Chapter 11

On July 1, 2000, Zhou Tiancheng suffered multiple organ failure and was sent to the emergency room for treatment. He was issued two critical illness notices in a row. Just when Dai Yan thought her husband was about to pass away, he came back from the grave.

Survival is an instinct. A machine maintains his weak breathing, but no matter how weak it is, he is still alive. He cannot open his eyes, but when he senses Dai Yan coming, he will turn his head a few centimeters towards her.

Dai Yan sat beside him and watched his bony chest collapse at an almost imperceptible degree to the naked eye. After a while, it rose again. There was a small piece of white mist in the oxygen mask. When it was about to dissipate, another piece of white mist appeared.

Apart from this, there was no sign of life.

On July 5, he suddenly woke up. Dai Yan was sleeping soundly beside his pillow. In her dream, she felt someone touching her hair. She rubbed her eyes and looked up, and saw that he was sitting up, leaning on a pillow, looking at her under the dim light of a miner's lamp. She was so scared that she sat up with a start, thinking she was dreaming.

"I want to eat the plain noodles you make." He smiled, and under the ghostly light, his peach blossom eyes regained their youthful color.

"Oh! Oh! Just wait! I'll do it for you right away!" Dai Yan was stunned for a long time, nodding her head rapidly with her hands in the air. She wanted to touch him but didn't dare, for fear that once she touched him, this smiling Zhou Tiancheng, who was just like the Zhou Tiancheng on his 20th birthday, who was grinning and arguing with her while holding a cigarette, would be wiped out.

"You little bitch, you're so fierce? I'm telling you this: you'll have to sleep with me and cook for me for the rest of your life!"

Dai Yan rode her bicycle through the endless darkness. All she could see was his arrogant expression that day, wearing a flowered shirt, with his hands on his hips, his fingers almost poking her nose. The roar of laughter from several people seemed to be right next to her ears. She cried immediately. When he saw her crying, he bit his cigarette and kept silent. He stared at her condescendingly for a while, then suddenly bent down and put his face close to her, begging for mercy with a servile smile: "Okay, okay, I lost, isn't it enough? A real man can bend and stretch. I allow you to hit me once, just once, and be gentle!"

She still remembers the hot wind that swirled when he came closer, making her chest feel stuffy. His thick, curled eyelashes extended to the end of his eyes, so close that she could see the teardrop mole under his eyes. After a while, he turned his head, and his captivating peach blossom eyes with a burning temperature swept over her face inch by inch, "What? You don't want to hit me? You don't want to hit that dear brother."

She jumped up as if she was on fire and gave him a thunderclap, which made him spin two and a half circles on the spot.

She ran very fast, as fast as she rides a bicycle now. She always adheres to the principle of hit and run. Those hooligans were either scared or gave up. No one caught up with her.

But he was different. He chased her for four blocks until she vomited and gave up resisting. He picked her up and shook her by the collar like a wild rabbit.

"Little girl, kill me!"

He was panting, his face turned pale, and he threw her against the wall with gritted teeth.

She closed her eyes and waited to be beaten, but after waiting for a long time, she only felt her eyelids itchy and tingling. When she opened her eyes, she saw his eyelashes and pupils close to her, and a wet and hot kiss.

But human beings are such complicated creatures. She rode her bike for an hour late at night to rush home just to make a bowl of plain noodles for Zhou Tiancheng.

She devoutly named this bowl of noodles Rejuvenating Noodles. She hoped that he could regain his youth. At least that was how she hoped so desperately when she was rolling noodles, boiling water, and chopping green onions and lard at two o'clock in the morning with tears streaming down her face. Her tears flowed into the pot and cooked into the noodles.

If possible, at that moment she would be willing to crawl on the ground, kowtow with every step, and crawl to the King of Hell, begging him to spare Zhou Tiancheng.

He is a bad guy, but he is also a good guy. All the people he rescued ran away, but he risked his life to go back and see his benefactor for the last time. For this, the King of Hell has to give him ten more years of life.

But the complexity of human beings lies in the fact that hatred and love cannot offset each other, and love and selfishness cannot offset each other.

At two in the morning, her legs aching, she stood in front of the stove to make him "rejuvenating noodles." She went to the hospital repeatedly, exhausting herself to the point of being half-dead. She stayed by his bedside night after night, listening to him curse her with the most obscene words. When he couldn't defecate, she would use her hands to pick out his feces, which were as dry as iron...

She did all this sincerely, and she also sincerely wanted him to die.

He didn't get to eat the bowl of rejuvenation noodles, as it just sat in the thermos lunch box and turned into a pile of mud.

