How it all happened

"I... couldn't get out. You opened the door... saved me."

Bai Congming spoke very slowly and softly, every word perfectly clear. Even his occasional lapses in logic did not stop anyone from understanding him.

"Saved you..."

Those few words helped Ding Ding recover some of the memories alcohol had fragmented the night before.

He had drunk too much yesterday. He had still been fairly sober when he left the bar, but thinking of his current circumstances, he had ultimately begrudged the cost of a taxi and staggered toward home instead.

The breeze fueled the alcohol's effects, leaving him drunker with every gust, until he could no longer tell which way he was going.

He only remembered a cry for help amid the fragrance of gardenias. The drunk had stopped and opened a door barred from the outside with a broom.

Someone had emerged from behind it, his eyes very bright. Looking at Ding Ding, he had moved his lips, seemingly saying thank you.

"You didn't talk. I was leaving... you stank!" Bai Congming said.

Ding Ding considered himself a respectable man. He ran a factory with eight or ten thousand employees; he could hardly let himself look too unkempt. Being told to his face that he stank for the first time was truly embarrassing.

Clearing his throat, Ding Ding asked, his gaze wandering, "What happened after that?"

"You... slept in the road. Dangerous. I... carried you home on my back!"

Mystery solved.

The drunk had collapsed unconscious on the ground, been picked up and taken home by a kindhearted fool, and then somehow ended up taking advantage of him.

Repaying kindness with harm left Ding Ding unable to hold his head up. He had guarded his chastity for thirty years, only to lose it under circumstances like these.

Ding Ding scrubbed his face hard, switched on his phone's recording function, and asked the most important question.

"Did you... do it willingly?"

Afraid the fool would not understand, Ding Ding added a few more words.

"I mean, did you want to? I didn't force you, did I?"

The fool stared at him, licked his lips, then nodded firmly.

"Yes!"

The word rang clear as a pearl dropping onto a plate. Ding Ding breathed a sigh of relief, only to hear the fool say more.

"I picked you to be my wife... I wanted to!"

"..."

The breath Ding Ding had just let out caught again. His bewilderment turned into a probing question as sharp as a sword.

"You picked me?"

"Yes!" The fool's eyes sparkled. "They said sleeping naked together makes someone your wife. You're my wife! Naked..." He paused, the delight on his face gradually turning to confusion. "But they didn't say it hurt... they're bad!"

His mother had left too suddenly to teach Bai Congming how to love and be loved. She had only mentioned it once, saying that if Little Bai met someone who made his heart pound at first sight, he had to treat that person well, and marrying them would be best.

He had never quite understood before. Only when he saw Ding Ding last night had Bai Congming understood what his mother meant.

Hearing this, Ding Ding thought of a possibility that was hard to accept.

"So... you brought me back, then took my clothes off?!"

"Yes!"

"...What else did you do?"

A brilliant sunflower of a smile bloomed across the fool's face, so dazzling it was hard to keep one's eyes open.

"Slept!"

"..."

Thinking back over his thirty years of single life, it seemed understandable that he might have committed some transgression while entangled with a flower spirit in his dreams.

Having gone from suspect to victim, Ding Ding did not know whether to feel relieved or angry.

He stopped the recording. With the evidence preserved, Ding Ding had at least spared himself a prison sentence that might or might not have happened.

The harm was already done. More words were useless; better to offer something practical.

Ding Ding emptied his pockets, scattering a stack of bills in various denominations and a clatter of coins across the bed.

"This... is compensation for you. I'm leaving now."

Without giving the fool a chance to react, Ding Ding grabbed his jacket and bolted out the door, disappearing from Bai Congming's sight without looking back.

In the room, Bai Congming pouted as he carefully gathered everything Ding Ding had thrown down into one place.

Why did my wife run away... and throw things everywhere...

In his panic, Ding Ding had slurred his words. Bai Congming looked thoughtfully toward the bathroom.

"Mm... fix the wall. Drips when it rains. Bad wall."

Granny Sun had rented this home to his mother. After his mother left, she rented it to Bai Congming.

Three hundred a month, including water and electricity, for some forty square meters and a little courtyard-that price was a special kindness to him.

The house was even older than Granny Sun. Worn down by the years, the bathroom roof always leaked when it rained.

If he set a small basin beneath the leak in the ceiling at night, it would be overflowing by the next morning.

Bai Congming got up, dressed, and wrote the wall repair on the little blackboard behind the door. He did not know how to write "wall," so he drew a square outline instead.

There were not many tasks on the blackboard. The first was to get a wife, and Bai Congming put a little check mark beside it with his chalk stub.

A business card had been tucked among the bills Ding Ding had tossed down. Bai Congming recognized it; he had seen one in the Flower Nursery manager's bag. It had a name, a phone number, and an address on it.

His wife had left without saying goodbye, but he had left this behind. Bai Congming decided to forgive him.

"Ding... Ding..."

Bai Congming had attended school for a few days, but the second character in Ding Ding's name was still unfamiliar to him.

Fortunately, copying it was not too hard. Using the business card as a model, Bai Congming added another item beneath the wall repair.

[Be good to Ding Ding.]

With all its strokes, the second character in Ding Ding's name was three times as big as the first, taking up half the blackboard.

Bai Congming looked at it for a while, then put away the chalk stub with satisfaction and hid the business card beneath his pillow. Only then did he unhurriedly wash up and head out.

Today was a workday. He could not be late.

"You really locked that fool in there? That's rotten!"

"Never mind that! If he's in there when we open up, you'd better transfer me the money!"

Very few people worked out of love for their jobs. Work at the Flower Nursery was the same day after day. The flowers were carefully tended, while the people were wrung dry by the heavy labor. Bored people grew ever more bored and could only scrape a little pitiful amusement out of those around them.

And the easiest person to bully at the Flower Nursery was none other than Bai Congming.

A fool without a guardian would be a target for pranks anywhere.

"I made a point of staying till the end with him yesterday before leaving. I watched him... huh?"

The speaker instinctively kicked the obstruction on the ground. Only after a stick had flown far away did he realize what it was.

"Isn't that the broom I used to knock on the door yesterday?"

"He must've got out himself," the person beside him said with a laugh. "Don't try to wriggle out of it. If the fool isn't in there, you lose!"

The door opened. They searched every corner of the Flower Nursery without finding a trace of anyone.

"There's no way he's not here!"

With his plan thwarted, the man immediately flew into a humiliated rage.

"Was it you? Did you sneak back and let him out because you didn't want to pay?"

"Just because you say so? You think I've got nothing better to do than come back here in the middle of the night?"

"Then how'd he disappear? I reckon you just don't want to pay that hundred!"

"You think I need your hundred? If you ask me, you're just useless! You couldn't even keep a fool locked up!"

"..."

The two began arguing. The people around them watched in amusement, uninvolved, while some fanned the flames, eager for them to start a fight right away and provide a little more gossip for their uneventful lives.

And no one noticed Bai Congming, the subject at the center of the storm, approaching and cheerfully greeting his coworkers.

"Good morning."