Chapter 15

Chen Yubing smiled. “Maybe I was just born to suffer. But at least I have a few obedient children.”

“That’s true. Your kids are all well-behaved,” another neighbor praised, then asked, “How did Baihe do on her exams? It’s been a few days since she finished. She’s always done well—should be able to get into college, right?”

“As soon as she finished the exams, the police called saying our child had been swapped at birth. Baihe was already under a lot of pressure, so we didn’t bring it up,” Chen Yubing replied while taking off her apron. “Anyway, the exams are over. Whether she gets in or not, we’ll know soon enough.”

After speaking, Chen Yubing went around borrowing two bicycles from neighbors. “Today is Xinyi’s first day back home. We had bought meat, thinking we’d make something nice, but I never expected her grandmother to pull something like this. I want to take her to the state-run restaurant for a good meal.”

She promised to return the bikes before everyone had to go back to work in the afternoon. Normally, people might not have been willing to lend them, but today, both Chen Yubing and Qiao Xinyi had everyone’s sympathy, so the neighbors were surprisingly generous. Even Aunt Zhang Hua, who was usually so stingy she wouldn’t even let a breeze into her home, willingly handed over her keys.

With two bicycles borrowed, Chen Yubing carried Qiao Xinyi on one, and Qiao Baihe took Qiao Yunbai on the other. The four of them left the family compound and headed to the state-run restaurant.

By the time they arrived, it was already a bit late and the place was nearly empty. But they were lucky—there was still one meat dish left. Chen Yubing didn’t hesitate about money or ration tickets; she ordered the meat, eggs, and even a whole fish. Along with a few side dishes, they ended up ordering five dishes and a soup in total. Even the waitress couldn’t help giving her a second glance as she paid.

After finding a seat, Chen Yubing quietly asked Xinyi if she was hot or uncomfortable. Xinyi shook her head but finally found the chance to ask the question she had been holding in the entire way.

“Mom, it’s been so many years. Why didn’t you divorce Qiao Laiwang?”

Xinyi had always referred to him that way in the compound. Plus, on the way back, she had clearly shown her dislike for her biological father, so Chen Yubing hadn’t bothered correcting her.

Hearing the question, Chen Yubing began to explain quietly.

“It’s not that I never thought about it. The first time I considered divorce was when Yunsong went missing. Back then, it really felt like the sky had fallen. Staying in that house for even one more day felt suffocating.”

Her tone stayed calm as she spoke of the past, except when she mentioned Yunsong’s disappearance—then her face was full of sorrow and hatred.

“But back then, Baihe and Yunbai were still so young. My cousin on my mother’s side—her husband died unexpectedly that same year. Her two kids were around the same age as Baihe and Yunsong.”

“She had to work while raising them alone and lived in a rented room. One night, a thug broke in.”

What thugs would do in the middle of the night to a defenseless woman and her children didn’t need spelling out, so Chen Yubing didn’t elaborate.

“After that, my cousin took her two children and jumped into the river.”

To this day, Chen Yubing found it terrifying to speak of.

If she had divorced, she couldn’t go back to her parents’ house. She’d have had to rent a place and raise her kids alone, just like her cousin. After what happened, she grit her teeth and stayed in the Qiao family to endure it.

“The second time I thought of divorce was after Baihe dropped out and later returned to school,” said Chen Yubing. “I figured no matter how hard things got, I could get through it alone. I couldn’t rely on Qiao Laiwang or his family, so I might as well leave and raise the kids myself.”

“While I was hesitating, a divorced woman moved into our neighborhood with her child.”

“Even though people treated her like a plague and said nasty things behind her back, I still took the initiative to befriend her—I wanted to learn from her experience.”

Chen Yubing hadn’t just thought about divorce twice—she had seriously considered doing it.

“Getting close to her naturally meant getting close to her child, and that’s when I learned just how badly her kid was being bullied,” said Chen Yubing.

“People on the street would openly or secretly call the kid awful names—’little bastard,’ ‘mongrel,’ ‘born of a mother with no father to raise him,’ and so on. And that wasn’t even the worst of it. The child would often come home bruised and battered. It turned out he was being beaten up by other kids.”

At this, Chen Yubing sighed.

“No matter if it was at school or near home, there were always rotten kids who bullied a child without a father. That poor child hated going to school, stayed home alone every day, barely spoke, was very withdrawn and extremely sensitive. Just looking at him made your heart ache.”

After seeing how that child lived, Chen Yubing didn’t dare divorce. She was afraid her own kids would end up the same way. She was willing to live a hard and exhausting life herself, but she hoped her children could at least be a little happier, suffer a little less.

Qiao Baihe still remembered the woman and her younger brother that her mother had mentioned.

“Auntie Zhang later moved away with her little boy. Since people kept bullying him because he didn’t have a father, she kept moving—from one city to another. At first, Mom and Auntie Zhang kept in touch through letters, but after a few years, we lost contact. Mom even asked around at her later workplace and found out that she had moved again with her son to another city.”

Chen Yubing nodded lightly. “Yes, that’s why I was truly afraid. And once I realized that if I divorced, I might not even get custody of the kids, I got even more scared.”

“There was another reason I didn’t dare leave. When Yunsong went missing, he was already old enough to remember things. I was afraid that if he ever came home, he wouldn’t be able to find me.”

“All these years, I’ve been looking for any trace of Yunsong, always leaving the address of the family compound. I was scared that if someone had news, they wouldn’t be able to reach me.”

With the way Chen Ju was, and considering Qiao Laiwang wasn’t much better, if she really divorced, no one in the Qiao family would inform her of anything about Qiao Yunsong. In fact, Chen Yubing had no doubt—if money were needed to search for Yunsong, Chen Ju would definitely refuse to give any and might even block Qiao Laiwang from spending.

So all these years, Chen Yubing endured in silence.

Qiao Xinyi immediately understood the kind of hardship and cold indifference her mother had faced in the Qiao household. How she coped with Chen Ju’s unreasonable behavior with cold detachment—never arguing, never engaging. How she ignored Qiao Laiwang’s cluelessness and lack of sense, because simply going to work every day and making money had already taken up almost all of her energy.

The rest of her energy went into feeding and clothing her children, and into searching for the missing Yunsong.

These responsibilities had already exhausted her. They had wrung her dry of any energy left for herself.

She couldn’t afford to collapse—didn’t dare to collapse.

So she had no choice but to prop herself up like this, to keep going like this, to struggle just to play the role of a mother as best she could.

It was the only identity she could still hold on to in this world.

A mother who just wanted to give her children a bit of shelter.

In this era, for some people, just surviving already took everything they had.

So no one could blame Chen Yubing for not living more freely, or more perfectly.