Afternoon sunlight spilled through the lattice window into the west room, where Liu Yu’er curled up on the kang, clutching the rattle Qin Xiaoman had given her, fast asleep. The corners of her mouth turned upward slightly as if she were having a pleasant dream, and her eyelashes occasionally fluttered gently, resembling two resting butterflies.
Qin Zhan sat on the doorstep with his back to the room, silently watching Zhang Guilan bustling about the courtyard.
She was cleaning up the bowls and chopsticks left from lunch with brisk movements, and she still found time to bark orders at third-brother Qin to chop wood and Qin Xiaoman to feed the chickens. The entire courtyard was kept in immaculate order by her, as bustling as a never-ending play.
“Eldest,” Zhang Guilan suddenly called out, “come inside.”
Qin Zhan stood up and walked into the main room.
Zhang Guilan was standing beside the kang, her back turned to him.
Her voice was lowered, as if she were restraining something: “Your wife, is she…”
She paused, seemingly searching for the right words.
“Is she a bit slow in the head?”
Qin Zhan fell silent.
Zhang Guilan turned around, her expression a complex mixture of heartache, anger, and a sense of grievance at being kept in the dark.
“I felt something was off during lunch,” she said. “The way she looks at people isn’t right, and the way she talks isn’t right either. She’s so slow, like…”
She bit her lip, “Like a little child.”
“Mother—”
“Don’t call me mother!” Zhang Guilan’s voice suddenly shot up, the rims of her eyes turning red. “Qin Zhan, tell me the truth! Did you buy an idiot to bring back home?”
Qin Zhan stood in place, silent for a long time.
“Yes,” he said.
This single word fell like a stone into a calm lake, stirring up a thousand ripples.
Zhang Guilan’s face instantly flushed red, her chest heaving violently.
She slammed a hand down on the table, causing the teacup to bounce up with a clatter and splash tea all over the surface.
“Qin Zhan! Have you lost your mind?!”
Her voice was sharp enough to nearly blow the roof off. Even third-brother Qin, out in the courtyard chopping wood, paused and craned his neck to peer inside.
“Such a big matter, and you didn’t consult the family? Do you still have me, your mother, in your eyes? Do you still have your father?”
In the inner room, Father Qin began to cough, trying to say something, but choking so hard he couldn’t get the words out.
“Don’t you know what kind of situation you’re in? You’re twenty-two! Your older sister’s dowry, your father’s medicine money, your two younger brothers’ food rations—our whole family depends on you! Other girls wouldn’t dare marry you no matter what anyone says! And now that you’ve finally managed to take a wife—”
Zhang Guilan’s voice carried a crying tone. “You’re eight feet tall, full of strength, and handsome to boot; why couldn’t you find a normal wife?! Mother knows our family has been a burden to you! When you brought a wife back, Mother was happy! Mother was beyond happy! But what about you? You bring an idiot home? Are you trying to drive me to my grave?”
As she spoke, tears began to flow, and she viciously wiped them away with her sleeve.
“How—how could you think of this? Huh? You’re a grown man making a living by hunting; she can’t do anything—how do you expect her to live her life with you? What happens if you have children in the future, what happens to the kids?”
Qin Zhan said not a single word, leaving her to scold him.
Back when Qin Zhan had just turned eighteen, finding a match had been difficult because of the family’s heavy burdens. Father Qin and Zhang Guilan had proposed splitting the family household, but Qin Zhan refused… The next day, before dawn broke, he headed up into the mountains. When he came back down, he bore a scar on his face and had brought down a black bear…
Zhang Guilan had cried until her heart felt broken, and from then on, she never brought up splitting the household again…
A faint rustling sound came from the west room.
Liu Yu’er had been woken up by the noise.
Dazed, she sat up, not knowing what was happening, only hearing that the auntie outside who was so nice to her—no, mother, Qin Zhan said that was his mother—raising her voice and speaking very fiercely, sounding as if she were scolding someone.
She grew scared.
Carefully climbing down from the kang, she stood barefoot on the chilly floor, walked over to the door, and peered out through a crack in the wooden panels.
Zhang Guilan stood with her back to her, her shoulders trembling with anger. Qin Zhan stood opposite her, expressionless, but his jaw tightly clenched.
“I’m telling you, Qin Zhan,” Zhang Guilan lowered her voice, but every single word was as sharp as a knife, “tomorrow you’re sending her back! Those five taels of silver and that wild boar—we in the Qin family will just take it as a loss! I’ll go find Matchmaker Wang and arrange a different match for her—”
“No.”
Qin Zhan’s voice wasn’t loud, but it stood like a solid wall, abruptly cutting off Zhang Guilan’s words.
Zhang Guilan froze.
Qin Zhan raised his head to look at his mother, a look in his eyes she had never seen before.
“No,” he repeated, his voice softer, yet all the more resolute.
“You—”
“Mother,” Qin Zhan interrupted, “she wasn’t born this way.”
Zhang Guilan faltered.
