The Man in the Black Sweater - 1.2: Goodbye, New York

Luo Xu saw his pupils suddenly contract, and the whole atmosphere around him seemed to drop a level. She grew uneasy, secretly wondering—could rich people be born with the ability to sniff out poverty? Had she been steeped in it so long that he’d caught the scent?

The man pushed the documents off his lap, stood up, and walked over to her. His eyes locked firmly on hers as he spoke in a low, questioning voice:
“You’re Tang Juan’s girlfriend, Luo Xu?”

“Yes…” Luo Xu had always considered herself someone who had weathered storms, but under his gaze, her heels tingled and she couldn’t move.

“Haven’t we met somewhere before?” Pei Yan took a step closer. As if unlocked, Luo Xu stumbled back a step.

“N-no way, I don’t recall at all…” She scratched her head, a little guilty but also secretly thrilled. Could it be that a man this handsome had some sort of connection with her? That shouldn’t be, right? And seriously—how could even a top-tier specimen like him fail to cure her face blindness?

Pei Yan straightened, hands clasped behind his back, and said lightly, “I must’ve mistaken you. My apologies.”

“It’s fine, everyone has moments of bad eyesight.” Luo Xu flashed a smile, her tone overly fawning as she tried to lighten the mood.

“Bad eyesight?”

Atmosphere—not lightened.

She ducked her head in quick surrender. “Sorry, I was joking… just joking.”

Pei Yan gave her a deep look, then returned to the sofa, picked up his documents again, and seemed to lose all interest in her.

Luo Xu opened her mouth, feeling like she’d just offended someone very important.

“Miss Luo, this way, please.” The flight attendant appeared at just the right moment, breaking the tension.

Since they were clearly working there, Luo Xu couldn’t just stand around. She nodded and followed the attendant further inside.

The plane’s fuselage limited the size of the bed, but once she lay down, she immediately realized the comfort far outstripped any five-star hotel.

The attendant said, “If you get bored, you can use the internet. Only during takeoff and landing is it unavailable; the rest of the time it works fine.”

“There’s Wi-Fi?” Luo Xu exclaimed in surprise.

The attendant smiled slightly. “If you need anything else, just call me.”

With that, she stepped out and closed the door.

To be honest, though the flight attendant was beautiful and graceful, she didn’t seem particularly polite toward her—there was a kind of disdain that came straight from the heart.

Luo Xu lowered her head to glance at her belly. Three months along, there was already a slight curve. That must’ve been the reason behind the attendant’s look—after all, what people saw now was the label stamped on her: unwed pregnancy, trying to marry into money, scheming to secure status through her child.

She let herself fall back onto the bed, covering her face helplessly. If only it really were that simple…

This long-planned performance had started a month ago with a single pregnancy test. A woman who had fought her way through every battlefield without a single failure… was pregnant. Though shocked and unprepared, she never once thought about erasing the child’s existence.

Her early life had been anything but happy. A father’s affair, a mother’s suicide, herself refusing to go to an orphanage and instead being taken in by a chain-smoking neighbor. After only a few years of stability, that foster father died of cancer, and she was left to wander the streets, forced to feed herself. While other girls her age studied under bright classroom lights, she roamed alleys collecting bottles and scraps, sometimes getting beaten up just for picking a few cans in the wrong territory.

And that wasn’t even the worst. The cruelest blow was when she finally got hold of a hamburger, only for a stray dog to target it, chasing her across thirteen streets until she tumbled headfirst into a river. A kind stranger pulled her out, saving her life, only for her to end up in the hospital with pneumonia.

Looking back, even the word “hardship” was far too small, unable to contain the weight of her suffering.

Yet, despite it all, she was grateful her mother had given birth to her, so she could experience both the joys and sorrows of this world. And when it came her turn, she wanted to give her child the same chance—to see this world for himself, even if his life ended up harder than hers. That was still his right.

The only problem now was the father. On that matter, Luo Xu was completely at a loss. At first she suspected Tang Juan, since three months ago at a party they’d gotten drunk and almost lost control. But in the end, nothing happened, so he was ruled out.

Her ex-boyfriend Ross? They had only just broken up three months ago—so it was possible. But since Ross had cheated, they’d hardly been sleeping together by then; she could count their encounters on one hand.

Most crucially, there had been another man. She had stumbled into his arms, tipsy, and been pulled into a room. Lights out, business done—like fire meeting dry kindling. By the time Luo Xu woke, he was gone, leaving only a stack of still-warm cash behind, as if to say he’d spent a wonderful night.

His skills had been so good that, even without that wad of bills that kept her fed for a month, Luo Xu would have remembered him. Well—remembered in the sense that she knew such a man existed. As for his face… she’d had a bit to drink that night, and even sober she wouldn’t have recognized him anyway.

Biting her fingertip, she thought hard. All she remembered was that the man had been wearing a black sweater. Beyond that, it was a blank.

And so it became a mystery. In this vast sea of people, where was she supposed to find her child’s father?

What made it worse was that when she told Tang Juan, instead of easing her worries, the brat filled his head with schemes—convincing her to pose as his girlfriend to fend off the family’s increasing pressure for him to marry. Tang Juan was gay. No way he was marrying any woman his family arranged. Luo Xu, pregnant and unable to work as a model, had no income. Together, they cobbled up this crooked idea.

Luo Xu agreed—not because she had no morals, but because she had once known the ache of an empty stomach. She refused to let her child taste the same.

But Tang Juan’s family wasn’t so easily fooled. Afraid he was being conned by some unscrupulous woman, they sent his uncle to fetch her—to test whether her story held water. From a technical standpoint, aside from a paternity test after birth, there was no way to be certain. By then, Luo Xu’s “contract term” would be long over—she’d take her pay, fly back to the U.S., and leave the rest for Tang Juan to handle.

It was the perfect plan. And yet, lying in this soft bed, Luo Xu couldn’t shake the feeling that her future had become frighteningly uncertain.

What really troubled her was Tang Juan’s uncle—he didn’t seem like someone who could be easily brushed off. The way he looked at her made her feel stripped bare, as though she had nowhere to hide.

Come to think of it, if she’d known the role would demand such acting skills, she should’ve raised her price right from the start.

P.S.: From a medical perspective, amniocentesis could be used for identification, but since it risks harming the fetus, it’s generally not done.