Chapter 66
When Mo Daoyan was looking up the information about Tong Yufei's adoptive father Ye Conghai, he noticed an intriguing detail.
Ye Conghai had been working at the Yuanfeng County Cultural Center during his lifetime. Coincidentally, his uncle had undertaken a renovation project there and had a close personal relationship with the director. Through this relationship, he visited the cultural center. He wanted to learn about Ye Conghai's life, Tong Yufei's childhood family environment, and the subsequent misfortunes he encountered. Unexpectedly, he found his mother in the archives.
In a black and white group photo, Ye Conghai and Meng Ruqing stood side by side with deep smiles on their faces.
Over twenty years ago, my mother also worked here, a colleague of Ye Conghai. Ye Conghai remained an ordinary clerk throughout his life, but my mother, seemingly on a meteoric rise, rose from a simple data clerk to Director of the Education and Promotion Department in less than two years, and within the third year, she was transferred to the Propaganda Department. My mother never mentioned this experience. I don't know if she felt those three years were insignificant in the context of her twenty-plus years in office, or if it was just a habit. She never discussed work with her children. In the early days, she worried that they, young and uncontrolled, might say the wrong thing outside. But later, as they each went their own ways, they lost the inclination to ask.
Mo Daoyan asked Director Liu, "These two are not from the same department, but are they familiar with each other?"
Director Liu chuckled, "How big is the cultural center? Twenty years ago, there were only a dozen people there. Everyone knew everyone else. Xiao Meng was quite the figure, now he's a big boss."
As for how familiar they were and whether they had any private interactions, Director Liu did not say more given Meng Ruqing's identity.
That night, Mo Daoyan returned to the old house.
At the dinner table, while his father was away, he asked his mother, "What's going on between her and me? Can't you see it? Why don't you give me some advice?"
"If we're compatible, we'll stay together. If we're not, we'll go our separate ways. Isn't it good for us to each find happiness on our own?" Meng Ruqing picked up a piece of green vegetable with his chopsticks and chewed it carefully. "Besides, don't you hate your parents meddling in your affairs the most?"
"Do you really think so?" They slept in separate beds before, but hadn't she still been meddling? Besides, how could this marriage, from start to finish, have been separated from her arrangements? Now you're letting him make his own decision. Mo Daoyan sneered, "Honestly, with her qualifications back then, how could you have been so attracted to her? Aside from her face, everything else was subpar."
Meng Ruqing blocked the conversation back without leaving a trace: "Didn't you fall in love with that face in the first place?"
"If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have known her at all."
"I should be the one saying this."
"What's the meaning?"
"One night during your sophomore year, you fished a girl out of the river and brought her home. After she recovered, you returned to school. Before leaving, you specifically asked me to take good care of her." Meng Ruqing raised her eyes. "Seeing you so nervous, I thought she was your sweetheart. At the time, I thought she wasn't very good-looking. She was as thin as a stick, with only a pair of big eyes sunken in her face. She looked like a skeleton. Not to mention her appearance, even her health was a problem."
Mo Daoyan frowned: "Is this true?"
This memory seemed to have been forced upon me, and I couldn't recall the specific details.
"You can't remember, right? Really. If it weren't for what happened later, I would have forgotten my help. After all, she was so inconspicuous. But after that, she often sent homemade snacks and handmade knitwear to the Propaganda Department, but she only left them in the guardhouse at the gate and never came in. Now that I think about it, she understood the ways of the world at a very young age and knew how to please people. Although people didn't look down on her, because she had no bad intentions, they just let her be." Meng Ruqing's eyes darkened slightly, and her tone was distant. "Before you went abroad, she came to send gifts again. At that time, I was worried about you going abroad. She offered to marry you and promised that she would definitely agree to marry her. She even said...if you get tired of her in the future, she can leave at any time. Tell me, where else can I find another person like her?"
"So, even if I hadn't chosen that blind date photo, you would have found another way to get her to me, right?"
