Chapter 16 Chen Wanxi: She Wants to Go Home
For a long time, Yu Xue would feel conflicted whenever she saw an unknown number. In the end, she chose to pretend not to hear it because her mother was a stubborn person. If she didn't answer the phone once, her mother would call from different people's phones and keep calling until she accidentally answered.
One minute later, the call ended.
Before Yu Xue could even catch her breath, the phone rang again.
Wen Feng said, "Take it."
Yu Xue tilted her head slightly towards him. "What do you think she's trying to do?"
Wen Feng had never met Yu Xue's mother. The two of them held their wedding secretly at Yu Xue's request, and no one in Yu Xue's family knew about it.
Wen Feng didn't know and had no way of guessing, "Maybe...we'll have dinner together? What do you think?"
Yu Xue guessed, "Tsk, maybe her mother wants to see me."
Her mother? Wen Feng took a moment to realize that Yu Xue was talking about her mother's mother, that is, her maternal grandmother.
Yu Xue once said that her family members were very strange. Even though they weren't that close and she wasn't particularly fond of them growing up, they would always insist on putting everyone at the same table during holidays. If her grandmother didn't see her during the Chinese New Year, she would complain that her mother was unfilial.
In fact, Yu Xue's maternal grandmother's family was quite well-off, and her mother lived a life of luxury and comfort when she was young.
Yu Xue still remembers what her mother once said: When she was little, her family was well-off. Every time she came home from school, her grandmother would be playing mahjong. When her mother was hungry, her grandmother would take out five yuan from the drawer and give it to her so that she could take Yu Xue's uncle out to eat mutton stew.
Because my mother was a girl, the family business eventually went to my uncle. My maternal grandmother left some money for my mother as a dowry. Then, my mother started to suffer hardship and poverty with Yu Xue's father.
While she was lost in thought, the phone kept going off and on again, but the person on the other end refused to give up, as persistent as a silkworm that had to wrap itself up layer by layer as quickly as possible.
Yu Xue picked up her phone, while Wen Feng held her other hand.
She glanced at Wen Feng, answered the phone, and tried to suppress the tremor in her voice, "Hello?"
Chen Wanxi's anger was about to burst out from the other end of the phone, "Why didn't you answer after all that calling? If something happens to your mother, I don't dare to count on you. By the time you answer the doctor's call and come to pay the medical bills, I'll probably be dead."
Yu Xue opened her mouth, but didn't know what to say.
Chen Wanxi: "Did you hear me?"
Yu Xue: "I heard you."
Chen Wanxi: "Your family doesn't usually call you, and you don't even know to call them?"
Yu Xue: "...I've been a bit busy lately."
Chen Wanxi scoffed, "What are you busy with? Work? I've told you, your husband can support you, you don't need to earn that little bit of money. What do those millions mean to him? You might as well stay home and take care of the kids, at least you'll contribute something to your family."
Yu Xue couldn't help but retort, "Their business is a legacy accumulated over generations, while mine is just starting out..."
Chen Wanxi: "You should cherish the fact that other people have family businesses. Luckily, our family has your younger brother now. After your uncle dies, your maternal grandmother's family business will belong to your brother. It's because your uncle's family doesn't have a son. You think your family can manage without a boy? What will happen in the future..."
"Mom, just say what you need to say." Yu Xue had argued with Chen Wanxi about their differing views before, but the truth was that Chen Wanxi had suffered greatly from this from childhood. This concept of passing down the family business to sons had caused her countless times pain and madness because she was a girl. Moreover, she couldn't accept gender reassignment surgery. She always believed that a person's life was predetermined, as if even whether you could inherit the family business was decided by the King of Hell.
Chen Wanxi couldn't come to this realization. If she had, the current tragedy would have been her own doing, not a gift from heaven.
Yu Xue couldn't correct her, nor did she want to continue wasting her energy trying to correct her.
That's settled then. Let's all just live our own lives.
But she knew that her uncle loved his daughter very much, and that their family business would most likely be passed down to her in the future.
The younger brother who dominated his older sister as she grew up suddenly became a doting father to his daughter.
Grandma's old ideas ruined my sister's path, and Uncle's new ideas destroyed my sister's last hope.
There was nothing Yu Xue could do. This family had always been broken, and she could only watch from the sidelines. She had also lived under such oppression since she was a child. Her father didn't discriminate against girls, but her aunt did. When she was little, her grandparents sent her father to school but not her aunt.
Her father loved her, but loved her stepmother more. Her mother didn't love her, but she still had to rely on her. Chen Wanxi also had a ten-year-old son to support.
Chen Wanxi ordered, "Your grandmother's birthday is next month, come back for a visit."
Yu Xue: "...I'm quite busy."
Chen Wanxi: "That's your maternal grandmother."
Yu Xue: "I do have something to do next month."
Chen Wanxi: "Do you think this is appropriate for you?"
Yu Xue: "..."
Chen Wanxi: "When you were a child, didn't your grandma give you money every year when you went home for Chinese New Year? How come you're so heartless now? How come you're becoming less and less humane? You look down on us just because you went to college."
Yu Xue: "Mom, I'm injured. I might... need to be hospitalized."
Chen Wanxi: "You're so young, what kind of illness could you possibly have? To put it bluntly, how many more years does your grandmother have left to live? Can't you just let her be happy? Why do you have to make me so angry?"
Wen Feng pointed to his mouth, indicating whether he could try it.
Yu Xue shook her head.
She pursed her lips and said, "Okay, I understand."
Chen Wanxi: "When are you coming back?"
Yu Xue: "The day before my birthday, Wen Feng and I found a hotel nearby to stay in."
Chen Wanxi, "You really don't want to live with me?"
Yu Xue: "Your house is so small, I'm afraid I won't have enough room to sleep."
Chen Wanxi's family has never changed; it's still the same house Yu Xue lived in when she was a child. When they divorced, that house was given to Chen Wanxi, and they haven't had the money to move over the years.
Chen Wanxi took a deep breath, as if she was furious, "If I want to sleep, I can sleep anywhere."
Yu Xue glanced at Wen Feng, then suddenly hardened her stance. "Mom, you only have two rooms in your house. You and your husband usually live in one, and the child sleeps in the other. That little bed is so small, it's uncomfortable for the two of us to squeeze in. Let's leave it at that. We'll be there the day before Grandma's birthday. Goodbye."
After she finished speaking, she hung up the phone and let out a long sigh of relief. She had been holding her breath for so long, not catching her breath at all.
With her phone set aside, Yu Xue leaned back and lay on the swing.
Wen Feng moved closer, and their heads almost touched.
Wen Feng said, "Refusing isn't difficult either."
Yu Xue closed her eyes and said, "It's really too difficult to stay at her house."
Wen Feng: "Actually, I could just make do on the sofa."
“No!” Yu Xue said, “Her child is incredibly naughty, and… I think it can only be described as disgusting.”
Wen Feng rarely heard such harsh words from Yu Xue. "How so?"
Yu Xue: "I had dinner with them, mother and son, when I was in my senior year of high school. They were making dumplings at home, and the boy found some ginger in one of the dumplings. He suddenly spat it out, then threw the piece of ginger he had bitten into into my bowl and told me he wouldn't eat it. After his mother came out, I told her what happened, and she just smiled and looked at her son with a very... very... very doting gaze... Oh my god..."
"Yes, it's disgusting," Wen Feng nodded in agreement.
Yu Xue: "Then I didn't touch that bowl of dumplings anymore. His mother scolded me for half an hour because of this, saying that I said I wanted to eat dumplings, and after they were made, I didn't want to eat them. Actually, I didn't say that at all. She asked me what I wanted to eat, and I said anything was fine. Then she said, 'Let's make dumplings then,' and that she had already bought the wrappers. I thought, 'Okay, then I'll eat them.' How did it end up being the one I wanted to eat? I really..."
She rolled her eyes.
Wen Feng rarely saw such a vivid expression on her face. Usually, when she saw Yu Xue, she would either smile stiffly or pretend to smile naturally. Only when she was having an attack and was on the verge of collapse was she truly showing her emotions. Otherwise, she seemed to have almost no other emotions.
Wen Feng wished she could be like this every day, whether she was happy, angry, or sad, she could express it openly on her face, instead of faking a smile, faking a smile, faking a smile.
