“Your senior brother’s absolutely right—they’re just picking on you! What a bunch of shameless lot!”
Su Ying munched on pistachios whilst chatting idly with Fa Caicai in the game’s voice chat room.
Before Su Ying lay a large platter of dried fruits—pistachios, dried apricots, and cashews—along with a small dish containing premium imported cherries and fragrant blueberries.
Back in the day, she’d never had such luxuries for the New Year. Her festive snacks used to consist of five packets of Chacha sunflower seeds bought on Taobao and a small box of mandarin oranges for 19.8 yuan.
In truth, it had been two or three days since the incident, and she had calmed down considerably; she was now able to recount it to others as if it were mere gossip.
Chewing on a cherry, she had to admit that whilst these air-freighted cherries bought online were a bit pricey, they were certainly fresher than the sea-freighted ones sold loose in the supermarket for 39.9 yuan per jin.
Fa Cài Cài continued, still indignant: “Although I do think your senior brother acted rather shabbily in the past, you really must listen to him this time, otherwise you’ll end up just like me—”
Fa Cài Cài suddenly stopped mid-sentence, but Su Ying caught it instantly; she opened her mouth to ask more, then closed it again.
Everyone has their own secrets and struggles; they were merely online acquaintances, and she shouldn’t pry too deeply into others’ lives.
Fa Cai Cai sighed and quickly changed the subject: “Besides, you’ve never looked after an elderly person confined to bed; that’s simply not something a young girl like you could handle. Eating, drinking, going to the toilet—all in bed. Just changing a nappy every day is as exhausting as walking two miles, and that’s only if the old person cooperates. Old people who’ve been bedridden for a long time tend to have somewhat unhealthy mental states; their mouths are like they’ve been smeared with poison, spewing every kind of vile abuse. If their hands still work, it’s even more terrifying—they might suddenly slap you across the face or yank your hair when you get close. Don’t be fooled by how frail she looks—she’s got a hell of a lot of strength.”
Su Ying, listening nearby, was already completely dumbfounded.
Fa Caicai concluded, “So if you’ve got the money, send them to a care home if you can, or hire a carer. It’s true what they say: ‘No son remains devoted when his parent is bedridden for too long.’”
Su Ying fell silent, hesitating for a long moment before whispering, “But wouldn’t that… be a bit… unfilial?”
After all, tradition dictates that parents raise their children when they are young, and children care for their parents in their old age.
Fa Cai Cai snorted derisively: “Children are so easy to look after—they’re so small. Take bathing, for instance: washing a child is as easy as washing a carrot. Can you say the same for an elderly person? “Try lifting a hundred jin with your bare hands! An elderly person bedridden is as heavy as a dead pig. Besides, children grow up—there’s hope. At most, you’d only have to look after them until they’re one or two years old; even if they’re pampered city kids, it’d only be until they’re six or seven. But an old person might outlive you—it’s a hopelessness that stretches on forever!”
“Yingying!” Fa Caicai advised her from experience, “Don’t play the saint. Once you get involved in this sort of thing, you can’t shake it off. It’ll haunt you for the rest of your life and ruin it. Don’t count on your uncles and aunts having a shred of conscience—if they did, they wouldn’t put a young girl like you through this.”
Su Ying remained silent, her mind suddenly flooded with the image of her grandmother’s gaze when she’d seen her—a look that seemed almost like a plea for help. But had that waving hand been a cry for help, or, as Fa Caicai suggested, a warning that she was about to be slapped?
“Still, your eldest uncle and the rest of them are a right lot of shrewd ones,” Fa Caicai muttered.
“Eh?” Su Ying was at a loss.
Fa Cai Cai explained, “Out here in our mountain village, hiring a carer to look after an elderly person who can’t look after themselves 24 hours a day costs over four thousand, and you might not even find one. Let alone here in the city—it’d easily be six or seven thousand, or even seven or eight thousand, wouldn’t it? And yet your uncle and his lot actually thought they could fob you off with just three thousand. I reckon they just think nursing homes are too expensive, so they’ve set their sights on you. What a pair of shrewd old foxes!”
Are carers really that expensive?
