Preface:
By the time my ex-husband begged for reconciliation, I had become a legend in the industry.
On the day my ex-husband took away all the assets with his mistress, I ate instant noodles in the rental room for three days.
My best friend tossed me a Bitcoin wallet: 'Take a gamble; it can't get worse than now.'
Three years later, at the international blockchain summit, I took off my sunglasses as a mysterious angel investor.
Under the spotlight, my ex-husband was serving champagne to curry favor with my partners: 'That crazy woman is probably still picking up cardboard boxes, right?'
I smiled and raised my bidding paddle: 'Thirty million, to buy your bankruptcy.'
Lin Wei sat on the creaky folding chair in the rental room, staring at the bucket of instant noodles that had long been soaked and greasy, her eyes hollow. It has been three days; the only thing that has gone into her stomach besides tap water is this. It feels like a damp, cold old newspaper is stuffed in her stomach, weighing her down, yet it doesn't stir the slightest feeling of hunger. The room is filled with a persistent moldy smell, mixed with the kind of insipid salty fragrance of cheap instant soup ingredients. The window glass is covered with a thick layer of dust, making the light filtering in appear dirty and dim.
Everything felt like a lingering nightmare after a high fever that refused to fade. But the cold touch of the chair beneath her, the real cramping pain in her stomach, and the glaring '0' on her bank balance text message all coldly repeated: it's real. Li Dongsheng, her husband of seven years, took the last bit of liquid funds from the company account with his newly graduated young assistant and even mortgaged the house that hadn't yet been transferred to her name. What was left for her was this small room with a deposit and three months' rent due soon, along with a pile of 'joint debts' waiting to be repaid.
The lawyer's voice on the phone carried a formulaic sympathy: "Ms. Lin, the other party is very well prepared, and the path of asset transfer is complex. The chances of recovering it in the short term... are very low. Moreover, these debt documents all bear your joint signature."
Signatures... those documents that Li Dongsheng gently coaxed her to sign, saying, "Wife, just sign, it's just a formality." How could she not take a closer look back then? How could she trust him so much?
The nails dug deeply into her palms, leaving crescent-shaped white marks, slowly oozing with blood. The pain was sharp, yet strangely made her numbed nerves awaken for a moment. It couldn't go on like this. Next to the instant noodle box, her phone screen suddenly lit up and vibrated. It was Su Man, her best friend since college, and the only person who hadn't yet avoided her like a plague during this time.
"Weiwei, open the door! I know you're inside! If you don't open the door, I'm calling the police!" Su Man's voice came through the door, suppressing her anger, but more anxious.
Lin Wei moved slightly, as if her rusty joints had shifted to the door, unlocking it.
Su Man rushed in like a gust of wind, bringing a wave of damp air from outside. She was holding a thermal bag and immediately scanned Lin Wei's pale, frightening face and the mess on the table, her eyes turning red right away. "You... are you eating this?!" She heavily placed the thermal bag on the only somewhat clean small coffee table, "First drink this, it's soup my mom made."
After the warm soup went down, a wave of warmth barely dispelled the chill in her limbs. Su Man didn’t ask her anything about Li Dongsheng but quietly cleaned up the instant noodle box and wiped the table. Then, she took out a seemingly ordinary black U disk from her bag and gently pushed it in front of Lin Wei.
"Weiwei, I know you can't take this in right now. But I'm only saying it once." Su Man pressed down Lin Wei's hand that wanted to push the U disk away, her voice low and steady, "Inside is a Bitcoin wallet, I've written the address and private key, in the text document inside. There's also some information I've organized on how to use exchanges, how to read basic market trends, though I'm also just a novice... Inside, there's the three Bitcoins I've saved up..."
Lin Wei suddenly looked up, her lips trembling: "Manman, this is not okay... how can I take yours..."
"Don't say that to me!" Su Man interrupted her, her eyes bright with intensity. "It's not for free. Consider it a loan from me, consider it an investment, anything will do. Lin Wei, look at what you have now, what else do you have to lose? Those debts of yours, with your current part-time jobs, you can never pay them off in your lifetime! That bastard Li Dongsheng might be enjoying himself somewhere with your money!"
She took a deep breath and held Lin Wei's cold hand: "I know this thing is risky, sounds unreliable, like gambling. But this is an opportunity, a possible gap to climb out! Weiwei, you're smarter than me, more willing to dig deep, you showed that in college. Anyway... it can't get worse than it is now, right? Just consider it a chance for yourself, and also... a possible 'surprise' for that pair of scumbags."
"Surprise," the two words were particularly emphasized by Su Man.
Lin Wei looked at the small U disk, its black shell shining with a cold sheen in the dim light. She remembered Li Dongsheng's last text filled with 'apologies' and excuses, recalled the unbearable insults from debt collection calls, and the suffocating despair of this cramped room.
What else is there to lose?
Deep in her heart, that cluster of flames, repeatedly doused with cold water and nearly extinguished, suddenly flickered very weakly.
She reached out a trembling hand, grasping the U disk. The cold metal touch felt strangely warm.
"Okay." She heard her dry voice say, "I bet."
To be continued...
