Chapter 37: The Ticket Stub

The moment she heard the words “art exhibition,” Yan Xue’s nerves tightened. It seemed the women who worked in the same company and department as Shi Shugao and Cong Fangfang had been telling the truth after all.

“You said an art exhibition? What kind of exhibition?” Kang Ge asked, taking the opportunity to probe for more details.

Chen Qing shook her head and searched through the photos on her phone. “I still have a screenshot. I’ll show you. I didn’t pay attention to what the exhibition actually was. I only remember that woman mentioning an art exhibition. I saved screenshots of all this as evidence, so I could use them in court. But I was so furious at the time that I couldn’t focus on the details. Even looking at them for another second felt like my heart was about to explode.

“Anyway, I’d already made up my mind to divorce him. I didn’t want to know where those two shameless people had gone. The more I knew, the more disgusting it would feel. I wanted to turn the page, not trap myself in it, so I never looked back.”

As she spoke, she quickly found the photo on her phone and handed it over for them to see.

Yan Xue realized that the reason Chen Qing could find something from so many months ago so quickly was that she had saved every screenshot related to Shi Shugao and Cong Fangfang in a separate album she’d created.

“You’ve kept everything so carefully. Weren’t you worried Shi Shugao might snatch your phone and delete all the evidence, then deny the whole thing?” Yan Xue asked casually as she looked at the screenshot.

Chen Qing gave a cold laugh. “He’d have to get the chance! After I discovered his other WeChat account, I sent the screenshots to my own phone and deleted every trace of them from his. I even cleared them out of the Recently Deleted album. He had no idea I’d caught him. Once I figured out who the woman was—and that she worked in his department—I went straight to their company. I showed everyone the photos. By then, it was too late to delete anything!

“After I got home, I backed up the photos on my computer and in the cloud, in case Shi Shugao tried to destroy the evidence and then shamelessly demand an equal share of the property in the divorce. I’m not greedy. If I were, I wouldn’t have married a man with so little going for him. But I’m no pushover, either. After everything he did behind my back, why should I split everything with him equally? I upheld the most basic standard of fidelity in a marriage. Did he? Why should he expect to be treated the same as me?”

Chen Qing’s emotions were gradually getting the better of her. She brought up another incident from that time. “You have no idea. When I first went to Shi Shugao’s company to confront him, there was a woman there—apparently some close friend of Cong Fangfang’s—who actually stood up for her and turned around to blame me. She said what I was doing was women making things difficult for women, and that if anyone should be held responsible, it should be Shi Shugao. Why was I targeting Cong Fangfang? She even called it a classic ‘mistress mentality’!

“I was so angry I nearly laughed. I was taking a stand against cheating. Shi Shugao was obviously no good, but does that make Cong Fangfang innocent? She knew perfectly well he was a married man with a family, and she still went after him. What does that make her? She was flirting with my husband, and if I call her out, that means women are making things difficult for women? What about me? Am I not a woman too? When she went after a married man, did she ever think she was making things difficult for another woman?

“And ‘mistress mentality’! The moment I went to his company, I had no intention of staying with Shi Shugao. I’d sooner be his grandmother and make him my grandson than keep living with him. If you ask me, those women who defended Cong Fangfang and insulted the betrayed wife by calling her a ‘mistress’ probably had a ‘side-piece mentality’ themselves!

“Later, people told me that the woman who stood up for Cong Fangfang had once had a very good boyfriend, but Cong Fangfang had supposedly broken them up too. They said the woman was crazy and couldn’t tell right from wrong. I didn’t bother arguing with her.”

As she spoke, she was breathing hard with agitation. Realizing she had lost her composure, she quickly reined herself in and took a deep breath until she had calmed down.

“Sorry. I got carried away again. I hope I didn’t scare you,” she said apologetically.

Kang Ge smiled gently and waved a hand. “Objectively speaking, given what you went through, that was a restrained reaction.”

Yan Xue could tell that the woman Chen Qing had mentioned, the one who had defended Cong Fangfang, was almost certainly Niu Wenhui. But her attention was focused on the screenshot of the chat, so she didn’t react.

The two people in the screenshot were, of course, Cong Fangfang and Shi Shugao. Judging by their messages, Cong Fangfang had indeed been the more forward one. Her coy, flirtatious wording toward Shi Shugao was plainly beyond the bounds of a colleague’s relationship.

Shi Shugao’s replies suggested that he was mostly basking in the vanity of being admired by another woman.

After that screenshot, Chen Qing had saved the photo Cong Fangfang sent Shi Shugao on its own. That made it easy for Yan Xue to examine the surroundings in which Cong Fangfang had taken it.

Shi Shugao probably hadn’t dared bring those things home, so both ticket stubs had remained with Cong Fangfang. She had tucked them into the pages of a book, leaving only a small part visible. It was impossible to make out what exhibition they were for, but although the background of the photo was slightly blurred, Yan Xue could clearly see that it was Cong Fangfang’s rented apartment.

“To your knowledge, did Cong Fangfang and Shi Shugao stay in touch after you went to their company and confronted them?” Yan Xue handed the phone to Kang Ge to look at, then raised her head to ask Chen Qing.

Of course she knew where Chen Qing had gotten her information, and she understood all too well the sleepless, heart-wrenching days she had endured after that confrontation. So Yan Xue glossed over the specific details that might make Chen Qing uncomfortable or upset, and didn’t press her.

“No. Of course not!” Chen Qing clearly knew the details. “After Shi Shugao left the company, Cong Fangfang stopped paying any attention to him. At first, Shi Shugao wanted her to explain herself. He thought she’d told me about the two of us because she wanted to be with him forever. But Cong Fangfang wouldn’t even respond to him. After all, things had reached that point, and he wasn’t her direct supervisor anymore. Why would she bother with him?”