Chapter 1: Let's get a divorce!
Post office, 1978.
"Let's get a divorce."
Su Jin looked at the mere five words on the telegram, her beautiful eyebrows furrowing in a frown.
Two minutes later, she looked up at the staff sitting inside.
"Comrade, is that all the content? Are you sure you haven't missed anything?"
The post office worker glanced at it impatiently at first, then said with some sympathy, "There's no mistake."
Su Jin read it again, but still couldn't accept it.
As I stepped out of the post office, the howling wind whipped into my collar.
It was icy cold.
She tightened her worn-out cotton coat and pulled her dog-skin hat down over her head, making her already fair face even paler.
Hospital.
Su Jin walked to the door of one of the wards, and before she even entered, she heard a low sobbing coming from inside.
"Old man, just hang in there a little longer, your son will be back soon! Even if you have to go, you must see your son one last time!"
At the bedside, the woman in her sixties held her husband's hand tightly, unwilling to let go for even a second.
Su Jin felt even more depressed. After pausing for a moment, she went inside.
When Liu Guizhi saw her return, she wiped the tears from her face with the sleeve of her worn-out cotton coat and asked anxiously and urgently, "Did you receive Zhenxing's telegram? Is he already on his way back?"
Su Jin glanced at her father-in-law, who was lying on the hospital bed, barely alive, and shook her head helplessly.
Liu Guizhi felt like the sky was falling. Five days ago, her husband was terminally ill, and she had her daughter-in-law send a telegram to her son, hoping that he would return from his military service as soon as possible.
Her husband is now on his deathbed and clearly cannot hold on any longer.
Su Jin clenched the telegram in her pocket, but chose to remain silent.
That night, Zhou Heming did not get to see his son, who was far away in the army, and closed his eyes in regret.
Three days later, in Daliushu Village.
Liu Guizhi knelt before her husband's grave and wept bitterly.
The village chief called Su Jin, who was dressed in mourning clothes, aside, took out a few yuan from his pocket, and handed it to her.
"Su Jin, this is a small donation from the villagers. Please don't think it's too little."
Su Jin refused without even thinking, "Village chief, I can't accept this money. The village has already helped my family a lot."
During Zhou Heming's hospitalization, not only did he use up all of his family's savings, but he also had to borrow a lot of money.
His funeral arrangements and the money for his coffin were all raised by the villagers from one household to another; now, they have no reason to accept such money.
Without a word, the village chief stuffed the money into her hand and said earnestly, "Just take it. Zhenxing is serving in the army outside and can't come back often, but you and your daughter still have to keep going. This is all the village can do; you'll have to rely on yourselves from now on."
Looking at the neatly folded banknotes and the villagers trying to persuade Liu Guizhi, Su Jin felt grateful from the bottom of her heart.
Returning from the cemetery, Liu Guizhi, exhausted and heartbroken, collapsed, developing a high fever and incoherently talking nonsense.
Su Jin bought fever-reducing medicine from the village's barefoot doctor and heated the kang (a traditional heated brick bed) until late at night before Liu Guizhi's fever finally subsided.
Su Jin rubbed her sore lower back, feeling completely exhausted.
I slumped down under the kerosene lamp, wrapped myself in a quilt, and finally felt a little warmer.
He pulled the crumpled telegram from his pocket and unfolded it again.
She had been married to Zhou Zhenxing for three years, taken care of his parents for three years, and lived alone in an empty house for three years. In the end, all she got was this sentence... Let's get a divorce.
Screw it, let's get a divorce!
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com