Qin Zhan took a deep breath, his voice rumbling low from his chest like muffled thunder: “She wasn’t stupid when she was little. When she was six, her stepmother pushed her. Her head was split open, and she bled a lot. Her father didn’t have money to hire a doctor, so the wound healed on its own, and she became simple-minded.”
The room fell silent.
So quiet that one could hear Father Qin’s suppressed coughs from the inner room, the clucking of chickens pecking for food in the courtyard, and the nervous, tiny breaths of Liu Yu’er behind the west room door.
The anger on Zhang Guilan’s face slowly faded away, replaced by a complex, indescribable expression.
“She was sold by her stepmother,” Qin Zhan continued, his tone as flat as if he were speaking of someone else’s affairs. “Five taels of silver, sold to the Spring Breeze Brothel. Her younger brother knelt on the ground and kowtowed until his head bled, begging her father not to sell her.”
He raised his head and looked at Zhang Guilan.
“If I hadn’t gone, she’d already be in a brothel by now.”
Zhang Guilan’s lips trembled slightly.
“The doctor said her condition isn’t congenital; there’s a blood clot pressing on her brain. As long as we find a good doctor, use acupuncture and medicine to disperse the clot, there’s a chance she can recover.”
Qin Zhan said, “If the town can’t cure her, I’ll go to the county seat; if the county seat can’t cure her, I’ll go to the prefecture. The money I’ve saved from hunting is enough to pay for her medical treatment.”
He looked at Zhang Guilan, softening his voice with a hint of pleading: “Mother, she isn’t an idiot; she was harmed by others. She’s just… not well yet.”
Zhang Guilan stood there, her lips twitching a few times. She wanted to say something, but not a single word came out.
She turned around and walked over to the stove, her back facing Qin Zhan, her shoulders twitching.
After a long while, she violently blew her nose, wiped her hands on her apron, and turned back around. Her eye sockets were as red as a rabbit’s, yet she still refused to let up with her sharp tongue: “You—you stubborn brat, if it was such a big deal, why didn’t you say so earlier…”
Qin Zhan didn’t speak.
Zhang Guilan scolded him again: “Who do you think you are? Guanyin Bodhisattva? A savior of the suffering? Carrying everything on your own shoulders, do you think you’re made of iron?”
The more she spoke, the angrier she got. She walked over, delivered another sharp, crisp slap to Qin Zhan’s arm.
“You’re twenty-eight! Not eighteen! How can you still be so reckless when doing things? You bought her back, but do you know anything about her? Do you know what kind of illness she has? How could you dare bring her home?”
Qin Zhan took the hit without flinching a muscle.
Zhang Guilan raised her hand to strike a second time, but halfway up, she saw Qin Zhan pull something out from his tunic.
It was a small silver bracelet, already blackened, carved with rough patterns. At a glance, it was the handiwork of a rural silversmith and wasn’t worth much.
“This is the dowry her mother left her,” Qin Zhan said. “Her younger brother hid it for two years to keep her stepmother from searching it out. He handed it to me yesterday, asking me to take good care of her.”
She stared at the blackened silver bracelet for a long time, then plopped down onto a stool, covering her face and weeping.
“What a sin…” She shook all over as she cried. “Such a good girl, ruined like this by that vicious woman… If her mother could see this from beneath the earth, how heartbroken would she be…”
In the inner room, Father Qin’s coughing stopped. After a moment, his hoarse, aged voice drifted out: “Guilan, stop crying. Eldest son did the right thing.”
Zhang Guilan snapped her head up and shouted toward the inner room: “What right thing? If he’s right, then I’ve become the bad guy, is that it? I’m worried about him! He hunts alone in the mountains, with no one to care for him or warm his bed! He finally manages to take a wife, and she’s a… she’s…”
She couldn’t go on and burst into tears again.
Qin Zhan squatted down, meeting Zhang Guilan at eye level.
“Mother,” he said softly, “she isn’t stupid. She’s going to get better.”
Zhang Guilan looked at him through tear-blurred eyes.
“Besides,” Qin Zhan’s lips twitched into an almost imperceptible curve, “she’s very easy to feed.”
Enraged and amused by his remark, Zhang Guilan smacked him on the head: “Easy to feed, easy to feed, that’s all you know! What if she never gets better? Are you going to support her for the rest of your life?”
Qin Zhan stood up, his tone as flat as if he were discussing the weather.
“If I have to support her for a lifetime, then I’ll support her for a lifetime.”
Zhang Guilan looked at her taciturn son and suddenly noticed his eyes. Those eyes—which she had always assumed were only cold and sharp—were currently gazing toward the western room with a tenderness that was beyond words.
Following his gaze, she froze.
The door to the western room was cracked open, and Liu Yu’er was poking half her head out from the gap. Barefoot on the icy floor, her two hands gripping the doorframe, she looked like a startled little animal, timidly watching them.
She didn’t know when she had woken up, nor how much she had overheard. Her face was covered in tears, large droplets rolling down one after another, yet she bit her lower lip so hard she didn’t make a single sound.
Zhang Guilan’s heart gave a sudden, painful wrench.