Divorce Application - Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Expulsion

The call ended, and Liu Sinan felt all the strength drain from her body. She forced herself to sit up from the bed and carried two suitcases downstairs.

On the way, she ran into Butler Wang. Seeing Liu Sinan’s state, he worriedly asked if she needed him to call a designated driver.

Liu Sinan didn’t go to the garage. Her face was pale, and she was wrapped in a scarf. The early autumn chill had completely frozen her heart. Her eyes were unfocused, lost in the air, and her voice was barely audible. “The cars… I don’t want to take them.”

Underneath the villa was a parking garage, packed with gifts from Li Jinping to Liu Sinan.

She still remembered her first meeting with Li Jinping at a niche car show.

At the time, she was just a small model, struggling in a foreign country. Due to her Asian features, she faced discrimination and could only work at the bottom of the modeling industry. Her desperate financial situation had even forced her to become a car model.

Other car models had sweet faces and flashed “American sweetheart” smiles, looking charming and graceful.

But she was a runway model, accustomed to keeping her body fat as low as possible. Naturally, she didn’t have the curvy figure or relaxed, sweet smile of the other models.

Throughout the car show, no one approached her, nor did anyone show interest in the car behind her.

Liu Sinan maintained her professional poses, but her heart grew colder with each passing moment.

Discrimination and expulsion in a foreign land were nothing compared to the fear of not having enough to eat.

She was already behind on her rent. If her commission from this show wasn’t enough for next month’s rent, the landlord would throw her and her luggage out the next day. She would be homeless, another common vagrant on the streets of America.

The situation at the time made it clear that Liu Sinan wouldn’t receive any commission.

Just as her heart was turning to ashes, a pair of uniquely designed embroidered black boots appeared in her line of sight. She looked up and fell into Li Jinping’s eyes.

Liu Sinan always thought she was the roughest, darkest, and most out-of-place piece in a pink-themed jigsaw puzzle, never finding the right fit and left to gather dust and mold in a dark corner.

But Li Jinping was the one who picked her up.

With a single glance, she found the most worn-out piece among all the others, gently picked it up, dusted it off, and carefully held it in her palm, making it shine as if it were a precious treasure.

At that time, Li Jinping’s world revolved around her.

She publicly announced their relationship and upcoming marriage in front of all the media, started a company for her, and opened a personal runway show. She hired top international designers to create a tailored path for her, transforming her from a piece of dirt that no one wanted into a shimmering, priceless jewel.

She made it so that the people who had once stomped her into the ground couldn’t even see her silhouette when they looked up.

She was her lover, and also a benefactor she could never repay in this lifetime.

That night, Li Jinping spent a fortune on her, and overnight, Liu Sinan went from a down-and-out model to Li Jinping’s highly sought-after “mysterious lover.”

The breath Liu Sinan exhaled was shaky. Li Jinping had an obsession with giving her cars, seemingly to commemorate their first meeting. She would give her a car on every important holiday. By now, the garage had over twenty limited-edition cars.

Every single one was registered in her name.

“The car I called is here.”

Before getting in the car, she took one last look at the villa, as if looking at her lover from seven years ago, and at all the entanglements, love, desire, struggles, and unwillingness of their seven years together.

However, she couldn’t make a clean break. The years they spent together didn’t have a proper ending. She hadn’t even been able to see Li Jinping one last time before all contact was severed.

The moment she closed the car door, Liu Sinan wept silently.

Late summer and early autumn are always unpleasantly humid. For several days, Liu Sinan stayed in bed, sleeping in a daze.

At some point, there was a continuous knocking at the door, so loud that she had no choice but to open it.

“Who is it?” Liu Sinan looked through the peephole. It was a familiar face, so she opened the door.

The person was wearing a professional pantsuit. Her expression was solemn, but the moment she saw Liu Sinan, a flash of surprise and concern crossed her face.

She looked outside cautiously and then closed the door.

“Your phone was unreachable, so I figured you’d be staying here,” Lan Qi said, maintaining a step’s distance. Without any preamble, she cut straight to the point. “Did you and Li Jinping get a divorce?”

