The Divorcee Is A Wicked Black Belly

"You"re not going," An Ning"s voice was firm. "I can"t have you put at risk and getting sick again because of another exposure to this stuff. I"ll go by myself."

"An Ning!" Nian Zhen was livid. "You"re not familiar with that tunnel. I am. What will you do if you encounter technical problems along the way? You can"t just hack yourself in there with your sword like it"s any other road you take a stroll at. You might get lost, might get sucked into another dimension. Who knows? You need me there."

"I don"t."

"An Ning..."

"If it makes you feel better, then I"ll take Gu Sheng with me."

"What?" Nian Zhen was outraged. "He"s just a kid."

"A kid who nearly a month ago successfully fought off a horde of invaders trying to destroy his kingdom? I don"t think so."

"An Ning," Nian Zhen was almost pleading. "What if something happens to you? What will I do?"

"You seem to forget that I"ve acquired immortality since the last time we met," An Ning voice was dry. "What will you do if something happens to me? Nothing because nothing will happen to me. Get suck into another dimension?" An Ning laughed. "What am I? A child? Not b.l.o.o.d.y likely. That"s just your imagination getting crazier and crazier."

"Then take Ban Chao," Nian Zhen said, his voice brooked no dissension. "At least I"ll feel safer with him there."

"A little boy like that? What can he do?"

"He won your contest and killed that white tiger, for one," Nian Zhen"s voice was smug.

An Ning was shocked.

"It was him?"

"Yup. He"s got a germ problem but not it seems when it comes to killing. I know his capabilities. He"ll be a good hand in a tight spot. Besides, I"ll feel better with him there."

An Ning frowned, thinking. She wanted to argue but there wasn"t any time for that now. She can"t argue stupid things with Nian Zhen while her family waits for her to find them.

"Okay," she sighed. "I"ll take him."

"Good. You have to wear these wires so I can monitor your location; and these headphones so we can communicate with each other," Nian Zhen said.

While she was being made ready, Nian Zhen had someone find Ban Chao, who of course, arrived with Kang Jun and Gu Sheng. The three of them seemed to have decided to live together at Gu Sheng"s tiny house, much to Gu Sheng"s chagrin since the two of them did nothing but bicker all day.

When they arrived, Kang Jun was again trying to order Ban Chao around. Ban Chao was polishing a dirty plate which Kang Jun was screaming at him to put down or throw away because it was so filthy they will not be using it anymore. But Ban Chao again ignored him, polishing the plate with a fervid expression on his young face.

"Ban Chao, put the plate down," Nian Zhen ordered.

Ban Chao kept polishing the d.a.m.n plate.

Nian Zhen walked over, plucked the plate from his surprised hand and smash it over the arm of a chair. The plates broke and splintered on the floor. Nian Zhen then walked over calmly to a computer monitor.

"Memorize this spot," he told Ban Chao who was gaping at him in surprise. "That"s where the lost time machine is. Or about there somewhere. That"s not an exact location but almost at the place where I think it ought to be. You are going with her grace as her bodyguard. You will protect her. You will get rid of this phobia and not let her out of your sight. You don"t and I"ll have your head. Is that clear?"

Ban Chao had a foolish look on his face, still staring at the broken plate on the floor.

"Ban Chao!" Nian Zhen said impatiently.

"I guess," Ban Chao finally shrugged.

"Good. Then gear up. You"ll leave in exactly one hour from now."

The time was up and they were ready to go. Nian Zhen took An Ning in his arms and in front of the three boys, kissed her so roughly and desperately her lips were almost bleeding when he finally let her go. An Ning was still reeling from the kiss when the sound of something heavy and suffocating reached her ears.

The time tunnel opened on the wall. It was as Nian Zhen said. A thick wall of water blasted by a laser beam. The mouth was huge and cold. A heavy fog surrounded it, making it difficult to see beyond the dripping opening.

"You can command it at will?" An Ning asked, looking at Nian Zhen.

"Only I know the pa.s.sword to unlocking the program," he explained.

An Ning nodded as if in a daze then she was walking forward, Ban Chao grasping her arm. The two of them entered the tunnel hand in hand.

It was as An Ning remembered. The thunderous wind, the force like a magnet. But this time, she walked the tunnel with firm steps. She didn"t looked back even when the fog enveloped her in its icy embrace, her eyes remained on the spot ahead.

They had been walking for nearly thirty minutes when the icy fog suddenly turned normal. It was like taking a stroll under the warm summer heat. It felt like a beautiful day under a clear sky. She could almost smell the sea just like in her childhood when Richard would take her for a ride down the dock on his bicycle in the summer.