"Talking about these hypotheticals now is meaningless. The fact is that you chose her at first sight and are willing to marry her. She initially boasted that she would let you marry her, and I thought she was just bragging, but I didn't expect it to come true. Mo Daoyan, you've seen so many beautiful girls, why did you choose her?" Meng Ruqing's tone was subtle. "Could it be that those two days together made you fall in love with her? Did you see her photo again two years later and feel like you were seeing your first love all over again?"
"You've seen too many humor masters."
"It's okay if she doesn't admit it. It doesn't matter whether there's any love or not. You're almost done with each other anyway." Meng Ruqing put down his chopsticks. "But are you asking these questions because you want to hold her accountable, or do you want to get to know her better? She hasn't really hurt you. If you want a divorce, then let her go. Give her some material compensation and don't make it too difficult for her."
So all this was premeditated. The innocent kiss in the cinema was just a performance with a mission. She had tried so hard to follow him, and now she wanted to get rid of him, only because the mission promised to Meng Ruqing had been completed.
But he has never been a puppet in anyone's hands. He will not be manipulated at will, and he should not be choreographed like this.
---
The row of old houses at the corner of Hefeng Road and Xinfeng Street were originally the staff dormitories of the Oil and Cotton Factory No. 3. As the factory's performance declined, some workers were laid off, and the vacant houses were rented out, which not only saved maintenance costs but also increased some income for the factory. Tong Yufei rented Room 2 on the first floor, a small two-bedroom apartment of 40 square meters. The kitchen and living room were connected, which barely provided a place to eat. In fact, it was almost the same as having no living room. However, compared with the tube-shaped building, it was equipped with a bathroom, which was an improvement.
Most of her neighbors were former employees of the Oil and Cotton Mill. The atmosphere of the melody of sheng and qing (sheng-qing) among the neighbors brought her back to her childhood. The only annoying thing was the noise of the machinery. The equipment at the Oil and Cotton Mill rang out on time every day: once at 7:30 in the morning and once at 3:30 in the afternoon, so accurate that it saved people the expense of alarm clocks for work. Some of the older workers were so used to hearing the noise twice, at midnight and at 4:00 in the morning, that they treated it as a lullaby. She, a deep sleeper, could barely adapt to it, but for a light sleeper like Ye Yimo, it was a death warrant, waking her two or three times in the middle of the night, searching the room for the source of the noise.
When she got up at night, she saw the dark shadow by the window and almost lost her soul.
The midnight terrors continued day and night, and she became mentally weak due to insomnia. She had to spend 80 cents to buy a pair of wax earplugs for her brother, but Ye Yi Mo refused to cooperate and refused to wear them no matter how she persuaded him. She was so angry that she ignored him. Later, she found that this kind of earplugs not only left wax residue in the ear canal, but also caused swelling and pain after wearing for a long time. So she crocheted a pair of soft-padded earplugs with wool and stuffed them with cotton. She would quietly put them on her brother after he fell asleep, and the problem finally subsided.
Her series of reports on Chen Jueyao garnered considerable attention, and she herself garnered some public attention. After being invited to record two radio programs, she became a minor celebrity. As the saying goes, "People fear fame, just as pigs fear weight," she remained unfazed, firmly believing that as long as she remained true to her heart, she had nothing to fear from her shadow. Her colleagues, having witnessed her writing prowess, became more polite in their interactions, and there were more smiles around her.
During this period, He Yanjun frequently came to see her, offering her snacks and cosmetics, but she rejected them on the pretext of "not engaging in perverse practices." One day, He Yanjun came to offer her snacks again, but when she threw them back, she suddenly wiped away tears: "My aunt's cousin was beaten by her wicked husband and became incontinent. Now she's lying in the hospital, dying. A fight between husband and wife is a family matter, but this is almost fatal. You can help that actor get justice, but can you also help my sister? Put that beast in jail!"
