Chapter 66 Grandma will take you to a place where there is no illness or disaster.
Zhao Qingda saw Zhao Fei return and was tidying up his things in the main house.
"Zhao Fei!" Zhao Qingda kicked the door open and stormed in angrily. "What the hell do you mean?! We agreed to move houses once we found Wen Xiaoxiao, and now you want to back out?!"
Zhao Fei came out of the house and stood on the steps with a blank expression on his face.
“I have no regrets,” he said.
"When will you complete the property transfer?" Zhao Qingda pointed at his nose.
Zhao Fei smiled. It was a faint smile, tinged with sarcasm: "Can't be changed."
"What?"
“I sold the house,” Zhao Fei said calmly. “I sold it last month, and the buyer paid in full. All the formalities are complete.”
Zhao Qingda felt as if he had been hit on the head with a club, and he froze on the spot.
Several seconds passed before he realized what was happening, his eyes wide with fury: "You...you fucking tricked me?!"
“I didn’t play a trick on you.” Zhao Fei put the clothes into the woven bag by the door. “I did promise you that I would move to a different house once I found the person. But I didn’t say that I would move to this house.”
Zhao Qingda was so angry that he was trembling all over.
"Zhao Fei! I'll curse your ancestors!" Zhao Qingda roared, grabbed a shovel from the corner of the wall, and charged over.
Zhao Fei dodged to the side, and the shovel slammed into the door frame with a loud "bang".
Zhao Qingda's eyes reddened, and he turned around to pounce on Zhao Fei again, but Zhao Fei grabbed his wrist.
"Zhao Qingda," Zhao Fei's voice was as cold as ice, "Don't push your luck. Do you really think I'm stupid for how those thirty pigs in my pig farm died?"
Zhao Qingda's expression changed.
"I'm not holding this against you because of Wen Xiaoxiao and our familial ties." Zhao Fei shook off his hand with such force that Zhao Qingda staggered a few steps. "Now, get out."
Zhao Qingda, panting heavily, glared at Zhao Fei.
He knew he couldn't beat his cousin; he had never won a fight since he was a child.
But he couldn't swallow this insult.
He turned to look at the Santana parked at the gate of the courtyard; it was Zhao Fei's car.
Like an enraged bull, he charged forward, shovel in hand.
"Clang—!"
The car window shattered instantly, shards of glass scattering all over the ground.
Still not satisfied, Zhao Qingda smashed the car window several more times, shattering it to pieces.
Zhao Fei stood on the steps, watching, but did not stop them.
After Zhao Qingda finished smashing things and turned around, panting heavily, he said indifferently, "Have you smashed enough? If you have, then get lost."
Zhao Qingda almost spat out a mouthful of blood.
He threw down the shovel, spat fiercely, and Zhao Fei turned and left the yard.
Back in her room, Wang Juan listened to the commotion outside and knew that changing rooms was no longer an option.
She gave Tie Tou some water.
Zhao Qingda came in and kicked over a stool. "He sold the house! He sold it a long time ago!"
The bowl in Wang Juan's hand clattered to the ground, spilling water everywhere: "Then... what do we do?"
"How the hell should I have known!" Zhao Qingda roared. "All you ever do is nag! If it weren't for your terrible idea, would I have even gone to talk to him about changing houses?! Now look what's happened, we didn't get the house, and he just made a fool of himself!"
"My idea?!" Wang Juan was also furious, standing up and pointing her finger at him. "Zhao Qingda, do you have any conscience? If you hadn't driven Wen Xiaoxiao away back then, would we be in this mess now? If you had any ability, would you have let your mother be so sick and still living in this dilapidated house?!"
"My shabby house?! You fucking lived there too?!"
"I must have been blind to have followed you!" Wang Juan cried. "Look at Zhao Fei, his pig farm is thriving, and look at you, you're always breaking down while driving a long-distance truck! Now look at you, a burden on the family, an old man and a young child, how are we supposed to live?!"
She cried her heart out, pounding on Zhao Qingda as she sobbed, "I must have been bewitched! How could I have followed such a useless bastard like you!"
Zhao Qingda, feeling humiliated by her words, shoved her away, saying, "If you think I'm useless, then get lost! Who's stopping you?!"
Wang Juan stumbled from the push and bumped into the edge of the kang (a heated brick bed). She covered her face and cried even harder.
Li Yugu lay quietly on the kang (a heated brick bed).
She had actually been awake for a while, and she had heard every word of her son and daughter-in-law's argument.
The fire in his chest burned even brighter, and a metallic sweetness rose in his throat.
She gritted her teeth and forced herself to swallow the blood back.
She slowly opened her eyes and looked at the dusty roof beams above her head.
She lived in this room for most of her life, from her wedding to her widowhood, and then raising her son.
The New Year pictures on the wall have faded, and most of the red paint on the window frames has peeled off. Everything is old and worn out, just like her body.
Tie Tou made muffled whimpering sounds from the side.
After crying her fill, Wang Juan got up again to take care of her son. While feeding him water, tears streamed down her face as she murmured, "My poor child... I'm so sorry... I shouldn't have given birth to you and made you suffer like this..."
