Chapter 8: This is what it feels like to quarrel with a Male Capricorn Part 1-6
001
Once, when we were still students, Mr. F and I got into a squabble. Although I am unable to recall the reason of the quarrel, we ended up intentionally ignoring each other for a long period of time. During the summer break, the class representative called me and asked me to contact Mr. F as he was organizing a birthday celebration for our form teacher.
I hesitantly agreed, and dialed Mr. F’s number with great difficulty. As his mobile was switched off, I was left with no choice but to dial his home number. His mother picked up the phone and informed me that Mr. F wasn’t at home as he was in Shanghai for a holiday.
A few days before school reopened, Mr. F suddenly called me and asked me why I had called him previously.
It had been more than a month since I called him – this fellow’s reaction time is crazily long! It suddenly struck me that previously, when his mother picked up the phone, she hadn’t asked for my name. Thus, I asked Mr. F how he knew that I was the one who called him.
He said, “My mum mentioned that the caller was a female, and you happen to be the only girl who knows my home number.”
A sudden sense of elation washed over me , and a big grin formed on my face. The next day, I even tried to ingratiate myself by taking the initiative to purchase breakfast for him – and yet, this fellow still had no idea what happened.
Ah, I’m truly a woman with no principles.
002
Angering a Male Capricorn is actually very terrifying – they will not shout or yell at you, but they will use a complete set of cold tacit violence against you and throw you to the North Pole.
The evidence for such a proposition can be seen in the four-year-long cold war that he raged against me. Subsequently, I asked him, “Mr. F, how did you ever manage to harden your heart in order to ignore me for so long?”
He snorted coldly, “If I forgive you too easily, you won’t learn your lesson.”
“Do you know how terrible I felt?”
He sighed, “I didn’t have an easy time either.”
003
In the office, a colleague (male) was sharing the correct steps to be taken when one quarrels with one’s girlfriend.
First step: Shut up. No matter what your girlfriend says, you should not retort or rebutt her; a lack of forbearance upsets great plans. If you’re unable to control yourself and start quarreling with her, you would encounter even more trouble subsequently.
Second step: Apologize and admit fault. Do not ask why, just take the initiative to apologize.
Final step: Hug and confess. You must hug the other party extremely tightly, look the other party straight in the eyes, and use the most sincere tone that you have ever used in your entire life to say, “I’m sorry, and I love you.”
I sat at the side, taking notes silently. My colleague asked me whether I was taking notes to show my husband in order to help him learn how to react when we quarrel. I shook my head, and said no – it’s for my own learning purposes, so that I know how to coax the Male Capricorn at home.
004
I told Mr. F, “Mr. F, sometimes I truly feel that our genders might have been switched.”
“Oh?”
“Really! Compared to you, my personality is more similar to a guy’s.”
“Why do you think so?”
“Think about it, between the both of us, who gets angry more often?”
“Me.”
“So what do you think this illustrates?”
“This illustrates your tendency to commit faults more frequently that I do.”
“Rubbish! It illustrates your petty nature!”
Once, when Mr. F and I were quarrelling, I called Hao Wu Yi immediately after the quarrel and raged, “He really crossed the line this time round! After he finished saying that sentence, I could feel the blood rushing to my head in spurts! I was so angry I nearly went crazy!”
Hao Wu Yi asked immediately, “So what exactly did he say?!”
“He said……” I grabbed the telephone, trying to recall but to no avail. “Damn, I forgot.”
Hao Wu Yi ticked me off, “You’re not magnanimous or forgiving, you’re just plain forgetful!”
I learnt from my lesson. Thus, the second time when Mr. F and I were in the midst of a quarrel, I shouted loudly, “Wait a minute!”
I fished out my phone with lightning speed, opened the voice recording application, and directed the speaker at him.
“I’m done, continue!”
Mr. F was dumbfounded, calling me crazy before breaking out into laughter.
005
We did have a very serious quarrel once.
One day, whilst we were window shopping, I spotted a flowery maxi dress which I really liked. After I tried on the dress ecstatically, he shook his head and told me that it wasn’t nice. Before I could respond, he had already dragged me out of the shop. When we returned to the car, he chided me, “The cost is not the issue, if the dress is nice, I’d buy it for you no matter how expensive it is.”
“But I like it, so who cares whether it’s nice or not? Why can’t you indulge me for once?”
He replied in a domineering manner, “When you buy dresses, you only wear them for my viewing pleasure. So if I say it’s not nice, it’s not worth buying!”
I got so mad I yelled at him to stop the car, “I don’t want to talk to you right now! I’m getting off the car!”
The car came to a stop with a screeching sound, and I keeled forward, nearly knocking into the windscreen – this person had really stopped the car!
I couldn’t go back on my word now, so I opened the door and got off the car. The moment my feet landed on the pavement, he revved the engine and drove off without second thought. I was enraged – there are so many men in the world, so how did I manage to find a male chauvinist pig with such an overblown male ego? After I took a few steps, I realized I had left my wallet on the car. Since there was a Starbucks nearby, I went in and borrowed a mobile phone to call Hao Wu Yi. The more I talked to Hao Wu Yi, the more aggrieved I felt. Naturally, the tears started flowing. Hao Wu Yi urged me not to cry, and that it was just a dress after all. If I really wanted it, she’d buy two for me – one to wear and the other to hang in the closet just for my viewing purposes!
Ah, only women understand women best.
Not long after, Hao Wu Yi came to pick me up. The first sentence she said when she saw me was, “Your husband is going crazy from worry. He called me, saying that he went back to look for you but you were nowhere in sight.”
