Chapter 3
It was the New Year, and the winter in the north was cold and desolate. The air was filled with the pungent smell of coal. Fortunately, there was a radiator. Zhou Yueyi ran to the radiator to keep warm as soon as she came back from kindergarten. Her frozen nose quickly melted in the warm room, and her snot kept flowing down. When she wiped it with paper, it was all coal slag.
The children all wore winter coats, and Kang Xingxing also wore the down jacket that Zhou Tiancheng brought back from Guangzhou. He was black, so Zhou Tiancheng liked to buy him black down jackets, several at a time, as well as navy blue and gray ones. He himself tinkered with electronic watches, so he bought one for Kang Xingxing as well.
Of course, Yueyue has some too, but most of them are plush toys and kitchen molds for girls to play with. There are very few of them, and there are not as many clothes and shoes as Kang Xingxing.
"Don't you usually spend enough money on her?" This was what Zhou Tiancheng told Dai Yan.
The relationship between Zhou Yue and Kang Xingxing is better than before, but Zhou Yue has a bad temper, which comes in fits. During nap time in kindergarten, she was scolded by the teacher for whispering with other children and was made to stand in the corner. When she came back, she took her anger out on Kang Xingxing.
"You're blocking my way!" "Why are you looking at me?" "Who told you to smile at me?"
Anything could be a reason for her to scold Kang Xingxing.
Kang Xingxing never got angry or spoke, he just looked at her and smiled. If she didn't let him look, he would sit next to her and read quietly.
On the other hand, she became angrier the more she scolded, and the grievances in her heart were like a dam that had burst. In the end, she started crying and making a fuss, and punched into Kang Xingxing's bowl, mashing his rice into a paste and refusing to let him eat.
But she never hit him again, nor did she ever envy him for having so many more clothes and shoes than she did. She just hated him for not responding to her strong feelings.
It is cold at night in the north in winter. Dai Yan sometimes goes to the two children's room to cover Zhou Yue with a blanket. As soon as she enters, she sees two small lumps of flesh, one black and one white, stuck together. Kang Xingxing grows fast after eating a lot. When he first came, he was a circle smaller than Zhou Yue, but now he is a circle bigger and stronger. He holds Zhou Yue in his arms, like a shadow swallowing up the body.
"Let go, let go!" Dai Yan gritted her teeth and pinched him. Zhou Tiancheng was at home, so she didn't dare to make a sound. She just slapped his arms and back in the dark, making them crack.
Kang Xingxing was a child after all, and his first reaction when he woke up from the pain was to cry. His cry was thin and small, like a kitten. Zhou Yue also woke up when he cried. She rubbed her eyes and hugged him, waving her little arms in the air, meaning that she didn't want her mother to hit Kang Xingxing. However, the child had poor ability to control his body and was half asleep and half awake, so he accidentally scratched his mother's face.
Dai Yan was stunned at first, and then slapped her daughter in the face. Zhou Yue was not as tolerant as Kang Xingxing, and burst into tears immediately. There was not much space in the house, and the clattering sound of mahjong and rough laughter and scolding in the living room could not cover up the little girl's shrill cries like an air raid sirens.
Of course Zhou Tiancheng heard it, but he was a man with many sinister sides in his nature. He liked to keep everything to himself and just looked at the cards with a smile on his face. The men looked at each other for a while and didn't dare to say anything. It was New Year's Day, who would be so ignorant as to meddle in the affairs of the eldest brother's family?
Dai Yan didn't care whether outsiders could hear her or not. She cursed loudly while wiping her burning face. It was wet and sticky, and the more she wiped, the more it smelled like rust.
She cherishes her face the most. It is everything to her and the only rope that can tie Zhou Tiancheng down.
She seldom reflected, but there were moments, like now, when she would feel sad for herself. She loved Zhou Tiancheng. She had seen him for the first time walking down the street when she was sixteen. He was wearing a flowered shirt, a cigarette hanging from his ear, two younger brothers following behind him, and a delicate and fragile girl in his arms. His thighs were so white that they swayed like a piece of tender tofu when he walked, and you could squeeze water out of them.
How could she not know what kind of man this kind of man was? But with just one glance, she could never escape in her life.
But she also hated him. The more she loved him, the more she hated him. She wished she could chop him into pieces and eat him, so that no one would compete with her for him. She no longer had to eat melon seeds in the streets and pretend to be a heartless bitch. She could listen calmly to people saying that the playboy and only son of the Zhou family had hooked up with some beautiful woman again. She gave him clothes and bags as gifts, not saying they were gifts, but just saying, "They suit you. My clothes are worthless, but there is one that must be worn by a beautiful woman."
