Continued efforts
The coldness seeped in gradually, not like a violent storm, but more like the plum rain in the south of the Yangtze River, silently wetting everything and making the chill penetrate into the bones.
The bankruptcy liquidation process was long and cold, like a giant, emotionless machine, slowly grinding through every inch of life. Lin Xiaoning's accounts, securities, and even the long-imprisoned Mercedes-Benz were all registered, appraised, and put up for auction. The gate of the lakeside villa was finally sealed with a glaring seal, heralding the end of an era.
In the past, when Sister Wang and her friends chatted, they would always recount with a certain hidden excitement how so-and-so had racked their brains to transfer assets during a divorce, how they had hired powerful lawyers and fought tooth and nail. At that time, Lin Xiaoning might have also been secretly weighing various options. But when all this really happened to her, when her lawyer gently suggested that some early, clearly sourced investments might be worth pursuing, and that some unclear spending records might be "explained" as personal debt, she felt an unprecedented sense of exhaustion.
She looked at the lawyer's shrewd, conscientious face, her fingers unconsciously caressing the glass of water before her, now completely cold. Fight for it? How? Like before, mobilizing all her wits and energy to exploit loopholes in the rules, weaving plausible lies, searching for a glimmer of hope between the lines? She suddenly felt that it was too exhausting. The feeling of wallowing in the mire, stained even if she won, was more suffocating than total loss.
She thought of Zhao Xianqi. Back then, imprisoned, he had every chance to seize on procedural flaws and pursue them relentlessly, even retaliating, wiping out a desperate situation. But he ultimately chose silence, accepting the seemingly unjust verdict and sadly leaving the law firm and courtroom where he had shed his sweat. She hadn't understood it before, always dismissing it as the cowardice and arrogance of an idealist. Now, she seemed to grasp the heart behind that choice—not surrender, but letting go. It was the sobriety of knowing that continuing to cling would only exhaust the last ounce of energy and tarnish the last vestiges of innocence. It was the resolve to throw the broken oar into the whirlpool, letting fate carry him to the unknown shore.
"No need." She heard her own voice sound calmly, with a hoarseness and emptiness that even surprised herself. "Just deal with it as it should be done. I'll cooperate."
The lawyer froze for a moment, pushed up his glasses, and was about to say something else, but seeing Lin Xiaoning's eyes, which were like deep pools and without a ripple, he finally nodded and closed the folder. That slight "click" was like a period, marking the end of everything she had worked so hard to achieve over the past ten years.
Leaving the law firm, the sky was that familiar, city-specific gray. No sunshine, no rain, just a dull, gloomy air. She took a deep breath. The air smelled of car exhaust and dust, not pleasant, but strangely, the huge stone in her chest seemed to have been lifted a little. Letting go, it turned out, could truly be liberating. A relief that was almost nihilistic, tinged with pain.
Life stripped away all its finery, revealing its roughest underbelly. The walls of our 80-square-meter, old apartment were a touch yellow. The kitchen faucet was always loose, ticking like a clock that was never quite right. The bathroom was so cramped that even turning around felt a bit awkward. The belongings we had brought from the villa were crammed into the house, adding to the cramped and messy atmosphere. My mother was always nagging me to clean up, trying to maintain a semblance of respectability, but the feeling of being stretched thin was pervasive.
Lele grew day by day, like a tenacious blade of grass, striving to stretch its branches no matter how poor the soil. He learned to walk, albeit with a stumbling stumble, but his desire to explore was incomparably strong. Simple words began to utter from his little mouth: "Mom," "Dad," "Food." In his clear eyes, the world was brand new, free of bankruptcies, scandals, and those suffocating gazes. His joy was simple: a piece of candy, a hug, or even a bird flying by the window could make him giggle.
Lin Xiaoning often held him in her arms, looking at his small face, which bore a striking resemblance to Wang Shumin's, yet blended with her own features. A bittersweet warmth welled up in her heart. A child was hope, a miracle of life's continuation. She had once believed that this new life would be like a ray of light, dispelling all her darkness and liberating her from the mire of the past. But gradually, she realized that this was just wishful thinking.
Lele's growth couldn't offset the panic she felt when she suddenly woke in the middle of the night; nor could the child's innocent smile erase the painful memories from her mind. When she lost control and yelled at her mother over a trivial matter, frightening Lele to tears; when she was so consumed by self-loathing that she even seemed distracted while feeding her child, she painfully realized that while her child was her lifeblood, a glimmer of light in the darkness, he wasn't her savior. The holes in her heart, the erosion she'd endured, needed to be filled and repaired inch by inch. No one could replace him. In fact, her deteriorating condition was invisibly affecting this fragile and sensitive little life, a burden that doubled her guilt and pressure.
Wang Shumin was still on duty at the detention center, and his visits home were rare. But each time he returned, he seemed quieter and more...hardened than the last. The resilience honed on the plateau and in the military camp was now evident under the extreme pressures of life. He no longer displayed the obvious pain and struggle he had initially, but instead adopted a near-numb endurance. He would silently fix a leaking faucet, silently carry heavy objects upstairs, and when Lele cried, he would pick him up with a slightly clumsy but determined gesture and pace back and forth in the small living room.
Their married life also took on a different pattern. Occasionally, in the dead of night, when the child was asleep, he would lean over, his movements unquestionable and almost predatory. There was no tender prelude, no emotional exchange; it was more like an instinctive need to vent, a way to find a temporary outlet under heavy pressure. Lin Xiaoning let him do what he wanted, her body like a piece of unconscious wood, her heart a cold wasteland. She could feel the warmth of his body and hear his heavy breathing, but between them, there seemed to be a thick, transparent glass wall. She could touch him, but she couldn't really get close. After they were done, he would quickly turn over and fall asleep, or get up to go to the balcony to smoke, leaving her alone in the darkness, listening to the distant city sounds outside the window, feeling like a fallen leaf with nowhere to cling to.
