Chapter 12

In the end, age had caught up with her. When Granny Xue slipped and fell, it triggered a stroke. By the time she was taken to the hospital, her mouth was crooked and one eye was drooping.

Xu Jiefang had just left town for a trip. The two sons waited outside the operating room for hours before the surgery was finally completed. Her life was saved, but Granny Xue was left paralyzed on one side, and her pelvis had a hairline fracture. At the very least, she would need three months of complete rest.

She had barely been transferred to the hospital ward when the two daughters-in-law broke into a heated argument over who should take care of the old woman.

The surrounding rooms were all occupied. Anyone who overheard it just shook their heads. She had given birth to three sons, yet not a single one was reliable.

If they were going to act like this, they might as well have just given up on treatment. The key issue was that the old woman didn’t die but ended up half-alive. As soon as she was wheeled out of the operating room, she began groaning and moaning in pain, turning the whole household upside down. Even the patients in the neighboring beds couldn’t get any sleep because of her. Anyone who saw it would say this old woman must be the reincarnation of a tormenting spirit.

They discussed it for a long time and finally decided to take turns caring for her. That night, the eldest and his wife stayed at the hospital.

The second son and his wife dragged their exhausted bodies back home.

Though it was already autumn, the cramped shared courtyard was still stiflingly hot. Wang Meili turned on the standing fan and practically wanted to bury herself inside it. “Look at this mess. I work myself to death all day long, and now I still have to run to the hospital. Your old lady doesn’t lift a finger, fine, but can’t she at least not cause trouble?”

“Like it or not, we still have to take care of her. The three households will just take turns for now.” The second son took off his shirt and paced around the room bare-chested, complaining bitterly. “It’s all the eldest sister-in-law’s fault. Why did she have to pick a fight with our mom? Technically speaking, she should be the one handling it.”

He didn’t want to care for the old woman either.

Just then, there was a clatter from outside. Xu Jia had returned.

Xu Jia had been out all day and had no idea anything had happened to her grandmother. As soon as she walked through the door, she flopped down on the sofa. “Mom, I’m so tired. I want some water.”

Wang Meili was the one who had actually been out all day, exhausted to the bone. She snapped, “You’re a grown girl. Can’t you get your own water? What, are you missing your hands or feet?”

Xu Jia groaned from the couch. “Forget it, I can just hold out and not drink.”

She was always like this. As long as you gave in and brought her water, she’d expect it again next time.

Grumbling under her breath, Wang Meili left the room. When she came back, she was carrying a glass of water. “You’re already this old, and next semester you’ll be in your final year of high school. Can’t you put in some effort and try to outshine your big brother?”

Xu Dawei had gotten into a university, and overnight he had become a celebrated figure. Didn’t the whole family bend over backward for him?

A trace of guilt flashed in Xu Jia’s eyes, but the moment she thought about what had happened to Xu Meng at home, she didn’t dare tell her mother the truth. Their household was blatantly biased toward sons. If it weren’t for her “good grades,” she would’ve ended up just like Xu Meng, doing all the housework at home. Whether you were a biological child or not didn’t make much difference here.

But with her current grades, never mind surpassing her older brother—whether she could even get into a university was uncertain.

“And another thing, your grandma had a stroke. She’s lying in the hospital now, so don’t cause me any more trouble for the time being.”

“Grandma had a stroke?” Xu Jia was truly parched this time. She tilted her head back and drained the glass of water, then handed the cup right back to her mom without so much as asking how her grandma was doing. Swinging her legs, she said, “Then buy me a box of instant noodles. I can make it myself. Oh right, why doesn’t Third Uncle bring Third Aunt back? If she came back, grandma would have someone to take care of her…”

“Your third uncle—” Wang Meili hesitated, then stopped herself.

The three of them had schemed together to drive Feng Yanwen away. At the time, they had felt rather pleased with themselves, and even Xu Jiefang hadn’t thought much of it.

But within three days, something began to feel off.

Back when everyone was still at home, they didn’t notice anything. A tidy house, delicious meals—those had all felt like things that simply came with life. But ever since Feng Yanwen left, no one had taken care of the household. The two older brothers shut themselves in their rooms and lived their own lives. Who had the time to look after her?

Drinking porridge morning and night was one thing, but now she even had to wash her own clothes.

When Feng Yanwen had been around, she was treated like the class enemy of the household. Now that she was gone, the eldest and second brothers had started quarreling again.