Liu Sinan had been submerged in sleep for the past few days. She felt a headache, a shoulder ache, and a pain in her bones and eyelids. Her entire body ached unbearably. Just when she was finally getting numb to it, the three words “Li Jinping” were like a sharp chisel, fiercely shattering her self-deceptive shell.

Liu Sinan was silent for a moment before saying in a hoarse voice, “We’re divorced.”

Lan Qi didn’t show any other reaction. She took out a document and her phone from her arms. “No wonder the media dared to release this news.”

Her phone screen was on Weibo’s trending topics. Several trending hashtags were listed: “Liu Sinan is Undeserving,” “Liu Sinan’s Party Kiss,” and “Li Jinping and Liu Sinan Divorce.” The last one had a “hot” tag, with an intensity that even the kiss couldn’t suppress.

Liu Sinan looked at the three trending topics and laughed inexplicably.

Lan Qi lowered her voice and pressed on. “Tell me, are these photos real?”

“Your scandals started appearing online, and I was confused. I didn’t believe the news about your divorce, but then I saw that Li Jinping’s company profile had changed from ‘married’ to ‘unmarried,’ and that’s when I knew you were divorced.”

Liu Sinan felt her head was so heavy it didn’t belong to her. She opened her mouth and said with difficulty, “Sorry, it was too sudden. I didn’t have time to tell you.”

Lan Qi didn’t say anything else. She shook her head and said, “You’re my boss; you don’t need to apologize to me. I’m here today to ask you how you want to handle this news online.”

How to handle it? It was true that she went to the party, but the kiss wasn’t real.

It was true that her talent didn’t match her resources. Her morals, in the public eye, had touched the conservative bottom line, but her moral decay was false.

And her divorce from Li Jinping was absolutely, undeniably true.

How was she supposed to handle it?

Liu Sinan forced herself to stand up straight, scanned the trending content, and struggled to pull a thread of rationality from her jumbled mind.

“Sue them for the kiss,” Liu Sinan articulated slowly and with great difficulty. “That party was my friend’s birthday. Someone recorded the entire thing. I fell asleep halfway through drinking. That picture is a forced perspective.”

Lan Qi’s solemn expression eased slightly. Liu Sinan looked up, thought for a moment, and added, “Every year, I donate to impoverished mountainous regions under my own name, using my personal account. It’s never been made public, but now, you can organize it and buy a trending topic.”

Lan Qi’s eyes flickered, and she hesitated. “‘Undeserving’ refers to your… chaotic private life. Besides that party, there are also many photos of you going in and out of bars.”

“Chaotic private life,” Liu Sinan covered her face and slid down the wall to the floor. “…It’s true, I like to have fun, I have many friends, and my taste in friends is terrible.”

“Otherwise, she wouldn’t have divorced me.”

At this, Lan Qi’s breath hitched. “Did President Li… divorce you because of that incident?”

Liu Sinan’s empty gaze fell on the ceiling. The dim yellow light cast halo after halo in her eyes, making her tear up.

“Yes, three months ago, I went to a party. There weren’t many people, just friends I’d known for a long time,” Liu Sinan said woodenly. “At that party, I was drugged, almost smuggled out of the country, and would have never been able to come back.”

Lan Qi was so shocked she took a step back. She said in a frightened tone, “Such a big thing, how could you possibly…”

She had only known that Liu Sinan had been seriously ill three months ago. Lan Qi was the manager of Liu Sinan’s studio and had worked with her for many years. She had vaguely guessed that she might have encountered some bad things, but she never imagined it was a matter of life and death.

She had almost been unable to return.

Liu Sinan suddenly started to cough violently, her gasping for breath making her cheeks flush red, adding a strange, vivid color to her pale face. Her shoulder blades were so thin they protruded, like the broken wings of a butterfly trying to fly, but which had somehow been shattered and scattered like withered leaves.

Lan Qi looked down at her, at her stunning and charming appearance and her defeated, heart-ashamed demeanor.

After a long time, Lan Qi said softly, “Do you still want to live, Liu Sinan?”

Liu Sinan’s unfocused pupils moved, and a surge of unwillingness suddenly rose in her heart.

To live.

Who doesn’t want to live well?

From the very beginning, she had been struggling and trying her best to live.

Liu Sinan propped herself up against the wall, her face expressionless. “Of course.”