Su Ying suddenly felt a bit uneasy. If she were to take a nasty fall in her old age and end up bedridden, the cost of a carer alone would be a fortune. Would her lottery winnings really be enough to see her through?
Su Ying asked that question again: “Facaicai, how much do you reckon you’d need to be able to just lie back and relax?”
“Hmm…” Facaicai thought about it seriously, then said, “500,000 yuan, I suppose! Once I’ve saved up 500,000, I won’t have to grind away at this high-intensity grind to make money like I do now. I’ll be able to relax a bit.”
“Only 500,000?” Su Ying looked a bit incredulous. How could it be so low?
“What’s wrong with 500,000?” Fa Caicai snapped. “You know we farmers here work from dawn till dusk all year round. After deducting the cost of seeds, pesticides and fertiliser, our net earnings for the year don’t even reach 10,000. To save 500,000, we’d have to go without food or drink for 50 years! It’s not like in your Chun City—oh, the Great Plains—where everything’s mechanised. Ordinary folk just lease their land to contractors, and of course the contractors make a profit. Back in the day, they’d have been landlords, wouldn’t they?”
That does seem to make sense.
“Is that enough?”
“Why wouldn’t it be enough?” Fa Caicai ran the numbers for Su Ying. “It’s just me and my mum, and that includes her medicine and pad costs. On average, it works out to just over a thousand a month. But thanks to the good policies these days, my mum gets a minimum living allowance, and with the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme, hospital visits cost next to nothing, and there’s a subsidy for medicines too.”
Facaicai began to paint a rosy picture of the future: “I’ve been paying into the top-tier pension scheme every year. Once I retire at 60, I’ll get nearly a thousand a month – that’ll be enough for me. Plus, I’ve got 500,000 in savings, which is enough for medical bills. With the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme, hospital visits won’t cost much, and I can even hire a carer to look after me during critical times.”
Facaicai sighed: “Mind you, if I were to suffer the misfortune of ending up paralysed like my mum, there’d be nothing to be done. I’d just have to bite the dust.”
Despite the gravity of the subject, Facaicai spoke of it as though it were someone else’s affair, in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Oh, why are we talking about this?” Fa Caicai forced a cheerful tone to change the subject. “It’s just that whenever I’ve been on the verge of getting married, the moment they heard my mum was paralysed, they’d run off. And with over a decade having passed, you know how dreadful it is to be a bachelor in the countryside. Now I just want to live a quiet life on my own. ‘You’re different, though. You’re still young. Get married, have children—when you’re old, your kids will look after you.’
Su Ying gave a soft laugh. With her chaotic family background, she’d long since given up any hope of marriage. And then there was what had happened to her before…
Never mind. Being on her own wasn’t so bad.
“But it’s still hard to save 500,000, isn’t it?” Su Ying did the maths; based on her previous income and spending habits, it would likely take her over a decade to save that much.
Fa Caicai, however, grinned smugly: “Hehe, we’re already halfway through the Long March!”
“Ah!” Su Ying was taken aback.
Fa Caicai, however, was quite smug: “I saved a bit when I used to work at the factory. Although I spent it all later on my mum’s medical bills and buying this flat, I actually earned quite a bit working as a ‘hitman’ for the Gold Guild a few years back. Back then, at the start of the season, I could make over 10,000 a month—though that meant playing non-stop for 12 hours a day, which was absolutely exhausting. Later, after seeing someone drop dead suddenly, I washed my hands of it. Now, just chatting with you whilst playing casually like this, I’m happy with three or four thousand a month.”
Finally, Fa Cai’s tone turned serious: “But all joking aside, don’t ask me for a loan, alright? Talking about money ruins the atmosphere.”
Su Ying laughed upon hearing this, but her thoughts turned elsewhere.
When she’d just graduated and couldn’t find a decent job in Chun City, she’d also considered whether she should just grind in The Blade of Jianghu. Three or four thousand a month was easy to come by, and she wouldn’t have to answer to anyone or commute.
However, when she’d posted asking if it was feasible, the other players thought she was mad.
Firstly, they thought it was unstable—the game could shut down at any moment. Secondly, there was no social security or housing fund, so no job security. Thirdly, three or four thousand a month was far too low; you could earn more than that doing just about anything else.
