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Chapter 6: The Silence That Follows
It had been three days since that night.
Three days since Bingqing had said those words. Three days since a single conversation had thoroughly dismantled my once-stable, quiet, predictable world, delivered in a calm voice and steady eyes.
An open marriage.
Even now, the words felt unreal. I sometimes found myself wondering whether the conversation had actually happened, whether my wife had really said something like that to me. The phrase still seemed to belong to someone else's life, someone else's story.
And yet, here I was, living inside it, dealing with the reality of words I had never imagined hearing from her.
The first day passed in a numb blur. The second felt heavier. By the third, I had stopped keeping track of the hours. It no longer felt as though time was moving forward. I was simply stuck somewhere between what our life had been and what it had become.
Bingqing and I barely talked anymore.
There were occasional exchanges. Small, almost meaningless sounds. "I'm going out." "There's food on the table." "You forgot your keys."
But those weren't conversations. They were just words, her words. Ordinary things that needed to be said.
For my part, I couldn't even bring myself to make those small exchanges. Looking at her long enough to say something, even a single word, had become too difficult. For three days, even saying good morning had felt like more effort than I could manage.
I never thought something invisible could hurt this much.
Work wasn't going any better.
Until recently, it had been one of the easiest parts of my life. Routine. Predictable. I knew what needed to be done, understood my responsibilities, and rarely struggled to keep up.
Now, I couldn't focus.
I would sit staring at my screen for minutes at a time, reading the same line over and over without understanding a single word. Emails began piling up in my inbox. Reports that should have taken an hour stretched into half a day. Deadlines slipped.
And then there were the mistakes.
Small mistakes started creeping in—things I never would have missed before. Sometimes I caught them late; sometimes not at all.
Chen Hao asked me on the first day if I was okay. I told him I hadn't slept well, and he laughed it off, telling me to stop staying up late watching dramas with my wife. I almost laughed too.
Sleep. That was a funny word.
I lay down every night, closed my eyes, and stayed like that for hours. But sleep wouldn't come. Because the moment everything went quiet, my mind grew louder.
Her voice. Her words.
Open marriage.
I want to understand my feelings.
I have feelings for him.
They replayed over and over again inside me, like a recording I couldn't switch off. Clear. Sharp. Unavoidable.
Sometimes I just opened my eyes and stared at the dark ceiling. Sometimes I turned to the side—and she was there. Close enough to touch, yet far enough to feel like a complete stranger.
I didn't reach for her anymore.
Food lost its taste entirely. I ate because I had to. Because not eating would raise questions. And because routine was the only thing holding me together, though even that was slipping.
I started leaving for work earlier and coming back later. Sometimes, after work, I would just walk. No destination. No purpose. I simply kept moving, doing anything to delay returning home.
Home.
That word used to mean something. It used to mean comfort, security, a place where I wanted to be with all my being. Now it was just a place I had to endure.
The hardest part wasn't the pain itself. It was her. Or rather, the way she didn't seem affected by any of it.
She didn't seem broken. She didn't seem lost. She didn't seem like someone who had just shattered her husband's world. She seemed normal.
She still cooked. Still moved around the house the same way. Still spoke with the neighbors in that calm, measured tone, as if nothing had changed and everything was still under control.
And maybe, for her, it was.
She did try to talk to me a few times.
"Wuji… can we talk?"
"I think we should discuss this calmly."
"I don't want things to become like this between us."
I heard every word. Every single one of them. But I also heard what was behind them. Or rather, what wasn't.
No urgency. No desperation. No fear of losing me.
Just an effort. Polite, measured, controlled. Half-hearted.
That was the only way I could describe it.
That hurt more than if she had been cold or overtly hostile. It made me wonder if she had ever truly loved me, or if I had simply been convenient—a safe, stable choice for a predictable future. The uncertainty ate at me constantly.
And I didn't think she even noticed my pain. Or maybe she did. And it just… didn't matter enough.
Because she hadn't stopped. Even after I said no. Even after I made my stance clear. She still hadn't stopped.
Her phone was always in her hand now. It hadn't been like this before. Not this often. Now it was constant.
Typing. Reading. Smiling.
