Chapter 77 : Be well

Han Zhenyu was still awake. Seeing her light the kerosene lamp, he thought something might be wrong and quickly asked, “What’s the matter?”

“It’s okay, go to sleep.”

Su Xieqiu opened the letter and said as she read, “I received a letter from Hai Shi today. I forgot to read it during the day, but I couldn’t sleep anyway, so I just decided to take a look to see what they said.”

Han Zhenyu recalled her mentioning her family last time and how badly they had treated her, to the point that they seemed to have given up on her working in the countryside. However, hearing Su Xieqiu speak so casually about it still made him feel sad for her.

Anyone would be heartbroken to see a young girl being taken from a big city to a rural area in Northeast China, where everything was unfamiliar, by the family she trusted the most.

He raised his head and looked at Su Xieqiu, sitting on the bed across from him.

He wanted to offer some comforting words, but she didn’t seem as sad as he expected. She just read the letter in her hand with calmness.

Han Zhenyu thought that she must have suffered so much that she had become indifferent to it.

After thinking for a moment, he said, “Life is only a few decades long. If you have family who cares about you, you’re lucky. If not, there’s no need to regret it. Without some ties, you might even feel freer.”

Su Xieqiu, who had been reading intently, was momentarily surprised by his words of comfort.

She hadn’t expected him, who was still young, to say such sensible things.

But when she thought about his experiences growing up, she realized he must have endured a lot.

Su Xieqiu felt that their experiences were quite similar, both of them having been unloved by their fathers. But Han Zhenyu still had relatives on his grandparents’ side, while she had had very few relatives in both of her lives.

She looked at him, smiled, and nodded. “You’re right. I’ve already let go of those people, and I just want to live my own life now.”

She picked up the letter, read a bit more, and smiled again. “Actually, I made it clear to them in the last letter. Since they went to such trouble to send me here, they are no longer my relatives. I just hope they live well in the future.”

Han Zhenyu looked at her with a smile on his face, but his words were so firm.

Though he felt sorry for her, he was also very clear that if he ever did something wrong, this woman would definitely just tell him, “Be well.”

So, he made a silent vow to himself that he would never give her that chance.

This letter was not as long as the last one and didn’t even fill two pages. It was full of accusations from her family, claiming that Su Xieqiu was ungrateful and had no conscience.

Her eldest brother, Su Xiechun, wrote angrily, saying that their parents had worked hard to raise her, and now that she was married and independent, she actually wanted to sever ties with the family, accusing her of being unworthy of being their daughter.

After reading the letter, Su Xieqiu scoffed and threw it aside. She then took out a pen and some paper and wrote a reply.

In a mischievous tone, she wrote, “Since you miss your daughter so much, I will return to take care of my parents and be filial to them. Anyway, I’m not getting enough to eat or wearing warm clothes in the countryside, and the man I married is a village gangster who beats me three times a day.”

Su Xieqiu first wrote about how difficult life was now, then began to complain.

“We are both daughters. My mother was reluctant to send my younger sister to the countryside and even gave her her job. So shouldn’t my father’s job be given to me?”

She then wrote in a more dramatic tone, saying “If you don’t give me a job, then stop talking nonsense. I can barely survive in the countryside, so how could I have time to deal with you?”

“Do you really think I don’t know how you got me to the Northeast?”

Su Xieqiu placed the letter she had just written under the pillow, planning to send it back to Haishi when she went to the city the next day.

After reading the letter and composing her reply, she didn’t think much about it anymore. She turned around, smiled at Han Zhenyu, and blew out the kerosene lamp.

But what Su Xieqiu didn’t know was that her smile, with her eyebrows curving, left Han Zhenyu wide awake.

It was around eight o’clock in the evening, and while people in the countryside didn’t have much of a nightlife, they typically went to bed when it got dark.

Han Zhenyu lay on the small bed, staring at the low ceiling, silently cursing the woman on the bed next to him.

What’s so funny at this hour? Doesn’t she know how intoxicating her smile is?

He glanced at her figure on the bed and heard her steady breathing, which meant she must have fallen asleep.

Han Zhenyu let out a sigh of relief, picked up a shirt from the side, and quickly put it on to cover his embarrassing situation.

—

In the family building of the machinery factory, Yun Pingbo glared angrily at Chen Sujuan and spoke in a low voice, “Your niece did something so shameless, and now she’s shifting the blame onto others and asking me to fire them. How shameless.”

Chen Sujuan had always treated her niece, Chen Hong, like her own daughter. Hearing her husband call her niece shameless made her so angry that her face turned red.

She retorted angrily, “Yun Pingbo, show some respect when you speak. You’re just a temporary worker. What if you get fired? Don’t you even have the ability to handle that?”

Yun Pingbo looked at her coldly. This woman had been thinking about her family all the time.

He had arranged jobs in the factory for her nephews and nieces from her side, and while he usually turned a blind eye to it, now she was getting more and more daring, even lying to him to get him to fire workers in the factory.

Yun Pingbo raised his hand and slapped Chen Sujuan hard on the face, his eyes filled with disdain for her family.

“If you think my words are disrespectful, then tell your niece to stop being so unreasonable. She’s a woman, yet she doesn’t even know who she is, but shamelessly claims that someone else is her partner. Han Zhenyu didn’t want to make a big fuss and tried to spare your Chen family’s face, but you keep pushing it and now want to kick him out of the factory. Do you really think this factory belongs to your family?”

Yun Pingbo remembered that Deputy Director Bai had visited his office in the afternoon, bringing gifts and apologizing.

He said that his subordinate was young and ignorant but didn’t intend to offend him, so he asked for his forgiveness this time.

At that moment, Yun Pingbo felt ashamed, as it was unreasonable for him, as a deputy factory director, to meddle in the affairs of workers in the transport team who had nothing to do with him.

Now, the leader came over, apologizing, but it felt more like a slap in the face.

Chen Sujuan, hearing him becoming more outrageous and even physically striking her, started yelling and fighting back.

Yun Pingbo grabbed her outstretched hand, threw her harshly to the ground, and said with a grim expression, “I’ve worked so hard to get to this position. If you ruin my career, I’ll divorce you and send you back to your parents’ house.”

Chen Sujuan sat on the ground, staring at him in shock. They had been married for more than 20 years, during which she had managed the household. Now, both their sons had started their own families.

And now, just because of a small issue with her side’s family and asking him for a little help, the man got so angry that he even mentioned divorce.

Yun Pingbo looked at her sitting on the ground but felt no guilt or remorse.

He was just worried that she would cause trouble for Han Zhenyu again because of her niece.

Suppressing his impatience, he helped her up and whispered, “Do you think a rural youth, without strong connections, could enter our machinery factory and become a regular employee in just one year?”

Chen Sujuan was a smart woman. Seeing that her husband was giving her a way out, she stood up from the ground.

Now that she had heard his implicit warning, she realized that her earlier actions were too hasty.

She gritted her teeth and asked, “Who is behind him?”

“Someone I can’t afford to offend,” Yun Pingbo deliberately made his words vague, attempting to intimidate her.

Then he looked at her sternly and whispered, “Put away your little schemes and stop causing trouble for me. What I said earlier wasn’t a joke. If you ruin my business, I will never forgive your Chen family.”