The comments were all coming apart at the seams, while inside, Lin Muyan felt a secret thrill of satisfaction.
But she quickly calmed herself, she wasn’t about to let a single lump of gold go to her head.
The whole thing was too fantastical, part of her still didn’t believe it.
At age three she’d carried this wooden shovel almost every day, digging in the sandpit, even digging up earthworms and little bugs with it.
It was her adoptive mother who’d thought it too dirty, no game for a child of a great house, and put the shovel away, never letting her play with it again.
If it really were as the comments claimed, she should have discovered it long ago.
Lin Muyan thought it over, then found a patch of loose soil and dug a few more times, and turned up nothing.
“Just as I thought, a hoax.” With that, she tossed the wooden shovel carelessly back into the box and continued on her way.
There was simply no such miraculous thing in this world, the comments were only toying with her.
Still, thanks to those comments, she’d unexpectedly dug up a lump of gold.
A hundred thousand wouldn’t accomplish anything grand, but even a mosquito’s leg has a bit of meat on it. At least for now, her luck didn’t seem bad at all, she’d struck gold the moment she stepped out the door.
After much back-and-forth and several wrong stops, Lin Muyan finally boarded the bus bound for the urban village.
Out of the city center with its forest of skyscrapers, past one office tower after another, and then, just beyond a garden and an artificial lake, the scenery abruptly transformed. Before Lin Muyan’s eyes appeared the most crowded, chaotic place she’d ever seen in her life.
She was struck speechless. This was barely a dozen kilometers from downtown, no remote suburb, and yet the surroundings were worlds apart from the rest of S City. Was this really still S City?
The buildings here were packed unbearably tight, most of them grimy-faced tenement blocks, their dense rows of windows oppressive to behold, one could only imagine how cramped and stifling life must be behind them.
On either side of the road, the air was thick with the hum of ordinary life. The vehicles coming and going were no longer luxury cars of every make, but bicycles and electric scooters, the occasional car that passed was mostly an old, plain sedan. The wealthy never set foot in a place like this.
The air reeked of garbage, and the sheer filth and disorder of it made Lin Muyan knit her brows.
The old man seated beside her seemed to read something in her face, and gave a cold chuckle.
“Little miss, you look down on this place, yet here you are riding the bus to it? Don’t let the run-down look of this urban village fool you, plenty of sharp young folks live here. The rent’s cheap and it’s close to those downtown office towers, so it’s popular with young people who’ve come to make their way.”
“You looking to rent? I’ve got a little attic at my place for lease, want to come have a look? I’ll give you a discount.”
Lin Muyan waved him off again and again, head bent over the little slip of paper in her hand. Her birth family’s address was in one of the old buildings in the urban village, a two-bedroom unit, it seemed.
Besides her parents, the household had an older brother and a younger sister still in primary school.
The brother, she’d heard, had already moved out for work and only came back to stay now and then, the little sister was in primary school, small enough that she didn’t take up a whole bed.
With two bedrooms, she ought to be able to have a room of her own, right? Sharing one with the little sister would still give her a bit of privacy.
Once she’d met them and stayed a while, she’d need to go out and find work, earn some money.
This place, she probably wouldn’t need to come back to it often.
The thought made Lin Muyan feel a little better.
Without the great shade tree of the Shen family, she’d have to work her own way to a good life from here on. If her birth family was easy to get along with, she could lend them a hand, but if they were a pack of unreasonable, low-class troublemakers, then she needn’t grow close to them at all.
Being swapped at birth was not her fault. Things had come to this, and she’d accepted reality, as for the road ahead, she’d take it one step at a time.
The bus stopped. Lin Muyan stood in the noisy street, still dressed in her costly designer clothes, utterly out of place.
Suddenly, a middle-aged man up ahead, a photo in his hand, fixed his eyes intently on her.
The next instant his face lit with emotion and he hurried toward her in a few quick strides. By the time he reached her, the rims of his eyes had gone red, as though the tears might fall at any second.
“Child, you’re Muyan, aren’t you?”
The middle-aged man came to a stop before her, fingering the uneven hem of his shirt, looking awkward and a little timid.