That small, quiet smile she used to give me.
I didn't need to ask. I didn't need proof. I knew who she was talking to.
Sun Junfeng.
The name sat in my chest like a jagged fragment of glass.
At night, it cut deeper. She thought I didn't notice. But I heard it.
The bed shifting, her slipping out quietly, the faint sound of the balcony door opening and closing.
Then silence for a few moments. Followed by her voice.
Low and soft, carried through the night air from the balcony.
The first night, I told myself it was just a normal call.
But it kept happening. Every night. The calls grew longer, quieter, more intimate.
I couldn't make out the exact words, but I could hear the tone. And that was enough.
I lay there with my eyes closed and my breathing steady, pretending to be asleep. Pretending I didn't hear. Pretending I didn't know.
Because what else could I do?
Get up and confront her? And ask what?
Who are you talking to?
I already knew.
What are you talking about?
I didn't want to know.
So I stayed still and listened.
Trying to hear something. Anything. Some sign that there was still something between us worth saving. It was humiliating, lying there in the dark, straining to hear my wife talking to her lover.
I didn't know why I kept doing it. Maybe I couldn't help myself.
Maybe I was going insane.
What sane man would lie awake trying to listen to his wife talk to another man in the middle of the night? And every night, something inside me broke a little further.
This wasn't a misunderstanding or a phase. It was happening right in front of me, and she wasn't even trying very hard to hide it.
That disrespect—the way she went about it so openly, as if my silence meant acceptance, as if my pain didn't matter—stripped away whatever dignity I had left.
So I tried staying at work even later, taking on extra tasks and volunteering for assignments I would normally avoid, desperate for a distraction. But I couldn't focus there either.
By the fifth day, it became impossible to hide.
“You look like hell.”
Chen Hao’s voice cut through my thoughts.
I looked up slowly. He was standing in front of my desk, arms crossed, expression unusually serious.
“I’m fine, just…” I began.
The words came automatically, but even I could hear how empty they sounded.
“No, you’re not.”
Before I could finish, another voice joined in.
“Wuji… what’s going on?”
Yue Mengli stood slightly behind him, her brows drawn together, her eyes filled with concern.
I looked away and turned my attention back to my screen.
“Just tired,” I said.
“This is not just tired,” Chen Hao replied immediately. “You’ve been messing up reports, missing deadlines, zoning out in meetings. This isn’t you.”
I didn't answer, because he was right.
"We've been watching you for days," he added, his tone softening slightly. "Something's clearly wrong."
"Did something happen?" Mengli asked gently, her voice careful.
I gripped my mouse tighter, searching for something to say. But what could I say?
My wife wants an open marriage.
The sentence formed in my head, but I pushed it down immediately. I couldn't bring myself to say it out loud. Saying it would make it real in a way I couldn't undo.
Besides, how could any man say something like that to his coworkers? How could I look them in the eye and admit that the woman I married was choosing someone else right in front of me? And asking me to accept it.
I couldn't tell them. I just… couldn't.
“I'm fine,” I repeated. But even to my own ears, it didn't sound convincing.
Chen Hao let out a sharp breath. “No, you're not.” There was irritation in his voice. He had never been a particularly patient man to begin with. “Look at me, Wuji.”
I kept my eyes on the monitor.
“Look at me,” he insisted.
I finally raised my head.
“We're your friends,” he said. “Whatever it is, you don't have to carry it by yourself.”
“You can tell us,” Mengli added softly, keeping her eyes on mine.
For a brief second, I almost did. The truth rose to the tip of my tongue. But then I imagined actually saying it—the silence that would follow, the uncomfortable pity in their eyes—and that made me pull back.
I shook my head slightly.
“It's nothing.”
It was a weak lie, but it was all I had to offer.
Chen Hao stared at me for a long moment before letting out another breath.
“Fine. But we're not dropping this.”
I didn't reply. I knew they wouldn't let it go, and I knew that eventually I wouldn't be able to keep it bottled up forever. But not today. Not yet.
Right now, I was still trying to process the situation myself, something I hadn't fully accepted and wasn't ready to say out loud. The terrifying reality that the life I thought I had might already be gone.
