Chapter 14

Shu Yuan’s voice carried a hint of surprise and delight. “I tried to reach you this morning. I heard you were in surgery. Long-distance calls cost seven mao (0.7 yuan) a minute, so I’ll keep it short. I’m Shu Yuan.”

Chen Zai said nothing.

His expression remained calm as still water, but he deeply resisted hearing that name.

When the other end stayed silent, Shu Yuan asked bluntly, “Are you seeing someone? Engaged? In a serious relationship headed for marriage, any of that?”

According to the plot in the book, he wasn’t in a relationship and hadn’t married. But this was reality, and Shu Yuan needed to clarify things first to avoid overstepping.

Chen Zai’s previously steady state of mind was thrown into chaos, like a whirlpool. He didn’t want to discuss this topic with Shu Yuan. It felt like thunderclaps exploding one after another.

Why was she asking this? What right did she have to ask? Didn’t she realize how presumptuous it was?

Still, wanting to quickly understand her intentions, Chen Zai answered truthfully, “No. Say what you have to say, I don’t have time to waste.”

Shu Yuan had already picked up on the rejection and distance in his tone, but it didn’t faze her. Her voice remained cheerful. “That makes things easier then. I have something to tell you, don’t be too shocked when you hear it. Xiao Man is your child.”

Chen Zai: “……”

His hand tightened around the receiver. The skin on his long fingers stretched taut, his knuckles turning pale, and the veins on the back of his hand bulged visibly.

This wasn’t just a thunderclap in clear skies anymore, but it was a bolt from the blue.

There was no sound from the other end of the line. Shu Yuan said, “Hey, are you still there? This call costs seven mao (0.7 yuan) a minute. I can’t afford to waste money.”

“I’m here.” His chest was visibly rising and falling as he tried to keep his tone steady. “Where is Xiao Man?”

Not wanting to waste time, Shu Yuan quickly said, “Xiao Man is with me. We’re in Lucheng. I brought him back from the northeast.”

She bent down and picked Xiao Man up. “Xiao Man, say hi to your dad.”

Xiao Man not only had no impression of his father, he didn’t even have a concept of what a father was. He had longed for his mother to come get him, but he had never held out any hope for a father.

His lips moved, but he couldn’t bring himself to say the word “Dad.” In a panic, he began reciting a poem: “Ploughing the fields at noon, sweat falls onto the soil beneath the crops.”

Shu Yuan held the receiver in one hand and wrapped her other arm around Xiao Man. “Did you hear that? Your son can already recite poetry. Surprised?”

Chen Zai’s dark eyes were fixed on the bare branches outside the window. His jaw was clenched tight, and his grip on the receiver so firm it looked as if he might crush it. There was surprise, but no joy. His thin lips moved slightly as he coldly uttered a sentence devoid of any emotion. “I can’t be sure that Xiao Man is my child.”

Faced with doubt, Shu Yuan’s tone remained cheerful. “You’ll be sure once you see him. He looks like you, like he was carved from the same mold.”

Thankfully, Xiao Man resembled him. Since there was no paternity test at the moment, they’d have to rely on appearance for now.

“Oh.” His response carried no tone at all.

Shu Yuan was determined to break his silence. “Hurry up and come pick up your wife and kid.”

In psychology, there’s something called the “door-in-the-face effect.” When making a request, one first proposes a larger demand. After it’s rejected, a smaller request is made, which is more likely to be accepted.

For example, if you want to ask your parents for two hundred yuan but think they won’t agree, you start by asking for one thousand. When they refuse, you then say you only need two hundred. They might just give it to you.

Shu Yuan’s real goal was simply to have Chen Zai acknowledge Xiao Man as his son. This was the little tactic she used.

Aside from the static and occasional noise, the other end of the line once again fell into an extended silence.

“You’re still there, right, Dr. Chen?” Shu Yuan was heartbroken over the accumulating phone charges.

“Alright.” His voice remained as calm and emotionless as ever.

Now it was Shu Yuan’s turn to be stunned. What did he mean by “Alright”?

She asked, puzzled, “Dr. Chen, what do you mean by that? Are you acknowledging that Xiao Man is your son? Don’t you want an explanation? An explanation for why I told you before that Xiao Man wasn’t your child? Why I asked you for breakup compensation and all that?”

She seriously suspected that Chen Zai still hadn’t fully processed the situation.

His voice, clear and steady with a hint of sarcasm, came through. “Explain it now.”

Shu Yuan: “……”

She only had one explanation: none of that had been her doing.

She sped up her speech. “If you want to ask me anything, you can write me a letter. I’ll tell you everything. The reason I’m calling is just to say that after returning to the city, I don’t have a job, and raising Xiao Man has been difficult. As his father, you should provide some child support. Of course, it’s only temporary. Once I have a stable income, I’ll support him myself.”

The other side responded with sarcasm again. “Shu Yuan, are you out of money again?”

Shu Yuan: “……”

She wasn’t provoked. Her tone was calm. “Yes, I don’t have money to raise a child.”

It was as if he had finally snapped out of it. He replied crisply, “I’ll return to Lucheng. But I have a lot of work to take care of, so I won’t be able to leave right away.”

Finally hearing a full sentence from him, Shu Yuan let out a breath of relief. “Alright, we’ll talk again when you get back.”

After hanging up the phone, Shu Yuan stood up with Xiao Man in her arms and said, “You heard that, right? That was your dad.”

Xiao Man nodded. “Mm.”

He had only one thought: so he did have a dad after all, and he was a doctor. If his dad acknowledged him, maybe in the future he could go to him when he got sick.

The operator called out loudly, “Seven minutes, four yuan and nine mao (4.9 yuan).”

