Dawn was just breaking.
Gray light filtered through the paper window, and the courtyard was already stirring with the noises of early morning. Across the way, old man Liu’s family clattered their slop bucket, blending with the pungent, sulfurous reek of the neighbor’s newly lit beehive coal stove. The smells drifted right through the cracks in the door.
Zhang Guifang stood outside the bridal room with a pair of bloodshot eyes, clutching a stiff broom handle, radiating pure murder.
The scene from last night was like a splinter lodged deep in her lungs. That hooligan of a son of hers—who had never lifted a finger to right a tipped soy sauce bottle his entire life—had actually squatted on the ground to wash a woman’s feet!
Zhang Guifang had ridden roughshod over the machinery factory compound for the better part of her life; when had she ever swallowed such an insult? If she didn’t establish her authority right this second, the whole roof of the Huo household was going to flip over!
Bang!
Guifang kicked open the wooden door without a single shred of politeness. The two thin door panels slammed against the mud wall, sending a flurry of dust showering down from the ceiling.
Inside the room, Jingye was already awake.
With his hands pillowed behind his head, his head turned sideways, he was staring right at the woman tucked into the red quilt beside him.
Qingwan slept very quietly.
There was none of the heavy snoring or tooth-grinding typical of the rough wives in the compound. She was curled into a tiny ball, leaving only half of her pale, palm-sized face exposed. The morning light caught on her fluttering long eyelashes, and a fine sheen of perspiration dotted the tip of her nose.
As Jingye watched, his Adam’s apple couldn’t help bobbing up and down. He was just pondering slipping out to the black market later to scrounge up a couple of catties of old hen to stew a nourishing soup for her to recover from yesterday’s blood loss.
Then his dear mother kicked the door in.
“What time do you think it is, still playing dead in here?!”
Guifang swept into the room like a black whirlwind, slamming the broom handle heavily onto the brick floor.
“The sun’s already hitting the doorframe! Do you still think you’re some pampered young miss of the Su family?”
Jingye snapped upright, his brows locking into a tight knot. Reflexively, he reached out to grab the edge of the quilt, covering Qingwan’s bare, rounded shoulders tightly.
“Ma, did you swallow a gun this morning? What are you kicking the door for?!”
He dropped his voice into a low growl, like a wolf whose territory had just been violated.
Seeing the protective, mother-hen way her son hovered over the girl made Guifang’s anger flare into an inferno.
“What gun did I swallow? I swallowed a bellyful of humiliation!”
She extended a thick, stubby finger, pointing it straight at Qingwan on the bed.
“The Huo family doesn’t feed lazy freeloaders! What kind of new bride sleeps until the middle of the morning on her very first day? Get your lazy tail out of that bed right now!”
“Go light the beehive coal stove in the yard, boil a pot of cornmeal porridge, and then scrub every single piece of dirty laundry in those two big tubs out front!”
In the state-run residential compounds of this era, a mother-in-law laying down the law for a new bride was completely natural. Doing the laundry, cooking the meals, and emptying the nightsoil chamber were all standard duties for the eldest daughter-in-law.
In reality, Qingwan had woken up the moment the door was kicked open.
Keeping her eyes closed, she listened to Guifang’s machine-gun-like orders and let out a cold laugh in her heart. Light the stove? Scrub two massive tubs of laundry? The hands that would eventually grow calloused in her past life were destined to be pampered with imported vanishing cream in this one. Nobody was going to make her touch a drop of freezing water.
Qingwan’s eyelashes fluttered as she slowly opened her tear-misted eyes.
Instead of throwing a tantrum or bursting into tears like the other women in the compound who barked back at their mothers-in-law, she sluggishly peeled back the blanket.
The thin, red-patterned cotton wedding tunic hung off her frail shoulders, making her neck look blindingly white.
“Ma, please don’t be angry. I’ll go right now…”
Her voice was terribly hoarse, carrying that sleepy, sweet fragility laced with an air of absolute, pathetic submissiveness.
Jingye snatched her wrist.
“Go where?! It’s freezing out there, and that water is ice cold. You’ll catch your death of pneumonia!”
He whipped his head around to glare at his mother, his tone packed with impatience.
“Don’t we have a sister-in-law in this house? Why should all the heavy, dirty labor fall on my wife?”
Guifang’s lips trembled with rage.
“You little ingrate, you take a wife and forget your mother! Your sister-in-law is pregnant! If she doesn’t work the moment she crosses the threshold, do you expect these old bones of mine to wait on her hand and foot?”
Qingwan gently shook off Jingye’s grip.
Keeping her head down, she stepped out onto the freezing, bone-chilling cement floor with her bare, porcelain-white feet.
The moment she stood straight, her brows snapped together, and her complexion instantly turned as pale as paper.
“Cough, cough, cough…”
Clutching her chest, she broke into a violent fit of coughing, her shoulders shivering like fallen leaves in an autumn gale. Her legs seemed drained of all strength, wobbling limply as she started to tilt sideways.
“Qingwan!”
Jingye’s heart gave a violent squeeze. He didn’t even bother putting on shoes, leaping straight off the bed barefoot. With a long reach of his arms, he scooped up and securely cradled the fragile figure against his chest.
Pressing his palm against her back through the thin fabric, he could distinctly feel the slight ridge of her shoulder blades.
She was too thin.
It felt like a little extra pressure would snap her in two.
Leaning instinctively into his broad chest, Qingwan took ragged, heavy breaths. She tightly clutched the lapels of Jingye’s shirt, her fingertips turning an unnatural, bluish-white.
“Husband… my chest hurts…”
She raised her head, tears trembling on the edge of her lashes, looking up at the man with heart-wrenching pity.