She suppressed her annoyance and said, "It's no use coming to me for this. You should call the police."
"What's the use of calling the police? A couple had a fight, and they were released after a few days in jail. That bastard took advantage of my sister's silence and falsely accused her of cheating on him, saying she was forced to beat him because she was cuckolded. You're a woman too, how could you just stand by and watch her die?"
"I'm a woman, not a god. Don't you always brag about your man's abilities? Why don't you let him come forward?"
Mentioning her husband, He Yanjun's tears could not be wiped away: "I'm not afraid of you laughing at me. My brother embezzled public funds to support three children and was fired from the grain and oil station. My husband was implicated and demoted from section chief to an ordinary clerk. Now he is just an empty shell, with a shiny donkey dung egg on the surface. You can laugh at me, but it has nothing to do with my sister. Her parents died when she was young. She worked like a cow and a horse in her uncle's house when she was five or six years old. She suffered a lot. Later, she joined the silk factory and her life became better. When the man pursued her, he was still a human being, but he showed his true colors after marriage. They're picky about her, complaining about her dressing up, about being an orphan with no family support. This time, they didn't hit her for cheating, they were complaining about her spending. But that was all her hard-earned money, and wasn't she buying a city hukou so her children could go to a good school? It's become a tool they use to frame her. I've considered contacting other reporters, but I also feel like how many men understand the hardships women go through? It's good enough that they didn't make sarcastic remarks. It's best if a female reporter writes about it. Besides, your parents-in-law are leaders, so they have the confidence to get things done...
He Yanjun usually talks nonsense, but today he was surprisingly frank. She couldn't help but laugh: "You've found the wrong person. Even if they become the top boss of Xicheng in the future, I will be a stranger to their former daughter-in-law."
"You want to divorce? Such a good family, why are you so depressed?" Life is like a fish drinking water, only the cold and warmth are known by oneself. He Yanjun sighed, "I still think you are the only one who can help her."
"You think that since she and I both come from the countryside, I can understand her, right?"
This matter is not just about the husband beating his wife. There may be deep-seated problems in the household registration system behind it. She had heard Tong Wan talk about a story before. There was a girl in the village who worked in a meat processing factory. Because her boyfriend's family in the county town disliked her rural household registration, the marriage was delayed for seven or eight years and still could not be completed. The day after the boyfriend remarried, the female worker committed suicide by jumping into the river under various pressures.
She didn't agree directly: "Which hospital is your sister in? I'll go see her first."
The next morning, she was going to the hospital to visit He Yanjun's cousin Tan Li. As soon as she opened the door, she saw that the door was full of clothes and shoes, all carefully wrapped in transparent plastic bags, all brand new. In fact, a lot of things had appeared here during this period of time, including several new beddings, a shiny heater, a shoe rack and a sewing machine.
She knew without a doubt that only Mo Daoyan could act this rigid and stubborn. Only he would come uninvited, yet remain outside the door, refusing to even step in without her invitation. Having already reached the point of divorce, she had no reason to accept his things anymore, so she quickly chased after him, wanting to call him back and make him take everything back.
But with people coming and going at the entrance of the alley, he was no longer visible.
Small items can be returned, but large items are difficult to handle. The postage alone is enough to make her suffer.
At noon, she called him from a public phone at a roadside store: "I'll be home tomorrow morning, come over and take all the things back."
"I bought it for you originally. It's not appropriate to give it to someone else." His voice was low and lazy on the other end of the phone. It was hard to tell whether he cared or just didn't care. "You don't want it, so do you want me to throw it all away? I'm just an ordinary citizen. I'm not so extravagant as to not treat money as money."
She took a step back and said, "Don't buy new ones. It will be so troublesome if we get divorced later."
"Don't worry about that. Even if you don't return it, I won't chase you for it. After all, before you married me, you gave Ms. Meng many gifts, like those knitted items. Do you really expect me to knit them for you myself?" He hung up the phone before she responded. "I have a meeting."
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