I threw myself over Mrs Jun at the last minute and felt sharp pain cut through my skin down my back.
"Go to hell, you disgusting old pervert!" I yelled at Mr Jun, but then screamed when the knife plunged into my body, making me convulse with pain. It hurt. Man, it hurt so bad. Even so, I still mustered what strength I had to shout, "Am I raw enough for you, old man? You're just a coward and a bully. Why don't you try again? Am I bleeding enough for you yet? Come, take another stab at me."
My strength was fading, as shock began to take over, making my fingers and toes numb with cold.
The knife landed and went deep, making me cough and gasp for breath. Mr Jun's eyes were livid and filled with rage. It seemed he had finally lost his mind. He struck my face with the handle end of the knife and then plunged the blade into my chest.
"Elder Master," I gasped and mocked with a voice that was losing its strength, "would you still like your slave girl to serve you tea after dinner tea again? Shall I spit in it again for you?"
That did it.
The man went into a frenzy.
There was screaming and blood everywhere. I could barely breathe.
Siming lunged over to take the knife and was stabbed for his trouble. Nevertheless, he managed to wrestle the knife from his father's grasp with Mrs Jun and Sihao's help. Sihao had abandoned the phone and it lay on the floor, the cordless phone face still lit up, showing the line was open.
Sihao threw himself out of the wheelchair. Between him and Siming, they somehow managed to hold their father down. But only for a moment. Mrs Jun was trapped beneath me and I couldn't find the strength to move for all the pain right at that point in time. I was amazed I hadn't lost consciousness yet.
The boys were soon thrown off and Mr Jun broke free. In the distance, approaching sirens could be heard coming in our direction.
While Mr Jun's attention was on the boys, I slowly and painfully rolled aside, bleeding onto the nice white carpet.
"Run, Mum," I whispered. "Quick. Go. You're the only one left that can get help now."
Mrs Jun gathered her skirts and raced for the door. Seeing her get up and run, Mr Jun pushed his sons aside and went after her. Mrs Jun managed to unlock the door but I heard her scream. Mr Jun carried her back on his shoulder and threw her down beside me. He had somehow gotten hold of the knife again, but this time, he had a maniacal grin on his face.
"You want to kill me?" he asked her in a conversational tone. He pressed the knife into her hand. "Here. Kill me. Stab me. Come on. I know you want to do it. Didn't you want to do it just now?"
Siming returned to fight for the knife, while Sihao dragged himself toward me, yanking the table cloth down off the table and ignoring the clatter of things falling down. He tried to put pressure on my multiple stab wounds. I grinned at him, laughing despite the pain and gurgling.
What a way to go out.
Finally, I had found someone to kill me. I was bleeding out and dying. It was great. I could leave this stupid world. What was so great about living?
"Yina. Yina, don't laugh. Stop laughing," Sihao said, tears dripping on me.
The sirens had arrived and I heard a knock on the door. Mrs Jun and Siming screamed when Mr Jun waved the knife to stop them from getting to the door, and then the door burst in.
"Hey there, handsome," I smiled at Sihao. "Come be my husband in the next life, ok? Just don't bring so much baggage next time. Even if I die, you can't. Your mother and brother need you."
Paramedics arrived and moved the table cloth to see what they could do.
"Don't close your eyes. Yina, is it? Here, squeeze my hand."
It made me laugh again, feeling the creeping cold. I hoped they were too late. I hoped I wouldn't survive.
"Revenge of the doormat," I sighed, "is to get itself killed. Stupid, isn't it?"
"What was that? Yina? What did you say?"
The lights faded and I went to sleep.
Unfortunately, death didn't welcome me. A hospital had. My life had been saved. It made me sigh deep within myself. I had failed.
I had to keep on living? Man. What a bore.
Rehab, counselling and Psychology sessions. Interviews with the police. Court sessions. More counselling.
Things were getting more and more out of control. Where was my nice and peaceful plunge into non-existence?
Almost everyone within our circle of society was affected. At the police station, Mrs Jun confessed to so many things that she had been an accomplice to that our society fell apart into the frenzy of dog and cat fights. Even many of my peers were found to be involved and were summarily charged and sentenced. Jun Sihao and Jun Siming were among them. I didn't know if they had just been fined or were being sentenced to gaol. I didn't have the energy to care when I was trying to stop the medical staff from dragging me firmly back into the land of the living.
Half the city was overturned.
My so-called marriage was not legally binding and I was ruled to have been illegally detained. I was free. The day I realised it, I laughed so hard that most of my wounds re-opened and the doctors had to sedate me in order to deal with the the bleeding before I bled to death.