Looking back now, however, the players’ arguments all had their limitations.
Take stability, for instance: her company had gone bust, yet the game was still going strong.
Take the lack of social insurance and housing fund: none of the jobs Su Ying had found offered these benefits. In fact, apart from the well-known ‘iron rice bowls’ and those household-name big companies, there were hardly any firms in Chuncheng that provided a housing fund, and small businesses that didn’t offer social insurance were a dime a dozen.
As for the salary being too low, Su Ying’s previous job had only paid 3,000.
Su Ying couldn’t help but think: experience really does count; Fa Caicai certainly has a much clearer grasp on life than she does.
After exchanging goodnights with Fa Caicai, Su Ying found herself unable to sleep.
With so many children, there was no way her grandmother would be neglected. Fa Caicai’s mother had Fa Caicai to look after her, but when Su Ying grew old, she would most likely be on her own.
A solitary old age…
It would be rather miserable, wouldn’t it?
Su Ying stared wide-eyed at the ceiling. But if she were to marry and have children simply to avoid a miserable old age, that wasn’t what she wanted either.
Perhaps she should be a bit more realistic. Having enjoyed the benefits of single life for decades, a bit of hardship in her old age would be her just deserts.
Su Ying opened her phone and began scrolling through social media. The platform seemed to read her mind, feeding her a steady stream of posts on topics like singleness, being older, old age and retirement.
A comic caught her eye.
“Dying Alone? How could a comic have a title like that? It sounds terrifying just looking at it!”
Though she muttered this under her breath, her fingers were already busily searching for the Chinese translation online.
The very first chapter delivered a brutal opening blow: the protagonist’s aunt had never married and died alone; indeed, having had no contact with the outside world for so long, by the time her body was discovered, it could no longer be described as human…
The art style was somewhat peculiar, even bordering on crude doodles in places, yet it retained the classic black-and-white aesthetic typical of Japanese manga.
Somehow, it managed to captivate Su Ying, and she ended up reading through the night.
In her entire 24 years of life, Su Ying had rarely stayed up all night; since starting work, every evening had become a precious commodity.
The sun was already high in the sky when Su Ying yawned; she felt she would drop dead if she didn’t get some sleep.
As she shut down her computer and lay down on the bed, she began to ponder the characters’ backstories.
The female lead came from a wealthy family, had a laid-back personality, and held an ordinary job. The male lead came from a poor background and needed student loans, yet he was a younger, puppy-like civil servant.
Huh? Why did this feel so familiar?
Compared to her and her senior, he had all the best traits of a male lead, whilst she’d been saddled with all the downsides.
Still, she wasn’t quite as unlucky as the male lead in the manga; her student loan was far smaller than his.
For some reason, Su Ying suddenly thought of her senior.
She rolled over and sent Su Jiayu a message: “ Senior, if I get old one day, could you send your children to visit me?”
Su Jiayu replied almost instantly: “?”
Su Ying thought for a moment; bringing children into her relationship with her senior was indeed a bit awkward, so she rephrased her question: “Senior, when I’m old and bedridden with a serious illness, could you come and give me some end-of-life care?”
What Su Ying really wanted to ask was whether he could help arrange her funeral, but she felt that might be a bit too much—after all, in the eyes of ordinary people, the dead are generally considered rather inauspicious.
Su Jiayu’s reply was a bit slow this time; Su Ying kept staring at the ‘The other person is typing…’ message at the top of the screen.
After a while, a message finally popped up:
“Get lost.”
Author’s Note: A little scene:
Su Ying lay in her coffin, surrounded by wreaths.
Su Jiayu, dressed in a black suit, stood paying his respects. A little girl beside him looked up and asked innocently, “Grandad, who is she?”
Su Jiayu wiped away a tear as he replied, “This is your old grandmother, Su Ying. Poor Grandma Su—not only did she die alone and in solitude, but her cause of death was actually sudden cardiac death from straining too hard whilst having a morning bowel movement. It’s a shame she didn’t even have time to wipe herself before she died…”
Su Ying was so furious she practically crawled out of the coffin: “I’m dead! Why on earth do I have to wipe my bottom now?! You’re expecting far too much from a dead person!!!”