Chapter 3 — Someone Else's WiFi Password

The dim, shifting glow of the lamp stretched her shadow across the floor, making it extraordinarily long. I swallowed hard, finding it somewhat difficult to force the words past my lips:

“I am pregnant. Three months.”

The air in the room froze solid. I kept my head lowered, bracing myself for her shock, her relentless questioning, or perhaps even a lecture urging reconciliation for the sake of the child, as mothers so often do. After all, this was the bloodline of the Jiang family. Yet, none of that came. Madam Jiang slowly walked over to the bed and sat down right beside me. She did not sigh, nor did she utter even a half-syllable of reproach.

“Then it is all the more reason for you to stay right here with me.”

“Tomorrow morning, I will make a trip to the farmers’ market and buy a few old free-range chickens to stew into a nourishing soup for you.”

The gentle warmth of skin touching skin seeped bit by bit into my limbs and bones. The shoulders that had remained taut and aching the entire evening finally relaxed completely in that single moment.

Early the next morning, I was jolted awake by a murmur of voices intentionally kept to a whisper. Pushing the bedroom door open, I found the front door half-open. Arthur stood in the hallway, carrying a bag of soy milk and steamed soup dumplings. Faint, dark shadows hung beneath his eyes, and a strained smile was plastered across his face to mask his exhaustion:

“Mom, I came to take Ninh home.”

“I was held up late at work last night, and when I finally reached the door, I was afraid of waking the two of you, so I didn’t knock.”

Madam Jiang refused to budge. She blocked the doorway, reached out to take the breakfast from Arthur’s hands, and tossed it casually onto the shoe cabinet in the foyer.

“She does not want to go back with you anymore.”

The smile on Arthur’s face instantly hardened into a mask of disbelief:

“Mom, what are you talking about?”

“I said, she does not want to go back to that house with you.”

Madam Jiang repeated each word with deliberate, chilling precision. Arthur’s breathing turned ragged; his shoulders leaned forward as he took a rigid step, attempting to wedge his way through the crack of the door:

“Mom, please let me in. Ninh and I just had a misunderstanding—”

Madam Jiang did not yield an inch. Her arm trembled slightly from the exertion, yet she remained as immovable as stone. Realizing he could not force his way in, Arthur grew frantic. His gaze shot past Madam Jiang’s shoulder and landed directly on me standing in the hallway, prompting him to raise his voice:

“Ninh! Come out here and tell me to my face!”

I met his gaze with absolute calm. That face, which I had looked upon countless times before, now inspired nothing within me save for a profound, crushing exhaustion. Peering through the narrow gap of the half-open door, my voice was devoid of emotion:

“Just go.”

Silence descended upon the doorway—a heavy, suffocating stillness. Arthur stared at me intently, his Adam’s apple bobbing with immense difficulty as he swallowed. After a very long time, his voice drifted through the barrier of the door:

“Ninh, we are supposed to get married... Please, come home with me.”

I offered no reply, nor did I reach out to open the door. Taking advantage of the pause, Madam Jiang pushed the door closed by another fraction and delivered a final, frigid decree:

“Go back first. Let her have some peace and quiet for a few days.”

The security door swung fully shut, emitting a sharp, crisp click that severed all connection to the world outside. I stood in the foyer, listening to the fading noises beyond the threshold. Arthur lingered outside the door for a very long time. So long, in fact, that the hallway’s voice-activated sensor light clicked on, flickered out, and clicked on again. Finally, the slow, dragging sound of his footsteps echoed down the stairs. Madam Jiang turned around, completely ignoring what had just transpired. She walked into the kitchen, retrieved a pristine white porcelain plate, arranged the still-warm soup dumplings upon it, and slid it across the dining table toward me.

“Eat them while they are still hot.”

I pulled out a chair, picked up my chopsticks, and delicately bit into a dumpling. The piping-hot pork and scallion broth burst forth instantly, lightly scalding the tip of my tongue before cascading down my throat, warming my stomach from within. I kept my head bowed, eating the dumplings in silence.

From that day onward, I remained entirely under Madam Jiang’s roof, and a quiet rhythm gradually took root in my life. Every morning without fail, she knocked gently on my door to summon me for breakfast. When I returned home exhausted in the evenings, a warm bowl of soup invariably awaited me on the stove, pinned down by a sticky note. Sometimes it read, “added dried scallop medallions”; other times, “finish this and go to bed early.” She rarely brought up Arthur. On the rare occasions when he called, she would answer with a terse grunt, state flatly, “she is eating, I am hanging up now,” and immediately sever the connection. At dusk, a week later, Madam Jiang returned from the market. As she untied her apron, she spoke to me quite casually:

“About the apartment, he mentioned putting it up for sale. Half of the proceeds will be given to you.”

My hand, holding the soup spoon, froze mid-air:

“There is no need to give me anything. He bought that place himself.”

Madam Jiang pulled out a chair, sat down, and locked her gaze onto my eyes:

“The two of you picked it together and signed the papers together. How could it not be yours?”

“You are carrying a child in your belly, and you will need money for countless things in the future. Do not act on impulse.”

I did not answer, lowering my gaze to drink my soup. A few dried scallop medallions floated on the surface, and the rising steam kissed my face, slowly melting the glacial barrier I had forced myself to erect around my heart. That night, after I finished showering and stepped out of the bathroom, the living room lights were left unlit. I heard Madam Jiang standing in the darkness of the balcony, speaking on the phone. Her voice was muffled and kept to a low register, yet it carried a severity I had never heard before:

“You created this mess yourself, so figure it out. Do not come here and bother me about it.”

With that, she hung up abruptly. Turning around, she caught me standing at the edge of the hallway. There was no trace of awkwardness upon her face for being caught eavesdropping, nor did she offer any explanation; she simply walked over and instinctively lifted the towel from my shoulder: