Chapter 47 I'll Take Your Surname

Jiang Hongying understood her mother's temperament.

If she disagrees and serves food to the eldest brother without permission, she will be scolded.

Song Chunxue didn't stop what she was doing and casually said, "You don't need to worry about it, I'll take it."

"Okay." Jiang Hongying secretly breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed that her mother still loved her eldest son.

After the buckwheat noodles were cooked, Jiang Hongying called Sanwa to help serve the meal, and Song Chunxue ladled out a large bowl of it.

The eldest brother's leg was still hurting. Although he could barely get out of bed, he didn't want to limp out of the house.

Chen Feng also had a bad temper. Seeing him lying on the kang all day, looking so pathetic, and knowing that it was inconvenient for her to take care of him while she was heavily pregnant, she felt angry and would curse the eldest brother whenever she came in or out to vent her anger.

The eldest brother was in a lot of pain and didn't want to hear it, so he got up and yelled a couple of times. Chen Feng immediately threw her things and went back to her parents' home.

Song Chunxue knew that Chen Feng wouldn't feel sorry for the eldest son. She had two very opinionated parents who had been thinking about how to control Jiang Yeming and her mother-in-law ever since they entered the family.

Chen Feng definitely won't be back for the next two or three days.

I can't just stand by and watch my own son starve to death.

But she didn't want Jiang Yeming to have an easy time either; she couldn't let him think that it was only natural for her to feed him.

Carrying the buckwheat noodles, he walked step by step into the thatched cave. The eldest son, who was lying on the kang (a heated brick bed), was stunned for a moment, then turned his back.

"What, you're unhappy to see me come in? Do you think Chen Feng will soften her heart and come back to cook for you?"

"Dream on. Besides giving her advice on how to divide the family property and how not to take care of me when she's old, did her parents ever teach Chen Feng how to live a peaceful life with you?"

"They did that for their daughter's own good, but what about you? Don't you have any backbone or your own opinions?"

“You guys are all so shrewd, but when nobody cares, you still have to rely on me for your livelihood. If I wasn’t worried about you starving to death and then being burdened with debt, I wouldn’t be here today.”

Song Chunxue stood at the door, "You can hate me if you want, curse me in your heart if you want, but what you did was truly inhuman."

“I raised you not so that you would take care of me in my old age. Once you get married, you become a man. You have to be a pillar of society, support your family, and earn money from outside. If you try to squeeze money out of me, that's all you'll ever amount to.”

After saying that, Song Chunxue stepped out of the door with a nimble step.

Forty years of estrangement have made her no longer see Jiang Yeming as a child; whether he can change is his own business.

Jiang Yeming stared blankly at the woman with a straight back and bright clothes. If it weren't for the fact that her face was the same as his mother's, he would never have been able to connect her with his mother.

She seems unlikely to ever smile at him again and say, "I've saved something good for you, come and eat."

He's been lying in bed for the past few days, and his mother hasn't come to see him even once.

Although he knew he had done something wrong, he was still her child; how could she be so cruel?

He looked at the empty doorway and the bowl of rice by the stove, and tears streamed down his face.

He thought, "It hurts so much. Why doesn't my mother ask me if it hurts?"

*

After the fourth brother came back, he stayed in his room. He didn't eat lunch with us, and he also ate dinner alone in his room.

Song Chunxue ignored him and wouldn't let Hongying or Sanwa bring him food.

"He did something wrong, yet everyone indulges him, putting food and drink right in front of him. It's outrageous that someone who did something wrong is right."

“I’m only giving him one day. If he doesn’t leave the house tomorrow and continues to play dead, I won’t cook for him. He can cook for himself.”

“Three days later, he couldn’t even cook for himself. He wasn’t allowed to eat unless he did some work. He’s fifteen, not five. Farm children can do chores at five. He still wants to be treated like royalty.”

"Your father passed away early, leaving behind several children. I'm lucky I didn't starve to death. I'm still supporting you all to be bad kids in school. Am I overfed or haven't suffered enough? Instead of resting at home, you insist on going to the fields to dig for wild vegetables, getting laughed at and looked down upon. Do you think I enjoy that?"

After a day of suppressing her emotions, Song Chunxue finally couldn't hold back any longer and became more and more excited as she spoke.

Sanwa and Jiang Hongying knew they weren't being scolded, but they still lowered their heads and ate in silence like children who had done something wrong.

“I treated you two the worst back then. I did everything I could to send you to school and give you a better future, but you turned out to be such ingrates.”

Song Chunxue pointed at the two people in front of her, annoyed. "You two should have some self-respect and stop sucking up to them. You've been wasting your time in school and now you think you're all learned? You're nothing but rubbish!"

Jiang Hongying glanced at Sanwa, and for some reason, she suddenly couldn't help but laugh out loud.

"Pfft..." She lowered her head and covered her mouth, afraid of being hit.

"What's wrong? What's so funny about me swearing? Let's eat."

Little Xiujuan saw her mother laugh out loud, and she giggled along with her, turning her head to look at Song Chunxue's reaction.

Song Chunxue was momentarily deflated by her tender face and sweet smile, and started laughing along.

“Little babies are so sweet; their smiles are so comforting.” Song Chunxue picked up Xiujuan and placed her on her lap. “Come on, let me feed you.”

Sanwa and Jiang Hongying exchanged a smile, thinking to themselves, "Is this what people mean when they say, 'What goes around comes around'?"

He and his sister used to be the ones getting scolded at home, so why is their mother being the most lenient with them now?

*

The rooster crowed, and Song Chunxue opened her eyes as usual, but did not rush to get up.

She looked at Hongying and the baby Xiujuan lying beside her, closed her eyes again, and slept a little longer.

She's only thirty-six, not seventy-six. Getting up so early is only tiring for her body.

When she opened her eyes again, Jiang Hongying had already taken the baby to the kitchen and was helping the three children make soup.

The fourth brother remained locked in his room, making no sound.

Song Chunxue drank the soup and looked at the egg soup sprinkled with wheat flour in front of her. She thought to herself that it was still not as good as wheat flour soup. She must plant more wheat next year.

"Sanwa, go and call Lao Si to come and drink the soup. If he doesn't drink it, we'll finish it and not leave any for him."

That's not how you use backbone. If he doesn't come, Song Chunxue won't indulge him.

She had such backbone when she was studying; she can laugh in her coffin even after she dies.

pity.

Before long, Sanwa returned.

He said he wouldn't drink, but he wanted us to drink.

"Alright, Sanwa, drink what's in the pot. If you can't finish it, we'll talk about it later." Song Chunxue calmly instructed, "Now that he's back, don't give him an IV drip at noon today. Let him handle the water in the house, the sheep pen, and the donkey pen."

"Oh." Sanwa touched his nose, wondering if he could avoid being assigned this task.

"I'll go instead."

Song Chunxue stood up at the door of the north room and shouted her words to the east room.

"Just pretend you don't come to see me, don't eat or drink my food. If you're still like this tomorrow, you'd better go out to your thatched hut and see what your older brother is like. I'm not going to put up with you anymore."

“We have plenty of sticks at home. If we don’t have enough, I’ll go up the mountain and cut a few more today. You’ve all learned nothing of real skills, but you’ve learned a lot of skills to fight me. If you want to resist, fine, but in your current cowardly state, you might not be able to beat me.”

"You're so poor you're just skin and bones, yet you still act like rich young masters and treat us like royalty. If you keep doing this, I'll change my surname to yours!"