She increasingly realized that Wang Shumin could be her comrade, the father of her child, a supporter in her most difficult times, but he couldn't completely pull her out of the inner hell she had created and destroyed by reality. The only one who could save her was herself. This realization, like a bucket of ice water in winter, chilled her to the bone, yet also brought her to a clarity she had never known before.
One afternoon, my mother returned from the market. Besides the usual vegetables, she also brought back two heads of Chinese cabbage, claiming they were grown by farmers in the suburbs and were both cheap and juicy. In the small kitchen, she cleaned up, peeling off some of the damaged, yellowed leaves and tossing them into the trash. Lin Xiaoning, who was playing with Lele in the living room, caught a glimpse and felt a sudden jolt in her heart. Ah Xiu... the old woman in that mountain town who meticulously stripped away the rotten leaves, then lovingly picked them up, saying she was going to "feed the pigs." At the time, Zhao Xianqi said that this was the wisdom of life: stripping away the unwholesome to leave the core.
She walked over as if possessed by a ghost and said to her mother, "Mom, don't throw away these cabbage roots."
Her mother was stunned for a moment and looked at her in confusion: "The roots have all been cut off, why keep them?"
"Give it to me." Lin Xiaoning took the cut cabbage root, still covered with a little dirt and roots, from her mother's hand without explanation. She found a shallow old dish, filled it with some clean water, and carefully placed the cabbage root in it, placing it in an inconspicuous corner of the kitchen windowsill.
The days dragged on in this monotonous, awkward rhythm, sometimes suffocatingly oppressive, sometimes shimmering with a glimmer of light thanks to a child's smile. She still feared going out, afraid of crowds, but for Lele, she had to bite the bullet and push him to the nearby park early in the morning or when there were fewer people to get some fresh air. She always wore a mask and a hat, kept her head down, and tried to avoid everyone's gaze. She felt like everyone was looking at her, pointing and criticizing her. She knew it was probably an illusion, a perception magnified by depression, but she couldn't help it.
That day, she was pushing Lele in a secluded corner of the park, basking in the sun. Lele babbled in the stroller, while she stared blankly at the bare branches in the distance. An elderly woman, also with a child, strolled over, glanced at Lele, and smiled, saying, "This child is so fair, he looks more like his father."
Lin Xiaoning froze, responded vaguely, and subconsciously wanted to push the cart away.
The old lady didn't seem to notice her resistance and continued to herself, "My grandson is also this age and very naughty. Do you live nearby? I don't think I've seen him before."
Lin Xiaoning's heart was beating fast, his palms were sweating, and he just wanted to end this conversation quickly.
The old lady sighed and changed the subject: "Ah, these days, it's not easy. My son's company isn't doing well, and he hasn't received a bonus in six months. His wife nags him every day. I see you, young as you are, raising a child by yourself. It must be hard, right?"
Lin Xiaoning was stunned. Raising a child alone? She...she thought she was a single mother? It turned out that strangers didn't carry the labels of "bankruptcy" or "scandal" that she'd imagined. They simply saw a young woman with a child, perhaps a little tired. Those imagined countless pairs of judgmental eyes that kept her awake at night might not even exist, or perhaps they simply had no time to care about such an insignificant existence as her.
At that moment, something in her heart gently clicked, like an overly taut string suddenly loosening a little. Although it was insignificant, it was indeed a real relaxation.
Returning home, she instinctively headed for the kitchen windowsill. A few days had passed, and she'd almost forgotten about the cabbage root. But just as she was about to turn and leave, she caught a glimpse of a tiny, delicate, pale yellow green emerging from the previously bare tip of the cabbage root in the shallow dish of clear water. She leaned in for a closer look. It was real. A few tiny, brand-new leaves were stubbornly poking out from the heart of the lifeless, seemingly worthless root. They were so small, so fragile, as if a gust of wind could break them, yet in the faint early winter sunlight, they glowed with a stubborn vitality, a vitality that belonged only to life itself.
They do not come from the cabbage heart that has been stripped of its outer leaves and carefully eaten, but from the discarded root that should have rotted. Nourished by clean water, it quietly completed its transformation and became the starting point of new life.
Lin Xiaoning extended her fingers and gently touched the delicate green sprout. The cold touch brought a strange warmth to her fingertips. She suddenly remembered the words in Zhao Xianqi's letter: "Protect the heart of the cabbage." She had always believed that "heart of the cabbage" was the original, pure, innocent, and idealistic self she needed to protect. But now, looking at this tiny sprout rising from its abandoned roots, she seemed to have a different understanding.
Perhaps the true "heart" of a cabbage isn't a fixed, unchanging core that needs to be carefully preserved. It's perhaps a capacity, a capacity that, even in the filthiest mire, stripped of all external glory, even severed from its past, as long as there's a little bit of root, a little nourishment, it can still nurture a little bit of new green from its remaining, seemingly lifeless parts. It's not about perseverance, but rebirth. It's not about avoiding harm, but possessing the strength to stubbornly complete the cycle of life even after being hurt.
Tears welled up without warning, neither sadness nor joy, but a complex mixture of deep sorrow and glimmers of hope. She was still trapped in the cold kiln, the future still uncertain. Wang Shumin's silence still weighed heavily on her heart, and the depression diagnosis still lay in the drawer. She didn't know how to escape this predicament, or even where to take the next step.
But looking at the tiny patches of green before her, she clearly felt for the first time that beneath that utterly devastated wasteland, something was quietly stirring. It wasn't salvation, it wasn't liberation, it was simply a primal instinct, trying to find a way out, even if that path required traversing the deepest darkness.
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