Chương 1: Getting Married

The tie was giving him trouble. Lin Che stood in his bathroom of forty square feet, and watched his reflection fail to tie a Windsor knot for the third time. His fingers were fine, not trembling, but he just kept on losing the thread of the movement halfway through, his mind seemingly elsewhere. He unpaused the tutorial on his phone, before standing there holding two ends of fabric with no memory of what he was supposed to do with them. Too long. He started again.

His father had taught him to tie a tie when he was fourteen, standing behind him and guiding his hands through movements. He was much better than a damned online tutorial, albeit a bit scruffier and less professional than the person on his screen. He was also much quieter, speaking via gestures over words. Lin Che had spent most of his life translating that silence, and he thought he'd got pretty good at it.

The old man had told him about the arrangement three years before he died, sat at the table with a cup of tea he kept forgetting to drink.

"There is a family," his father had said.

"The Shen family. There has been a promise between our families for a long long time. When the time comes, if they ask, you will marry their daughter." Lin Che had been twenty-two, just out of university, and completely uninterested in the idea of marriage.

"What if I don't want to?" His father just looked at him and scoffed.

"You'll want to. Be good to her. That's all I ask." Why will I want to? Lin Che had thought, but he never asked. That look his father gave him had meant that the conversation was finished. That was a couple of years ago, and now his father was gone, so the question would forever remain unasked and unanswered. The Shen family had called four months ago — a man who introduced himself as Shen Bowen, his fiancee's uncle, spoke to him on the phone and Lin Che had said yes.

He hadn't agreed due to his ancestors' promise, but rather because he was in his late twenties and single and desperate. Oh, and because his father said to be good to her, and there wasn't a single compelling reason to not try. The tie finally cooperated and he looked at himself in the mirror. A freshly-trimmed man dressed in a charcoal suit who had done everything he could think to do. Both hands ran their way up from thigh to blazer, feeling for anything missing.

He took one last breath and thought to himself: Well. Here goes.

He had not expected her to be so beautiful. This thought arrived with a particular self-aware embarrassment, because he knew he was punching up. That he was certainly some sort of last resort for her to get married off. He had been picturing a practical woman — someone who matched the transaction he'd agreed to. Someone who would shake his hand and suggest they establish some ground rules in their marriage.

Shen Yue was standing near the window of the small civil affairs office when he arrived, wearing a qipao the dark green of pine needles. She was looking out at the street with the indifference of someone who had arrived much earlier and was thinking about something else entirely whilst waiting. She turned when he walked in.

"Lin Che," she said, her voice flat.

"Shen Yue." He crossed the room and offered his hand because it seemed like the right gesture to do.

"It's nice to meet you." She shook his hand with a grip strong enough to make Lin Che cry internally and smile to restrain tears.

"You too. You're on time."

"You're early." They filled out the forms. The registrar was a man nearing retirement who had witnessed everything under the sun and was quite frankly completely uninterested in any of it about twenty years ago. He processed the paperwork with lightning efficiency, stamping documents and handing over certificates.

"I wish you eternal happiness," he recited, clearly not meaning it, before shooing the newly-wedded couple out of his office. Lin Che looked at the certificate in his hands, his eyes drifting up to Shen Yue, who was looking at hers.

"There's a restaurant nearby," he said.

"If you'd like. I mean, we don't have to. We could also just exchange contact information." He paused.

"Though I think we're supposed to be living together, so—" This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. She looked at him blankly, seemingly with disbelief that someone of his standing would ask her out to dinner.

"I've arranged for an apartment already. I can send you the address."

"I have my things in boxes," he replied.

"I was going to move them over this week."

"That's fine." She tucked the certificate into her bag, taking good care not to fold or crumple it during the action. She then looked him in the eye.

"Dinner is fine, by the way." They walked out into a grey Wednesday evening to a reservation Lin Che had made five weeks prior. It was a high-end Thai restaurant difficult to get reservations for, but his late father had been acquainted with one of the head chefs, and that nepotism would work wonders for the evening. The two were brought to their seats, and the waiter took their orders. He first turned to Lin Che, who bumbled out something, pointing at words he could not understand on the menu. Then he left.