Li Yugu closed his eyes.
Tears slid down my cheeks.
That night, after Wang Juan and Zhao Qingda had both gone to sleep, Li Yugu quietly sat up.
She moved to the edge of the kang (a heated brick bed), her movements as slow as a slow-motion scene in a movie, taking her a long time to catch her breath for even the simplest action.
She took out a small paper packet from the bottom of the cabinet.
That was rat poison Wang Juan bought a while ago when there was a rat infestation in the yard.
Li Yugu's hands were shaking violently.
She opened the paper package, looked at the grayish-white powder inside, and took a deep breath.
Then she moved next to Iron Head.
The child was asleep, his mouth slightly open, drool wetting the pillow.
She gently touched her grandson's face, from a baby to his current state of mental disability.
"Grandma will take you away," she whispered. "We'll go to a good place where there's no sickness or pain, where you can run and jump, and call out to Grandma..."
She shakily poured half a packet of medicine powder into a bowl, added some warm water, and stirred it well.
Then she helped Tie Tou up and fed the child little by little.
Tie Tou swallowed groggily, his eyes still closed.
After feeding his grandson, Li Yugu poured the remaining half packet of medicine powder into his mouth and swallowed it with his saliva.
It was very bitter, so bitter that she frowned.
She lay back down in her seat and pulled Tie Tou into her arms.
The child had a faint smell of milk and medicine mixed together.
She gently patted her grandson's back and hummed a lullaby from long, long ago.
That was a song her mother sang to her when she was a child.
The moonlight outside the window was faint, shining into the room and covering the floor with a layer of silver frost.
Li Yugu slowly closed his eyes.
This world is too bitter. She was tired, really tired.
(Waaaaah... I actually cried while writing this)
As dawn broke, Wang Juan, as usual, carried a bowl of rice porridge into the inner room.
She went to check on Tie Tou first; the child was lying quietly, motionless.
"Tietou, wake up, it's time to eat." She reached out to push him, but froze when her hand touched his body.
It's cold.
It's cold.
"Tie Tou? Tie Tou?!" Wang Juan's voice changed as she rushed over, shaking her son's small body. "Wake up! Don't scare your mother!"
The child did not react at all.
Wang Juan's scream shattered the morning's tranquility.
When Zhao Qingda rushed in, he saw his wife holding their son and crying her heart out, while on the other side of the kang (a heated brick bed), Li Yugu was lying quietly.
He walked over, his hand trembling as he reached out to check his mother's breath.
there is none left.
There's nothing left.
"Mom..." Zhao Qingda's legs went weak, and he collapsed to the ground. "Mom!"
Li Yugu's funeral was held very simply.
Zhao Qingda and Wang Juan took her back to their hometown, set up a mourning shed, and kept her body there for three days.
Not many people came to pay their respects; besides relatives and a few old neighbors, there was also Zhao Fei.
Zhao Fei, dressed in black, kowtowed three times before the altar and burned paper money.
Zhao Qingda knelt beside him to return the greeting, his eyes red and swollen, but when he looked at Zhao Fei, his eyes were full of undisguised hatred.
“We’ll settle the score once my mother is laid to rest,” he said through gritted teeth in a low voice.
Zhao Fei ignored him, got up and walked to the side.
He looked at the black and white photo in the center of the mourning hall. Li Yugu in the photo was still very young, probably in his early forties, with short hair that reached his ears, and a gentle smile.
That photo was taken when her husband was still alive; she hasn't taken any more photos since.
Looking at the photo, he recalled how Li Yugu often made insoles for him when he was a child, stitching them tightly, saying that boys wear out shoes quickly.
Later, when his affair with Wen Xiaoxiao came to light, Li Yugu would sigh whenever he saw him, but he never said anything unpleasant.
She was just an ordinary mother who wanted to protect her child and live a few days of peace.
Tie Tou's funeral arrangements were handled by Wang Juan's parents.
The elderly couple cried when they learned that their grandson had passed away, but they didn't say much.
They knew their daughter had a hard time, and they also knew how much of a burden that child with cerebral palsy was to her.
“Bury it far away,” Wang Juan’s mother said, wiping away her tears. “Don’t tell them where it is. Otherwise… otherwise they’ll keep wanting to go see it, and then they’ll feel sad.”
Wang Juan's father sighed: "They are still young, let's look forward. Life has to go on."
Wang Juan's eyes were swollen like peaches from crying.
Although she always complained about Tie Tou and said that the child was a burden to her, he was, after all, the child she had carried for ten months and gave birth to.
For countless days and nights, she fed the child, bathed him, changed his diapers, and listened to the child's indistinct calls of "Mommy."
Now that it's suddenly gone, it feels like a piece of my heart has been ripped out, leaving an empty and painful void.
At first, Zhao Qingda comforted her, saying that it was good that the child was gone, so that she would suffer less.
But Wang Juan wouldn't listen. She hugged Tie Tou's little clothes and cried her heart out.
