“A genuine leather sofa?”
Those four words dropped into the dim air of the bridal chamber and left Huo Jingye completely stunned.
His hand, holding the red double-happiness enamel basin, froze in midair. The warm water inside sloshed, sending concentric ripples spreading outward.
In Jiangcheng in 1985, an ordinary factory worker busting their back for a full month made thirty-something yuan at most. A genuine leather sofa was a rare, high-end luxury item. In all of Jiangcheng, the only set on display was sitting in the first-floor window of the largest department store downtown. It had a price tag of over two thousand yuan, and buying it required a stack of overseas remittance coupons that money alone couldn’t buy.
Forget about the neighbors in the residential compound—even his old man, the factory director Huo Jianguo, sat on a beat-up wicker chair in his office.
Huo Jingye’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down a couple of times. His hands, more accustomed to gripping bricks and steel pipes, instinctively patted his military-green trouser pockets. They were completely empty, not even a copper coin for rolling tobacco to be found.
Normally, if one of his buddies had dared to throw out such an outrageous demand, he would have slapped the back of their head and barked, “The hell are you dreaming about, eating dog shit?”
But right now, the person making the demand was his wife.
She was the delicate wife who had coughed up blood for his sake just yesterday, and who was right now curled up on a hard wooden bed, rubbing her aching waist.
A man’s damned self-esteem flared up like gasoline tossed on a fire.
“We’ll buy it!”
Huo Jingye slammed the enamel basin down onto the chipped nightstand. He stiffened his neck, puffed out his chest, and aggressively wiped his large hands down his trouser legs.
“What’s a simple sofa? As soon as I get my hands on the coupons in a couple of days, I’ll hire a three-wheeled flatbed and haul it straight back for you!”
The declaration sounded thunderous, but his backing was as hollow as a winded accordion.
Leaning against the headboard, Su Qingwan watched the man put on his stubborn, die-hard-pride act, and she almost couldn’t hold back her laughter. She understood street lords of his age inside and out. They were aggressively poor, and their pride mattered more to the heavens. Poke holes in the reality that his pockets were emptier than his face, and he’d fly into a rage and flip the table. Go along with him, stroke his ego, and he’d risk his life to carve out a future for you.
“Hubert… husband, you’re amazing.”
Su Qingwan extended a pale, dainty hand, lightly tugging at the cuff of his floral shirt and shaking it with a kitten-like motion. Her voice was so soft and sweet it practically melted, making half of Huo Jingye’s body go tingly and numb.
He took the cue and plopped down on the edge of the bed, his back held ramrod straight, letting her tug on his sleeve.
“Though, there’s no need to rush about the sofa.”
Su Qingwan pivoted, her mist-filled eyes locked straight onto him. “I heard the older sisters-in-law in the compound saying that once a woman gets married, she has to work like an ox or a horse. You have to get up at the crack of dawn to light the stove, wash clothes, wait on your parents-in-law, and toil away in the fields.”
She sniffled, the corners of her eyes flushing with a wronged tint. “They call that being a virtuous and dutiful wife.”
When Huo Jingye heard those four words, his brows instantly knotted into a tight frown. He had a crystal-clear view of what married women in the compound were like.
Take Li Hongmei next door—hardly past thirty, her face already looked like a greasy yellow rag from coal smoke, and when she got into a shouting match, her spit could fly two meters. Then there was the wife of old Zhang’s family in the front row, whose hands were constantly chapped raw from scrubbing laundry until they felt like sandpaper, so rough even old Zhang complained they scratched him at night.
He looked down at Su Qingwan.
Her palm-sized face was as fair and tender as a peeled chicken egg, her fingers so slender they seemed translucent, and she carried a faint, lingering scent of soap.
If a fragile porcelain doll like her turned into someone like Li Hongmei…
Huo Jingye shuddered violently and shook his head over and over.
“Bullshit! Whoever wants to be a virtuous drudge can go right ahead!”
He grabbed Su Qingwan’s hand, his movement rough, but his grip remarkably gentle, terrified he might snap her bones. “My woman doesn’t have to do any of that dirty work!”
Hook, line, and sinker.
A flash of cunning glinted in the depths of Su Qingwan’s eyes as she continued to guide him along step by step.
“But if I don’t do any work, people are going to laugh at you. They’ll say you married an ancestral deity just to wait on her hand and foot, and that you’ve got no spine.”
“Let ’em try!”
Huo Jingye looked like a wolf whose tail had been stepped on, his eyes bulging wide. “Whoever dares to run their mouth, I’ll go tear it open! I want to spoil her myself, what the hell business is it of theirs?”
“Husband, you can’t always solve problems with fistfights.”
Su Qingwan leaned forward, gently resting against his broad shoulder. A soft, fragrant wave washed over him, leaving Huo Jingye frozen in place, slowing his breathing to a crawl.
“A woman is like a delicate flower. If you plant her in the mud to suffer through the wind and sun, she turns into a wilted vegetable leaf.”
Su Qingwan’s warm breath brushed against his neck, causing his Adam’s apple to bob uncontrollably. “If you raise her in a greenhouse and feed her well, she’ll bloom bright and gorgeous. Taking her out gives face to you as the man of the house, doesn’t it?”
Huo Jingye’s brain spun sluggishly through a tangle of thoughts, catching up to her logic a beat late.