Lin Muyan had already guessed who he was. She opened her mouth, but in the end couldn’t bring herself to say the word “Dad.”
For twenty years she’d called Director Shen her father, to suddenly call a stranger “Father” now was more than she could manage.
Lin Jianbin wiped his hands nervously and reached out to take her things, saying as he did:
“Muyan, I’m your father, Lin Jianbin. The Shens probably didn’t have any photos of me.”
It was his way of explaining the situation to her. Clearly he was nervous, and a little at a loss.
This daughter, lost to him for twenty years, left him not sure how to behave around her, yet the very first glance at her stirred a feeling of closeness. This child was easy to love.
Lin Muyan looked at the man before her, meek, plainly honest to the bone, and couldn’t put a name to the feeling in her heart.
She’d imagined her birth father might be a drunk who loved his liquor more than life, or a foul-mouthed gambler, or some cold, domineering chauvinist, but he was clearly none of these.
In this father’s eyes, of all things, she saw a careful, anxious eagerness to please.
The words caught in Lin Muyan’s throat, in the end she said nothing, and dodged Father Lin’s reaching hand. Her things, she’d carry herself.
Lin Jianbin’s eyes dimmed, but he forced out a smile and said to her:
“Come on. Come home with Dad.”
Lin Muyan gave a nod and followed a step behind Father Lin, toward the new home she held no hopes for at all.
【Father Lin hardly ever shows up. This pitiful middle-aged man lives such a spineless, downtrodden life.】
【Right? You always hear about abusive husbands, rarely abusive wives. Father Lin gets beaten by that vicious mother day after day and still won’t leave, the man can really take it.】
【Birds of a feather flock together [1] 不是一家人不进一家门, those who end up in one household are cut from the same cloth jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2620853_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2620853_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });. Anyone who could live with that vicious mother all these years is no good egg himself. Don’t be fooled by his honest-man act.】
The comments said Father Lin was being abused? Every day, no less? What kind of earth-shattering gossip was this?
Lin Muyan wasn’t quite convinced. Her birth father looked sturdy enough, just aged beyond his years, his stooped back giving him a weathered air. He had two good arms and legs, and surely no small strength, could a man really be beaten by a woman every single day without fighting back? Was he a Ninja Turtle?
The comments turned to the Lin household where Shen Jiaojiao had grown up.
【Getting a little excited, we’re about to see where our Jiaojiao grew up. A wolves’ den it may be, but it’s our first time seeing it. I really want to know what kind of dragon’s pool and tiger’s den [2] 龙潭虎穴, a terribly dangerous, fearsome place jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2620853_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2620853_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], }); tormented our Jiaojiao into the state she’s in.】
【Pulling up a stool we’ll get to see that vicious mother soon. She’s not some nine-head-tall she-devil [3] 九头身, idealized, model-tall body proportions jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2620853_1_3').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2620853_1_3', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });, is she? Just watch me roast her alive!】
【Count me in. I’ve long wanted to get a look at that vicious woman. If this wretched green tea hadn’t left the Shens, we’d never have had the chance to see the Lin family’s true faces.】
In fact, Lin Muyan was a little nervous and on edge herself. Shen Jiaojiao had warned her that her birth mother was no good person, while the father was decent, and that did match what she’d seen.
If her birth mother really was a vicious-hearted shrew, how was she to face her?
Just then, Lin Muyan felt a sudden pang of regret, regret that, all those years at the Shens, she’d received a top-tier education and a refined upbringing, holding herself to strict standards in private, never stepping out of line or speaking a coarse word.
To this day she barely knew how to quarrel. Back at school, there’d been classmates who resented the rich and would needle her with snide, mocking remarks, cursing her in ugly terms, she’d wanted to curse back, only to find she had no idea how to bicker or trade insults at all.
When she met her birth mother soon, if the woman opened with a show of force to put her in her place [4] 下马威, an opening display of strength meant to intimidate a newcomer jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2620853_1_4').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2620853_1_4', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });, how was she supposed to respond?
Judging by her birth father, he was probably a henpecked husband, all bluster and no backbone, unlikely to take her side.
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