The man held me on his lap and I could feel him sticking up into me. All that kept me safe from him were the thin layers of clothes between us.
I didn't dare to move and tried to sit as still and as obediently as I could while he chatted with his friends. One of his hands drew lazy circles on my bare skin beneath my clothes, making me shiver and shudder every now and then. Every time I shivered, he grew a little harder.
The conversation was ordinary and boring, ranging from watches to cars and then to business and investments. None of it was anything I was interested in or needed to listen to. What I really wanted was to escape this boredom and the suggestive poking from the man's aroused appendage from beneath me.
The moment I moved or tried to find a new more comfortable position, the man's hands would tighten around me and pulling back tight against him so that he poked me right in the soft spot between my legs. It made me grit my teeth. Eventually lulled by the droning voices and the boredom, I ended up leaning back into that firm chest and nodding off.
While I drifted off, I contemplated how I had gotten here in the first place.
It had all started with a gathering of my family with our family friends at the Jun family's house for dinner. The conversation had somehow gone in the direction of the marriage of all the children of the five gathered families. We were all in our twenties, finishing or having graduated from university and still single.
While all the older adults were gossiping over our love lives, we young people had been playing games at our dinner table and catching up on where everyone was at. Some of us hadn't met for a few years.
"Yina, get me another drink," my sister, Yining ordered, while chatting with her friends.
"Sure, Sis," I said with a smile, taking her cup.
"And me."
"And me."
"Me too."
Her friends took the opportunity to have me serve them as well. No problems. It was just getting them drinks.
"Whoa. Hey! Yina, go get a cloth and a mop!" Yining called me again, pointing at the drink someone had accidentally spilled on the table.
"Sure. Sure," I nodded, putting down the new drinks I had just refilled. "Be back in a jiffy."
After wiping and mopping up the mess, I was called over to one of the tables filled with boys talking about cars and racing.
"Hey, get us a few beers and refill the snacks on the table," they ordered me as if I were a lowly waitress.
"No worries," I said, passing by the table with my parents.
"Yina, when you've done that, come back and clear our table," Aunty Jun told me.
Uncle and Aunty Jun were the hosts of today's dinner party, but everyone, like usual, took advantage of my cheerful obedience.
"Brother Meng, you and your wife are so lucky to have such a cute and obedient daughter," Aunty Gong sighed. "If only my children were such cheerful helpers. They sigh and scowl if I even ask them to lift a finger to pick up their own socks."
"You flatter me," my father chuckled, casting a glance at me rushing to and from the boys' table with drinks and snacks for them. "She's not really that obedient. Deep down, she's a rebel and lazy worm who is always causing trouble. Especially when she gets together with Siming. Those two are forever getting into trouble together. I was called to the school at least once a week when she was in highschool. That girl, she only knows how to flatter others and get into fights behind our backs."
"Those fights were never Siming or Yina's fault," Aunty Jun shook her head at my father with a smile. "Those bullies were just trying to take advantage of your Yina's kind and patient character, bullying her all the time. If my Siming didn't protect her and she didn't protect him from getting beaten up all the time for standing up to those bullies, she'd have been forced into somebody's bed by now."
Aunty Jun glared at the mother of one of those bullies, while I cleared the table, pretending I was deaf to their conversation.
"That was a joke," the lady and the other parents of the bullies all protested with awkward expressions. "We already cleared it all up and even Yina testified she knew it was a joke. There was no harm done. We agreed to leave the past in the past. The children are all in university now. They're all going to different universities and living their own lives."
There was a snort from the Juns and my parents. Aunty Gong looked away and caught me watching. She looked back for a moment, schooling her expression into non-expression, as if to tell me she wasn't ashamed of what her son had tried to do to me at all. Then she looked down at her teacup.
"Go refill the snacks and drinks for our table," my mother ordered me, "and all the other tables."
Uncle and Aunty Jun pretended they didn't hear my mother ordering me about on their behalf. After all, things had been like this ever since I was young.
"It's her grades that worry me now," my father sighed. "How is she ever going to graduate at this rate?"