If she could go back to the past, she would definitely go back to the day when she first met Zhou Tiancheng.
She would definitely not take a shortcut to the cinema, and she would never turn around when his little brother was following her and shouting, "Beauty, don't go! My brother Tianer invites you to the movies!" to see Zhou Tiancheng's pair of sickly peach blossom eyes, with his eyelashes red in the sunset.
Zhou Yue cried until her voice was hoarse, and Kang Xingxing held her tightly and refused to let go. The two little ones were face to face, with snot and tears stuck together, looking up at their mother as if they were waiting for death to come.
"It's New Year's Day, are you almost done?" Zhou Tiancheng's voice came from the living room, slowly. He was a heavy smoker, but his lungs were not good, so he spoke softly. "The tea is cold."
Dai Yan's hair, which she had spent the whole afternoon perming, was now a mess, and there were streaks of blood on her face. She walked out of the small bedroom in a daze, crossed the living room and went to the kitchen. She came out with a teapot and poured tea for the brothers at the mahjong table one by one.
Zhou Tiancheng's brothers were not considered upright gentlemen. To put it bluntly, they were just legal gangsters. But at this moment, they did not dare to raise their heads.
Zhou Tiancheng didn't even look up. He took the tea and held it at his lips for a second. The next second, the tea was poured on his wife's face. Not a drop was left. It flowed down from her head like a waterfall. A few tea leaves were still stuck on her hair, steaming hot.
"Brother Tian'er!"
"elder brother!"
Several people jumped back at once. The water was not scalding, but it was quite warm, and it splashed on their bodies like broken glass.
Dai Yan was wearing a burgundy high-necked cashmere sweater, and now most of her body was stained a dark blood color, which looked extremely tragic.
"Dai Yan, I have something to tell you today."
Zhou Tiancheng put down the cup, and the gold watch on his wrist made a tinkling sound against the rim of the cup, which was louder than the sound of his voice.
"You can still spend my money and live in my house. The person you should thank most is my son, Xingxing. He wants Sister Yueyue and Aunt Daiyan, so you can still be here. Do you understand?"
Dai Yan stared blankly at the window facing her. Fireworks were brilliant outside the window, and the glass was fogged up, reflecting their figures. She was 28 years old, and Zhou Tiancheng was 32 years old. She was still in a dishevel, and he was still decent, with his hair combed shiny, and wearing the red sweater she knitted, which made him look even more cool and handsome.
But even in the reflection, Zhou Tiancheng didn't look at her. He pushed the cards nonchalantly and said, "Win." He smiled with a cheeky smile.
"Oh, your son," Dai Yan smiled as she looked at the fireworks, "open your dog eyes and take a look. I'm telling you this today. Those two little ones in the house will give birth to a child for you sooner or later. They won't even know whether to call you grandpa or grandpa. By then, you have to smile as happily as you do now. It doesn't matter. The rest of the family are not human beings anyway."
"Hey!" Zhou Tiancheng finally raised his head to look at her, grinning wickedly, "You're right! He's not human!"
Dai Yan didn't look at him again, turned around and went into the bathroom.
Zhou Tiancheng watched her disappear around the corner with her hair in a mess. He fell silent for a few seconds with a cold face, picked up the cigarette box and spat with gritted teeth. The other three were so scared that they dared not say a word. The one who was considerate quickly took out a lighter and lit his cigarette. After he finished smoking a whole cigarette while looking out the window, the card game started again.
Zhou Yue and Kang Xingxing couldn't sleep, so they discussed it and decided to apologize to their mother.
After the uncles left, the two little guys came out of the bedroom, holding hands and walking along the wall to their parents' room. There was no one there. Then they went to the living room, where the mahjong table and the floor were a mess, full of wine bottles and leftover melon seed shells and peanut shells, and there was no one there either.
I listened again and heard some noise coming from the bathroom. Mom and Dad were inside, the door was half open, and two pairs of little eyes were peeking inside through the crack.
Dad sat on the edge of the bathtub with his hands on his back, watching Mom look in the mirror. Her hair was tied up like a feather duster, and she was wiping the blood off her face with cotton in one hand. Her makeup was gone, her lipstick, her green eye shadow, all gone.
In fact, Zhou Yue likes the way her mother looks without makeup, with a white face, a light pink mouth, and eyes that are not that big. She doesn’t look fierce at all, but very gentle, even a little weak.
