Chapter 2

For a moment, we listened to our elders getting excited over the possible marriages of their children. They started pairing us young people up and ordering us around. Obediently, the people who were matched went to sit with their prospective spouses to chat and test their compatibility. Nobody could publicly rebel against the will of so many elders without disgracing our respective families. After all, as family friends and secret rivals, we had to uphold our family's face and honour with so many people around. Only known rebels and disgraces like Siming would dare refute them. I, with the placid personality went with the flow.

My sister, Yining, went to sit with Gong Rui, the heir of the Gong Jewelry business family. A younger cousin of Gong Rui came over to take Siming's attention off me and we were all shuffled about. I was left without a partner.

My parents had looked at Siming's parents and then me.

"She'd never agree willingly," they said to Uncle and Aunty Jun, while I was still looking at them quietly. "She may be willing to do many things, but she has a stubbornness even we can't deal with when her bottom line is crossed. She'll accept it once she finds herself stuck in that situation with no other choices. Let's just do what you said. That way we won't have to worry about her anymore. I'm sure she'll be happy in your family with Sihao."

"Look at all our children being paired up like this," said the Li couple. "Don't they all look so cute? So good and compatible."

"No. I'm not doing this," Gong Rui's younger cousin said in a shrill voice and suddenly got up from beside Siming with a look of disgust. He must have said or done something stupid again. "Forget it."

"Nevermind then," Aunty Jun waved a hand with a tone of surrender. "We understand."

"Aunty, Uncle, if Sihao can't do it after he gets married, why don't you let Siming help out and make sure the family line is passed on? You may never get that troublemaker married." someone said. I couldn't tell who had spoken.

Everyone in the room gasped.

I looked around the room for the speaker but couldn't pinpoint who it was who had said such a ridiculous thing. Everyone knew not to talk about Jun Sihao and his legs.

"I wouldn't mind," Siming said, looking at me.

"In your dreams," I pointed at him. Not because I detested the thought of doing it with my best friend but because there are some boundaries that shouldn't be crossed. He liked me. I knew it. He'd been trying to convince me into his bed or to marry him for the past two years.

Romance would kill what we had. I only wanted my best friend.

Siming shrugged and went over to the drinks table where his mother was ladling herself another drink from the punch bowl. She helped him scoop an extra cup for me.

"There are very few girls who would be willing to marry your Siming after all," the Li family's great aunt pointed out to the Jun couple. "It's an option to consider. Although the girl isn't very bright, she's not completely worthless. She should be able to birth your family an heir. It's not a shame for the brothers to help each other."

"Then you'd have to consider whether Jun Sihao would agree to it first," I muttered to myself, but nobody heard while Siming wasn't there and was busy getting us some new drinks to drown our sorrows, "and whether my parents would agree or not."

"We're fine with that," my father waved a hand, making me lean back, feeling flabbergasted. That was my father, right? Was this how a father should show concern for his daughter's married life? Should they be publicly agreeing for me to marry the older brother in order for the younger to impregnate me?

They might as well say that I was being married into the family as a baby making machine and not marrying any one specific person. Wait. Could that even be considered a marriage then? We could say I was marrying the two brothers, not one. But bigamy is a crime nowadays. How would they get around that?

Was this how my parents ought to be treating their precious daughter? Did they no longer love me? Scratch that. Had they ever loved me? I was going to be sold right here and now, just like this?

Alright. I'll admit I knew I was adopted, even though I wasn't meant to, hence why my family seemed to hate me so much, but even so, couldn't they have pretended harder? I had been trying to brainwash myself all these years to convince myself that even adoptive parents could love their adoptee as much as their biological child. Now, the pretense was well and truly falling apart. It was just my wishful thinking. I was really just some abandoned unwanted and unloved child whose only use was to be a pawn in someone else's game.

"What's that?" Siming asked, coming back over to my side and passing me a drink he had picked up for me, picking up the last of my muttered ranting.

"Nothing," I mumbled, mixing the fruit punch with what was left of my soju and beer.

"If my brother can't do it, you shouldn't refuse me, ok?" Siming told me. "The two of us would be great together. We could explore and unlock all sorts of positions with that book you gave me for my birthday."

"Hey, I'm a loyal person," I slurred after having somehow sipped away half the cup. I wondered where the drink had disappeared to. It was delicious mixed like this. Perhaps I'd had a little too much alcohol tonight. I'd stop after this drink before I embarrassed myself and disgraced the family by accident. "If and I'm saying 'if' people somehow managed to make me marry your brother, there's no way I'd cheat on him. But I don't want to, so too bad. The two of us are friends. We shouldn't ruin this nice relationship and turn it into something toxic. You shouldn't be thinking of how to cuckold your brother either. It's not brotherly."

"Your parents agreed," Siming pointed out. "And it is the brotherly thing to do if he needs the help."

"If he doesn't mind. Which I really think he would. Your brother's never liked sharing any of his things with you," I pointed back.

"I like the idea though," Siming put an arm around my shoulders.

"I don't," I said shortly, downing the rest of my mixed drink and then the rest of the fruit punch. "I don't have such questionable moral values. I'm going to the toilet."

"You're so blunt," Siming rubbed his forehead, speaking into the stunned silence. "And drunk. You do realise that you just shouted that to the entire room?"

"I'm drunk, uneducated and useless," I sniffed and stalked to the toilet feeling way more drunk than I felt I ought to be. The whole world was swaying like the deck of a ship. "Everyone should be used to it by now. The only thing I have going for me is that I'm still a bargaining chip with enough value to be used for a business marriage and have the patience of a sheep when I'm sober. Everyone can bully me. It's really frustrating."

I came out of the toilet feeling like the world was reeling around me.

Aunty Jun was there with my mother when I emerged. They led me to a table and put a pen in my hand.

"Sign this," they told me. "Here and here and here."

"What am I signing?" I asked.

"So many questions," my mother rebuked me. "Just do what I tell you. Will I harm you?"

"Ok, ok. Don't shout," I muttered. "I feel dizzy. My head hurts and I want to lie down. I think I drank too much."

"Sign this first," my mother said, "and then we'll let you go and lie down. You have to behave in the future, ok?"

"Of course. When am I ever misbehaving?" I asked.

"When you're at school and when you're drunk," my father laughed, coming over. "Who would have thought you would be a loud drunk?"

I saw the other people of my generation watching me with a strange silence and odd expressions of pity in their eyes. And disdain. Disgust. More than usual. It was the look of people watching a nasty show and enjoying seeing the little people they disliked being trampled underfoot.

"Gets sold and even helps them count the cash," Gong Rui murmured.

"That's my sister," Yining sighed, looking away.

I frowned in confusion, wondering what they were talking about but was distracted by my father leading me upstairs after I had signed the documents like they had asked. My eyes had been so blurry that I hadn't been able to read what was written there, no matter how I had blinked.

"Yina, you can sleep here tonight," Uncle Jun opened a door and helped my father lead me into the room. They sat me on the edge of the bed and then left. My mother gave me a brief hug and kiss, sighing over me.