Shu Yuan felt like her heart was bleeding. A single phone call had cost that much. Of the seven minutes, at least four had been wasted by Chen Zai in silence. Just thinking about it made her feel like she couldn’t breathe from the pain.

She was getting poorer and falling even further behind in repaying what she owed Shu Ping.

She swore to herself that she would never make another long-distance call again.

Back home, Shu Yuan immediately shared the news with Li Hongxia and Shu He. Seeing the two pairs of doubtful eyes staring at her, Shu Yuan said, “What? You don’t believe me? Xiao Man’s dad really is coming back to Lucheng.”

Was she really that unreliable? Why did neither of them believe her? But she didn’t have the time or need to convince them. Without delay, she grabbed the snakeskin bag and the steelyard scale and headed out to sell the pine nuts.

To Shu Yuan, the fact that Chen Zai was willing to return to Lucheng was a major victory. Her current top priority was selling the pine nuts. A dozen or so yuan was a fortune to her right now.

“Mom, I can walk now,” Xiao Man said, toddling back and forth on his short legs.

Shu Yuan watched him carefully. His walking really did look normal again, but she still bent down and scooped him up. “Let me carry you for two more days. Walk properly after you’re fully healed.”

At five o’clock, as workers got off duty, the sweet, childish voice calling out, “Pine nuts for sale!” once again drew the crowd of factory workers to her.

The group of aunties and older ladies finally couldn’t hold back anymore. They nudged each other and pushed a representative forward to ask the question everyone was dying to know: “Xiao Man really isn’t your child?”

Shu Yuan had a thick skin and didn’t feel embarrassed at all. She smiled and replied, “Why don’t you take a guess?”

The crowd buzzed instantly, erupting like a boiling pot. Normally, when someone got asked such a question, they’d get angry, try to cover it up, or avoid it entirely. But Shu Yuan was so open and unbothered that it actually made them unsure.

“You had him in the northeast? You got married? We never heard anything about his dad!”

“There’s no way Xiao Man is Shu Yuan’s child, right? There wasn’t even the slightest hint before.”

Shu Yuan hadn’t expected that she and Xiao Man would draw so much attention. A whole group had gathered around them just to watch. Mother and son took the opportunity to promote their pine nuts. Xiao Man held the steelyard scale, with the rod in his left hand and sliding the weight with his right. Once he measured out a jin (500 g), Shu Yuan would pour the pine nuts onto a piece of paper, quickly wrap it up, and hand it to the customer.

The mother and son worked together with perfect coordination.

While wrapping pine nuts, Shu Yuan also had to keep up the energy and crowd engagement. Her smile never faded as she said, “Yes, Xiao Man really is my child.”

The crowd was shaken!

Shu Yuan had completely contradicted what she’d said before.

Just yesterday, she claimed Xiao Man had been picked up at a dump. And now she was openly admitting the child was her own.

Yet her face didn’t flush, her heart didn’t race. She said it so casually and confidently that people couldn’t believe her.

At the entrance of the electronics factory, a large crowd had gathered around the pine nut stall. As Shu Yuan saw the pine nuts nearly sold out, she couldn’t be bothered to respond to their questions and doubts any longer.

By the time Li Hongxia hurried over and dragged the mother and son back home, Shu Yuan had already sold out the ten-plus jin (5 kg) of pine nuts and made another fourteen yuan.

It was a huge hit, their little street stall was booming.

All of it was thanks to the attention the mother and son drew. Right now, they were the undisputed stars of the electronics factory.

It was a pity they only had a little over twenty jin (10 kg) of pine nuts. If they had a hundred, Shu Yuan felt confident she could sell them all with ease.

Seeing that there weren’t many people on the road, Shu Yuan said, “Xiao Man, we made fourteen yuan today.”

The corners of Xiao Man’s lips lifted. “That’s amazing, Mom.”

Shu Yuan’s mind raced. She hadn’t expected this surge in attention to come so suddenly. What else could she sell at the stall? In a few days, this popularity would surely fade. But where could she find new goods for the stall on such short notice?

She couldn’t afford to let this golden opportunity slip away.

No way. If she couldn’t make use of this traffic, it would feel like losing ten million yuan.

——

Having decided to return to Lucheng, Chen Zai began considering the timing. The sooner, the better. He remembered a colleague was scheduled to attend a seminar in Lucheng in the next few days, so he arranged to take their place.

Once the decision was made, he immediately asked someone to help him buy a train ticket. If everything went smoothly, he’d be back in Lucheng in just a few days.

Next, he needed to quickly wrap up his current workload.

After work, Chen Zai remained in his office. Leaning back in his chair in a comfortable position, he rubbed his brow with his fingers and unlocked the long-sealed memories, recalling that part of his past he never wanted to revisit.

He had graduated from university at twenty-one and started working at the hospital. Because of his overseas connections, once the movement began, he was sent down to the countryside. There, he did the same work as the other barefoot doctors, treating people, and usually kept to himself, speaking little and barely interacting with anyone.

He first met Shu Yuan in winter. He had just returned from gathering herbs in the mountains when he saw Shu Yuan carrying two buckets of water from the well toward the educated youth camp.

She was a new arrival, and it was likely her first time hauling water. With every step she took, the water in the buckets sloshed out and splashed onto her. Her pant legs had already frozen into thick ice, and even her jacket had ice shards stuck to it. She looked like a walking icicle, yet she didn’t seem discouraged or upset. Her expression was relaxed, her brows at ease, and she even appeared to be in good spirits.

Chen Zai stepped aside to give her room, but Shu Yuan called out to him and, without hesitation, asked him straightforwardly if he could help carry the water back to the educated youth dormitory.