Chapter 073 Absent from the Wedding

This story is entirely a work of fiction.

Zhao Ming’s fifteen-day journey was coming to an end. Before heading home, he needed to buy a few gifts. On the phone, he asked Du Juan if there was anything special she wanted as a present. She simply replied, “Your safe return is the best gift I could ask for.”

The final stop on his itinerary was a shopping trip in K City. This time, he stayed with the main group, refraining from wandering off on his own, for he longed to stroll through the famous K City before leaving Bin City and to pick out a few fashionable Korean outfits for Du Juan.

When he arrived in K City, the place was packed with people. Tourists from every corner flocked into the shops, selecting all manner of garments. Surrounded by dazzling arrays of stylish clothing, Zhao Ming felt overwhelmed. He had left home with only a thousand yuan in cash. Four hundred had already been spent on a wireless internet card and a Buddha figurine, leaving him with less than six hundred yuan. In this modern marketplace, his funds seemed paltry. He gazed longingly at the goods—he liked everything, wanted to buy everything, yet could afford almost nothing. In the end, he could only pick out a few inexpensive items.

He wandered around K City for half a day, unable to decide what to buy. Finally, he spotted a brand endorsed by Kim Hee-sun, each piece costing just over three hundred yuan. He thought Du Juan would love it, so he bought one. He also picked out a long-sleeved T-shirt for his father-in-law—an item rarely seen in Dahe. With the remaining money, he bought several packs of Korean cigarettes to present as gifts to his colleagues upon returning to work.

Having spent almost all his six hundred yuan, he lost interest in further shopping and returned to the tour bus to stare blankly ahead.

A long time passed before anyone else came back to the bus. He realized that while the others were still caught up in the thrill of shopping, he alone was mired in a silent predicament. Bored and adrift, he scrolled through messages on his phone, not daring to revisit the betting website—there was nothing there but heartbreak and tears. He couldn’t comprehend how, in just a week, he had plummeted from confidence to unprecedented despair, to the point where life itself seemed empty. The thought of all this terrified him; he dreaded the arrival of another worrisome Monday.

Every Monday marked settlement day. Ever since he’d become addicted to football betting, carefree days had vanished. In the early days, he’d kept his wagers under two thousand yuan and had yet to grow greedy. Though the winnings were modest, the occasional three-to-five-thousand-yuan windfall was enough to bring joy. Those few victories soon seemed insufficiently thrilling, the path to wealth too slow. Eager to speed up, he raised his stakes—an escalation that only hastened his downward spiral.

As an onlooker, it’s easy to see things clearly; but once entangled, he became impulsive and lost all reason. In this reckless, irrational state, every choice he made was wrong, and without realizing it, he began a steady decline.

His betting was always indecisive. With only two possible outcomes, each decision felt impossibly difficult. At that critical moment, he almost always chose wrongly. The consequences were inevitable: his days became a cycle of scrambling for funds and paying debts, only to dive into another week’s fierce struggle.

Holding his plane ticket back to Dahe, Zhao Ming knew his journey was almost over.

His mood was abysmal. His only chance to recover losses would be the brief window on the night he arrived in Dahe. Braid’s wedding—the colleague who’d covered his shifts for half a month—was scheduled for the day of his return, and Braid had told him about it before he left. During his absence, Braid had called often for work advice, but Zhao Ming’s mind was no longer on the career he once admired, but rather lost to that dreadful betting.

Sitting in the airport lounge, ticket in hand, Zhao Ming felt listless. When he saw on the website that several matches of the Japanese J-League would kick off at six that evening, his spirits lifted. For him, this window of time was precious.

He decided to skip the wedding he had originally planned to attend. Before boarding, he called a colleague to apologize for missing Braid’s wedding. He also phoned Du Juan, telling her—falsely—that his plane would not arrive until ten that night, though he would actually land at six.

After takeoff, Zhao Ming closed his eyes, replaying in his mind the string of defeats he had suffered over the past week. His head felt as if it would explode. His spirit was all but destroyed; he felt that he was now just a walking shell, unsure when that shell would become a zombie, a mere corpse in motion.

