The entire afternoon, A-Jiao and Jiang Zhengkai were glued to one another. A-Jiao liked being stuck to Jiang Zhengkai, like a little girl being stuck with her parent. As for Jiang Zhengkai, he was fine with her acting that way. It’s just like eating braised Dongpo pork: if you eat it too much, it becomes too greasy, but if you eat it every once in a while, it tastes very creamy and delicious.
“Honey, do you really not care about my past?” A-Jiao tenderly whispered, as she leaned over Jiang Zhengkai’s body and placed her head in the crook of his arm. “I… I…”
“Hehe, what about you?” he asked as he glanced at A-Jiao and gently stroked her hair. “I know everything there is to know about you.” Obviously, he said that to help ease A-Jiao’s mind. If he truly knew everything there was to know about her, then he wouldn’t have so eagerly taken her to the police sub-bureau to be questioned.
A-Jiao sighed, before burying her head deep into Jiang Zhengkai’s chest. She quietly said, “Honey, I… have been pregnant before…”
Hearing her confession, Jiang Zhengkai was quite understandably shocked, but he didn’t display any excessive reaction. On the one hand, he was a calm and collected person anyway; on the other hand, if he could accept the fact that A-Jiao was once a prostitute, then of course he wouldn’t care too much about her having been pregnant in the past. Instead, his thoughts revolved around why A-Jiao had decided to tell him this information right now. Did she plan to tell him that she has an illegitimate child? Or did she want to tell him that she could no longer bear any children at all?
A-Jiao leaned up against Jiang Zhengkai’s body and waited for a long while. She’d been expecting a furiouos reaction from Jiang Zhengkai, but the rage she’d envisioned never appeared. She hesitantly raised her head and looked up at him. “Honey, do you… do you not care about… this?” Her words sounded uneasy, while her body trembled slightly.
Jiang Zhengkai saw her expression, so he reached out and pulled her closer in his embrace. “Ziyuan, let’s not keep talking about the past. It’s all done and over with, and it doesn’t concern us. I don’t care what happened in your past, and I don’t care if we’re able to have a healthy baby. I just care about us living happily together.” Jiang Zhengkai didn’t understand the reason why A-Jiao had decided to tell him about her past pregnancy, but he smartly hedged his bets and warded off any potential threat to their relationship.
After hearing his words, A-Jiao collapsed on top of Jiang Zhengkai and began quietly sobbing. “Honey, you’re the best!” Seeing A-Jiao was being quite emotional, Jiang Zhengkai could only sit up straighter on the bed. He pulled A-Jiao’s body up so that she lay diagonally on him, and then lowered his head and gently kissed away her tears. Afterwards, he said to her, “Honey, don’t worry. From now on, I will only love you.”
“I dare you to love someone else!” Even though that’s what her mouth said, A-Jiao’s head once again moved to Jiang Zhengkai’s chest. She then sobbed some more while lying on top of him, before pursing her lips and saying, “Honey, I don’t think you care about me enough! Why didn’t you ask me how I got pregnant?”
“Eh? I don’t care?” asked Jiang Zhengkai as he looked at A-Jiao in surprise. In his mind, this really wasn’t that big of a deal, but in A-Jiao’s mind, it was the most important thing in the world. Perhaps this is the difference between men and women. A woman might casually sleep with a man, but she will definitely not casually bear a man’s child.
“Uh-huh!” said A-Jiao as she sat up and looked at him. “Tell me, do you love me or not?”
“Hehe! What do you think?” asked Jiang Zhengkai as he looked at the woman in front of him with a evil grin on his face. This scene felt very familiar, yet also distant. In the past, the woman in this scene was played by Su Jing, but now that role had gone to A-Jiao.
“You…” Seeing how Jiang Zhengkai didn’t give her a straight answer, her face became red with rage, and she angrily turned her head away so she wouldn’t have to look at him. But Jiang Zhengkai didn’t need words to explain himself. He grabbed A-Jiao, pushed her onto the bed, and began wildly kissing her face and her neck.
