On the day she left the Liu family, she carried her daughter in her arms, with only a small bundle in her hands, and left without a trace of regret.
Su Wantang offered her a place to stay at her house, but Liu Fen refused. She said, "Tang-mei, you've already helped me enough. I want to walk the rest of the road myself."
Armed with several nursing and pharmacology books that Su Wantang had found for her, she entrusted her daughter to a familiar sister-in-law during the day and ran all over the town's clinics and pharmacies, pleading for a learning opportunity without regard for reward. Her diligence, excellent memory, and relentless drive to learn finally impressed the old director of the town clinic, who made an exception and made her a non-permanent nursing assistant.
With a job, she used her meager savings to rent a tiny ten-square-meter room on the outskirts of town. There was no separate kitchen or toilet, but she kept the room spotless. She personally nailed together a small bookshelf from wooden planks and neatly arranged her precious medical books on it.
Today was the day she received her first month's salary. Her hands were trembling when she received the thirty yuan. She went to the supply and marketing cooperative immediately and bought these things.
"I...I'm a full-fledged nurse at the clinic now." Liu Fen looked at Su Wantang, her eyes glistening with tears of joy. "Last week, I took the county's nursing qualification exam, and I passed! The clinic director said he'll make me a full-fledged nurse next month, and my salary will increase by five yuan!"
"That's wonderful!" Su Wantang excitedly grasped her hand. "I knew you could do it!"
The two women looked at each other and smiled. In their smiles were the relief of surviving a disaster, the hope for the future, and the purest, most heartfelt bond of mutual support between women.
Liu Fen sat for a while, then got up to say goodbye, as she had to go pick up her daughter.
Su Wantang saw her to the door, watching her walk towards her new life in the afterglow of the setting sun. Her back was more upright than ever before.
Su Wantang was filled with emotion. She knew that Liu Fen's life had truly begun from this moment on. She was happy for her friend, turned around and went back into the house, picked up her babbling son in the cradle, and kissed his rosy cheek.
“Babies, you see, independence and knowledge are a woman’s greatest strengths,” she said softly.
She carefully accepted the malted milk powder and brown sugar that Liu Fen had given her, feeling a sense of peace. She believed that good people would eventually be rewarded, and those who did evil would eventually face their judgment.
Unbeknownst to her, at that very moment, on the other side of town, in the Liu family's house—the one that had once suffocated her—a belated storm was brewing. And at the eye of that storm was none other than that self-righteous man, Liu Jianjun.
He looked at the empty house, the home that belonged only to him and his mother, and suddenly felt an unprecedented panic. It was as if he...had lost something forever. And he was about to discover that what he had lost was far more than he had imagined. (This chapter has been read. Please click to continue reading the next chapter!)
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