Chapter 73
"Auntie, if you want Xinyi to take over, then give me hush money."
Li Taohua hadn't expected Chen Yan to ask for hush money. Her smile froze a little, but after thinking about it, she realized it wasn't unacceptable.
She brought 500 yuan with her when she came, thinking that she would leave no hidden dangers, so she simply gave all 500 yuan to Chen Yan: "Then it's settled, you can't go back on your word after you've taken the money."
When Chen Yan saw the 500 yuan that Li Taohua reluctantly handed over, he was stunned. He had originally been upset with her, but he didn't expect Li Taohua to actually give him money.
However, since she was willing to give 500, it proves that she can get much more than that.
Thinking of the exorbitant surgery fee of 5,000 yuan mentioned by the doctor, Chen Yan felt as if he had suddenly seen a glimmer of hope.
He was incredibly nervous inside, but he didn't show it on his face. He pushed the roll of money that Li Taohua had handed him back to her: "5000, not a penny less."
Hearing Chen Yan's outrageous demand of five thousand, Li Taohua couldn't hold back any longer and cursed at him, "Are you crazy, you bastard? Asking for an exorbitant price? Why don't you just rob a bank?"
Upon hearing this, Chen Yan also felt it was unlikely and turned to leave, but Li Taohua grabbed his arm: "Wait, give me some time to think about it."
Chen Yan didn't go along with her, but looked into her eyes and said half-seriously, "Auntie, time waits for no one."
Li Taohua's grip on his shoulder tightened. She didn't know where this kid had learned to threaten people, but she knew that being sponsored by a rich young lady was something that five thousand yuan couldn't compare to.
Once her precious son becomes rich, she will definitely teach Chen Yan a lesson. She said to him angrily, "...You come back with me now to get it."
"Okay." Chen Yan appeared calm, but was overjoyed inside. With this five thousand, his mother-in-law's surgery would be covered.
He followed Li Taohua back to the village in an oxcart. Along the way, she was rude and displeased, but Chen Yan ignored her completely, took the money, and left.
After he received the money and put it in his pocket, he walked all the way back to the hospital. There were no donkey carts or horse-drawn carriages to take him, so he walked all the way to the county.
When he returned to the hospital, it was already evening. As he entered through the main gate, he saw a large crowd gathered around a certain area. He wasn't one to join in the fun, so he only glanced at the crowd while waiting for the elevator and then left.
The elevator quickly reached the sixth floor. Thinking that his mother-in-law would soon have surgery, Chen Yan had a smile on his face when he got out of the elevator.
Xiang Wan followed him quietly the whole time, and seeing him happy, she couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.
The two walked towards the department one after the other, but when they reached the stainless steel chair at the department entrance, the old lady who had been lying on the chair was nowhere to be seen...
Seeing the crowd gathered around the window, Chen Yan suddenly had a bad feeling. Thinking back to the crowd when he first entered the hospital, his shoulders gradually stiffened.
He ran like a madman to the window at the end of the corridor, but after just one glance down, he could no longer contain his emotions: "Grandma—"
"Mother-in-law—"
"Mother-in-law!!!!"
He shouted until he was hoarse, but only his mother-in-law's body lay quietly in the flower bed on the first floor...
"Young man, calm down."
My condolences...
"Don't act impulsively."
Chen Yan forcefully broke free from the crowd's grasp and ran in the opposite direction. He walked to the elevator and frantically pressed the down button.
But the elevator was slow to come down. He didn't wait any longer and rushed into the stairwell and ran down as fast as he could. What he couldn't see was that behind him, Xiang Wan was also running down as fast as he could.
When Chen Yan reached the spot where his mother-in-law had fallen, he pushed aside the crowd blocking his way and squeezed his way to her side.
After falling from the sixth floor, the old woman's body was in a rather grotesque state, but Chen Yan was not afraid at all. Instead, he held the old woman's body tightly, trying to pull her up from the ground.
"Grandma, let's go home—"
"Come on, Xiao Yan will take you home."
Putting aside the question of how a ten-year-old child could lift an adult, the grandmother's body was already somewhat broken; how could he possibly retrieve her body?
