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The name is quite ordinary.

But a short story doesn’t necessarily require a high-flown name. What really worries Wei Long is the content. After several disappointments, all Wei Long hopes now is that Chu Kuang’s works can maintain its usual standards—

Just keep being consistent.

Chu Kuang is a general!

Although there is a boost from Feng Hua’s blog, Wei Long’s literature tribe still has the ability to compete if their overall level does not lag too much. Anyway, short story lovers do not only read one story. This is the only excuse Wei Long can use to comfort himself.

He clicked it open.

Wei Long started reading.

The story was launched from the perspective of a beautiful but poor woman who, due to poverty, got married to an ordinary clerk. The couple lived a stingy life.

The woman pursues materials.

Because of the bleakness of her house, the roughness of the wall, the antiquity of the furniture, and the banality of the cloth, she was always filled with sorrow. She dreamed that she could wear gorgeous servants, have countless servants to use at will, and enjoy delicacies at will…

Wei Long thought for a moment.

He roughly guesses that the purpose of Chu Kuang’s story is probably to revolve around the topic of material, which was in line with Chu Kuang’s previous short story routine. He liked to achieve a certain satirical effect through short stories, which was a high-level sense in the eyes of Wei Long. His expectations are slightly higher.

Keep reading.

One day.

The man is quite pleased to bring out an invitation for his wife to see: “The leader has the honor to invite Mr. Wang and Mrs. Wang to attend the evening party held at our institution building on Monday, January 18th.”

Mr. Wang thought his wife would be happy as it had cost him a great effort to get this invitation.

Not everyone in the education bureau was invited by the leader to attend the party.

But his wife got angry out of nothing.

At least this little clerk in the education bureau cannot understand his wife’s rage.

It turns out that Lady Wang felt she didn’t have decent clothes to attend this grand party.

“The most humiliating thing in the world is to show poverty among a heap of rich women.”

This is Lady Wang’s explanation.

Mr. Wang was helpless and could only offer to pay some money and let his wife buy appropriate clothes.

The wife said: “Four hundred yuan is enough for me to own such clothes.”

Mr. Wang’s face was slightly pale.

Because he was saving this amount to buy a gun, so he could hunt birds in the plains with a few hunting friends on weekends this summer.

“Four hundred yuan?”

Wei Long roughly calculated in his mind and then probably found the era corresponding to the value of money.

In Chu Kuang’s novel, although it does not explicitly state which era the story is from, clues can always be found through details in the article.

However…

Isn’t Lady Wang too materialistic?

Lady Wang indeed has a nearly pathological pursuit of material, because that is decency in her eyes. After making her clothes, she even went to a rich female friend of hers to borrow a necklace—

It was a necklace made with diamonds.

In Lady Wang’s eyes, this necklace was truly beautiful, and this is where the title came from:

Necklace.

Wei Long couldn’t help but think of a popular term today, known as “money worshiper.”

Speaking of which.

Mr. Wang is not any better.

He had four hundred yuan, but he only wanted to buy a gun to hunt, instead of saving the money to make life more decent…

Let’s look back at the earlier part of the story.

The couple had even hired a servant at home.

The couple was already living a strained life, yet they still hired a servant?

Pretentious.

Dead for face, live to suffer.

This is Wei Long’s current sensation, which reminds him of the story “The Gift of the Magi.”

Both stories focus on a couple.

But in that story, both the man and the woman were willing to give up their pursuit of materials for each other, which was the complete opposite of Mr. and Mrs. Wang!

How would Chu Kuang satirize it?

Would he let this woman find a rich leader at the party, resulting in the man being abandoned?

Maybe there will be a twist.

The leader got tired of the woman and abandoned her. The woman could only return to the small clerk’s side…

If this is the case, there seems to be something missing in the story.

Wei Long couldn’t help feeling worried.

This is a habit many novel readers have, which is to subconsciously anticipate the follow-up plot.

At this moment.

The party began.

Lady Wang made a big success.

She was more beautiful, fashionable, and charming than a general female guest. She constantly smiled and was ecstatic.

The male guests were all staring at her, hearing her name, trying to introduce themselves to her.

All the personnel from the secretariat wanted to dance with her, and the leader also noticed her.

She danced in ecstasy and with excitement, she was intoxicated with joy, she was pleased with her face’s victory, pleased with her accomplishment’s glory, she was surrounded by happiness.

However, after the party ended, she had to return to her original position.

Her life did not change because of this, and the glory of this night could probably only remain in her memory.

The couple found a broken minivan in the bitter wind and returned home.

She had to face reality again.

But what happened next was even crueler.

The necklace, incredibly, was lost!

This is the turning point of the entire story.

