Chapter 5 — No Dowry, No You

He gritted his teeth, his voice reverberating through the desolate parking garage.

"All of this is just to spite me, isn't it?"

He reached out to grab my shoulders, his fingertips trembling.

"You don't love that man at all. You just want to make me regret everything, to make me beg you to come back, right?"

I stopped in my tracks and looked at him coldly. Kao Fan stood blocking my car door, his shadow elongated by the harsh fluorescent lights. He stared into my face, desperately hunting for a fracture in my expression.

"Meng Jie, tell me the truth. That marriage certificate is fake, isn't it?"

He stepped closer, closing the distance, his breath coming in jagged, hurried gasps.

"You blamed me for what I said in front of the registry office that day. You just wanted to force me to bow down, to make me listen to your every whim from now on, didn't you?"

He was crafting his own narrative, as if only this specific explanation could keep his crumbling sense of pride standing upright.

"The registration is real."

I looked at him calmly, articulating every word clearly.

"Kao Fan, stop lying to yourself. If you do not believe me, go check for yourself tomorrow."

"And furthermore, the fact that I do not want to marry you is also the truth."

Kao Fan’s body swayed as if struck.

"That is impossible. Three years of love—how can you just change like this?"

His voice spiked in pitch, his words tumbling out at a frenzied pace.

"Fine, I admit I was wrong. That day was my fault; I shouldn't have brought up the salary issue."

"I will give you back the two hundred and eighty thousand in dowry—or even three hundred thousand! I will tell my mother later today."

"Keep the car, just take it for yourself. We can even add your name to the title of the house we were going to buy. Does that satisfy you?"

He looked at me with frantic eyes, his gaze filled with a generosity that felt like an act of condescension.

"Meng Jie, let us start over. I will go tell my family right now that everything can go back to exactly how it was."

I looked at his face and suddenly felt a profound sense of estrangement. Over the past three years, I had completely failed to see who he really was. He believed that if he just offered enough money and gave me the status I wanted, I would behave as I once did and return meekly to his side. I pulled my phone from my pocket and lit the screen. I found a specific message and tilted it to show him the display. It was a successful ticket refund notification from a few days ago. Kao Fan squinted at it for a moment, and the color began to drain from his face. They were two passes for an exclusive tour to watch a prestigious European football club, and they had not been cheap. Kao Fan was a fanatical devotee of the sport; he had spoken of that specific team for eight years. I had pulled strings with countless friends and reached out to professional sports agencies, finally securing those two precious independent travel slots just before the match of a lifetime.

"This was meant for you."

I tucked the phone away, and the screen went dark.

"If we had successfully registered our marriage that day, this would have been your surprise after you returned from your business trip."

"I had even finished arranging the visas and the hotels through connections."

Kao Fan’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. He reached out as if to touch my phone, but pulled his hand back at the last second.

"You had been preparing this for a long time?"

"Yes. Even that morning, before you made your unreasonable demands in front of the registry office, I was still planning our future together."

I stared at our two shadows reflected on the car window.

"Kao Fan, I gave you so many chances."

"If you had just stood up for me once—even once—I would not have left."

"But what about you? You were always telling me to be magnanimous, to be understanding of your mother, even to be understanding of your younger brother’s girlfriend."

Kao Fan opened his mouth, trying to find a rebuttal.

"I did all that for our future—"

"You did it for the Kao family, not for me."

I cut him off.

"Now, the tickets are refunded, the spots are gone, and the affection I had for you has been reclaimed right along with them."

"Keep those conditions you just offered. Save them for the next person who is willing to come and engage in poverty alleviation for your family."

I stepped around him and reached for the car door. Kao Fan remained rooted to the spot, watching me climb inside as the cold white light swept over his trousers. For the first time, he truly realized that I was not merely throwing a tantrum. I was truly, completely finished with him. I pressed the accelerator, and the tires rolled over the dry basement floor, emitting a dull, hollow sound. In the rearview mirror, Kao Fan’s silhouette grew smaller and smaller until it faded into an indistinct black speck. I drove out of the garage. The night wind rushed through the open window, sweeping away the stifling atmosphere. Back in the garage, Kao Fan remained standing by the empty parking space. The phone in his pocket began to vibrate frantically, emitting a series of rapid, rhythmic alerts. It was the Kao family group chat. More than a dozen messages flickered across his locked screen.

"Brother, I do not care. If you cannot buy the car, I will tell Dad to go to her company and make a scene! You need to figure out the housing situation quickly, too—my girlfriend is already pressuring me!"

"What is going on with the car and the house? Say something!"