Arc 1 Chapter 3

Previous | Table Of Contents | Next

Chao Fen was the daughter of two rich people, Chen Gang and Lin Ling. They had her quite young and in the end, there was never a wedding between the two, which didn’t prevent the father from recognizing his daughter though. Chao Fen’s name in her childhood until her puberty had been Chen Chao Fen. She used to live with her mother’s family and would sometimes, during holiday most of the time, visit her father’s side of the family. It went on like this until her mother married. She was nine at the time.  For their honeymoon, they left her with her father who was now living alone -sometimes with his girlfriend of the time- and she was never picked up afterward. Which wasn’t all that bad. After all, she used to think that she was closest from her dad. 

Reality hit the child quite harshly and before understanding how, she was abused sexually by the man who used to hug her and couldn’t keep himself away from her, the man that she used to see for a week per year, finding it too little. Once living with him for a prolonged period, he got intimate with her more than what was considered normal.  The child tried talking about it with her mother and other people. Either she wasn’t good at explaining things or they just didn’t want to listen.

It was an on and off-again thing which was slowly maddening her. Once or twice a year that he went all the way sometimes he was just touchy-feely. It was one of the great influence on why she started taking drugs and herbs even alcohol from pre-teen to her teen days and even later on in her young adult life. 

At fourteen, when he once again wanted to force her, she actually took defense for herself and put a knife through the man’s heart. Many stabs issued and she didn’t stop even when the man laid there motionless on the kitchen’s floor. Her father’s girlfriend found her at the time, sitting dazed near the corpse, her face, hands, and clothes full of blood as well as the body and the floor. Such a brutal way of killing had her put in an asylum for a while. From then on, her life grew more chaotic and if she wasn’t in a rehab center then, she was in the teen detention. She was really the definition of a child, angry at the world.

She broke off all relationship with both families after that, which didn’t prevent the fact that she still got to inherit her share of her father’s legacy. At the time she hadn’t wanted anything to do with it, but the man in charge of her asked her to think carefully and he would hear her reply on her twenty-first year again.

With mixed feelings, Li Miao kept on reading. It seemed that it was at eighteen that this person met with the young Chao Mei. The nine-year child was actually the daughter of the chief of one the rehab centers Chao Fen was interned in. There wasn’t really anything detailed just that it was this child who was her light during her darkest days and when a couple of years later the grown-up sixteen years Chao Mei wanted to work as a model, Chao Fen personally created the opportunity. She took the person under her wings and considered her, her ‘true’ sister deciding that the name they shared was to be her new family name.

Before that though, by her twenty, the broken Chao Fen started to pick up the pieces of her life, trying to make something of it. She first decided to have tattoos as a way to remember this vow. At this information, Li Miao frowned and immediately pulled down the long sleeve of her right arm and sure enough, she could really see the Chinese dragon’s tail ending by her mid arm and even dark birds sitting on a branch by her wrist, the left hand just had wrist tattoos. She shuddered quite happy that it was things from years ago, she was, after all, someone who couldn’t stand pain!

After this bold decision, the young adult followed courses which permit her to have the equivalent of her diplomas and later on entered university while keeping small jobs in the morning. She disdained still, both her parents’ money and wanted full independence. She grew out of that though and later on, used both her father’s legacy and her mother’s ways-of-making-peace money to buy some stocks. She confided that she wouldn’t have felt any real loss if the whole thing disappeared as she was just trying her hands at what she learned but who knew that she was actually way better at finance than she thought? She did some good placements and soon, her fortune grew.

The person had a cynical view of life and didn’t exactly have her tongue in her pockets. She wasn’t scared of angering people and actually didn’t filter what came out of her mouth at all. She made many enemies here and there which led her to require the services of constant bodyguards.

“If I’m friend with master Li? Who is he supposed to be again?”

“I have trusting issues? Of course, I have them. When even your blood family can let you down what of friends and acquaintance?”

"Oh that company closed... how can it be my fault, they had stupid people as managers!"

She wasn’t a fan of interviews but when she had them she wouldn’t be polite at all!