What mattered most now was to minimize his losses before settlement on Monday. Otherwise, with no capital left, his account would reach its limit and his gambling days would be over. He wanted to keep playing the game, painful though it was, for as long as he could still place bets, he didn’t consider himself defeated. Only if he lost even the chance to gamble would he feel utterly, irredeemably lost.

If that happened, how could he face Du Juan? When they bought their home, they had been just thirty-to-fifty thousand short, but now, not only had they failed to resolve the house, even their meager savings had vanished. He could not bear to let his beloved wife endure such suffering, nor to watch the happy family and adorable child he once had slip away.

The plane descended slowly at Dahe’s airport. In that instant, Zhao Ming felt a sharp pain in his chest. Was it the sense that, upon returning to Dahe, he would face day after day of relentless torment? The runway was short, but he felt as if he’d traveled through a tunnel into another world, and for a moment, he was unaccountably happy. The flight attendant called out in front of him, “We have arrived at your destination. Please collect your luggage and disembark.” Only then did he open his eyes, reluctant though he was to do so.

He was dazed, unable to describe his feelings. Dragging his suitcase, he followed the crowd like a soulless zombie. The sky above Dahe was thick with dark clouds, as if a heavy rain was about to fall.

His mood grew heavier, but he still had to catch the airport bus.

Every time he flew, he had different feelings. In the past, he’d taken many flights; the moment the plane landed, he could hardly wait to get home. But this time, all he could think of after landing was the internet café.

As the bus passed the Prince Hotel, Braid’s wedding was just beginning. He saw the bright red wedding sign at the entrance, with guests coming and going through the hotel lobby. There were few pedestrians on the street; the bus rolled past, and the hotel quickly receded into the distance. Zhao Ming glanced back at the hotel and murmured, “Sorry, my brother! I have to hurry to save myself.”

For convenience, he got off at an internet café near his home.

Ignoring his empty stomach, he bought a piece of bread at a nearby bakery and rushed into the café. After getting his login card, he impatiently turned on the computer. In his anxiety, he entered his password incorrectly several times, and even the short wait for the machine to boot up felt unbearably long. He wanted to analyze the J-League lineups and past results as quickly as possible.

He loved the excitement of the J-League, especially when betting—the goals in the R-League came in rapid succession, and when the team he bet on scored, the thrill was indescribable. But if he bet wrong, those goals turned into nightmares.

He was determined to make one last stand. There were six matches kicking off simultaneously. He placed bets on his favorite teams to win, and for the other two matches, he picked the underdogs, staking ten thousand on each. With forty thousand left in his account, he planned to use it in live betting, just in case.

After placing his bets, he noticed that Jewel had a deep handicap, giving one to one and a half goals, with the over/under set at 2.5. He felt strongly that Jewel would win, and win against the spread; the outcome seemed so clear to him that he predicted a 2-0 score. He placed a five-hundred bet on this exact score at 7.5 odds, for a possible payout of 3,750 yuan.

Looking at the site, he recalled that in the past, he had occasionally made small bets for big wins, but since his mindset had changed so drastically, that old habit had all but disappeared.

Within ten minutes of kick-off, his team started scoring, especially Jewel Red Diamonds, who scored almost too soon. With a goal before the tenth minute, his five-hundred score bet seemed wasted, but if Jewel Red Diamonds could win against the spread, he would still earn at least ten thousand. The odds had been at 1.0 when he placed the bet, and a full-win payout felt wonderful.

As time passed, his teams’ results were mixed. Of the six matches, he got three right, but only Jewel Red Diamonds, among the four favorites, delivered the expected result—not only winning against the spread, but also hitting the exact 2-0 score. That score bet’s winnings helped offset some of his losses, but after a long night of waiting, he ended up with less than two thousand yuan in profit from the J-League.

The matches were over, but he still couldn’t let go. He sat there, staring at the screen, but the night’s games were finished, and he had no hope of recouping his losses.

He had no choice but to drag his suitcase and leave the internet café.

He walked down the street, the dim streetlights illuminating his weary body. His face was waxen and withered, his eyes dull and lifeless. In those hollow pupils, an indescribable sorrow was written. When he returned home and knocked at the door, Du Juan, who had been waiting in the living room for his return, did not even hear the sound of his knocking.