—

Early in the morning, they would head out to the train station to sell watermelons. Business had been good lately, with a steady daily sales volume of over a dozen melons. The maps, however, were less consistent—on good days, they could sell up to five hundred copies, while on slower days, only about two hundred.

But even just from selling maps, they could earn a few hundred yuan a month.

At first, Feng Yanwen had been anxious. What if, once summer vacation ended, they no longer had any source of income? But now, even she was beginning to feel more confident.

Although business would slow down with fewer tourists after summer ended, selling maps didn’t require much capital. They didn’t expire, didn’t take up much space at home, and every copy sold brought in a bit of money. On top of that, the hours were flexible.

The next major task, then, was to focus on reviewing for exams.

After being reborn, Xu Meng had been steadily adjusting her mindset toward studying. In truth, her grades in her previous life weren’t bad. During her final year of high school, her performance kept improving. In the very first placement test, her scores had jumped significantly. At the time, no one paid much attention to it, but in the following mock exams, her rankings kept climbing higher and higher. That was when she finally caught Xu Jia’s attention.

Maybe even back then, Xu Jia had already set her sights on her.

In her previous life, Xu Meng took the college entrance exam in 1991. Her estimated scores had looked pretty good, so she applied to higher-tier universities.

But no matter how long she waited, her admission notice never arrived. She went to the school to ask and found out something had gone terribly wrong—she had missed the cutoff by just one point.

Normally, there would still be the second-choice university. But somehow, that one didn’t accept her either.

At the time, some universities simply wouldn’t admit you if you didn’t list them as your first choice—it all depended on their enrollment situation.

Xu Meng had made several trips to schools and waited again and again, but in the end, she just didn’t want to keep going.

She hadn’t expected her luck to be that bad. That year’s college entrance exam questions had left such a deep impression on her that she still remembered them clearly to this day.

Her review approach was still similar to before, though having lived a whole other lifetime, many of the knowledge points weren’t as fresh in her memory anymore. Reviewing them now would likely be a bit more difficult. However, for subjects that didn’t rely heavily on memorization, the difficulty was lower and those could be left for later.

That afternoon, after selling the watermelons, Xu Meng went to pick up a batch of one thousand maps. Since carrying them was heavy, she deliberately took a shortcut.

What she didn’t expect was that her luck would be so bad today—just as she stepped out of the alley, she heard a familiar voice.

It was Xu Jiefang. Xu Meng’s expression changed instantly, but she immediately realized that nothing good could come of this. She quickly turned and tried to run.

She hadn’t expected Xu Jiefang to spot her too. He stepped forward and blocked her path. “Where have you been all these days? Where’s your mother?”

Xu Meng nearly ran straight into him and had no choice but to stop. The stack of maps slipped from her hands and fell to the ground.

Xu Jiefang didn’t even glance at them. Pressing forward aggressively, he kept questioning her. “What exactly are you two doing out there? When are you coming home?”

Don’t be fooled into thinking he was asking out of any real concern for his wife.

Xu Meng only needed one look to understand what was going on. His clothes were clearly unwashed, and his beard looked like it hadn’t been shaved in days. He wasn’t missing his wife—he just wanted someone to come home and do the housework.

If you were to ask why Xu Meng had been so against marriage in her previous life, it was all thanks to her adoptive father.

If Xu Jiefang had been a decent man, then Feng Yanwen might have endured her difficult mother-in-law and gotten through it. But unfortunately, he wasn’t.

The two had been married for nearly twenty years. In Xu Meng’s previous life, when Feng Yanwen was hospitalized, Granny Xue said to Xu Jiefang right there in the ward, “How much is it going to cost to save her? With that kind of money, you could find yourself a new wife—one younger and more capable than her…”

Xu Jiefang didn’t say a word.

His money could be given to that promising nephew, or used to buy Xu Jia a pair of roller skates, but when it came to spending on Feng Yanwen, he had to calculate whether it was worth it.

Three days later, Feng Yanwen passed away.

Before they even had time to finish handling the funeral arrangements, the Xu family couldn’t wait to marry her off to a cripple.

Back then, Xu Meng had thought, money really is a powerful thing—it can buy even a life.

She was glad she hadn’t run into Xu Jiefang these past few days. Just seeing his face made her want to punch someone.

“Weren’t you the ones who kicked us out?” Xu Meng shot back with a single sentence that left Xu Jiefang speechless. “My mom’s a living person. She can go wherever she wants. When you left to go elsewhere, did you ever ask her what she thought? My mom doesn’t want to serve your family anymore—she wants to live her own life.”