Perhaps he was used to pretending. After so many years of marriage, Wen Feng never realized that Yu Xue's smile was fake. He himself was not a qualified husband, so what right did he have to blame Yu Xue?
Yu Xue turned her head away, suddenly unable to meet Wen Feng's gaze any longer.
She felt ashamed and in pain.
If Chen Wanxi were just a stranger she met on the street, or an unfamiliar aunt, she would find it ridiculous. She would probably even suspect that the person opposite her was a time traveler, just from ancient times, out of place in modern society, and that every word she uttered was so exaggerated that it could be written into a novel.
But this was her mother, and she couldn't laugh. Every time her friends found out that her mother was like this, she felt ashamed and embarrassed, wishing she could disappear into the ground, even when her friends weren't laughing at her.
She looked at the moon, and as she looked, tears began to fall in large drops.
In her original world, she clearly had loving parents. Her mother wasn't as absurd as Chen Wanxi. Her mother was gentle and sometimes angry, but even when she was angry, she never hit her or spoke harshly to her. Her mother didn't discriminate against girls; she loved her and only loved her. Her mother had said that Yu Xue was the most important person in her life. Her father was also very good. She had no siblings; she was an only child.
But she was lost. In this strange world, she couldn't find her home, nor could she find the air and food she once knew.
She wiped away her tears with the back of her hand: "I thought of my mother again. I remembered when I was little, I also kept asking to have a swing on the balcony at home, and my mother bought it for me. Every night, she would read storybooks to me on the swing..."
"Don't cry, don't cry." Wen Feng pulled her into his arms, feeling her trembling. "Go take a hot bath, then go to bed. I'll read to you, okay?"
"Study?" Yu Xue wiped away the tears that kept welling up in her eyes, and finally simply covered her face. "I'm not a child."
Wen Feng patted her back and tried to pull away her hands that were covering her face. "It's not just kids who listen to stories. Adults listen too, there are plenty of audiobook apps."
"Do you want to hear it?" Yu Xue mumbled.
She dared not agree, fearing that Wen Feng would secretly criticize her for being childish and think she was pretending to be cute.
Whenever she does something embarrassing, she mentally creates a large audience around her, as if she is constantly surrounded by sharp eyes watching her every move.
Every time she does something embarrassing, she feels awkward for a long time. For example, the last time she suddenly ran around the room in the hospital wrapped in a bed sheet, she still feels so uncomfortable thinking about it that she can't eat, and the more she thinks about it, the more uncomfortable she feels, and she almost vomits.
How could she do something so shameful?
Countless days and nights, she would think back to the past. She remembered that when she was in elementary school, she was late for class one day. All the other students went out to do exercises, and she was alone in the classroom. She accidentally knocked over a classmate's thermos. That afternoon, the classmate came to school and said that after opening the thermos, she found that the lid was broken.
When the teacher asked in class, Yu Xue stood up and admitted it.
The teacher asked her to compensate the student fifteen yuan based on the depreciated value of the cup.
When she got home, she told her father that after he scolded her, he talked on the phone with the teacher for almost an hour, and finally took out fifteen yuan and said, "I want to give this money to the principal." Yu Xue felt like she had a fever.
Fortunately, before going to bed that night, the teacher called and said, "The student's parents said that there's no need to pay compensation, and the child didn't do it on purpose."
The next day at school, the teacher still praised Yu Xue for her honesty and told everyone to learn from her. But Yu Xue still felt ashamed. Standing on the stage, she felt as if the podium next to her had turned into a furnace, making her feel hot all over.
She couldn't understand why. Her family wasn't poor; her father earned 10,000 yuan a month. They shouldn't be unable to come up with 15 yuan.
For many years, she has regretted why she stood up and admitted that she broke the cup. If she had remained silent, the matter would most likely have been resolved, and the teacher would not have bothered to check the surveillance footage for fifteen yuan.
Wen Feng pulled two tissues from the table and continued to wipe her tears. "Why are you crying so hard? What's wrong? What are you thinking about?"
"Listen!" Yu Xue suddenly raised her head, wiped her face, and said, "I want to hear your story."
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