By then she already had established a modeling agency which was famous for accepting any kind of model, most of all promoting the beauty of uniqueness. Models here could be handicapped that they would still feel beautiful, they would have the weirdest of illnesses that they would still feel beautiful. Their president, flashing her scar on the face, welcomed them all. She was a contradiction like that.

Even though it grew more than she first thought it would, at the start, the agency was for her precious sister that she helped, who later became an actor without stopping her modeling carrier.

In many interviews, Chao Fen indulged on how much she loved that person, it was the rare time when her speech would be polite. She loved her sister and made no attempts to hide that and Li Miao thought that with such immersion no wonder President Chen went berserk at the other’s death. Chao Mei was obviously her everything.

Browsing some more, a thing actually caught Li Miao’s attention. In all Chen Fen’s pics, there was a constant man behind her. A bodyguard it seemed. She sometimes had three or four bodyguards and the others’ faces changed but it was just this man who stayed constant all through the years from the establishment of Chen Fen in the business world until now. Nothing much was said about him besides that his name was Zhao Li.

With all the money she had, if things like those could be so easily found, it was certainly because Chao Fen herself didn’t care to hide them. Actually, she must have played a role in how much the Chen family name got blackened as well as the critics on Lin family's name. But she cared very much about her sister though and certainly had a hand on what could be displayed when entering that person’s name. Searching for Chao Mei there wasn’t much personal information that could be found just things about her carrier, the films she appeared in. She started living with her ‘elder sister’ officially when her own father died. She was twenty-one then.

Tired by the time she finished, Li Miao still took a look at what was inside the computer’s memory. Some things about the agency she ran, the companies she had shares in, e-books on finance and management and such, the surprising thing was when she stumbled on the camera recorders. There were so many cameras in this apartment, making Li Miao wondered if Chai Fen was actually really right in the head.

From the living room to the dining room, kitchen, toilets and … this, was this her bodyguard’s bedroom? Li Miao was a little startled, it never appeared to her that the man was actually living in the same apartment as his boss!... But oh well, it’s not like they were in the same bedroom so it was fine. The poor man slept with his lamp desk still on, leaning against the headbed, the book long fallen from his hands… Her sister’s bedroom was completely dark. She had no idea if the person was even in there.

Each of them had his own toilet it seemed, in such case, she didn’t mind living with two other people in this big apartment.

Sighing, she turned off the computer, putting both hands on her neck, she massaged it a little, twisting it, hearing soft cracking’s sounds. She got up and, not taking in consideration the door her sister used, she went to the one by the left side of the room and sure enough, it was the big bathroom she saw on the computer's screen. It was ridiculously big for just one person! Half of one wall was entirely made of glass and Li Miao stood there, looking at her own reflection.

From a twenty-year-old, she became someone of thirty-two. It was really bemusing. But this person, if one didn’t know, one would think that she was in her twenties. Her face wasn’t bad at all and the long ink-colored hair tied in a messy bun was actually splendid on her. Only, why was her face in this state? The scar wasn’t really frightening but one couldn’t ignore it, from the middle of her forehead to her right cheek, it was way too glaring. The wound at the time must have been deep and needed stitching. Nothing though was mentioned on how she got such a thing. Pondering over it for a while without any answer, Li Miao just let it be. With such a turbulent adolescence as the one she had, Chao Fen must have certainly got it during that time.

The scar aside, this person was a looker! She ought to be a model herself! Such long sexy legs gotta show them more. Yet in her interviews, she always had pants on… actually, she was always wearing either jeans or vest pants, Li Miao didn’t see any photo or video where this person was wearing skirts or anything like that. At home though, she obviously preferred a relaxed style.

Removing the long shirt, Li Miao turned around to take a better look at the dragon tattoo. It was a chinese, scary and menacing looking dragon, all black and green which started from her right shoulder all the way to her right arm. Something about strength, courage and maybe independence if what she read online was truthfully Chao Fen's intention at the time. The tattoos of birds sitting on branches on her wrists hadn’t been explained but paying enough attention to them and passing her fingers to feel them, Li Miao actually noted the horizontal scars and cuts they were hiding so well. And the admiration she felt for this no-pain-scared person was twinged with a little pain and sadness, as she ultimately understood. 

This solid, sarcastic and confident looking-like woman, was once suicidal it seemed… 

Previous | Table Of Contents | Next