Dai Yan sat in the corridor at the door of the intensive care unit, holding an insulated lunch box, her head against the cold wall, her butt on the cold chair, looking up at the equally cold ceiling and incandescent light, not knowing what to pray for.

Pray for him to get better? He can't get better. Most of his lung has been removed, and they will continue to remove it until it is all removed. This is just the lung. What if the cancer cells metastasize?

His days in the hospital are endless, and she has to accompany him endlessly. Sooner or later, she will have to accompany him to death, until she becomes a dry man, until no man will even look at her.

She is different from ordinary women. She was really beautiful. In 1989, she was so beautiful that she was approached by scouts when she went to Hong Kong. But she has nothing else except her beauty. This is her only and most precious wealth. She should not and is reluctant to let it sink to the bottom of the sea like the Titanic.

She is thirty-three, not forty-three or even fifty-three, and there is still time for everything.

She leaned against the corridor and thought, what should she pray for?

When the final answer appeared, she was completely calm, as if it was written in black and white before her eyes:

"Please let him die."

Unfortunately, Zhou Tiancheng is a tough guy. He can chase her for four blocks while he is alive, and he can arm wrestle with the King of Hell before he dies. He thinks that after winning this game, he will go back and see her again, but he doesn't know that his concern has become a burden.

After ten hours of emergency treatment, the doctor asked the family to bring in paper and pen. Dai Yan hurriedly took her daughter's red pen and exercise book and brought them in. After more than half an hour, the nurse came out and gave her the book. There was only one and a half words scribbled on it:

My Kitchen

She wanted to ask him what the half word he hadn't finished writing was, but then she felt she wasn't that eager to know.

She just felt tired and didn't want to care about anything anymore. She just wanted to fall into bed and sleep forever. She closed the notebook, took it back to the ward, and casually placed it on the small table where her daughter was doing her homework.

Zhou Yue and Kang Xingxing were even less aware of the situation. They were simply left in the hospital by their mother for a longer period of time, floating in the wards, corridors, and under the wisteria flowers like two little ghosts.

"Orangutan, do you think Dad will die?" Zhou Yue knelt on the stone bench and looked up at the sky. The sun was weak during those days, and at dusk it became as bleak as if diluted with water, and it was dark in a short while.

"No, Uncle Zhou is very strong. He has survived so many times and endured so much pain. The disease cannot defeat him."

Kang Xingxing and she knelt on the stone bench together, as if kneeling to heaven and earth and the gods and ghosts, but heaven and earth and the gods and ghosts had a lot of things to do, and they could never see the two little guys, let alone hear their insignificant wishes.

"Yeah!" Zhou Yue nodded heavily, kneeling down and hugging Kang Xingxing beside her. He was very solid, with thick black arms and a thick back. She put her face on his chest, listened to his heartbeat, and smelled the stinky smell on his body. It was not the smell of sweat, it was hard to say what smell it was, like straw dried in the scorching sun, like a furry little bear. Her pounding heart gradually calmed down, like a boat sailing into the harbor late at night.

A few adults walked by and scolded them with disgust: "They are so young and they are already hugging each other. Where are their parents? They don't care!"

Someone nearby reminded: "No, they are siblings."

"Brother and sister? They don't look like that!"

Kang Xingxing was held by her, lowering his head to sniff the top of her hair, and coaxing her with a silly smile: "Yueyue, they are watching."

Zhou Yue raised her head from his embrace, her large eyes, as clear as spring water, flashing: "Why do you care what they do?"

He smiled shyly, his two sweaty little hands clenched behind his back secretly opening to hug her. He was willing to give her everything, so why would he care about "them"? But he had to be reserved, just to see her peel off his vulnerable shell and throw herself into his arms regardless of everything.

Zhou Yue was still happy during her time in the hospital. Every day with Kang Xingxing by her side was safe and happy. However, her mother...

She wanted to hug her mother's legs from behind as she did when she was a child, and listen to her mother pretending to be frightened and shouting: "Ah! Little rascal!" Then bend down to hug her and blow air into her chubby neck. Every time Zhou Yue did this, she would laugh and shout with joy, but she didn't dare to do that now. She just held on to the kitchen door frame and watched her mother's busy back.

The pressure cooker was cooking meat, smelling like lamb, and the lid was jumping with a hissing sound. Chicken soup was bubbling in the casserole, and the old hen was stewed until it was soft. Her mother was still chopping ribs on the chopping board with her back to her. The kitchen was filled with the aroma of meat, as well as the scent of star anise, cinnamon, and bay leaves.