Without asking Shen Yue. She seemed unbothered about being ignored, but Lin Che could not let the attitude slide. Not least, because his wife was being treated in such a manner. He tried to raise his voice, but no words came out. He tried to stand, but his legs kept him sat. The food arrived before either of the two said one word, the waiter carrying more plates and bowls than Lin Che had asked for. The table did not have enough room to hold it all, so two more waiters arrived to bring in another table.

A special ceremonial tea accompanied the extra table. One of the waiters turned one last time before leaving.

"We hope this is all to your liking, Miss Shen."

She didn't say much over dinner, but she asked him two questions — what he did for a living, and how long he'd been at the same company. He asked her two questions in return — what she did, and whether she'd grown up in the city. She claimed she was a consultant who travelled often for work. The city she'd grown up in was somewhere he wouldn't recognise, that she was a "third culture kid." He walked her home, which, strangely enough, was now his home too.

The two married strangers stood outside the door for a moment before Shen Yue broke the silence.

"There's a back room on the left," she said.

"I use it for work, and ask you not to go in there."

"Alright," he said.

"And I keep odd hours."

"I'm a light sleeper. I'll adjust." She looked at him and a chill ran down his spine.

"The bedrooms are separate." They went inside. He lay awake that night, relieved that his wife had a temperate personality. If he had to stay married to someone, at least it was someone who kept to themselves and wasn't overbearing. Still, he thought to himself, he certainly hadn't expected his marriage to go like this.

She was already gone when he woke up the first morning. He found this out when he went to the kitchen and there was no one in it, and then when he noticed the door of the back room was closed and the faint light that was underneath minutes prior was now gone. He made coffee and drank it by the window. She gets up early. Noted. He went to work. He came home. She was in the kitchen when he arrived, sitting at the table with a stack of documents, and she looked up when he came back.

"Food in the fridge if you want it. I made extra."

"Thank you," he replied. It was rice and a soupy braised beef dish that was genuinely amazing. He ate it at the counter since the table was colonised by paper, and he didn't dare mess up her organisation system. She didn't offer to clear it, and he didn't ask her to. When he put his bowl in the sink, she glanced up.

"How was work?"

"Average," he replied.

"Meetings that could have been emails and the usual."

"The usual?"

"They're low on staff so I've been working on logistics and supply chain management nonsense. Boring enough that people stop asking what I do about a minute into the explanation."

"I wasn't going to stop asking." He ran water over the bowl.

"What about you?"

"It's complicated right now," she said.

"I have a project that's been running longer than expected."

"Seems complicated to me. Can't recall the last time I saw that much paper in person."

The days went on like so. Two occupants in a moderately-sized apartment who only encountered each other during mealtimes, and even then, only occasionally. Still, he learnt her preferences and she did his. She drank tea, not coffee, and would sit by the radiator if she were in the kitchen. His designated spot was by the door. She checked her phone frequently, sometimes in front of him, other times not.

She woke at four in the morning on the dot; he knew because he was a light sleeper and heard the careful sound of her moving down the hall. On day six, Shen Yue bought groceries and filled the fruit bowl with plums. Throughout the course of day seven and eight, the fruit bowl had emptied itself. He had never seen her eat a plum. On the ninth day, he came home late due to problems at work, and found her on the rooftop.

He'd gone up to get some air, which was a legitimate reason and not at all related to having heard the rooftop door every morning for nine days. The door was unlocked and he went through it. She stood near the far edge, facing away from him and towards the cityline. She was looking up and her eyes were closed. He stopped immediately, realising he was intruding on something private that wasn't meant for him. Still, he watched, mostly due to concern that his now wife may be suicidal.

She exhaled as a cold gust of wind blew over him, before standing up without warning. He scrambled for the door. On day eleven, he went up the back stairs of the building after dark to retrieve a delivery that had been misplaced. He slipped, and then he fell. And then: nothing. He was standing in his bathroom. The tie was giving him trouble.