Sometimes she would curse Li Yugu and take her son away.
Later, Zhao Qingda got annoyed: "What's the use of crying when the person is dead? You'd be better off thinking about how to live from now on!"
Wang Juan cried even harder.
Later, they moved to Wang Juan's parents' house and stayed there for a month. Wang Juan's emotions gradually calmed down.
She stopped crying all day and started helping her mother cook and clean the house.
But whenever the night is quiet and I think of Tie Tou, I can't help but shed tears.
What worried her even more was that she and Zhao Qingda wanted a child, but she couldn't conceive.
Six months have passed, and there has been no movement at all.
The two secretly went to the hospital for a checkup.
The day the results came out, Wang Juan's hands were shaking as she held the lab report.
“The doctor said… that your sperm survival rate is not high, so it’s not easy for you to get pregnant.” She sat on a bench in the hospital corridor and said to Zhao Qingda, “But it’s not entirely impossible… it’s just quite difficult.”
Zhao Qingda's face was grim: "Then what should we do?"
"The doctor said I could try traditional Chinese medicine to regulate my body," Wang Juan said, clinging to her last glimmer of hope. "Let's give it a try."
So the two of them started asking around for folk remedies and seeking prescriptions from traditional Chinese medicine doctors.
The medicine was very bitter, and a whole pot was boiled at once, filling the whole room with the smell of Chinese medicine. Wang Juan pinched her nose and forced it down, while Zhao Qingda also gritted his teeth and drank it.
Several months passed, but Wang Juan's belly still showed no signs of pregnancy.
Sometimes she would wake up in the middle of the night, touch her flat stomach, and remember how Tie Tou hummed in her arms, and tears would flow uncontrollably.
Zhao Qingda was sleeping with his back to her; it was unclear whether he was truly asleep or simply too lazy to pay attention to her.
Xiaoxiao Tailor Shop in a neighboring city.
Her life was routine: she would open the door in the morning, cook for the children at noon, continue working in the afternoon, and finish work a little later after the children had gone to sleep.
Yizhen and Yibao are almost two years old, and they've really become two little chatterboxes.
It starts chattering as soon as it opens its eyes in the morning, asking "What is this?" and "What is that?" about everything it sees.
Wen Xiaoxiao patiently taught them: This is scissors, that is fabric, this is a button, and that is a spool of thread.
Wen Xiaogai has been sitting up for seven months now and can sit up steadily.
Liu Shuhua often made him steamed egg custard.
The little guy had a good appetite, eating spoonful after spoonful, smacking his lips and getting food all over his face.
“This child will definitely grow up to be a big guy,” Liu Shuhua said with a smile as she wiped him. “Look at his appetite, he can eat more than his two older sisters combined.”
Wen Xiaoxiao also smiled.
She looked at her three children, her heart overflowing with joy.
Sometimes, however, she feels like someone is watching her.
The feeling was indescribable; it was like there were eyes watching you from behind.
She turned around; the street was bustling with people, everything seemed normal.
Zhao Fei does come here frequently.
He completed Yidi's transfer procedures and rented a two-bedroom apartment near the tailor shop. It wasn't big, but it was enough for the father and daughter to live in.
Zhou Lanying initially disagreed with her granddaughter transferring schools, but Zhao Fei insisted, so she had no choice but to compromise.
“I know what you’re thinking,” the old lady sighed. “I’m old, and I might be gone any day. Yidi is still young, and you can’t stay single forever. As for Wen Xiaoxiao… well, if you two can really get together, I’ll be at ease.”
Zhao Fei remained silent.
Once, Wen Xiaoxiao went out to hang up her clothes and looked up to see a black Santana across the street.
The car window rolled down halfway, and she vaguely saw a man's profile. It was so familiar that it made her heart skip a beat.
The clothes she was holding fell to the ground.
When she picked up her clothes and looked up again, the car had already driven away, leaving only a faint wisp of exhaust fumes.
Wen Xiaoxiao stood there, her mind in turmoil.
Did she see it wrong?
Or... did he really come?
After learning that Zhao Fei had transferred Yi Di to another school, Wenbin came to find him.
“You’re being too impulsive,” Wenbin said. “You and Xiaoxiao haven’t even reached a conclusion yet, and you’re already transferring the child to this school. What if… what if she doesn’t accept you?”
Zhao Fei was tidying up his newly rented apartment, placing Yi Di's books one by one on the bookshelf.
Without looking up, he said, "Then I'll wait."
"When will we wait?"
"Wait until the day she's willing to accept me."
Wenbin sighed: "You're doing the opposite of what you're doing."
“Yes.” Zhao Fei finally straightened up and looked at Wenbin. “I’m going all in. I let her get away two years ago, and I won’t make the same mistake again. I want her to know that I’m waiting for her, and I’ll keep waiting. If she doesn’t accept me for a day, I’ll wait for a day; if she doesn’t accept me for a year, I’ll wait for a year. If I can’t wait in this life, I’ll wait for the next life.”
Looking at the determination in his eyes, Wenbin was speechless for a moment.
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