Ink Marker, Why Are You Harassing Others?

It seemed he wasn't the only one interested in the argument. In the green space at the center of the residential complex, a bustling crowd had formed a wide circle, watching with relish, whispering, and pointing fingers.

Shen Le didn't have the skill to squeeze his way in, so he retreated two steps, climbed onto a nearby flower bed, and stretched his neck to get a better look.

The wife's face was beet-red. Her hair, treated with cheap chemicals and permed, was a wild, frizzy mess, sticking up in clumps on one side and collapsing in a heap on the other. She didn't care to fix it, though; she only focused on grabbing her husband and dragging him toward the exit of the complex with all her might.

"Let's go! We're getting a divorce!"

"Xiulan... Xiulan, don't be like this..."

The middle-aged man braced himself, his knees slightly bent, his feet dug firmly into the ground. He refused to fight back, but he also refused to be dragged away, remaining firmly planted in place as he pleaded incessantly:

"I'll do whatever you want! If you think I'm doing something wrong, I'll change! Just don't divorce me... If we divorce, how are we supposed to live!"

The onlookers whispered among themselves. Some called the wife heartless, some said she wasn't thinking of the children, and others remarked that a "simp" never gets a happy ending.

The wife ignored all the commentary, staring unblinkingly at her husband, her face flushed and tears welling in the corners of her eyes.

"You'll change? When have you ever changed!"

"I've told you how many times to lift the toilet seat when you use the bathroom? Have you changed?"

"Every time you don't lift it, every time you drip urine on the seat, and every time I have to wipe it up!"

"I do everything in this house, big or small. I ask you to buy vegetables and you can't even do that right—either you buy them too expensive, or you buy them when they aren't fresh!"

"The greens you bought today, the roots were completely rotten. I've told you so many times, why can't you check them!"

"You don't mop the floors, you don't wash the clothes. I ask you to wash the dishes, and you only wash the dishes—you don't wash the pot, you don't wipe the stove..."

Shen Le stood in the crowd, bewildered and completely at a loss. This? This was worth a divorce?

It was all trivial, fingernail-sized nonsense. If he didn't wash the pot, just tell him to go back and wash it. Was it really necessary to drag it all out, scream at him, and even demand a divorce?

He had heard that young couples could argue to the point of divorce over whether to squeeze toothpaste from the end or the middle, but he had assumed it was an exaggeration. He never expected it to be true.

He couldn't understand it at all. Looking around, several old men in the crowd wore indignant expressions, while the older women and middle-aged ladies looked on with sympathetic nods.

One old woman even turned her head and glared fiercely at the old man beside her:

"What are you looking at! You're exactly the same as him! If I didn't have a good temper, I would have divorced you long ago!"

"Yes, yes, you're the best to me..."

In the center of the crowd, the couple continued their argument—or rather, the wife's one-sided indictment continued.

After a long while, a man and a woman wearing volunteer vests and carrying trash bags—clearly neighborhood committee staff—pushed their way in.

"Alright, alright, stop crowding around! And you two, stop arguing here. Whatever the issue is, go home and talk it out properly!"

The two newcomers seemed to be acquaintances of the couple. The man pulled the husband, the woman pulled the wife, and with a mix of pushing and persuading, they steered them toward the entrance of the residential building.

Shen Le stood where he was, just letting out a sigh of relief, when he saw the Lead Weight jumping frantically, clearly wanting him to follow.

He grabbed the Lead Weight, shoved it into his backpack, and zipped it shut. The Lead Weight thrashed back and forth inside, making the bag bulge and ripple, looking very much like an awl in a sack, its point ready to break through.

"You want me to keep watching? Fine, fine..."

Shen Le wasn't a committee member, a neighbor, or an acquaintance of the couple; there was no way he would be invited into their home.

So, he waited until they had been inside the building for a while before he stepped forward, dragging his feet as he climbed. As he ascended floor by floor, the wife's tearful complaints grew clearer:

"...You don't do anything at home. The shopping, the cooking, the cleaning, the kids' homework—everything is dumped on me..."

"When the whole family caught the virus before the New Year, you just lay there. I had a fever of 102.7 degrees, and I still had to get up to take care of the elders and the kids..."

"When I was giving birth to Linlin, I said I wanted a C-section, and you couldn't even come up with the money for the surgery, leaving me in pain for a day and a night..."

Through the thin wooden door, Shen Le couldn't hear the husband's voice, only the wife's relentless, tearful litany. After listening for a moment, his head began to throb:

If I remember correctly, your kid is at least fifteen! Even if you're getting a divorce, why bring up fifteen-year-old history!

However, the committee staff and the neighbors who had come to mediate were very patient—or perhaps they were simply used to such situations.

After the wife cried for a while, an old woman's voice spoke up, slow and steady, offering low-voiced comfort:

"Living as a couple, you can't just look at the bad; you have to look at the good. At the very least, Xiao Zheng doesn't smoke, doesn't drink, doesn't gamble, and doesn't play mahjong, right? And he's never hit his wife..."

What? Not smoking, not drinking, not gambling, and not being abusive—wasn't that just basic human decency?

Shen Le stood outside the door, finding it laughable. Since when did those things count as virtues?

How pathetic must a person be for those things to be considered merits by the people trying to mediate?

The Lead Weight was still jumping around in the backpack, though less frantically now. Shen Le had no interest in listening to this old, stale history. He walked up another flight of stairs and crouched at the landing to comfort it.

"Stop it, don't make a scene. What do you want me to do? You don't want me to reconcile them, do you? How am I supposed to do that? Just knock on the door and walk in? I don't even know them!"

The Ink Line stretched and retracted. The Lead Weight jumped from the bottom of the bag to the zipper, then rolled from one corner to the other. Finally, the door opened, and the mediators filed out, heading downstairs.

Shen Le stood at the landing of the floor above, listening intently. Soon, the outsiders were all gone, and silence returned. Yet, the quieter it became, the more violently the Lead Weight jumped, nearly turning the backpack into a fishing net.

With no other choice, Shen Le slowly walked back down. He was still more than a meter from the door when the Lead Weight suddenly jumped out of the backpack in a desperate frenzy—

Whoosh!

Bang!

Whoosh!

Bang!

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, bang, bang, bang, bang...

Shen Le stared, dumbfounded, as the Lead Weight darted back and forth across the doorframe, moving up, down, left, and right in a chaotic, Brownian motion. Every time it darted and paused, an ink line would snap onto the wood, followed by another dart, another pause...

"Let's go!"

He lunged forward, grabbed the Lead Weight, and hauled it back with all his might. In that short span of time, the ink line had already crisscrossed the doorway seventeen or eighteen times, plastering the entire wooden door!