"It's time to go back to my dad's house tomorrow," Dad said. He stretched out his long legs to Mom's feet and gently kicked her calf. "Did you hear that?"
But mom didn't react at all, and dad's face turned gloomy. Zhou Yue wanted to tell mom to sort out dad quickly, but mom didn't react at all.
"I'm talking." Dad's voice became cold and hard.
But mom still didn't even look at dad. Later, Zhou Yue discovered that since that day, mom never looked at dad properly again. She always avoided dad's eyes and didn't like to smile at dad anymore.
Zhou Yue felt sorry for her father because her mother was a swallow, the Spring Girl. When she smiled, spring came and all the flowers in the world bloomed.
"I gave you face, didn't I?"
Dad kicked so hard that Mom lost her balance and staggered. She held onto the sink to avoid falling into the mirror.
But Dad was still the same as usual, never apologizing to Mom. He stood up, his cold mouth cracked into a scoundrel smile, walked behind Mom, put his arm around her waist, and his deft hand wiped Mom's wrist, and a gold chain appeared on Mom's wrist.
"You beat my Qianqian like that, how much did it cost me? Do you think I ever gave you any trouble?" Dad rested his chin on Mom's shoulder and looked in the mirror with Mom. "I asked someone to check, and Qianqian is pregnant with a son."
"Then I got there just in time?" Mom smiled brightly, but tears welled up in her eyes. "Should I also thank Mr. Zhou for not beating me up so hard I couldn't get out of bed, considering our relationship as husband and wife?"
"If you think so..." Dad laughed when he heard it, and his voice became softer, as if he was begging for mercy, but more like he was correcting Mom's mistake, "I'll let you kill my son."
Zhou Yue squatted at the door and waited. Her parents kept talking. She almost fell asleep while waiting, but she still didn't get the chance to apologize to her mother.
Just when her eyelids were twitching, Kang Xingxing covered her eyes with his little black hand. The back of his hand was black, and his palm was relatively white. He also covered her mouth.
"Yueyue can't watch." His furry breath blew against her ear.
What was there to not watch? Zhou Yue was puzzled. She had seen her father beat her mother, so what else was there to not watch?
Look, Dad is bullying Mom again. Mom is crying like a kitten and Dad’s breathing is heavy and rapid.
There is another question that Zhou Yue can't figure out. The father "let" the mother kill his son. The gorilla is also his son, so why can't the mother hit him at all?
But Zhou Yue was still happy because the gorilla would not be beaten anymore. However, she also felt guilty. Obviously, her mother was the most pitiful one. She should stand on her mother's side and resist the chimpanzee and the bad father with her.
However, she blamed herself and thought that although her father was very bad, gloomy, and had a bad temper, and he had a good relationship with other aunts, for some reason, her father's presence made her feel safe. When he taught her to ride a bicycle, he always supported her back and said:
"Don't be afraid, Yueyue. Daddy is here. Ride forward and don't look back."
She didn't know when he let go of her hand. When she realized it, she had already ridden a long way. When she looked back, her father was standing in the distance, smiling and waving at her. He was like a towering tree supporting her. With him around, this family would not fall apart.
She had no aversion to chimpanzees at all.
The kids in the kindergarten loved to snatch her toys, playdough, and pull her braids, but the chimpanzee wouldn't do that. He would give her everything he had, and would even sit on a small stool behind her, combing her freshly washed hair bit by bit with a plastic comb. All she needed to do was sit by the hot radiator at home, eating popsicles and watching "Sailor Moon", and tell the chimpanzee that her name was not Zhou Yue, but Sailor Moon, and that she would marry Tuxedo Mask in the future.
"Tuxedo Mask is a hero. It's not good to marry a hero."
Kang Xingxing rarely chatted with her. He would sit behind her and suddenly say something, but his thinking was strange. Once she refuted him, he would stop talking.
"Why? I admire heroes the most! I want to marry a hero!"
Kang Xingxing fell silent at this remark, and after a moment she added, "The evening gown mask is too pale."
"I just like white!"
Kang Xingxing finally gave up resisting and helped her tie up her hair. It was a very bad tie, with one strand missing, but Zhou Yue didn't care. The two of them sat on the sofa and watched "Sailor Moon".
Thinking back many years later, Zhou Yue still misses those days the most. Her father was still there, Kang Xingxing was still there, and her mother still loved her father.
Sadly, the happier she was because of her father and Kang Xingxing, the more miserable her mother was. Whenever Zhou Yue thought about it, she felt extremely guilty for the incommunicable joys and sorrows between mother and daughter.
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