5.005 Clash
Having chased away the old man, Su Yu still had a young child at home. She glanced at him but ignored the little brat and went inside to continue chopping bones to prepare a meal.
Ning Jin pulled Ping An over and scolded her in the yard: "Who does your laundry and cooks for you every day? Who takes care of you when I'm not home? Ping An, I can hardly believe you've become this kind of child. I now doubt whether your well-behaved and sensible behavior in front of me is an act."
"No, I didn't, it's... I didn't." He stammered for a long time without being able to come up with a reason. What his father said was true. This woman was taking care of him every day. At this moment, he remembered what his grandmother had said, and looked up and said, "She doesn't cook for me. She brings back food from the cafeteria. She takes advantage of the government to support me. Besides, you bought her job. It's only right that she takes care of me. You even help her raise her son. She's the one taking advantage of our family."
With a "smack," a burst of crying ensued. Su Yu heard the hitting and cursing outside but didn't go out. A father disciplining his son is a family matter, and outsiders who interfere will only be blamed.
"I bought this job, I paid for it myself, and I earned it all myself. I can give it to whomever I want. You little brat, you think you can team up with outsiders to control my money? If you keep being so ignorant and listening to nonsense, I'll send you to your grandma's house. You love your grandma, don't you? Let's see if you'll still be treated as well as you are at home." Ning Jin scolded the little brat with a dark face. At eight years old, he still can't tell right from wrong. He kicks and puffs up at the slightest provocation from outsiders. Where did his obedient, sensible, and cleverness from when he was little go?
Ning Ping'an was first frightened by his father's words and stopped crying. Then, an overwhelming sense of grievance welled up inside her. She gritted her teeth and looked at him with a mixture of fear and anger. With a sob in her voice, she asked loudly, "Don't you want me anymore? Do you want to have another son with her and raise the son she brought with her? My grandma was right. With a stepmother comes a stepfather. You are my stepfather."
He pointed towards the kitchen, but unexpectedly, someone inside suddenly came out. He glanced at them, snorted, and withdrew his hand.
"Kid, let me reassure you, your dad and I are not going to have any more children, because..."
"Su Yu!" Ning Jin stopped her, lowered his voice, and frowned at her. "Don't be ridiculous. What nonsense are you talking to the child about? I can't agree to that. Don't mention it again. Go inside and cook. I'll teach him a lesson."
Su Yu ignored him. This man was like a child who would jump into a pit wherever he was being scolded. If she continued to scold him, the kid might actually run away in a fit of anger. If something unexpected happened, even if she was innocent, she would still be covered in shit.
“Your father and I are discussing divorce. I definitely won’t have a son with him. What you need to do now is persuade your father to divorce me. If he agrees, I’ll take Xu Yuan away immediately. The money from selling the job will still belong to your father. Thinking about it that way, I’ll be at a loss.” After saying that, Su Yu ignored Ning Jin’s dark face and pointed to the door, saying, “Take him inside and teach him a lesson. Everyone in the alley in the yard heard it.”
"Give up, I'm not going to divorce you." He said this and dragged Ping An into the house.
Su Yu ignored the noise inside the house, which fluctuated in volume, and simply closed the kitchen door with her foot to cook in peace.
I don't know what the father and son said, but anyway, Su Yu had already cooked the meal and the two of them were already in the yard, with the dining table brought out.
"Come in and get your noodles for yourself."
Ning Jin came in, opened the pot lid, looked at the half-full pot of white noodles, turned around and asked, "Only white noodles tonight? No black noodles?"
"Huh? No, I saw some dried noodles in the cupboard, so I made some." The black noodles he mentioned were made by mixing buckwheat flour and high-gluten flour together, kneading the dough, and then rolling it out. Su Yu had never rolled out noodles before and was too lazy to bother, so she just made some dried noodles.
"Are you really not going to live like this anymore? We've already eaten, what are we going to eat with two kids? I can finish as much of this refined white noodle as I want." He went inside and rummaged around, then sighed, remembering that the leftovers he had eaten that afternoon were also just plain white rice. He ladled out two bowls of noodles and took them out.