How many people are they feeding? Zhou Yue had only seen the nanny at her grandfather's house prepare a table like this, using every pot and pan, and nothing but meat.

She looked at her mother's back. She was wearing a plain white tube skirt, had a swan neck, and her hair was tied up high. There was a faint sweet scent in the aroma of food and rice, which was perfume.

Her toes peeked out from her slippers, and the mottled bright red nail polish was covered with a new layer of fluorescent pink nail polish, which made her feet look white and tender.

Although her waist, legs and buttocks cannot withstand a close look, a beauty is still a beauty. She may be a disheveled and yellow-faced woman in the morning, but she will look bright and eye-catching after a bit of tidying up in the afternoon.

She was cutting vegetables when she suddenly stopped. The gurgling sound in the kitchen was still going on, but she looked out the open window. It was already dark, and she could only see the dim street lights.

"Yueyue, Mom is so tired." She turned her back to Zhou Yue, as if she had eyes on the back of her head.

"I'll help Mom!" Yueyue finally felt like she was useful. She trotted over to her mother's side, leaned over the stove, and looked up. Her mother's face was hidden by a lock of hair, so it was hard to tell if she was happy or not. "I can crush garlic, chop it, and even fry an egg!"

Dai Yan still stared out the window steadily. After a while, she burst out laughing and said, "Look, how did I become like this?"

Zhou Yue was confused. She followed her gaze and realized that her mother was not looking out the window, but at the window glass. The light in the kitchen reflected her face, but the dim light made the grooves on the wings of her nose and the corners of her mouth deeper, as if they were cut with a knife.

"Your father is not well now, and I have to take care of him," she said with a smile. "When he is fully recovered, what will I have to do with him?"

"If I get sick someday, can he take care of me like this?"

Zhou Yue couldn't answer any of the series of questions, and Dai Yan didn't want her ten-year-old daughter to respond to her. She was asking herself.

"Director Zhang came to see me today," Dai Yan said, looking down at the chopped pork ribs on the chopping board. "He said there's a cure for your father. There's an imported medicine that can keep him alive. It's not bad except it's expensive. One pill a day, three hundred yuan a pill. Back in 1995, my monthly salary was just over a hundred yuan."

The hissing sound of the pressure cooker stopped, and the kitchen fell silent. She smiled as if immersed in sweet happiness, "Your father can still be saved." After a while, she stopped smiling again, the kitchen knife hanging over the chopping board, and said hesitantly, "But I have to have either his heart or his money, right?"

"I gave him my youth, my love, my tears, but what did he give me?" She smiled. Her eyes were still bright and charming, but the fine lines around her eyes seemed like the harbinger of a drought. "Oh, all he talks about is money. When I was with him, he had just been kicked out by his father. He was penniless. He lived with this brother one day and that uncle the next. If I loved money, would I be with him?"

"He owes me."

Zhou Yue looked up at her mother. She was ten years old, but she only vaguely understood these things, as confusing as math problems. She had not yet realized what her mother said. Her scattered hair, the hissing sound of the pressure cooker and the cicadas outside the window were already engraved in her heart and she would never be able to get rid of them. Every time she thought of them, she felt that her mother was crying, not laughing.

"Yueyue's birthday is tomorrow. Hasn't Yueyue always wanted a piano?" Dai Yan squatted down and caressed her daughter's cheek lovingly. "Mom will buy you one tomorrow and put it in the living room. Let Yueyue sit in the middle of the living room like a little princess and play the piano and sing for everyone to listen, okay?"

Zhou Yue felt her neck stiff, but she still nodded vigorously.

"Yueyue, does mommy feel sorry for you?"

"Poor mom." Zhou Yue cried, but she didn't know who she was crying for.

"Then when we go to see Dad tomorrow..." Dai Yan slowly stretched out her hand in front of her and made a gesture.

Kang Xingxing bought some soy sauce and vinegar and walked into the kitchen with a bag full of clinking bottles and jars. Dai Yan was gone, having taken the food to the hospital. Only Zhou Yue was standing in the kitchen alone.

"What's wrong with Yueyue?" He put the things on the dining table and hurried to see her.

"It's okay," Zhou Yue lowered her head, her voice hoarse and her body stiff, forcing a smile, "I'm fine."

She shared all her joys, sorrows, anger, and happiness with Kang Xingxing. However, in this matter, her compassion and love for her mother far exceeded hers for her father. Whether as a girl or a woman, she could empathize with her mother more. This is true, just like every child is asked when they are young: "Do you like your father or your mother?"

But the moment she remained silent to Kang Xingxing, she had already become a criminal. This was the verdict she gave herself, a life sentence. Every time she thought of it, it was a trial, and every trial upheld the original verdict.

