The Lipstick Stain

She had been married into the family for five years, yet had never once met her mother-in-law. Every day, she simply followed her husband’s instruction to leave a bowl of rice at the door of the ancestral hall. Until one day, a bright lipstick mark appeared on the empty bowl. Her husband’s fury, the sounds of panting coming from the ancestral hall in the dead of night, and the ambiguous marks on his neck—all pointed to a horrifying truth. Behind that tightly shut door was not her ailing mother-in-law, but her husband’s dark secret. When she finally obtained the key and pushed the door open in front of everyone, she saw a sight she would never forget for the rest of her life.