His eyes were red-rimmed, but there were no tears. He didn't shed a tear, but everyone in the crowd around him had tears in their eyes.
There was also a mother in the crowd who couldn't bear to see this kind of scene. Her voice was choked with emotion as she advised, "Child, calm down."
Chen Yan ignored her and stubbornly tried to lift his mother-in-law off the ground, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't lift her up at all.
Behind her, Xiang Wan silently watched everything. Suddenly, she felt a strong urge to smoke a cigarette. She walked out of the crowd and looked at the setting sun in the distance. Her mood was unusually heavy.
The crowd gradually dispersed only after someone came to handle the mother-in-law's body.
They were going to take the old woman's body away, but they wouldn't let Chen Yan go with them, leaving him sitting there alone.
A doctor on vacation in the crowd wanted to have a heart-to-heart talk with Chen Yan, but Chen Yan didn't even look at him. He just sat quietly on the ground and didn't say a word.
An ambulance happened to be parked at the hospital entrance, and the doctor went to help, leaving Chen Yan alone.
He sat motionless where his mother-in-law had fallen, until a nurse in a uniform rushed over. She first asked the people around to confirm that Chen Yan was the family member of the patient who had fallen, and then she ran to him with red eyes.
“Your mother-in-law just contacted me, asking me to write a letter to her grandson.” The nurse’s eyes were filled with guilt. “If I had realized earlier that it was a suicide note, this tragedy might not have happened.”
After listening, Chen Yan mechanically looked up at her, his eyes bloodshot: "What did my mother-in-law ask you to write?"
The nurse handed him an A4 sheet of paper, bowed to him, and left. There had been a car accident nearby. Although she really wanted to stay and talk to the child for a while, she was too busy to leave.
Xiang Wan watched the nurse's departing figure, then looked down at Chen Yan. His small fingers clenched the white paper tightly, and large tears slid down his cheeks.
She sat down next to Chen Yan and looked at the white paper that contained her mother-in-law's last words.
I expected it to be covered with dense text, but surprisingly there were only three lines.
【Xiao Yan, even when you're alone, you should eat well.】
[Your mother-in-law can't help you much, but she doesn't want to be a burden on our Xiao Yan.]
[Mother-in-law loves Xiaoyan.]
Xiang Wan remembered that the old man couldn't write, so these three sentences must have been written by the nurse earlier.
Holding the suicide note, Chen Yan broke down in tears, but dared not let his tears wet the white paper. He carefully folded the paper and put it into the lining of his cotton-padded coat.
Holding the blank sheet of paper and a thick wad of five thousand yuan in his arms, he suddenly lost all sense of purpose in life.
My only mother-in-law has also died.
What's the point of his life?
No security guard wanted to go to the place where someone had just died, and no one discovered that he was hiding there.
That night, Chen Yan hid in a corner of the hospital, looking up at the stars in the sky. He looked at the brightest star and suddenly his eyes welled up with tears.
That star was so bright.
Could it be my mother-in-law?
The little boy lay there looking at the stars, unaware that there was another soul beside him, silently keeping him company.
Xiang Wan looked at the little devil secretly wiping away tears beside her and suddenly longed to see 19-year-old Chen Yan, so she hugged him tightly.
Thinking of Chen Ruilin, who was surrounded by crowds in his past life, what was he thinking when he was alone in the quiet of the night?
*
Although his mother-in-law died, Chen Yan still had to live his life. After his mother-in-law jumped off the building, he did not return to the village, but secretly stayed in the hospital.
A few days later, Chen Yan used the five thousand yuan that Li Taohua had given him to arrange his mother-in-law's funeral.
While cremation is common in cities, people in villages still believe in burial for a peaceful rest.
He didn't keep any of the five thousand for himself; instead, he used it all to buy the best coffin for his mother-in-law.
Chen Yan's mother-in-law had been frugal her whole life, but she couldn't afford medical treatment when she got sick. Chen Yan hoped that at least her mother-in-law would have a good coffin.