Xu Jiefang couldn’t stand hearing that. “What, is your mom seeing some other man out there? You tell her to get back here right now. Don’t you know your grandma fell? It’s all because of you two—she ended up in the hospital. Go get your mom to come back and take care of your grandma.”

What? She fell?

So now that they needed someone to take care of things, they suddenly remembered her?

Even a dog raised at home gets fed so it will guard the house, right? But apparently, marrying a wife is just so she can serve the elderly, take care of the kids, and act as the family’s punching bag.

Yes, that was exactly how Xu Jiefang viewed his wife.

Xu Meng almost laughed. “You’re really something. She fell on her own—what does that have to do with us? She should’ve watched where she was going. She’s not a child anymore. At her age, having walked her whole life, and she still trips and falls? That’s just useless!”

She bit down hard on that last word: useless.

But that wasn’t even her original line. When Xu Meng was little and had tripped once, it was Granny Xue who had said it—called her useless, said even walking she couldn’t manage without falling. Now she was just giving it back.

Xu Jiefang flew into a rage. “She’s your grandmother. How can you talk like that?”

“Hmph, she was the one who said she didn’t want to be my grandmother. So what right does she have to act like one now? And by the way, this Xu of mine isn’t from your Xu family. I took my biological father’s surname.”

She had known since she was a child that she was adopted. Her biological father’s surname was also Xu, and the two families were related. Otherwise, her surname would have been changed long ago.

Xu Jiefang was fuming.

He had only just returned home today when he heard that the old woman had taken a fall. He rushed to the hospital, and once there, his elder and younger sisters-in-law started talking over each other, full of complaints. Their main point was to quickly bring his wife back to take care of the old lady.

People are inherently selfish. As long as they themselves didn’t have to suffer, they didn’t care who did. In the past, all this work had been done by Feng Yanwen. No one felt there was anything wrong with calling her back to serve. So Xu Jiefang went out to look for her. He hadn’t expected that as soon as he stepped out of the hospital, he’d run into Xu Meng.

But Xu Jiefang was, after all, a grown man. Not only was he stronger, he was faster than Xu Meng too.

At first, Xu Meng managed to dodge quickly, but as time dragged on, she couldn’t keep up. Xu Jiefang landed a hard slap that shoved her straight into the stone pillar at someone’s doorway. Her knee slammed right into it, and a wave of numbness and pain shot through her entire body. It hurt so badly that cold sweat broke out across her back. Just then, Xu Jiefang reached out and grabbed her hair, his emotions spiraling out of control as he tried to slam her head into the pillar.

This kind of domestic violence—Xu Jiefang had done it countless times in the past. He was all too practiced in it.

But in that moment, Xu Meng didn’t know where the strength came from. She lifted her other leg and stomped down hard on the top of Xu Jiefang’s foot.

Xu Jiefang was wearing a pair of sandals, with his toes exposed. Xu Meng’s rubber-soled sandals landed squarely on his toes. As the saying goes, the fingers—and in this case, toes—are connected to the heart. Xu Jiefang cried out in pain and instantly let go, howling as he released the grip on Xu Meng’s hair.

As soon as Xu Meng was free, she didn’t bother picking up the maps. She turned and bolted toward the entrance of the alley. Halfway there, someone grabbed her arm and pulled her upright. 

“What are you doing, bullying a woman in broad daylight? Are you out of your—wait, are you… alright—?”

Before he could finish, Xu Meng lifted her head and looked at the handsome young man in front of her.

Han Jiming happened to meet her gaze. Her large, glistening eyes were brimming with tears, as if she had just been terribly wronged. The look in her eyes made her seem even more delicate and pitiful.

For a moment, he completely forgot to look away.

In the past, he had always seen Xu Meng as just a little girl, but he had forgotten—she was no longer that kid who used to follow him around everywhere.

Han Jiming instantly mistook the man in front of him for a lecher harassing Xu Meng. Without a second thought, he lunged forward, throwing punches with everything he had. A man like Xu Jiefang only knew how to act tough in front of women. Against Han Jiming’s fists, he didn’t stand a chance. With barely any resistance, he was knocked to the ground, screaming in pain.

But Han Jiming still didn’t feel satisfied. He grabbed a nearby brick and was about to smash it down on Xu Jiefang’s body.

“Uncle… Uncle Han.”