An Ning blinked. The image was so vivid that she almost cried out.

The earphones on her head suddenly crackled.

"An Ning? An Ning? Can you hear me?" Nian Zhen"s voice was eerily loud. "An Ning!"

"Yes. Yes, I can hear you Ri...I mean Nian Zhen."

"Are you out of the icy fog yet?"

"Yes."

"Good. You"ll be coming in to the summer portion of the tunnel next. Some fifteen minutes away is the first turn. You will not see it because the fog will try to hide it from you. It wants you to go forward to a dead end where you will spend half a day trying to retrace your steps. I"ll time you then call you back again to tell you if it"s time to make the turn or not. Just stop where you are when your watch reach fifteen minutes and wait for my call, okay?"

"Okay."

The crackle died. Nian Zhen"s ghostly voice disappeared.

They continued walking. The summer breeze was warm on An Ning"s body. She wanted to spread out her arms and feel the sun on her face but Ban Chao was grasping her arm in a tight hold. She looked down and saw him looking around with wide, frightened eyes. Just like Richard"s when she disappeared down a ravine during their family"s vacation in the mountains. What he didn"t know was that part of the ravine fell down to a wide ledge with a trail leading back to the main road. She found it earlier when she went out to collect firewood and thought of a plan to surprise Richard with it. But the plan ended in scaring Richard instead. So scared that he almost clutched her in his arms when she reappeared on the trail a few minutes later.

An Ning shook her head and found Ban Chao eyeing her with concern.

"Are you feeling okay? You look like you"ve just seen a ghost."

"I think I might have," An Ning agreed, dazed.

"We"ll we"d better continue. This place is starting to scare me," Ban Chao said, clutching at her hand.

The sun continued to beat down on their heads like a warm caress. Ban Chao was starting to mumble under his breath, his face a little pale. An Ning wanted to tell him to stop but the words he was saying was starting to make sense, the same words Richard said to her when he asked her to marry him. They had just had dinner with some friends, two university cla.s.smates who were pa.s.sing through the city and wanted to reconnect. They were a couple who after graduation had sold all their belongings and moved to a little town in the west. They opened a store which later became the hubbub of a busy tourist trade. They were married now and had two kids. They wanted to know when she and Richard were planning their wedding soon.

An Ning saw the surprise on Richard"s face. He was not expecting the question. He was not expecting that their friends thought that he and An Ning were a couple. But he didn"t betray his surprise and answered as lightly as he could. They drove the couple off to the bus station and watched as the bus finally drove off. They drove back. The silence was thick with embarra.s.sment, with tension. She wasn"t even surprised when Richard stopped the car in a commercial parking lot and turned to her in silence, not knowing what question to ask, not knowing where to begin.

They sat there in silence. An Ning was so embarra.s.sed she wanted to leave and run away. She was finally faced with the awful truth. And it was something that nearly split her apart. Richard liked her, cared about her but he didn"t love her. Not the way she loved him. The way she wanted him. The same way she wanted him to love and want her back.

"I guess we should think about getting married soon," Richard broke the silence by shattering her hopes.

He drove her to her apartment but did not come up to her door. She didn"t remember what she told him, didn"t remember how she answered his proposal. Her mind was in a muddle by then. Liu Richard, the man she had loved for more than a decade, did not love her back. Was incapable of loving her back. Will not want her ever because she was not the one he loved. But she was his friend, his bestfriend and they told their parents and had the married banns announced two weeks later.

An Ning almost screamed at the images flooding her brain.

She was not happy. He was not happy. During the engagement party, she felt so aloof from everything and everyone. It hurt to smile. It hurt to laugh. Most of all, it hurt to look at Richard"s face.

Love was not something handed to you on a plate by demand. It cannot be forced. It cannot be bought. Not faked. Nor stolen. But it can be given willingly, hopelessly, even as your dreams die and your hopes perish with the gift.

All through that night, Richard never left her side. He held her hand, circled her waist in his clasp, kissed her cheek, looked at her like he loved her but An Ning was slowly dying inside. She felt suffocated, like a stone had been flung at her chest making her incapable of breathing properly. How was it when she was dying he wouldn"t even notice? The pretense continued. Everybody played their parts. An Ma looked so proud and happy. The false Ceres serene and smiling.

The day of their wedding, An Ning wanted to die. She should have just taken a knife and plunged it into her own heart instead. Maybe the pain would ease. The tears would finally break through the dam of civility and wash her guilt and pain away.