Only at this moment does Wei Long discover the real purpose of the title “Necklace”.

“Interesting…”

We Long’s eyes lit up!

It’s not the cliched story of family ethics, betrayal, and infidelity.

What Chu Kuang wrote, perhaps, is about a couple paying a huge price for the vanity of that night!

And indeed, it was.

This was a forty-thousand-dollar necklace!

Especially after Wei Long thought about the prices at that period, he understood deeply how enormous an amount forty thousand dollars was to Mr. and Mrs. Wang of that era!

What will they do?

Wei Long contemplated many possibilities.

Perhaps this couple would deny their debt… Perhaps this couple would return a counterfeit… Perhaps this couple would end up in court over this…

The final outcome was none of these.

This couple, astonishingly, purchased an identical necklace and returned it.

At this moment, Wei Long gained some respect for Mr. and Mrs. Wang.

He even had an epiphany:

Whether one is wealthy or not, does not determine their moral character. When faced with a problem, Mr. and Mrs. Wang chose to confront it.

Even though the price was indeed too high:

To buy the necklace and return it to the owner, Mr. Wang borrowed countless amounts of money, practically risking his entire latter life, and both he and his wife emerged with astounding heroism.

They decided to repay these debts in full without omission!

Mrs. Wang experienced the authentic life of the impoverished.

This unfortunate couple dismissed their maid, moved houses, and rented a cheap attic under a rooftop.

She began doing various manual household chores.

She washed dishes, scrubbing the oil stains at the bottom of the pots and pans, wearing out her rosy fingers.

Underwear and rags were all hand washed with soap by her before being hung on the line;

She got up early every day; she carted the garbage downstairs and carried water upstairs. Each time she finished a floor, she had to sit down on the staircase to catch her breath, and she was dressed like a common woman.

She went to the vegetable shop, grocery shop, and butcher shop with her basket, haggling over prices, getting scolded, making every effort to protect her pitiful little cash penny by penny.

She paid off quite a few lOUs every month while making new ones to delay the deadlines.

Her husband wrote accounts for a businessman in the evening, often copying books at a rate of five cents per page until late into the night.

This life continued for ten long years.

Yes.

Mrs. Wang’s gloriously radiant night had cost the couple ten years of life under colossal monetary stress!

Mrs. Wang seemed to have aged.

Now, she had become a robust, coarse, and resilient woman of a poor family.

She tied up her hair haphazardly, wore her skirt crookedly, showed her reddened hands, spoke loudly, and mopped the floor with heavy basins of water.

But sometimes, when her husband went to his office, she sat alone by the window, and she would reminisce about that evening party.

The dancing party, where she was so beautiful and so happy.

If she hadn’t lost that piece of jewelry, what would her present life be like?

Who knows?

At this moment, the story was not yet over, yet Wei Long felt an endless aftertaste, realizing that it was an excellent short story.

Chu Kuang was still the same Chu Kuang.

He used a necklace, and a party, to sketch the melancholic half-life of a young couple.

“The price paid for excessive pursuit of material things and vanity, is perhaps too much.”

Wei Long had countless reflections in his heart.

At the same time, Wei Long continued reading the remaining content in one sweep.

He had thought that the story ended after the couple endured a harsh decade. But…

Seemingly, it wasn’t so.

Mrs. Wang once again met the friend who had lent her the necklace, and this friend was just as elegant and charming as she was ten years ago.

But by this time, Mrs. Wang had changed due to those ten years of hard work to the point where her friend could barely recognize her.

The two greeted each other.

The friend was inevitably astonished, why had Mrs. Wang changed so much in just ten years?

Mrs. Wang naturally spoke of the reason with a bitter smile.

Who would have thought that the friend would be even more shocked? She took Mrs Wang’s hand and said, “Ah, my poor sister, do you know, that diamond necklace I lent to you was a fake, worth at most five hundred dollars!”

The story ended here.

But Wei Long, who was reviewing the draft in front of his computer, felt as if he had been struck by lightning, causing him to be completely dumbfounded!

It’s a fake…

The necklace is a fake!

So, the debts that Mr and Mrs. Wang had nearly risked their lives to repay were actually just a misunderstanding!

Realizing this, Wei Long suddenly felt a chill at the back of his neck!

He stood up abruptly, using too much force, causing the chair behind him to suddenly fall to the ground.

“Bang.”

The chair fell a meter away abruptly, this sudden noise garnered the attention of countless people in the department. Even Han Jimei from the inner office couldn’t help but peek out to see what was happening.

Just as someone was about to inquire about Wei Long’s situation, Wei Long suddenly yelled out a phrase. The voice resounded throughout the entire department:

“How about a three-horse carriage then!”