The passing oxcart refused to take the coffin because it was considered unlucky, but Chen Yan was not discouraged. Instead, he went to a nearby garbage station, picked up a tattered quilt, wrapped it around the coffin, and pulled the coffin himself towards the village.
During the day, there were many cars on the road, so he would wait until late at night when it was quiet to pull his mother-in-law's coffin towards the village. At dawn, he would drag the coffin to the fields by the roadside to sleep.
It only takes two hours to walk from the hospital to the county, but it took Chen Yan a whole day and night to walk this path while dragging his mother-in-law's coffin.
That night, he finally dragged his mother-in-law's coffin back to the village.
But when he returned to the yard, he didn't rest immediately. Instead, he picked up a hoe and turned over the soil in the yard, burying his mother-in-law's coffin underneath.
He was a small man, and his hands were worn raw from wielding a hoe to turn the soil, but he seemed not to feel any pain at all, and he didn't shed a single tear.
When it was time to cover the coffin with soil, Chen Yan took one last look at his mother-in-law and waited a long time before closing the coffin lid.
After the soil was filled in, Chen Yan lay on the newly filled soil, looked at the sky that was about to brighten, and finally closed his eyes.
A single tear slid from the corner of his eye and dripped onto the soil.
In the freezing cold of December, he didn't feel cold at all; he only felt a complete emptiness in his heart.
Chen Yan's mind went blank, but he suddenly remembered the scene when he first met the young lady on the mountain and she introduced herself to him.
"My name is Xiang Wan, what's your name?"
—Goodbye, little sister!
Chen Yan didn't know what he and Li Taohua had exchanged, nor did he know what it meant, but he didn't regret it, because without those five thousand, he wouldn't even have had the money to buy his mother-in-law a coffin.
After returning to Lijia Village, Chen Yan stayed at home until a week later, when people from the village went from house to house banging gongs and drums, saying that the eldest daughter of the Xiang family was going to sponsor all the children in the village to go to school.
When the county officials who had come to the countryside knocked on his door, Chen Yan opened it.
When the cadres who went to the countryside saw how thin and bony he was, they were shocked and even brought him some steamed buns and dumplings from their office at their own expense.
Chen Yan did not accept the offer. When he heard that the young lady he had met once wanted to sponsor the children in the village to go to school, he did not immediately accept the offer.
Instead, he thought about it for a long time and finally told the county officials the truth: he didn't plan to study anymore and planned to go directly to the next town to work and earn money.
From the moment Chen Yan witnessed his mother-in-law's death, to the moment he buried her, and then to the moment he lay on that bed without ever leaving the house, eating only dry rations every day, Xiang Wan witnessed everything from a place where he couldn't see him.
When he said he was going to drop out of school, she sighed helplessly.
Although she knew that Chen Ruilin would eventually become the president of Si Rong in this life, her heart still ached slightly when she heard that he was going to drop out of school.
When the county officials heard that he was going to drop out of school, they didn't expect this outcome. He was newly transferred and didn't know much about the villagers' situation.
Although the village chief had told him before he came that this family was a poor household, he never expected that there was no head of household and only a 10-year-old child.
He felt embarrassed to encourage an orphan who was starving and cold, but he also couldn't bear to see his child drop out of school and repeat the tragedy of the previous generation.
Therefore, the county official, upon returning to his office, thought about it and decided to make an exception and explain his situation to Xiang's family.
Before Li Xia left, she left him her contact information. The county official explained Chen Yan's situation to him. After listening, Li Xia asked him to wait a moment. Not long after, he called back, saying that the young lady said she could provide extra financial assistance for his daily expenses.
Upon hearing that Miss Xiang was willing to sponsor Chen Yan, the county officials were overjoyed and immediately rode their electric scooters to Chen Yan's house to tell him the news.
Upon hearing that the young lady was willing to subsidize his daily expenses, Chen Yan was silent for a moment, then turned to the county official and said:
Can I thank her in person?
The county official smiled and said, "Even I can't speak to someone of her high status, let alone you."
Chen Yan nodded without speaking, but his gaze drifted to the hilltop where he had first met her, a faint sense of loss stirring within him…
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