Hidden Under the Rain

Chapter 9: The Woman Who Waited

I don't remember walking home that night.

The next thing I knew, I was sitting on the bathroom floor of my rental apartment, my clothes still wet, my hair dripping onto the tiles.

The apartment was empty. Too empty.

Gu Shen and I had rented it together six months earlier. His toothbrush was still in the cup by the sink. His hoodie was still draped over the back of the sofa. The smell of him was everywhere—that clean, faint scent of laundry detergent and something uniquely his.

I couldn't breathe.

I crawled to the toilet and threw up. Nothing came out. My stomach was empty, but my body kept heaving, over and over, until I was just dry-sobbing into the bowl.

Then I remembered.

I wasn't supposed to throw up.

Pregnant women threw up. But I couldn't afford to throw up. I couldn't afford to lose any nutrients. I was eating for two now.

Two.

The thought made me laugh. A broken, hollow sound that echoed off the bathroom walls.

I was twenty-three years old. I had no job. No savings. No family to speak of—my parents had died in a car accident when I was nineteen, and I had no siblings.

And now, no Gu Shen.

I looked at myself in the mirror.

My face was pale, almost blue. Dark circles under my eyes. Lips cracked and bleeding. My hair hung in wet ropes around my shoulders.

I looked like a ghost.

Maybe I should just disappear, I thought.

Then I felt it.

A flutter. So faint I almost missed it. Deep in my lower belly, like a tiny fish swimming against the current.

I was only a few weeks pregnant. It couldn't be the baby moving. It was too early. Probably just gas. Probably just my imagination.

But I pressed my hand against my stomach anyway.

And I said, out loud, to no one: "Okay. We'll do this alone."

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Four years and eleven months ago.

I left the city three days later.

I didn't tell anyone. Not Lin Wan. Not my coworkers. No one.

I packed one suitcase. Left everything else—the furniture, the books, the photos, the memories. I couldn't take them with me. They weighed too much.

I took a bus to a small town three hundred kilometers away. I'd never been there before. I picked it because the name sounded pretty on the map.

When I got off the bus, I stood in the town square with my suitcase in one hand and my empty wallet in the other.

I had exactly two thousand yuan left.

That was all I had to my name.