Chapter 277: Envy

When Gu Baozhu was little, she noticed that everyone else had fathers, but she and her brothers did not. The others would call her a fatherless wild child, and the village children wouldn’t let her or her second brother play with them, instead pushing them away.

“Gu Baozhu! Gu Jingyun! You don’t have a father. Our mother said it’s because your mother cursed him to death. We won’t play with you, or you’ll bring harm to us too!”

“Get lost! This isn’t a place for the likes of you!”

Someone took out a slingshot and shot a stone at Gu Baozhu’s forehead. It quickly swelled into a lump, and she burst into tears.

Seeing his sister being bullied, Gu Jingyun, like a lit firecracker, exploded with anger. He rushed forward and grabbed the person who had hurt Gu Baozhu with the slingshot.

After all, he was only four or five years old. His small frame was easily pinned to the ground by the other children, leaving him beaten black and blue.

Gu Baozhu was terrified, crying even louder and shouting for them to stop hitting Gu Jingyun.

Mother Gu, drawn by the commotion, came over, and the group of children immediately scattered and ran away.

She looked at the injuries on Gu Jingyun’s face, her eyes reddened with anger, and asked Gu Baozhu what had happened.

Gu Baozhu, being so young, didn’t yet understand how to consider others’ feelings. Through her tears, she asked, “Mother, they said Father was cursed to death by you. They won’t play with me or Brother, and they said we’ll bring harm to them.”

Mother Gu stared at Gu Baozhu in a daze.

Gu Baozhu, completely unaware of the impact of her words, continued to persistently ask, “Mother, I have a father, don’t I? I’m not a fatherless wild child, right?”

Mother Gu cupped Gu Baozhu’s face with her rough hands and wiped away the tears on her little cheeks. Tears glimmered in her own eyes, but her tone was firm. “You are not a fatherless wild child. You have a father; he just went very far away.”

Gu Baozhu was pacified at the time. Later, when she learned what “cursed to death” meant, she never asked Mother Gu about it again and stopped playing with the other children. From then on, she and Gu Jingyun were inseparable.

As she grew older, she came to understand more clearly—her father hadn’t gone to some faraway place. He was never coming back.

She and her second brother had been fatherless since the day they were born.

She never again asked questions about her father, afraid of upsetting her mother.

Who would have thought that now, her mother would tell her that her father had really come back!

Gu Baozhu’s eyes lit up with joy, and she began jumping with excitement. “Mother, where is Father?”

Her eyes darted around the room, but she didn’t see any unfamiliar faces. Puzzled, she asked, “Hasn’t he come back yet?”

Mother Gu saw the expectation in Gu Baozhu’s eyes. She had always known how much Baozhu longed for a father. When she was younger, she would watch other children sitting on their fathers’ shoulders playing “horseback ride,” staring at them with unwavering envy.

Her heart ached, and many words were stuck in her throat, unable to be spoken. She couldn’t bring herself to tell Gu Baozhu about everything Gu Qingsong had been through in Xiliang.

She gently touched Gu Baozhu’s radiant, smiling face and looked into her pure, clear eyes. While forcing a smile onto her own face, Mother Gu said, “He just came looking for us and is staying at an inn right now. If you want to see him, I’ll arrange for someone to take you there.”

Gu Baozhu had a simple nature, but she wasn’t foolish. Because of the environment she had grown up in, her thoughts were especially sensitive and delicate. She noticed that when Mother Gu said these words, her mood wasn’t one of the joy typically felt during a long-awaited reunion but rather an indescribable bitterness.

Her father had been absent for eight or nine years and suddenly reappeared out of nowhere. There had to be things she didn’t know about what had happened in between. Otherwise, why would her mother have him stay at an inn instead of bringing him home? And why wasn’t her mother personally taking her to see him, but instead arranging for someone else to take her?

The joy in her heart faded instantly, but the sweet smile on Gu Baozhu’s face remained. “Mother, I’m so tired from coming down the mountain. I’d like to take a nap and change into clean, pretty clothes before going to see Father.”