Chapter 14
Before Su Ningna could finish speaking, Sun Pengfei, who had just stopped crying, continued relentlessly: "I was devastated—one morning I woke up and suddenly found myself working as a commissioning engineer at a power plant in a pastoral area of the Mongolian grasslands! I was living on the grasslands hundreds of kilometers away from Baotou City! All around me were countless identical white prefabricated houses! I never imagined that my office would also be my dormitory, and just one of those white prefabricated houses! The house was almost empty, except for a local map hanging on the wall; the bookshelves were also almost empty, except for five yellowed work manuals. There were no smartphones back then, and even my cell phone and my laptop were rare items there. But back then, it was dial-up internet, and the internet fees were exorbitant. My monthly salary wasn't even enough for a few hours of internet access, so having a cell phone and a computer didn't really offer much entertainment. The only entertainment there, besides watching boring TV, was playing cards, drinking, or playing Minesweeper and Spider Solitaire on my laptop."
Sun Pengfei laughed twice more: "Among those people, I only felt endless loneliness and isolation, and I felt particularly miserable, without even a single person with whom I could share a common language. Although the men there were all the 'rough old men' of my ideal, they all carried a kind of dull precociousness—they understood matters between men and women, but not feelings; the girls there would just laugh 'hahaha' at anything they heard. Most people there got married around the age of 20, and then the young men spent their days drinking, gambling, beating their wives, beating their children… just like their fathers. I don't know how they could endure such a dull life, how they could accept the lives of their parents. So among these people, I felt like a pretender, an idiot, and then one day I suddenly realized with sadness that I had only betrayed my own nature forever in order to rebel against my mother—maybe I was always meant to be…"
“We were already married then, and our eldest child had been born, but he suddenly seemed like a completely different person,” Su Ningna sighed, interrupting Sun Peng, and continued, “At the factory, his reputation worsened. Everyone said behind his back that he was arrogant and looked down on people. He became increasingly cold towards me, and later he became obsessed with foreign classical music we had never heard of before, and subscribed to many literary publications. Back then, our family would receive a large package of books every now and then, and every time it arrived, the people at the factory would laugh at him like he was crazy, because very few people in our area liked to read. So he changed…” He became unpredictable. Eventually, he almost stopped talking to me altogether. When he did speak, it was no longer the glib, Beijing-accented man he used to be; he suddenly became fond of pedantry and quoting classical texts. One night, he got completely drunk—you see, I like using idioms now, like the proverb "one is influenced by one's company," haha. He got drunk and started yelling at the children; when I shielded them behind me, he started cursing us, saying, "Women and petty men are the hardest to deal with"—at the time, I didn't understand what that meant. Then, he suddenly punched the wall of our prefabricated house, breaking three of his own fingers.
“It only took me half a month to help us both quit our jobs. We didn’t run into any trouble. The factory manager had wanted me fired for a long time.” Sun Pengfei continued, “But she was very scared. She said those were secure jobs, and she had been working there for over ten years. How could she just quit like that? Then she was afraid her parents wouldn’t agree to us leaving. Ha, what a joke! We’re both married with children now. She’s part of the Sun family now. Her parents can’t rely on their married daughter for everything like before. Don’t you think that makes sense? Even the ‘brother-supporting demon’ doesn’t support her like that. She spent more money on her two brothers who only know how to gamble and fight than she spent on our son. What’s going on? Then we went back to Beijing. But I know that period must have been quite difficult for her.”
"Um."
"First of all, I didn't know what kind of job I could find after returning to Beijing. I was almost 30 years old then. But that wasn't the hardest part. The hardest part was dealing with my mom and her silly dog—my mom dressed her male dog, who had testicles, in a pink tulle skirt! Nobody ever dresses dogs up on the grasslands! She was terrified when she first saw that silly dog, haha. Maybe it's because she's getting old, but although my mom still speaks in her usual affected manner, she's become very grumbling. She used to be a woman of few words. When we first went back, my mom disliked her and nagged her every day, complaining that she was from out of town, that she was unsophisticated, uncultured, and unhygienic... she complained about everything. She also disliked her grandson, saying he was ugly and a wild child, and always felt the need to lecture him. She was very resistant to us 'intruders' from outside, but she was helpless. Besides nagging us every day, she could only let us stay at her house."
“Besides helping my brothers, I actually secretly saved some money on my own,” Su Ningna said. “Because my mother-in-law didn’t like us… Actually, not long after, she couldn’t stand the sight of my son and me in front of her. Whenever she saw us, she would subtly curse that dog. So later, I had to use my savings to rent a small house in the outskirts of the city, and the three of us moved out, only able to afford the cheapest food every day. During that time, I never knew where he was, or what he would be like when he came home. Every time I finally managed to get him home, he would start rambling on about music and philosophy, and I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. I thought about taking my son back to my hometown more than once, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. How could I abandon him? Later, I had no other choice, so I took my son…” He entrusted his son to the landlady, giving her an extra 200 yuan a month. Then he found a part-time job as a cashier at a nearby supermarket, which saved him a lot of money on food, since the supermarket always had leftover items nearing their expiration date, which was a good deal for us, haha. Later, things got better. He found a very good job at his father's company. His father was a physics professor at a university, owning several very successful research companies. Although his father remarried twice, he was his father's only son, and his father wouldn't let him take over the business. Who could inherit the company? Then his mother passed away, leaving him a large apartment in a good school district in Haidian District, along with a large sum of savings. Then he sold that apartment, bought our current house in full, and still had a considerable amount of money left over. Life finally got back on track.
“Actually, my best decision was marrying you,” Sun Pengfei said, his voice so gentle for the first time that night. “Yes, our backgrounds are quite different, and our marriage isn’t exactly a romantic one, but you are the wife tailor-made for me. I swore to myself that I would never forget how you stayed by my side during the difficult times when we first returned to Beijing. What I admire even more is how well you have adapted and integrated into my new life. I know how much effort you put into transforming yourself! Look, your clothes, your manners, and your speech are just as appropriate as every other lady here, and you’ve managed to make our home so impressive!”
Despite saying these words, and despite the master's words that everyone should open their hearts and not hide anything, Sun Pengfei still secretly concealed something in his heart, such as his jealousy of Chengshi.
Although the Sun and Cheng families appeared to be close friends in Central Park, Sun Pengfei was genuinely jealous of Cheng Shi from the bottom of his heart. Cheng Shi possessed everything he longed for: Cheng Shi had not only been admitted to the best university in the country but had also been recommended for postgraduate studies in a seemingly useless but beloved field—something that was hard not to envy. Moreover, Cheng Shi had spent several years in Shucun, hanging out with various artists and living an unrestrained single life. Now, he had a beautiful wife, two children in good school, and a successful career…
More importantly, what Sun Pengfei really wanted to hide was his deep and unrequited love for Huang Ruoyu.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
