What Are Your Tastes? chapter 31
The Past
Hongchuan’s public relations response was swift, immediately posting a response on Weibo.
Zhou Yanchuan’s personal Weibo and the company’s Weibo were usually managed by assistants. This time, the assistant edited the text as requested, accompanying it with video evidence, briefly stating the facts of the incident. It was first posted on his personal account, then retweeted by the company’s account.
The faces of female employees affected in the video were blurred, but Zhang Hao’s face was clearly visible, unmistakable.
Workplace harassment has always been a sensitive issue for the public. Once this incident broke out, public opinion quickly turned. Each netizen could drown Zhang Hao, who hid behind the internet, with their spit.
[“It’s not that he had nowhere to go, but nowhere to harass, right?”] [“What a disgusting man, go away!”] [“So who’s really morally bankrupt here? Bad environments breed bad people.”] [“Can those who were blindly babbling before come out and apologize now?”]…
When Zhou Yanchuan met his aunt and Zhang Hao again, it wasn’t at a restaurant but in the rental they hadn’t had time to leave.
Zhang Hao knew he had done wrong and was scared to death of the backlash online. Suddenly seeing his cousin, who looked furious, enter, he instinctively hid behind his mother.
“Yanchuan…” his aunt, trembling, spoke up, “He was confused for a moment. I don’t understand these things and don’t know how he could do such a thing. Please, don’t report him, I beg you—”
“I came here to tell you something else.” Zhou Yanchuan’s tone was flat but chilling.
The middle-aged woman was still trembling slightly, nodding slightly: “Okay, let’s talk calmly.”
“Do you know what happened with my mom and the family?”
“Yes, your grandfather said your mother despised the family’s poverty and sought a better life but didn’t make much of herself and refused to come back…” Seeing Zhou Yanchuan’s face darken, her voice lowered abruptly before rising again, “That’s just what your grandfather said. I don’t know if it’s true.”
Zhou Yanchuan didn’t say much, just threw a few notebooks on the table.
“What are these?”
“My mother’s diaries,” he glanced at the two people trembling and silent before him, “Can you read? Take a look.”
“We can.” Neither Zhou Yanchuan’s aunt nor his cousin had gone to college, but they had attended middle school and could read basic text. After exchanging glances, they sat down together and opened the topmost notebook.
Zhou Yanchuan himself had only recently come into contact with these things.
Zhang Hong had not returned home for many years. The only person she ever mentioned was her younger brother, to whom she sent money to regularly.
However, after her death, even the brother she supposedly had a good relationship with didn’t show up, acting as if she had never existed. This was a major reason why Zhou Yanchuan harbored resentment towards his relatives.
He had been puzzled, wondering what could have happened to cause such a long estrangement. That day, his aunt’s words implied that the issue lay between Zhang Hong and her father.
After Zhang Hong’s death, all her personal belongings were packed in a wooden box. Zhou Yanchuan had never thought to pry into his mother’s privacy.
On the day he fired Zhang Hao, he wasn’t sure what motivated him—perhaps the unpleasant encounter made him want to dig into the past—so he opened Zhang Hong’s diaries.
Zhang Hong had dropped out of high school but had beautiful handwriting. When Zhou Yanchuan was young, she still kept a diary, though she gradually stopped.
These notebooks were over thirty years old, with yellowed, brittle pages filled with neat, elegant writing. Yet beneath the beautiful handwriting lay unbearable memories, each page more shocking than the last.
Zhang Hong had not left home voluntarily but was forced to flee to Wen County.
More than thirty years ago, their hometown was much poorer. The dowry from a daughter’s marriage was a significant sum at the time. Zhang Hong’s father intended to marry off his only daughter to a man ten years her senior for this reason.
The man did some unknown work outside, earned a considerable amount of money, and upon his triumphant return home, many were eager to connect with him. He specifically chose Zhang Hong, who was less than twenty years old at the time.
Zhang Hong attempted to escape three times.