A-Jiao’s body was pinned softly beneath Jiang Zhengkai’s. She could feel his body reacting to all of this external stimuli. She felt a hard rod pushing up against her lower body. She closed her eyes and slowly opened her mouth, waiting for Jiang Zhengkai’s tongue to enter. She knew that this afternoon, she would truly give herself to the man she deeply loved…
Jiang Zhengkai and A-Jiao exerted themselves for a long time on the bed. Only until the two of them were completely exhausted did Jiang Zhengkai lie down next to A-Jiao and tightly hugged her naked body to his. “Ziyuan… Honey, I love you!”
“I love you, too!” A-Jiao whispered while in Jiang Zhengkai’s embrace. “Honey, we will have a healthy baby, and he will look just like you!” A-Jiao raised her head again as she spoke and cutely looked at Jiang Zhengkai. “Honey, when I was twenty, I had…” In a soothing tone, A-Jiao told Jiang Zhengkai the same life story that she had once told Wei Xin. To tell the person she loved about her sordid past was a very painful thing to do, especially since this part of her personal history involved another man.
“Oh…” Jiang Zhengkai let out a long sigh after hearing A-Jiao’s story. So that’s what A-Jiao’s past was like. Still, his mind was at ease now, because A-Jiao hadn’t actually had a child and didn’t lose the ability to bear children. Well, the things men worried about were always somewhat… different from the things women worried about.
“Honey, you won’t get mad at me for being… being so stupid and for wanting to have a baby with another man, will you?” As A-Jiao spoke, she placed her head on Jiang Zhengkai’s chest once more. Because the two of them were both naked, Jiang Zhengkai could naturally feel her tears swelling at her eyes.
“Of course I won’t. In fact, I’ve got to thank him!” said Jiang Zhengkai as he brought A-Jiao closer to him. “Silly girl; if it weren’t for him, then you wouldn’t be here to marry me!” he said, half jokingly and half seriously.
“You…! You’re so annoying!” shouted A-Jiao in response, lightly hitting Jiang Zhengkai’s chest. “I love you, Honey! I will give us a baby…” As she spoke, A-Jiao gently closed her eyes. This young woman was feeling exceedingly tired by now. When a person finally removes a heavy burden from her shoulders, she will feel a sense of fatigue and sleepiness. A-Jiao was like that as well. She leaned up against Jiang Zhengkai’s body and quickly fell asleep.
Jiang Zhengkai continued to stroke A-Jiao’s body. He liked smelling her scent. It was the smell of her natural body scent mixed with an elegant fragrance. This smell always made Jiang Zhengkai feel like he was free of mind and happy of heart, while at the same time it stimulated his sex drive. If A-Jiao hadn’t fallen asleep, he would have almost certainly have done it again with her.
He looked at the woman in his embrace, but his mind was thinking about what she had just told him. A-Xiu was the one who had stopped A-Jiao from committing suicide, and she was also the person who had led A-Jiao down the path of prostitution. According to A-Jiao’s description, A-Xiu hadn’t been a bad person. Although she’d been somewhat greedy and stingy, she’d also been kind and helpful to her fellow prostitutes. Why then had a woman like her been killed? Why did she leave the alley in such a hurry after being brought in for questioning by the vice squad? It looked like these two questions would have to wait until A-Jiao woke up before they could be answered.
In a poorly lit area outside A-Jiao’s old house, A-Meng leaned against a wall. He stood there for the whole day, waiting for Jiang Zhengkai to leave. From the look of it, however, he’d probably have to keep waiting. Having received military training, A-Meng had a soldier’s sense of loyalty and obedience. However, the object of his loyalty was not his country, but A-Tao. A-Meng didn’t think the things he’d done to survive had brought any hardship to his country, so he didn’t believe he had betrayed the oath he swore to his country as he stood under its red banner.
By the time A-Jiao awoke from her dreamy slumber, the sky was already completely dark. “Honey, what time is it?” she quietly asked the man beside her, as she lay on top of Jiang Zhengkai’s chest and wrapped her arm around his body.
“It’s already six. Are you hungry?” replied Jiang Zhengkai. He looked over A-Jiao as if he were appreciating a masterfully-crafted sculpture. “Do you want to go out to eat, or do you want to stay in so I can cook for you?”
“You can cook, Honey?” At the sound of such an offer, A-Jiao responded as if she had just taken a shot of adrenaline. She immediately raised her head and continuously batted her long, shiny eyelashes. “Honey, I want you to cook for me!”