Someone higher up than Mr Jun's best police friend, the man he was blackmailing, had taken an interest in the big mess I had managed to break open. They had uncovered a whole ants nest of illegal activities and dealings with the underworld and black market. Now that Mr Jun had been taken out of the game, they were finally free to mete out justice as it ought to have been served all these years. It turned out that Mr Jun had just happened to be the key.
The police discovered my real identity as well. I was my grandfather's daughter from a hidden case of incest. I had been brought up as my father's daughter in order to save the family some face. No wonder my family had treated me like dirt. It sent my grandfather to prison as well, making me laugh again. At least, by now, the doctors and police had some experience. They had already fed me sedatives first, told me the news before the medication kicked in and then let the sedatives get to work before I could injure myself laughing.
No wonder I had always had poor health but nobody had really cared enough to make sure I was properly treated. Now with my injuries, my poor health made itself known. My body didn't seem to want to heal.
I was in and out of ICU when I wasn't being a witness for another court case or questioned to see if I knew anything about some new crime the police detectives had discovered. I wasn't much use, but my observations were usually enough to point them in the right direction. Along with the loose tongues of the Jun brothers and Mrs Jun, there wasn't a family in our circle that the four of us didn't offend.
Then Jun Sihao showed up at my bedside and refused to leave. It was nice to have his company. It was even nicer to see that he had progressed from the wheelchair to crutches and then to a walking stick. He proved that a doctor's prognosis was not always correct and that human determination could produce miracles. That was my man. Awesome. Persistent. Tenacious.
By the time my life was no longer in danger, he had gotten rid of the walking stick and taken over his family's business before it had crashed after the nose dive caused by the uncovering of so many crimes.
Just like Yining had saved our Meng family's company when its stocks dropped. That girl was really amazing. I don't know how she did it. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought she was the female lead in some webnovel. It amused me no end that I was actually her aunt while she had been looking down on me all these years, treating me like a disgusting younger sister. She didn't visit and I didn't want to see her.
Just when things were settling down, multiple deaths once again shocked the city. The evidence indicated that they were suicides, but with so many happening across the city all at the same time and the many ways people had died in, the police were more inclined to think it was mass murder or that there at least had been a mastermind behind it all. Anyone from our circle who had been convicted, been in the know as part of or close to the inner circle, who had reported secrets - they were all killed. Including Mrs Jun. All in one night. A few of them were my former peers who had been groomed as the heirs to their family businesses.
Suddenly I was receiving death threats from the survivors that remained of our circle. They all seemed to blame me. I didn't get it. Just because I was the one who had fought back and had burst everyone's fantastical bubble of elitist dreams? It would have happened sooner or later. Some day, at some point in time, something, somewhere would have broken. Besides, it wasn't me that set of this cascade of events. It was Mr Jun's actions. It was Mrs Jun's breaking and confessions. It was my adoptive parents and their greed. What did it have to do with a lazy, rebellious university drop out?
I ran away but Jun Sihao and Jun Siming found me. Mr Jun had escaped from prison. Mrs Jun was dead. I thought they would have blamed me, but the brothers didn't say anything. They gave me a safe haven. A place to hide and try to regain my health after being discharged from the hospital.
Having received heaps of compensation in my bank did nothing for me when there were people out there seeking to make my life an even bigger misery or snuff it out altogether. The police were busy and short-staffed with the sudden increase in violent crimes within the city. They couldn't spare any manpower to look after me.
I was just grateful to have somewhere to go and have some people who still cared about me. Living with Jun Sihao and Jun Siming was comfortable, but I made Siming uncomfortable. We had crossed the boundaries and so now, he couldn't face me properly anymore. He had a tendency to grow a tent in his pants whenever he saw me. He refused to look at me or talk to me. That was the biggest blow for me. I had lost my best friend. He eventually moved out and I was left alone with Jun Sihao.
The university gave me special consideration after hearing of my plight, and gave me a year of intermission so that I could finish recovering.
Jun Sihao and I visited Siming at his university, watching him enter the exam halls and bringing him out for a meal afterwards. With that, a little of our old friendship resurfaced.
To celebrate the end of exams, Jun Sihao had taken Siming and I out to celebrate and meet his elusive friends in a nightclub. These were friends he had kept hidden from his parents and whom I had never met before, but Siming had. All the men got a little tipsy and I ended up being held on an uncomfortable bulging lap.
While I was kind of grateful that I hadn't gotten pregnant after everything that had happened before, I didn't really feel ready for us to have that type of relationship again. I wanted to finish university, get a degree, work in a career. Basically have my own life and rediscover who I was again. Not just be some useable chess piece and product of somebody's indiscretion with their family member. In short, I had decided to live again. For myself, this time and without all the fatalistic apathy from before.