The 99th Divorce

The color drained from Ou Ming’s shocked face. He rushed forward to hold on to Qiao Ziqing.

She put one hand on her waist. With her other hand, she held Ou Ming in a vice-grip. She cried, “Ou Ming, listen to me. Won’t you break up with that woman? I’m begging you as your mother!”

Her words were carried by a whimper and sorrowful cry. “You’re bewitched by that woman. Eventually you’ll realize that what I say is right. There’s nothing worthy about that woman whatsoever!”

“Stop talking!” Ou Ming’s face flashed with panic as he held Qiao Ziqing up. “I’ll take you to get your medicine. Stop talking, and stop moving around needlessly!”

Qiao Ziqing clutched Ou Ming’s sleeve tightly with both hands. The figure she had maintained so well now seemed bent over. “Promise me first that you’ll break up with that woman!”

“Stop talking!” Ou Ming’s anger began to boil over. He picked her up in his arms and asked, “Where is your medicine?”

“I won’t take my medicine! You’re my only son! If my only son won’t be obedient to me, I… ah…” Without finishing her sentence, Qiao Ziqing let out a cry of pain. “I might as well… just die and be done with it!”

Straining to keep his temper against his mother in check, Ou Ming strode toward her room and laid her gently on the bed. He started to turn the room upside-down, asking as he went, “Where is your medicine? Where did you keep it?”

“I don’t know!” Qiao Ziqing was in so much pain that she was having spasms. Still, her voice was firm and steady. “If you won’t listen to me, I’ll die right before your eyes!”

Ou Ming pursed his lips and stopped searching the room. He straightened up and walked right out the door.

When Qiao Ziqing witnessed this, she was dumbfounded.

Tears streamed down her face uncontrollably as she wailed, “You heartless creature! Would you really rather your mother die than break up with that woman? Why on earth did I give birth to you? Ah…” Her voice began to trail off.

Qiao Ziqing wrapped her arms around herself and curled herself up into a ball. Low sobs of pain escaped her lips as she whispered, “Where are you, Old Ou? I’m about to die. Your son would rather I die…”

Qiao Ziqing hadn’t spoken more than two sentences when the sound of running steps came in from outside.

In Ou Ming’s hand was a white bottle of medicine. Upon tearing the seal open, he fed the medicine to Qiao Ziqing. In her daze, she swallowed the medication and fell into a deep sleep on the bed.

It was clearly a cold day, but the fright Ou Ming had just experienced caused sweat to pour down his brow. He wiped his face and proceeded to check her breathing. Only when her breathing slowly stabilized did he release his breath.

He tucked his mother into bed and covered her with the blanket. As he straightened up, he saw how helpless Qiao Ziqing was.

The young one was hard to handle. The old one was even harder. He thought,

Why are the women around me all so persistent?

Ou Ming sighed and returned to the room to hide the spare medicine someplace new. Considering that she had used her illness to threaten him to break up with Yu Lili, they needed to speed up the execution of their plan.

…

Yu Lili had been keeping a close eye on the happenings on Weibo. The short post on Weibo had garnered a few hundred thousand likes and tens of thousands of comments in the short span of four hours.

Just as she was getting carried away reading the comments, the page refreshed on its own. A 404 error message appeared. Yu Lili took a second look, refreshed the page once more, and found that the Weibo post had been deleted.