The first two times were shortly after the engagement was arranged. She didn’t get far before being caught by her father and uncle, who brought her back and beat her severely, causing her to fall seriously ill. Zhang Hong’s mother, unable to make decisions, continuously urged her daughter not to resist, saying that all women face this day eventually.
The third attempt was on the day of the wedding. At this critical juncture, Zhang Hong’s father and other relatives did not believe she would still try to escape, so they let their guard down.
It was on this seemingly most impossible day to escape that she set off again before the groom’s party arrived to pick her up.
This time, she was lucky. As soon as she left the village, she encountered a van transporting goods. Gathering her courage, she asked the driver to give her a ride. Fortunately, the driver was kind-hearted and took her to the next town, from where she took a bus to leave.
Zhang Hong not only left the village but also the province, eventually arriving in a completely unfamiliar county. She didn’t know if anyone from her old home ever looked for her again and didn’t dare to inquire.
After finding a new place to stay, she quickly found a menial job to make a living and soon met Zhou Yanchuan’s father. With this sense of security, the dark clouds from her hometown gradually dissipated.
Two years later, she heard snippets of news about that year from a fellow villager. The wedding couldn’t proceed, the bride price was returned, and her father fell seriously ill out of anger. The man quickly married another girl from the same village.
As for the rest, Zhang Hong understood that her father would never acknowledge her as his daughter again. As for herself, she was destined to live her life far from home.
Zhou Yanchuan knew nothing of these things in the past; besides his father, hardly anyone else knew. This was a feud of the previous generation, and how much Zhang Hong’s maternal family understood depended on how her father explained it to others. According to Zhou Yanchuan, it likely didn’t reflect the truth.
When Zhang Hong left home, she was not yet twenty years old, and her younger brother was still a child who didn’t understand things. This meant that her living relatives might not know her past, especially her aunt and cousin.
Zhou Yanchuan could turn a blind eye to their ignorance, but he couldn’t forgive his cousin for distorting the facts and using his mother’s situation as leverage after making a mistake.
“Yanchuan, I…I didn’t know it was like this. If I had known, how could I have had the nerve to bring Zhang Hao to see you?” The middle-aged woman’s voice was filled with fear.
Zhang Hao, who already lacked a backbone, realized the seriousness of the situation after reading the contents of the diary and seeing his mother’s expression.
Just a reputation of harassing a female employee could lead to social death within a certain range; once the old grievances were stirred up, with their grandfather deceased, only their father would endure all the humiliation, which they simply couldn’t afford.
“Cousin,” Zhang Hao knelt down with a thud, almost hugging Zhou Yanchuan’s legs, “it’s all my fault. I did wrong. Please don’t hate my parents, at least for what happened before—”
“I won’t make the past public,” Zhou Yanchuan interrupted before Zhang Hao could finish. “It’s not about saving face for your family but sparing my mother from gossip.”
“Okay, okay, I understand. Thank you…”
“Get out right now,” Zhou Yanchuan turned away. “I don’t want to see you or your family anywhere in Sen city.”
Though Hongchuan and Zhou Yanchuan’s personal reputations were restored, he wasn’t happy.
“How could there be such a big conflict in a family?” He had been so sure in front of Lu Yunchu before, but now he kept reflecting.
He understood Zhang Hong’s character well. How could she not be a good daughter? Even when the family was so poor, she still thought about giving money to her younger brother. But what did she get in return? After her death, no one remembered her or cared.
Returning home in the evening, he didn’t eat dinner and didn’t go upstairs immediately. Instead, he sat on a bench downstairs in the apartment building to rest. He felt the indoors were too stuffy; it was better to feel the breeze.
The streetlights in the community garden weren’t bright enough, casting a gray shadow on the ground. There were stray cats in the bushes, their cries sounding like children wailing, but they quickly quieted down.
After winter set in, there were fewer elderly people walking or children playing outdoors, leaving Zhou Yanchuan completely alone.
He sat on the bench, his face stiff from the cold wind, moved his neck a bit, and was about to stand up when a figure emerged from the tree shadows in front of him.