as they looked at him like a wake of vultures. He needed to get the story straight with them.

“Yeah, and why are you all clean, if the woman had attacked you?”

“Shh! She’s trying to tell us! ”

“Thank you!” Li Ying snapped in frustration. “Lin Yong came to push me out of the way and got hit instead. Does anyone know if he’s okay, by the way?”

Everyone looked at each other, uncertain. Li Ying noticed one phone up, the camera pointed at him and Hanjun.

“Hey! Do you mind!” Li Ying stared furiously at the guy, but he didn’t stop filming.

Hanjun stood up and was going to grab the phone from him, but the guy stepped back and finally put it down… only for a few more phones to pop up in other hands.

Damn vultures, the lot of you! Li Ying thought. The situation was delicate. “Hanjun, let’s go.” He got up and Hanjun wrapped his arm around him protectively as they went.

The sympathetic model called after them, “Hey, I think she deserved it!”

But Li Ying could hear some others say:

“She was acting so violently.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

Fuck…

Li Ying and Hanjun went back inside. There, people on their phones were showing something to each other from their screens, shocked by what they saw.

“Hanjun, I think I want off this yacht.”

Hanjun nodded. “Let’s go talk to the crew.”

“You go, I’ll just… pop into the loo real quick. Meet you here?”

Hanjun nodded again. He headed up another staircase to get to the upper deck where the cockpit was, to find a crewmember.

Li Ying crossed the room, ignoring the stares he got when people recognized him and said, ‘isn’t that her?’

Li Ying entered a toilet stall and locked the door. He sat on the toilet bowl and took out his phone, searching the social media app by tags such as ‘New Year party, The Peninsula, fight, girl, blood, attack . ’

There were several video uploads showing his and Tang Xiuxiu’s fight, from the point where poor Lin Yong was standing there in his bloody suit, a gruesome mess of blood and tiny guts on the floor before him.

And there was Li Ying, running after Xiuxiu, grabbing her hair and hurling her around while she screamed, Li Ying shouting: ‘How many of your toes do I have to break, bitch!’

It was hard to watch: him dragging Xiuxiu over where Lin Yong was throwing off his ruined jacket, then backing off as Li Ying returned and forced the screaming woman to the ground and her face onto the bloody floor.

There were a few such videos from different angles, not many views on them yet, a couple hundred at most on the one with the best frontal view of the brawling ladies, but the numbers kept going up and up. Li Ying fearfully entered the comments section:

Psycho woman, I hope she got arrested.

What happened before this? Where did the blood come from?

It’s not real blood. The other girl threw it at Lin Yong.

Good job, people who are just standing there, while that woman is literally killing her!

What a crazy woman…

Li Ying couldn’t blame them for calling him that. His handling of Xiuxiu was very rough, and when Hanjun had come to get him away from her, he had looked… Okay, he looked pretty crazy-eyed, Li Ying realized.

What is wrong with me…

Li Ying thought he had been justified, but looking at himself on the video and seeing all those comments was not easy, and Li Ying knew he had probably overreacted in anger.

But it’s not like Li Ying had gone crazy, it’s not like he had actually wanted to hurt Tang Xiuxiu, though things looked bad on the video.

Li Ying had just wanted to teach her a lesson .

Considering this, however, Li Ying had to wonder whether he had been unreasonably cruel, what with everyone reacting this way, calling him the crazy one, but then he remembered most of the commenters hadn’t seen the whole picture.

They hadn’t seen what that hateful woman had almost done to him, what she had ended up doing to Lin Yong as collateral.

Something like this could have devastated a person more sensitive than Li Ying.

That’s right: she assaulted me first in such a vicious way! Li Ying reasoned. Nevermind that I’m not so affected by blood and gore, but were I just any girl or nancy society boy, I could have been traumatized for life if she succeeded!

Indeed, telling by the footage, most of the people were too afraid to even step in to help him and Lin Yong.

Only Hanrong had helped Lin Yong when he and Hanjun had arrived at the scene.

No one was trying to stop Xiuxiu either, and she would have just gotten away with it if Li Ying hadn’t caught her.

Damn cowards! I bet that had it been any one of them, they would have been pretty pissed off and wanted instant revenge too!

Li Ying read on in the comment section:

I was there and saw the girl in a pink dress throw blood on the other girl. The guy is Lin Yong and he came between them. He’s an actual hero!

The pink-dressed girl started it, she threw fake blood. Does anyone know who she is?