The meal ended in silence among the three of them. Ignoring Ping An's curious and probing gaze, she stopped Ning Jin from taking the last bite of noodles, saying, "I still need to feed the dog. Leave some for it."
Ning Jin glanced at the little black dog under the table, muttered that the dog was eating better than the people, but still left a piece of food.
After the meal, Su Yu stopped moving, saying, "I cooked, so I won't wash the dishes."
The man glanced at her, silently picked up the bowl and chopsticks, and went into the kitchen. Only the two of them and the dog were left in the yard. Ping An felt a little lost facing the woman whose attitude had suddenly changed. He picked up the dog, who had finished eating, and looked at her several times, but she ignored him. After hesitating for a while, he finally asked, "...Mom, do you really want to divorce Dad?"
Su Yu glanced at him in surprise. Why was he calling her "Mom" so readily this time?
Ping An understood what she meant, glanced at the kitchen, and said reluctantly, "My dad said that as long as we're not divorced, I have to call you Mom."
"You're surprisingly obedient to your father!"
"Of course, he's my dad, why wouldn't I listen to him?" He paused, then asked, "Are you really getting a divorce?"
"Isn't this exactly what you wanted? Why are you being so stubborn?"
Ning Pingan remained silent, stroking the dog's fur with her head down, without saying that she had never thought of asking her father to divorce her.
"Where will you live now that you're divorced?" he asked, trying to start a conversation.
"I definitely won't stay at your house, don't worry. Go play. Kids shouldn't meddle in adult matters. If you want to know, ask your dad." Su Yu didn't want to talk to him. Kids act on impulse, don't know right from wrong, and hurt people with their words and actions without realizing it. She didn't want to argue with him, nor was she in the mood to chat with him.
He didn't move or speak. Su Yu propped her head up with her hand and looked him over. The child looked like his father, with wheat-colored skin and short hair. Not wanting to recall what he had done before, he seemed like a pretty and well-behaved child, but she had no desire to coax or teach him. She couldn't help but doubt her decision in her past life to adopt a little girl for the sake of more liveliness in the family. Now it seemed like a rash decision. She didn't even want to have children, yet she thought of raising one.
Sigh, it's a good thing she died quickly enough, before she could take her child home. She gave people hope but couldn't live up to it herself, which also harmed the child.
"I've boiled the water. You two take a bath first. I'll go fetch two buckets of water." Ning Jin broke the silence outside by carrying two buckets out. Ping An breathed a sigh of relief, glanced at the person opposite, jumped off the stool, and ran to his father. "I'll go with you. I want to take a bath with you."
Even after leaving the house, Su Yu could still vaguely hear Ping An say, "She kept staring at me; it was a little scary."
"Ha, is that all the courage you have?" She carried water into the bedroom to take a bath, finishing before the man returned with the second load of water. The floor in the room was soaked, but thankfully it wasn't muddy.
She went inside to sleep, locking the door from the inside. A moment later, footsteps approached and stopped at the door, followed by the sound of the door being pushed open. "Xiao Su, you locked the door from the inside? Open the door and let me in to sleep."
“Go sleep with your son, or you can sleep in Xiao Yuan’s bed.” Su Yu lay on her side, her eyes fixed on the shaking door.
"No way! Open the door for me! I have a wife, why would I go to sleep alone? Open the door for me!"
The person inside remained silent. He called out again, but there was still no response. "Su Yu, if you don't open the door for me, neither of us will sleep tonight," he threatened.
No one made a sound from inside.
The man gritted his teeth and paced around the doorway for a while. He glanced at the open window, which was not even as long or wide as his arm and was covered with a curtain.
He looked for a while, then turned and walked towards the kitchen. Su Yu thought he had given up, and just as she breathed a sigh of relief, she heard footsteps coming back. Then, with a tearing sound, the window screen was ripped.
"Are you crazy? If mosquitoes get in, are you going to sleep tonight?" Su Yu jumped out of bed and looked at the man who was about to climb in through the window. "Don't try to climb in, I'll open the door for you." She planned to sew the window screen shut with a needle later.
"You open it first, then we'll talk." He held the two glass-framed windows against the glass, afraid she would close them again after he passed by.