Taking his wife out to save face?
He recalled the New Year’s party hosted by the factory. Those leading cadres’ wives, each wearing Dacron skirts, sitting in the front row cracking melon seeds—talk about looking prestigious. If he walked out with a glowing, snow-white Su Qingwan by his side, wouldn’t his single-guy brothers’ eyes turn green with envy?
“Right!”
Huo Jingye slapped his thigh, deciding his wife’s words were absolute truth.
“So,” Su Qingwan smoothly lifted her head, her finger lightly drawing circles against his muscular chest, “women are meant to be pampered, and men are meant to make money. I’ll take care of looking gorgeous and giving you face, and you take care of earning the living outside.”
“We call this: men rule the outside, women rule the inside.”
This rebellious line of reasoning utterly subverted traditional 1980s marital values. If the old fogies in charge of ideological work at the factory office heard this, they’d undoubtedly call a mass criticism meeting.
But to a wild wolf like Huo Jingye who had never been tamed by conventional rules, it felt like a lightning bolt cleanly splitting open his skull.
He rubbed his stubbly chin, two fires blazing deep within his dark eyes.
I run the show outside and bring home the bacon. Back home, I’ve got a delicate, sweet-scented wife waiting to pour me tea and whisper sweet nothings.
Now that was the kind of life a real man was meant to live! Why the hell should he, Huo Jingye, act like those spineless cowards who sought validation by oppressing their wives?
“Wife, you are making total sense!”
Excitedly, Huo Jingye threw his arm around her shoulder, grinning from ear to ear. “Don’t you worry about the money. Jiangcheng’s huge—it’s not like I’m going to starve! Once I make big bucks, forget the genuine leather sofa, I’ll buy you a massive color TV and imported vanishing cream, and I’ll treat you like an empress dowager!”
A man’s protective instincts and self-esteem ballooned to unprecedented heights in that exact moment.
Su Qingwan beamed with joy. This stubborn boulder had finally been whittled down and tamed by her soft blade. In an era where everyone was shouting slogans about “arduous simplicity” and “making sacrifices,” she, Su Qingwan, was determined to be a lady of leisure who never lifted a finger.
Rumble—
A thoroughly ill-timed stomach growl echoed awkwardly through the quiet room.
Su Qingwan clutched her belly, a rare blush creeping up the tips of her ears.
“Hungry?”
Far from teasing her, Huo Jingye looked at her with pure heartache as he stood up. He walked over to the chipped wooden table and lifted the enamel bowl covering it.
Inside sat two plump, white meat buns, still trailing wisps of heat. He had sprinted over to the factory cafeteria bright and early that morning, pulling rank as the director’s son to snatch the very first batch right out from under the serving lady’s ladle.
Lining a piece of oil paper underneath, he carefully carried them over to the bedside.
“Dig in. They’re all pure meat filling, and I even had Auntie Pang add an extra ladle of sesame oil.”
Su Qingwan was genuinely starving. From being forced into marriage yesterday until now, she hadn’t even had a sip of hot water. Taking the bun, she parted her lips and took a gentle bite.
Rich meat juices instantly flooded her mouth, and the savory aroma of pork and scallions exploded across her taste buds. Pork in the eighties didn’t taste like commercial feed; it was raised purely on grain, making it so fragrant people could practically swallow their tongues along with it.
Before she knew it, a drop of oil slipped down the corner of her mouth, threatening to ruin the clean quilt cover.
Huo Jingye’s reflexes were lightning fast. His rough hand reached out immediately, catching the drop of oil steady. Without a second thought, he wiped his hand on his trousers, grabbed the thermos off the table, and poured half a cup of hot water into an empty mug.
“Eat slow, nobody’s rushing you. Don’t choke.”
Holding out the water cup, he stared fixedly as she ate, his gaze mirroring that of someone inspecting a rare, priceless treasure.
Su Qingwan felt a bit self-conscious under his intense scrutiny. Though she had encountered all sorts of people through business in her past life, she had never run into such pure, blazing intensity.
The atmosphere between them suddenly shifted into something strangely warm and cozy. Sunlight filtered through the paper windows, dancing across floating dust specks; the quiet passage of time made it look like a painting.
Just as Huo Jingye was debating whether to seize the lovely mood and kiss his wife’s oil-smudged cheek—
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Someone violently hammered on the large iron courtyard gate. The force rattled the frame so hard that rust flakes rained down in clumps.
Huo Jingye’s brow twisted instantly, the romantic spell completely shattered by the banging. He stood up, strode toward the door, and let his murderous aura rush back to the surface.
Before he could even open his mouth to curse, a self-righteous, slightly aggrieved, and thoroughly pompous male voice rang out from beyond the gate:
“Qingwan! Come out here!”
“Have you really fallen so low that you’re going to marry a hoodlum like Huo Jingye?!”
Hearing that voice, the savory bite of meat bun in Su Qingwan’s mouth suddenly turned completely tasteless.
The delicate fragility in her eyes vanished in an instant, replaced by a gaze as cold as driven snow.
That good-for-nothing educated youth from her past life—the one who had sucked her dry and later wrapped his arms around his mistress while mocking her for looking like a yellow-faced hag—Shen Shuwen, had come here to court death.