The one going crazy is Wu Hanjun’s foreigner girlfriend. Don’t know who the girl being attacked is.

It was real blood!

They have emptied the room and the pink-dressed girl was escorted out by security. The police are outside. There’s a video...

Li Ying followed the link to another video with only a hundred or so views for now, taken from the hotel lobby: beyond a small crowd there were two guards escorting Xiuxiu out while she was covering her face with a tissue, still wearing the nitrile gloves.

A police car’s lights could be seen flashing outside the doors.

She’s the one who threw fake blood on Lin Yong at the party.

She attacked first. The victims should sue.

The blood was real.

Really? That’s fucked up!

Where is the other girl? Was she arrested?

She was attacked first though, she is the victim.

Maybe, just maybe the narrative won’t turn entirely against me. Still, Li Ying feared his temper may play right into Wang Guosheng’s hands if this went the wrong way.

It was no use reading any more comments. Li Ying got up, had a wee, and re-tucked, then saw if his makeup needed touching up. The least he could do was not to look like a lunatic, but he was fine after smoothing over his windswept hair.

Li Ying tarried, not wanting to step through that door and face all the people who had just seen that video, but he had no choice. He opened the door. Thankfully Hanjun had returned and was right there, warding off a curious crowd.

“I won’t comment on tonight’s events,” he spoke, his voice or expression betraying no emotion.

“But you must have seen what happened?” someone insisted.

“Cease harassing me, or there will be actions taken.”

“No one’s meaning to harass anyone here, we are just wondering—Hey, that’s her!”

Li Ying forced a smile. “Excuse us, but we have to go.”

Li Ying came to Hanjun’s side. The man wrapped his arm around his shoulder, and together they descended the staircase back to the aft deck .

“Wait! Is it true that the other woman tried to throw real blood on you?!”

Neither looked back at the people who were still calling from behind them.

“I got us a boat,” Hanjun said and led Li Ying across the lobby and down another staircase to the lower deck. Here were the yacht’s staterooms, closed from the partygoers, but a member of the crew was there to receive them.

“This way to the boat hangar, sir.”

“Thank you.”

The yacht indeed had a garage and a boat hangar below deck, and there a small motored boat was being prepared for them. The crewmember helped them get on the boat and handed them warm blankets.

“Here, it gets cold out there. The skipper will take you where you want to go.”

“Just take us ashore, please,” Hanjun told the skipper as he and Li Ying sat down on the seat at the back.

“Can’t we cruise for a while?” Li Ying asked. It was a shame they couldn’t stay to enjoy the yacht, but a private boat trip would still be nice, he thought.

“I could give you a short tour along the waterfront?” the skipper suggested. “I just need to be back at the yacht before the charter is over.”

“Please, if that’s possible?” Li Ying asked, and it was settled.

The boat exited the hangar and they sped away from the yacht, turning back to where they had left the port. The people on the pool deck and the balcony spotted them, cheering and waving, some of them figuring out who it was aboard, pointing.

Fuck it. Li Ying waved back, almost hoping someone got that on camera. He was not the crazy one here, why should he be ashamed?

But Hanjun took Li Ying’s hand and gently pushed it down. “Don’t give them any more reason to talk. ”

“They’re going to talk anyway. I did what I did, so at least let them say I owned up to it.”

Li Ying took a blanket, wrapped himself in it against the cold wind blowing over the river, and snuggled against Hanjun.

“Don’t worry, we will sort this out,” Hanjun said, rubbing Li Ying’s shoulder and kissing his hair. “But Li Ying, you shouldn’t have done that.”

“Yeah. I saw the video. I see why some of them are calling me crazy. I should have held back, maybe, but I just… I lost my temper, okay?”

Maybe Li Ying thought his vengeance justified, but he still had to admit he had brought upon himself and the Wus another PR disaster. Anne would be just thrilled to hear about this, Li Ying thought. Nevermind what Wu Yiheng and the rest of the Wus would think.

“It’s okay,” Hanjun said. “Were you scared?”

“No. Just angry.” Li Ying took another blanket and put it around Hanjun. “You stay warm, too.”

“Thank you.” Hanjun pressed another kiss on Li Ying’s temple and his boyfriend snuggled against him.

They lay down on the seat, huddled against each other, and watched the many colors of the Pudong skyline glitter and dance on the water until it was time to head ashore. Hanjun took out his phone while they boated towards the wharf.

“Who are you calling?” Li Ying asked.

“Uncle Yiheng. We’re going to need the PR management to step in this time. And possibly a lawyer.”