Chapter 80: Dust

Chu Susu didn’t know how much Rebecca had drunk before coming to knock on her door again. In any case, by the time the two of them sat down in the living room, the other woman’s body was swaying nonstop, and she looked far from sober.

She even boldly placed her hand on Chu Susu’s wrist.

Such contact might be nothing between women, but Rebecca wouldn’t normally act this way—she always kept a certain distance from others.

Thus, she was indeed unusually drunk this time.

“You should drink a little less.”

Chu Susu had just made the decision to keep her company with drinks, but she couldn’t help feeling a bit worried for her.

If Rebecca made a fool of herself in front of her subordinate tonight, it would probably make things awkward between them afterward. Chu Susu herself might not mind, but Rebecca…

Rebecca clutched her hand in a sudden flip, as if she couldn’t hold her liquor, and smiled faintly. “It’s fine. I know what I’m doing.”

Chu Susu raised an eyebrow but didn’t voice her doubts.

Really?

Drunk people always claimed they weren’t drunk. She wasn’t some naive little girl who was new to the world, so she wouldn’t believe it so easily.

Rebecca sighed, knowing she couldn’t convince her. “Sorry to trouble you.”

A flush of red bloomed vividly on her cheeks as she spoke hastily.

“I’m just really troubled right now, and I don’t know who else to talk to.”

“I don’t even know why I suddenly dragged you into this. Maybe it’s because… from the moment I saw you, I felt like we really clicked?”

Her eyes fixed on Chu Susu’s, shimmering faintly with moisture, shadowed by worry.

“My friends and colleagues my age have all gotten married and had kids, building their families. Meanwhile, my own home is a mess of unsavory matters. How could I possibly bring that up with others and ruin the mood?”

In truth, Chu Susu had already figured it out from the first word Rebecca said—she was upset about family issues.

After all, Rebecca was quite successful in her career. Aside from her daughter and family, there didn’t seem to be much else that could trouble her.

Chu Susu took a sip of red wine too, savoring the unique sweetness of grapes that made it hard to stop at just one.

She didn’t ask directly what the issue was, simply listening quietly to Rebecca’s outpouring while offering occasional words of comfort:

“But Zhilan is such a sweet little girl. Don’t you think you should pull yourself together for her sake?”

The mere mention of that name brought a genuine smile to Rebecca’s face, as if it were the most wonderful thing in the world.

She paused, then replied, “I’ve held on this long because of her.”

But the next sentence carried a faint bitterness.

“Yet everything I have now is all because of her.”

The words were ambiguous, but Chu Susu had already anticipated as much.

Rebecca had casually mentioned more than once before that Feng Zhilan wasn’t in good health. Combined with the nasty divorce battle with her ex-husband, it wasn’t hard to guess that the child was the root of their marital breakdown.

She just didn’t know exactly what kind of conflict they’d had. After all, Feng Zhilan looked frail but was obedient, sensible, clever, and cute—no different from any normal child.

Could it be…

Sure enough, Rebecca’s next words confirmed her suspicions.

“My ex… my ex-husband and I were high school classmates.” When Rebecca mentioned him, her eyes filled with undisguised disgust.

“Oh?”

Chu Susu had assumed they’d met through an arranged marriage. Couples like that usually didn’t have much emotional foundation, which made it easy for things to turn ugly.

She hadn’t expected they’d been together since high school. If so, that was seventeen or eighteen years by now. How could it end like this?

“Though we’ve completely torn into each other now, our feelings back in our youth were pretty harmonious.”

Rebecca seemed lost in memories, her speech slowing, fragmented and halting.

“Even though we went to different universities and were apart for a few years, we stayed close. Not long after graduation, we naturally got married.”

At this point, she tugged at the corner of her mouth and downed the red wine in her glass, letting the sweet yet slightly bitter liquid slide down her throat. Because she drank too quickly, it burned like fire.

“I’m the ambitious type at work, so I didn’t want kids right away. I wanted to build my career first and think about it around 35. I even thought that if I was too old by then and it was too risky, I just wouldn’t have any.”

“Then Zhilan…”

Chu Susu roughly estimated Feng Zhilan’s age. When she was born, Rebecca must have been around twenty-eight or twenty-nine—much earlier than she’d planned.