Zhou Tiancheng woke up. He was used to traveling all over the world and had been back and forth between the underworld and the world of the living several times. But no matter how chaotic the time difference was, he still remembered his daughter's birthday.

"Wake up." He heard Dai Yan's voice and struggled to open his eyes to look at her. A faint white mist rose from the oxygen mask.

His dry eyelids made it difficult for him to even blink. He just looked at her and nodded slightly. Behind her, there was a table at the other end of the ward with three or four insulated lunch boxes and a birthday cake.

"Yueyue's birthday." He said, his breath was barely moving.

"Um."

Zhou Tiancheng's blurry vision gradually focused, and he could see the person next to him clearly. She had red lips and green eye shadow. She must have just had her hair done, as her wavy hair had a pearly soft sheen.

Zhou Tiancheng is such a smart man that even if his body turns into ashes, his brain is still good. In his words, as soon as Dai Yan sticks out her butt, he knows what kind of shit she is going to do.

He looked at her quietly for a long time, then laughed, laughing at her and at himself.

He raised his index finger and touched her hand. "Yeah, it's rough." He smiled with his eyes closed. When he touched the cold ring, he stopped and opened his eyes to look at her. "Are you anxious?"

Dai Yan looked at him silently.

"Tsk," he scoffed, the white mist from his oxygen mask growing thicker. "What do you think you can accomplish? You're dressed like a widow, are you afraid people won't suspect you?"

"You're too impatient." He seemed to be suffocating with every laugh, and his breathing was like a bellows. "You ran to Qianqian's house and beat her up, and you even listened to her? You beat her child to death, and now I have to clean up your mess."

"If I die, there will be no one to clean your ass." His fingers, so thin that only skin remained, slowly stroked her wedding ring. "Go, wash your face and tie your hair up."

Dai Yan stood up like a wooden man who had obeyed the command and walked to the bathroom in the ward. She mechanically bent down to wash her face over and over again, until her skin was broken. She walked out mechanically, with water dripping all the way.

She walked out, away from the bed, looking at Zhou Tiancheng. He was just a thin piece, lying in the quilt without a bulge in his shape. But if you look closely, you can still hear the faint breathing, rising and falling, but this rise and fall is about to disappear. She will never find him again. What number should she dial to hear his impatient drawl after a long busy tone of beeps? How much is it?

She cried, tears and water flowing down her face. Just as she was about to move forward with her mouth open, she heard him say, "Think it over. If I get better, women won't be able to stop."

The sadness on Dai Yan's face faded little by little, becoming dazed, and finally evaporated along with the moisture.

"Yueyue." She spoke softly, sticking half of her body out of the door. She was small, wearing a white dress, and walked in with her head lowered, leaning against the wall as if she was standing in punishment.

Zhou Tiancheng was finally stunned, but the surprise and pain in his eyes disappeared in a blink. He called out "Yueyue", and when his daughter raised her head, she saw her father's smiling face again. He loved to laugh, and although he would scold people when he was impatient, he would not do that when teaching her. At such times, he was more patient than usual.

Zhou Yue walked towards her father, went to the hospital bed, and lay down beside his pillow, her eyes blurred with tears. "Dad." She burst into tears as soon as she opened her mouth. Even at this moment, she still wanted to seek her father's help.

Dai Yan didn't look at Zhou Tiancheng or her daughter again. She turned around and left, taking a piece of cake before leaving.

"Don't be afraid, Yueyue. It's okay." Zhou Tiancheng wiped the tears from his daughter's face, brushed her soft temple hair, looked at her eyebrows and eyes, and said with a smile: "My Yueyue is too beautiful. This is not a good thing. Remember, you must be cruel to men."

After he said that, he gently grabbed his daughter's hand and placed it on the oxygen mask with a relaxed smile, "You have to learn a little from your mother in this regard." After saying that, he pulled his daughter's hand hard.

A sharp sound of dripping sound whistled up, but Zhou Yue could hear nothing. She only heard the sound of high heels tapping in the corridor, not fast or slow at all. Her father did not look at her. He rarely looked at her, just a glance, knowing that she was here, and then let her sit on his lap or let her play by herself.

His smiling eyes always moved back and forth on his mother's face, waist and buttocks, and the smile became more and more evil as he went down. Now he was still looking at the door, his eyes slowly stopped moving and became gray. After a while, they moved again. Zhou Yue's heart was pounding, "Dad?" But she soon found out that she had seen it wrong. It was just a tear that had been accumulating in the eye socket for too long and was squeezed out because of the shrinkage of the body.