"What she said might be true. This family has been rotten to the core for a long time. It's rotten to the very root. It's a huge quagmire, a bottomless black hole."
“You’ve fallen in, and so have I. My older brother, my sister-in-law, my paralyzed father, my insane sister… we’re all struggling in this quagmire, and nobody can get out.”
With each word Zhang Weiguo spoke, Shen Xiang's heart sank a little deeper.
She understood all of this, but the way Zhang Weiguo said it so calmly carried a chilling undertone.
Look at me.
Zhang Weiguo raised his empty right sleeve and waved it in front of Shen Xiang.
"A cripple. And look at you."
"A widow with a son in a vegetative state."
He suddenly laughed, a laugh more ugly than a cry, full of mockery.
"What are we? We're just two of the most ridiculous useless people in the world. One of us can't save his own family, and the other can't save his own son."
These words struck Shen Xiang's heart like a heavy hammer.
Yes, it's beyond saving.
All her efforts and all her hopes came to naught.
"You want to go to work, earn money, and save your son, right?"
“But you can’t go. What will happen to your son if you leave? Even if you do go, the little money you earn will be wasted in the hospital and won’t even make a sound.”
"Just like me."
“I went to work as a gatekeeper at the factory. Who would care if my dad soiled his pants? Who would care if my sister went crazy and ran away and got bullied? The meager wages and compensation weren't even enough to buy them medicine!”
“We’re all tied up, Shen Xiang.”
Zhang Weiguo's voice was extremely low, like a devil's whisper: "Bound tightly by responsibility, by family, by this messed-up world."
"The more we struggled, the tighter the rope tightened, until it strangled us to death."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