"It's the same with our Siming," Uncle Jun shook his head with a sigh, raising his newly refilled glass to clink it with my father's. "I don't know what I'm going to do with that useless brat. He's useless at school, useless in business, useless at home. I have a feeling I'm going to have to raise him for the rest of his life. At least your Yina knows how to make herself useful."
"Would you like to switch children?" my father chuckled.
"Even better, give your daughter to one of my sons," Uncle Jun chuckled. "I can afford to raise another useless person if she can help my wife out at home. Then my wife won't have to tire herself out every day."
I was waved away after that to serve the other tables. When all the work was done, I flopped in the couch beside my best friend to eat the desserts he had saved for me. I had missed most of the main meal, being too busy serving people. We hadn't seen each other for a while because we went to university in different cities and I sorely missed his cheerful company.
"My older brother, Sihao, was in a car accident," Jun Siming had told me over a beer while I kicked my feet up on a footstool with a sigh of relief. "You've probably heard about it. He's been moody and depressed because of his injury. He can't walk anymore and the doctor's prognosis is poor. I heard that he'll never be able to get it up with a woman again. Not that he's ever had a woman. It's a pity. I heard my mother say she hopes your parents will marry you over to take care of him."
"Me? Why me?" I had asked in shock.
Jun Sihao was my secret crush and a perfect man in my eyes, disabled or not, but I had never let on I was interested. In the past, it was because girls more trendy and of better social standing than me who liked him would have trampled me into the dust in order to get rid of another love rival. Now, I didn't want people to think that I was trying to make fun of him. All those girls who had fawned over him in the past had lost interest the moment they had heard that the man may never walk again and have issues getting it up. So if I was really going to be married to the man of my dreams, I'd put up a token resistance to try and show that I only appeared to look like a doormat and wasn't really one but then happily go and get married.
"Mum said it was because you're like me. A useless spare tyre that carries the family genes and nothing else," Siming said in a glum voice. "And also because out of everyone we know, you are the most patient and able to bear hardships. She said you have a simple personality which would make you easy to deal with and control. You'd never complain. You wouldn't care about anything most girls our age would and you would be happy as long as you had food and shelter. Besides, as your bestie, I'd be there to keep you company when you get lonely. Hey. Don't get mad with me. It's what my mother said."
"She's not exactly wrong," I had said, squirming in my seat, "but it feels horrible to hear it all being said out loud."
"We can't help it if we have exceptional siblings," Siming shrugged and refilled my glass. "My parents are hoping that Sihao will recover at least mentally and get himself back on track, whether or not he recovers the use of his legs. They seem to believe that he's the only possible inheritor of our family business."
I added a shot of soju to both our beers.
"Just like my sister, Yining, is the only heir of mine?" I clinked glasses with him and drank it down.
"Hey, why don't the two of us get married?" Siming asked and I scowled at him.
"Get married so that us two bums who don't know how to do anything can irritate each other and be losties together? No way. The marriage would fall apart within a week," I shook my head. "How would we survive when we're barely surviving now? Imagine what would happen. After getting married, our families would toss us out to let us try and survive on our own so that we can stop being leeches. They hate us enough as it is. Neither of us have been much good at any of the jobs we've tried and our grades are so poor that we might be graduating from university as illiterates. You spend money on rubbish hobbies like chucking cash down a drain and we'd be in debt before we'd even finished the wedding ceremony with no way to pay it back."
"You're so pessimistic," Siming had flopped back on the couch to look at the ceiling.
"It's called being realistic," I replied, wishing I was allowed to actually get good grades in my studies. Since I was young, I'd be beaten if I did well, because my grades were usually better than my sister's and overshadowed what was her rightful glory. I'd long since resigned myself to becoming her foil. My version or retaliation to the unfair treatment had been to become a useless doormat who tried hard but achieved nothing. Overtime, both my sister and parents had forgotten that I had once been a high achiever with more intelligence than that lazy cow. "I wish I was a better person too, but I can't help it. This is me."
"I'm not scared to be seen, this is who I'm meant to be," Siming sang and I snorted at him.