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墨書 Inktalez
Chapter 5: Intensifying Contradictions
Neon lights shattered in the torrential rain, turning into a blue glass rain that pierced into my swollen eyelids. As Zhou Yi's military jeep rolled over the pregnancy check-up slip beneath my skirt, the dashboard flashed a dark red alert, and the car radio announced the closing price of the Singapore Exchange. The metal door, still warm from bullet holes, felt like a branding iron just dragged out of an incinerator.
"Medication." As the aluminum foil cut into my fingertip, blood droplets rolled into the folds of the Contraceptive Pill wrapper, forming a distorted imprint of a baby’s foot. Suddenly, the bulletproof box in the back seat emitted a piercing alarm; the Birthday Song recorded by Mother before her fall mixed with static, and the Snowflake Screen flashed a slow-motion shot of Su Ya dripping poison into a petri dish—she wore Chanel No. 58 lipstick, matching the color of the Threat Letter that had been inserted into my prenatal report last week.
The loud crash of Lin Yichen kicking the door shattered the frame in the foyer. At that moment, as glass shards pierced his sole, his leather shoes crushed Su Ya's smiling face from our Wedding Dress Photo, while platinum cufflinks tore through Zhou Yi's coat lining. A cork from a 1995 Lafite rolled out from a hidden compartment, carrying the sulfur scent of gunpowder and scorching an embryo-shaped mark onto the Persian Carpet.
"Are you done playing?" He tore at my turtleneck sweater with a force akin to ripping off a Band-Aid, and the electrodes from the Fetal Heart Monitor stuck to his palm. Su Ya leaned against the spiral staircase with a light laugh; her crystal nails glided across a tablet, and suddenly, the footage of Zhou Yi tying my scarf switched to the Delivery Room Shadowless Lamp—on that day, surgical forceps had crushed Placental Tissue, now soaking in champagne from Lin Group's latest merger celebration.
When Zhou Yi's Glock 17 collided with the coffee table, my abdominal scar began to seep blood. The tourniquet he pulled from his combat uniform was wrapped around half of a B Ultrasound Report; ash from Lin Yichen's fallen cigar burned through the "Fetal Heart Defect" diagnosis section, igniting precisely where he had been shot in his right rib that morning.
"Get lost!" The force with which he extinguished his cigarette on the baby photo made my stomach convulse. Su Ya timely handed over an auction house receipt; the sale price of the blood-stained wedding dress was three zeros more than my pregnancy weeks had stalled. Rain poured through the shattered floor-to-ceiling window; Zhou Yi's body heat still lingered in my palm's indentation from where a bullet had struck—like an unformed birthmark.
As I felt the cold air from the convenience store freezer penetrate my bones, I counted the crimson location points on my phone map. The beeping of Zhou Yi's apartment password lock echoed with the date of my abortion; white roses in the foyer were stained with the sweet metallic scent of nitroglycerin. The bathroom steam obscured his new knife wound on his back; bloodstains twisted into Lin Group's equity tree diagram, with its farthest branch pointing directly at my empty womb.
"Drink." The Ginger Tea carried a coppery taste reminiscent of shell casings; I could taste Peat Whiskey from Singapore Airport Duty-Free Shop on my tongue. He suddenly lifted my soaked skirt; a medical suture needle threaded with catgut pierced where fetal movement had been—gunshot scars and cigar burns intertwined beneath my skin like veins forming Lin Family Tree, with its sharpest angle pricking at a Paternity Test Report.
At three in the morning, Lin Yichen's voice message exploded against my bedside. Zhou Yi paused as he wiped his combat knife; in its reflection, Su Ya was burning an Embryo Testing Report. I traced the direction of my abdominal sutures; suddenly, their stitches overlapped with inheritance order lines as intestinal gurgles harmonized with the clicking sound of a safe's dial.
As I was wrapped in a Military Emergency Blanket, rainwater accumulated on Zhou Yi’s Collarbone dripped into a whiskey glass. The tweezers used for bomb disposal picked up a Contraceptive Pill whose back bore engravings of Mergers and Acquisitions Coordinates; at that moment when sirens pierced through the rain curtain, I swallowed bitterness mixed with his blood and cedar scent—remnants of our first encounter amidst an arms depot explosion.
At the moment when the Fetal Heart Monitor ceased its rhythm, the cold metal of a gun barrel pressed against my temple spread throughout my body. Zhou Yi’s breathing rate overlapped with the sound of safety catch disengaging; Su Ya’s image set ablaze in Villa reflected in his pupils. I clenched fragments of blood-stained Bulletproof Vest and heard Lin Yichen’s leather shoes crunching down on capsules meant for maintaining pregnancy like crushing an underdeveloped heart.
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