“It was an accidental pregnancy. I only found out later… it was my ex-husband’s doing.”

His doing? Was Rebecca saying her ex-husband had tampered with their birth control?

Seeing the shock in Chu Susu’s eyes, Rebecca nodded indifferently.

“During that time, he poked holes in the condoms. I never imagined he’d do something like that. I was busy with work and didn’t pay attention to the details. So, before long, I was pregnant.”

“After I got pregnant, I grew suspicious and found some evidence. Under pressure from me, he finally confessed everything.”

“Then… why didn’t you get an abortion?”

A trace of sympathy stirred in Chu Susu’s heart for Rebecca, and she blurted out the question before quickly realizing it wasn’t that simple a decision.

After all, who could imagine being deceived by someone they’d known for seventeen or eighteen years?

If it were Chu Susu in that situation, she’d undoubtedly terminate the untimely pregnancy. But that didn’t necessarily apply to Rebecca.

Aborting the child would mean completely ending things with her ex-husband.

It wasn’t just one person’s choice—it involved one family, or even several.

Though Chu Susu felt such a man wasn’t worth keeping, it was easy for an outsider to say. In reality, few people could sever so many years of feelings with one clean cut.

Rebecca’s lips pressed together lightly, stained with a few drops of red wine.

“You’re right, but I couldn’t do it,” she said. “After I found out I was pregnant, I went for an ultrasound.”

“I knew it would be too late once the pregnancy advanced. I was determined to have an abortion, but then I saw the image on the ultrasound.”

“She was so tiny, curled up so small inside my body. She wasn’t fully formed yet, but through that image, it felt like I could see my child.”

“I couldn’t kill my child.”

She tried her best to keep her tone steady, without sobbing or shedding tears, but her trembling hands betrayed her emotional collapse.

Hmm…

Chu Susu didn’t agree, but she could understand.

Perhaps because she wasn’t straight, she’d never really considered the idea of marriage and kids, so she couldn’t fully put herself in the shoes of a wife facing that choice.

“Then why did your ex-husband do that? Did he want a child that badly?”

The answer was almost certainly yes. What else could drive him to such extremes, disregarding over a decade of affection?

“Yes. He’s very traditional and always wanted to carry on the family line.”

“But it wasn’t like that at first. When I first said we shouldn’t have kids yet, he understood. It was only after repeated arguments that he gradually changed.”

Chu Susu was somewhat moved by her words and nodded with a complicated expression. “People do change.”

Promises made back then only reflected the feelings of that moment—they couldn’t last forever.

Promises were illusory to begin with.

“But I don’t regret having Zhilan.”

Whenever she mentioned her daughter’s name, Rebecca’s eyes filled with hope, as if with Zhilan by her side, she could conquer anything, unbreakable.

“She was the result of my ex-husband’s coercion, but he doesn’t even like her. Just because she’s a girl and not healthy, requiring a ton of money for treatment—even selling the house. He couldn’t bear it.”

Chu Susu said softly, “She’ll grow up to be a healthy child.”

Though she was a bit curious what illness required bankrupting a family to treat.

She’d seen many young kids on donation sites suffering from cancer or leukemia, looking gaunt. Zhilan’s complexion wasn’t rosy, but she seemed far more spirited than them.

But this wasn’t something to casually bring up. No mother would want to expose her daughter’s scars to outsiders. So of course, Chu Susu wouldn’t pry into what was wrong with Feng Zhilan.

The two chatted for quite a while, with Rebecca doing most of the talking while Chu Susu listened.

She spoke a lot about her ex-husband, and the little details about Feng Zhilan—some laughter, but mostly sorrow.

Chu Susu learned about Rebecca’s unknown side, and it suddenly made sense to her why Rebecca had lost her composure so abruptly.

Too many burdens weighed down on the woman before her, and she was nothing more than an ordinary person among the masses.

By the time that bottle of red wine was emptied, Rebecca was completely overcome by the alcohol. She collapsed onto the table and closed her eyes in a daze.

Fortunately, she still retained a shred of clear consciousness and softly murmured:

“Susu, please help me back to my room.”