I said the he deserved it, since he was the one who ditched me in the first place.
After eating dinner at Hao Wu Yi’s house, we gossiped and watched Korean dramas. At 10PM, I told her I had to return home.
“Aren’t the both of you quarreling right now? You don’t have to go home, you could stay here for the night.”
“I can’t, he has to go overseas tomorrow for work, so I have to return home to help him pack his luggage.”
Hao Wu Yi walked me to the ground floor as the lamp below her block was spoilt. Suddenly, a bright light shone in the distance – a car had turned on its headlights in order to help us light the way. As I neared the car, I chucked in glee. Isn’t this Mr. F’s car?
He got off the car and obediently opened the door for me. I asked him, “When did you arrive?”
He replied, “I just reached.”
Hao Wu Yi said, “I made a bet with him, saying that you’d sleep at my house tonight. He said that it was impossible, and insisted on coming to fetch you.”
Hehe. I giggled mindlessly.
Hao Wu Yi scolded me, “You terrible person who only cares about your spouse, get lost!”
I followed Mr. F home dutifully.
Although I get riled up easily, I also get pacified easily. Every single time after we quarrel I’d start to regret my actions, and would scratch my head trying to think of ways to apologize. Subsequently, Mr. F told me that he too, was like that.
006
As he was due to attend a University reunion dinner, he asked me whether I wanted to come with him.
“ I better not; after all, I don’t recognize anyone there.”
“It’s okay, all of them recognize you.”
Thus, I followed him to his reunion dinner. The minute I sat down, people started to point their fingers at me, shouting, “Ah! So you’re the one!”
Confused, I wondered what was going on.
“Your QQ display picture is a rabbit, right?”
“How did you know?” The speaker was extremely pleased with himself, and replied, “Little F would go to your profile page every day! I remember you made these huge lengthy posts talking about your daily life – he would read every single one of them without fail.”
I was extremely surprised and turned to question F, “How come you never talked to me?”
After all, I was only on QQ everyday because I was waiting for him!
“I haven’t forgiven you then.” His replied haughtily.
The speaker continued to expose Mr F., “He was just putting up a brave front. There was one night, after having read your journal, he proceeded to purchase a carton of beer and came to knock on my door, forcing me to drink with him.”
Giggling, I asked, “Why did he do that?”
“Why else? He found out that you were attached! Although I had an exam the very next day, this idiot still made me drink the entire night. In the end, he hugged the toilet bowl and started retching. When I went in to check on him, I was so shocked by what I saw that sobered up immediately.”
Mr. F glanced coldly at him, and interrupted, “That’s enough.”
To my surprise, that person actually kept mum after that.
Intrigued, I refused to give up and continued pestering Mr. F, pleading with him to continue.
Mr F. put down his chopsticks, and said quietly, “I cried.”
“I was very sad that day, I had never been so sad in my entire life, so I got myself drunk and cried. That’s all, so stop asking and eat your dinner.”
He helped me to a bowl of soup.
But I had already lost my appetite entirely. I stared at the bowl of soup, wanting to crash my head into it. My heart felt extremely uncomfortable – in the past, he used to tell me that, compared to me, he had a more difficult time during the years when we were separated, but I never truly believed him. I thought he was merely exaggerating. I never ever thought that he would, despite being at the opposite end of the ocean, secretly keep himself updated about my life and even cry because of me.
When we returned home, I had a very serious talk with him. He told me that there was no need to feel guilty about the incident – after all, what’s past is past, and I hadn’t done anything wrong.
Even though he said that, I still continued to feel stirrings of discomfort in my heart, and always felt that I had to make it up to him. Thus, I was particularly attentive to him, acceded to all his requests, and even spoke in a volume two decibels lower than my usual volume.
Subsequently, I suddenly realized that something’s not right – I never ever wrote about my relationship in my journal entry! I confronted him, “What exactly did I write that day?”
“I forgot.”
“Did you make a mistake? I don’t recall ever writing about my boyfriend.”
He retorted instantly, “The journal entry was made on XX/X/XXXX, go take a look at it yourself.”
Didn’t he just say that he forgot…
I went to rifle through my journal entries, and found the one in question. It was a pretty normal journal entry, detailing the mundane evens of my life – As I was on holiday, I stayed at home and helped my mother make dumplings, and quarreled with Guan Chao over whether the filling should be stuffed with leek or celery… nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary.
“Where did I mention my boyfriend?” I asked him.
“Second last paragraph, the last line.”
Winter seems to be colder than normal this year. Would boyfriend really be alright in school?
Stunned into silence for three seconds, I threw my mouse away. “Kao! That’s a stray dog that my dorm mate picked up! A dog called boyfriend!”
He was equally stunned, with a multitude of expressions flitting across his face, “Why the hell would anybody ever call a dog boyfriend?!”
“We just named him arbitrarily, she even picked up a cat which she named Monroe!!!!”
“Are you guys crazy!!!!”
“It wasn’t my fault!!!!”
“Couldn’t you have inserted some explanations whilst you were writing!!!!!”
“Who inserts footnotes and explanatory notes whilst writing their own journal!!!!”
“You did it on purpose, didn’t you!!!!”
“How would I know that you would be like a perverted voyeur who came to read my journal in secret every single day!!!!”
Miffed, he couldn’t find words to retort my accusation. He stood up and exited after slamming the door. I could tell that he was truly angry this time.
…
That night, I gave my dorm mate a call.
“Do you know, that the dog which you picked up had just catalysed the biggest quarrel I ever had with my husband after having been married for so long…”
My dorm mate hugged the phone and laughed for a full ten minutes.
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