Richard and Valerie. Valerie and Richard.

She didn"t know why she followed him outside. All she remembered was the flash of the rest of her life in front of her brooding eyes. Really? Another twenty years of loving Richard for nothing? Marrying him for his friendship. Marrying him for...perhaps having children with him which would again leave her in limbo. Children. Hers and Richard"s children.

She opened the door and there he was. A woman was with him. A very beautiful woman with flowing hair and skin the color of peach. He was bending over her as he lighted the cigarette between her pink lips. The way his body leaned towards her was beautiful. Like an ode to beauty, like the symphony of mirth.

She had never heard his voice spoken like that, teasing, seductive, a lover whispering to his beloved. The woman"s laughter was throaty, her voice soft and sweet.

She stood half-way behind the door and watched them. She was paralyzed on that spot. She couldn"t move even if she had wanted to. The scales fell from her eyes and she knew utter shame. She sold herself for nothing. She trampled her pride for a love she couldn"t even dream of owning. She humiliated herself by going through a marriage that promised nothing, gave nothing, nourished nothing of her innermost self. She was looking at an abysmal pit which would only leave her torn and bleeding. Down the years...down the decades. It was empty. It was nothing.

That night, the honeymoon, she didn"t even pretend anything anymore. She told him she was sick and had him drove her to the hospital instead. She made sure she stayed there for a week by ingesting a drug that copy catted a viral infection. She had the flu, the fever, the indigestion, the diarrhea, the bleeding. The only thing that remained constant was her frozen heart.

Richard and Valerie. Valerie and Richard.

And then Han. He was a boy she liked because he didn"t remind her of Richard. Han who somehow made her laugh, made her smile. Even when she told him she was pregnant with Richard"s child, he merely pulled her tightly in his arms and tried to stop the bleeding when she sobbed.

A broken heart. A broken body. That was what Richard left her in the end. The ****, for it was a **** and not a seduction as he said, killed something in her. The past began to fade from that day. The memories of him and her together became unmoored and somehow forgotten as the days pa.s.sed.

An Ning and Richard. Richard and An Ning.

Two friends. The story of her and him. It always would end in nothing. Through the end of days..nothing. Not love. Desire. Not even together.

Richard and An Ning.

The headphones again crackled in her ear.

"An Ning? An Ning? Are you there? An Ning?"

"Yes," she answered after a while.

"What"s wrong? You sound...different."

"It"s nothing. I think I"m hallucinating. But I"m alright now."

"Hallucinating? How?"

"It"s like something is flashing me images of past scenes from my previous life."

"Scenes? Like memories perhaps?"

"Something like that, yes."

The voice on the other end was silent.

An Ning looked around at where they were standing. The fog was a little lighter, somehow bluer in color. She could see a faint light up ahead. Her first instinct was to head towards it but stopped herself. Beside her, Ban Chao moved as if he was stepping forward but she grabbed his hand and pulled him to her side.

"Wait until Nian Zhen tells us where to go," she told him. "Somewhere here is the first turn." She turned on the headphones and spoke into it. "Nian Zhen? Nian Zhen? There"s a light up ahead. Is that the sign we need to find the first turn? Over."

"Yes," the answer was eerily ghostly. "Move to your right and feel the walls. It"s not exactly a wall but something that feels a little b.u.mpy. Just follow it with your hands. Some twenty feet away the wall will turn right. Just follow it. Call me back when you"ve found the turn."

"Will do. Over."

"Yes, like that," she said as Ban Chao started moving to their right with his hands outstretched. It didn"t take long before their hands met a blockade of something cool and squishy.

"It"s probably solid water or something," An Ning said.

"It feels like jello," was the unexpected answer from Ban Chao.

"Jello?"

"Yes. Nian Zhen had Indian made one and let me taste it. This barrier feels similar to it."

"You"re probably right. Come on, let"s follow it."

The headphones again crackled.

"Memories?" Nian Zhen"s voice sounded weird.

"What?"

"You said memories?"

"Yes. We"re not at the turn yet. I"ll let you know when we"ve reached it. Over."

"What kind of memories?"

"Ban Chao! Don"t walk too fast. Wait for me."

"An Ning..."

"Images of when we were kids. When you proposed. At our wedding. Like those."

The headphones went dead.

"I think this might be it," Ban Chao said, his voice crisp and clear in the silence. "There is a break in the wall and it"s turning right."

"Okay, hold on a bit. I"ll call Nian Zhen."

"Are you at the turn now?" Nian Zhen asked, when the line again crackled to life.

"Yes, we found the turn. What next?"