"It's so annoying! I'm about to divorce you and you still want to sleep in here. Have you no shame? You shameless scoundrel." She opened the door for him, holding her breath. After he came in, she pulled out a needle and thread from the bamboo frame and threw it at him. "You tore the window screen, you go and sew it up."
Ning Jin obediently picked up the needle and thread to sew up the opening in the window screen. He didn't get angry when she scolded him. The more quarrelsome a couple is, the less they should sleep in separate beds or rooms. It's easy to go out but difficult to come in. This is the experience he gained from observing his father and his two older brothers.
The man had already come in, so Su Yu didn't need to make a fuss anymore. It wasn't like she hadn't slept with men before. She closed her eyes and lay on the bed peacefully. After a while, the light bulb above her head suddenly went out, and then someone lay down on the other half of the bed. A smell of sweat hit her, but it wasn't unpleasant. This man didn't smoke, so there was no smell of smoke.
"Don't worry, I won't bother you, even though I'm feeling really uncomfortable."
Su Yu rolled her eyes in the darkness, turned her back to him to show her attitude.
Whether it was because her body was familiar with her or because a strange man was sleeping next to her, Su Yu fell asleep very quickly. Soon her breathing calmed down, and her sleeping position changed from lying on her side to lying on her back and then to facing the man, with her legs crossed and resting on his legs.
Finally, things quieted down. Ning Jin opened his eyes and looked at the woman beside him in the moonlight streaming through the window. She was still the same person, but her personality had changed a lot. This time when she came back, she was distant from him and no longer lingered around him. Since marrying her, he had never washed the dishes again, and she no longer cared about Ping An. Before, whenever he hit that kid, she would come out to protect him.
He thought of the bowl that suddenly cracked in two at noon the day before yesterday, of Su Yu's honest and quiet nature in the past, and of her angry and anxious appearance all day long, which was interesting and lively, as if a wooden person had come to life.
Has his personality changed so much after just one brush with death? He reached out and wiped the sweat from her nose, then moved away a little. He was hot, and the two of them were even hotter pressed together.
With his hands under his head, he turned his head and saw the moon with a gap in it. For some reason, he suddenly thought of the story of the fox worshipping the moon that he heard in operas when he was a child. The fox had become a spirit and possessed people. He came to his senses and gave an embarrassed smile. He was just a delivery driver who hadn't graduated from high school and had a son. Even if there was a fox spirit, she would be blind and wouldn't even look at him.
Su Yu slept soundly until dawn, catching up on the night she had stayed up the night before. When she opened the door and went outside, she saw Ping An playing with the little black dog in the yard, and then she realized that the man who had been sleeping in the bed was nowhere to be seen.
"Where's your dad?" she asked him.
"I've gone to pick up Xiaoyuan."
At this moment, in the Su family of Xinhe Brigade, Ning Jin handed the meat in his hand to his mother-in-law, took a bowl of corn porridge with some pickled vegetables, glanced at Xu Yuan who was taking the food out to eat, and looked at the old couple and said, "Dad, Mom, Su Yu is making a fuss about divorcing me. I know that Ping An's grandmother and her maternal grandmother did something wrong, but I didn't know before. Please help me persuade her. I don't want a divorce. I will talk to my mother and my ex-mother-in-law."
Su Changguo put down his bowl. Was there something between Ping An's grandmother and his maternal grandmother involved? He said calmly, "She still wants to divorce you? I went to see her a couple of days ago and tried to persuade her, but she only said that she had been through a near-death experience and had come to her senses."
Ning Jin was startled, never expecting that even after his father-in-law had advised her, she still wanted a divorce. He finally took her attitude seriously. His face flushed, he recounted all of Su Yu's complaints. "It's my mother's fault. I'll talk to her when I get home today and tell her not to cause trouble for Su Yu anymore." He glanced at his father-in-law's gloomy face and added, "And don't let her interfere in our family's affairs either."
"You brat." Su Changguo stuffed a mouthful of pickled vegetables into his mouth and chewed them noisily. "Xiao Yuan, stay at my house for now. I'll go back with you. I'll go see your parents. Did they think my daughter would be ruined by them after she married into the family? I'll go ask your mother if she's spoken to any other old men."
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