“I’m useless. I can’t even stand steady—how am I supposed to light the stove or scrub clothes for Ma…”
Her voice was as thin as a thread, grinding like a dull blade against the tenderest part of Jingye’s heart.
Standing nearby, Guifang watched with her jaw practically unhinged.
“Acting! Keep right on acting! Didn’t you have the energy to throw a hanging tantrum in the courtyard yesterday? Now you’re out of breath just taking two steps?”
Guifang raised the broom in her hand, making a threatening move forward.
“Today I’m going to beat some sense into your lazy bones!”
Terrified, Qingwan shrank deep into Jingye’s embrace. Biting her bloodless lower lip, she finally let the tears spill over.
Hot droplets splashed onto the back of Jingye’s hand, burning him so intensely that every muscle in his body instantly locked up.
“Ma, go ahead and beat me. It’s all my fault.”
Weeping, Qingwan tossed out a fresh batch of manipulative bait.
“It’s my broken body that doesn’t deserve the Huo family’s threshold. I don’t even have the fortune to cook a breakfast for my elders.”
She reached out with her delicate hands, gently pushing against Jingye’s hard chest.
“Jingye, don’t get on Ma’s bad side because of me. Before the neighborhood finds out, let’s just go down to the neighborhood committee and get a divorce today.”
“Take your bride price back, and find a sturdy girl who can do farmwork to take good care of Ma…”
Every single sentence hit directly on Jingye’s triggers.
Divorce?
Send her back to that educated youth surnamed Shen?!
In his dreams!
Jingye’s eyes instantly flushed red, the veins on his forehead throbbing violently. He scooped Qingwan up horizontally, carefully laying her back onto the bed before wrapping her securely in the quilt from head to toe.
“Divorce my ass! You’re the only one I’m ever acknowledging as my wife!”
He whipped around, blocking the front of the bed like a fierce deity of war, glaring down at his own mother.
“Comrade Zhang Guifang, I’m laying it out clear today!”
He used her full name—the exact battle posture he usually took right before getting into a street brawl.
“I, Huo Jingye, took a wife to cherish and protect! Not to fetch and carry for your Huo family as a maid or a servant!”
Guifang sucked in a sharp breath, dropping the broom handle to the floor with a loud clatter.
“You… what did you just call me? You’d dare roar at your own mother for some outsider?!”
“She’s not an outsider! She’s Huo Jingye’s woman!”
Straightening his broad spine, Jingye pointed past his mother toward the two tubs of dirty water outside.
“Nobody to wash the clothes? I’ll wash them!”
“Nobody to light the stove? I’ll light it!”
Sticking out his chin, he swept a fierce, menacing gaze across Guifang’s stunned face.
“From now on, I’m taking over all the chores in this house! If anyone dares let my wife touch a single drop of cold water, I’ll tear this whole compound down!”
Every word rang with iron force, echoing off the ground.
Tucked safely inside her quilt, Qingwan curled the corners of her lips upward. Watching the man’s broad, heroic back, a flicker of appreciation crossed her eyes.
The combat power of this neighborhood bully certainly didn’t disappoint.
This meal ticket wasn’t just high-performance; it even came with stellar after-sales service.
Guifang was shaken to the core by this unfilial audacity. Raising a trembling hand, she pointed right at her son’s nose.
“You’ve lost your mind… you’ve really let some vixen bewitch you!”
A sudden stifled pressure seized her chest, making her vision swim with black spots. A breath caught in her throat, refusing to go up or down.
“Oh lord—what kind of sins did I commit in my past life…”
Clutching her chest, Guifang’s legs went weak. Tumbling backward, she slid down the door frame until she hit the floor, slapping her thighs and wailing at the top of her lungs.
“I don’t want to live anymore! Raised an ungrateful wolf for twenty years, and the moment he takes a wife he forgets his mother!”
That piercing wail instantly sliced through the quiet morning air of the compound.
The houses in the workers’ residential area were squeezed tightly together; let out the slightest peep in one home, and the entire courtyard heard it loud and clear. Let alone the factory director’s wife sitting on the floor throwing a full-blown tantrum.
Within moments…
Rustling footsteps began to ripple from outside the courtyard wall.
Beyond the waist-high mud wall of the Huo family courtyard, a neat row of heads suddenly popped up.
Li Hong梅, the wife of the neighboring workshop director, was still holding a rinsing mug with foam all over her mouth, craning her neck as far as it could go.
Auntie Liu from the neighborhood committee hadn’t even taken off her apron, standing perched on a brick with a pair of eyes glowing with excited greed.
All the other neighborly aunties who lived for gossip snapped their mouths shut in perfect synchronization, pricking up their ears. The lush, thriving luffa vines trailing along the top of the wall were being ruthlessly crushed flat by the crowd of spectators.
“Look, look! I told you that new bride wasn’t going to be a quiet one,” Li Hongmei whispered, her voice practically dripping with malicious glee.
“The Huo family is in for a real show now. The little tyrant protects his own, and the old lady is stubborn as a mule. There’ll be no shortage of fireworks around here from now on.”
Outside, the audience’s eyes shone like searchlights.
Inside, Jingye irritably raked a hand through his hair, bending down to pick up the broom from the floor as he prepared to tackle those two massive tubs of laundry.
Just as he turned, his peripheral vision caught sight of Qingwan on the bed.
She was nestled obediently in the quilt, a pair of clear, innocent eyes staring at him with undisguised tenderness and heartache.
The lingering irritation in Jingye’s heart vanished completely in an instant.
He silently swore an oath to himself: even if he scrubbed the skin right off his hands today, he was never going to let his wife suffer a single grievance.