Chapter 13
At first, Narumi didn't recognize Suningna's voice in the darkness, because the voice sounded paler, hoarse, and slower than Suningna's voice in Narumi's memory. It wasn't until he heard several strange ending sounds that Narumi realized that the person who was sobbing and talking softly not far from him was actually Suningna.
Suningna's story was not very coherent, and the events were not told in chronological order, but rather she talked about whatever came to mind, making it seem disjointed. Moreover, the story was influenced by Suningna's emotions, filled with deep grievances and resentment, which left Chengshi completely bewildered—he didn't understand why she would cry and say these things in front of so many people.
However, after listening for a while, Chengshi finally understood the story that Suningna was telling.
The story begins nearly 20 years ago, when Su Ningna was a cost specialist at a power plant in a pastoral area of Inner Mongolia. A native of Inner Mongolia, Su Ningna studied accounting in vocational school, making the power plant cost specialist job her ideal job—it provided wages, holidays, was close to home, avoided the harsh conditions of herding livestock, and allowed her to help her mother with housework and care for her brothers and the animals on weekends. However, her father disapproved of her attending vocational school, believing it would reduce the family's labor force and waste money. For this reason, Su Ningna, after working for several years and already quite old, remained unmarried and without a boyfriend, as she used most of her earnings to support her family, essentially repaying her father for the "tuition" he had paid for her vocational school education.
After working at the power plant for seven or eight years, Su Ningna met Sun Pengfei, a college student from Beijing who was four years younger than her.
At this point, Suningna seemed lost in distant memories, and only soft sobs remained.
After a while, a male voice that sounded even more unfamiliar to Cheng Shi began to tell his story—however, it was actually the same story that Suningna was telling.
It turned out that the unfamiliar male voice was actually coming from Sun Pengfei.
“I’ve always wanted to be a real man… because I was always laughed at when I was little. People said I was effeminate…”
Cheng Shi felt that Sun Pengfei's voice sounded higher and higher than usual, and his affected tone sounded like that of a eunuch, which gave people goosebumps.
"I grew up in the Xueyuan Road area of Haidian District. My parents were both university professors, and they were very strict with me, especially my mom. I hardly remember playing with any classmates when I was little. Every day was filled with tutoring, piano lessons, and math olympiad classes. My parents divorced when I was nine, and I was awarded to my mom. My mom... my mom is a very controlling person, which I think is why my dad divorced her. After the divorce, my mom's controlling nature only intensified. She controlled everything about me. Even when I was in junior high school, she still slept with me every day, watched me shower, and dictated what I ate, what clothes I wore, and what shoes I wore. Her favorite color is pink, so I had to wear pink sneakers and carry a pink backpack to school every day! She just wanted to turn me into a complete idiot!"
At this point, Sun Pengfei seemed to break down and started shouting. But after a short while, he sneered and continued, "But now I've forgiven her. No one's parents are perfect, and no matter what path she originally wanted me to take, she didn't get her way. After starting junior high, I gradually escaped her control, haha! Let me put it this way, anything my mom considers 'well-mannered,' 'noble,' or 'elegant,' I feel disgusted from the bottom of my heart, while anything my mom considers 'vulgar and obscene,' I absolutely must have."
"Sigh!" Suningna let out a soft sigh.
But Sun Pengfei ignored Su Ningna's sigh and continued, "My grades weren't bad, so I went on to attend top schools all the way. When my parents first divorced, I would pretend to be a good kid, but after entering high school, I completely let loose. I never wore school uniforms and preferred to wear ripped jeans and graffiti T-shirts, pretending that my family was very poor. It was from this point that I noticed my classmates started to be afraid of me. Most of the students in our top high school were good kids, so they thought I was a bad kid, but their fear was mixed with admiration for me. Some classmates who didn't come from the same elementary or middle school as me even thought my family was particularly poor, so they started to pity me."
"However, I didn't finish my studies at that prestigious high school because I got into a fight off-campus and ended up at the police station. The school threatened to expel me, mainly because my grades weren't very good at the time, and they were probably worried about my impact on the college entrance exam pass rate. Anyway, this incident worried my mom to the extreme, haha. Later, my mom used her connections to transfer me to another prestigious high school and begged me to study hard and do well on the college entrance exam, saying that everything else was negotiable. But by then, I had already made up my mind: I wasn't going to try for any 985 or 211 universities; I was going to go to a diploma mill!"
"My wish came true. I ignored my mom's tearful pleas for me to repeat a year of high school and went straight into that dubious university, majoring in the very manly field of mechanical engineering. Looking back, university was truly a happy time. I often skipped classes, frequented those shabby little bars, and hung out with other rough guys, drinking, bragging, and chatting. Then, right after graduation, I got a job at a power group and volunteered to work at a power plant on the Inner Mongolian grasslands. How cool was that!"
Sun Pengfei's voice grew increasingly deep and heavy, a stark contrast to his initial tone. He seemed to gain more and more pride as he spoke, but unexpectedly, he broke down again and burst into tears.
Then, Su Ningna's voice rang out again in the darkness: "As soon as he arrived, he attracted all the young people in the factory. Back then, it was rare to see people from big cities, let alone people from Beijing. We all liked listening to him talk, liked his nonchalant attitude, liked listening to him speak Beijing dialect, and even more liked listening to him tell stories, even though we couldn't understand much of what he said, and we didn't even dare to imagine the stories he told, but we just liked him very much. We knew he was a worldly person, different from us."
At this point, Su Ningna chuckled softly, then continued, "I know I'm not pretty, not smart, and certainly not young—I'm four years older than him, not to mention our family's circumstances weren't good. My father and mother were traditional herders who could barely read or write. I had an older brother and two younger brothers. My brother finally got married, but the younger brothers were still unmarried. I was the only one in our family with a government job. Although I was considered an 'old maid' at that time, I hadn't considered marriage because I needed to save enough money for my brothers' dowries. But… I might be considered quite lucky. A herder girl with only a vocational high school diploma was chosen by a college student from Beijing. It's simply… it's simply…"
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