After receiving her payback of 200 yuan dowry money, Song Xuezhi looked at it in her hands and felt a deep sense of relief. Money truly felt safest when it was in her own possession.
She felt as if she had awakened from a long, strange dream.
In the future she had seen in her nightmare, after marrying Zhou Weidong, this 200 yuan would have simply disappeared without a trace.
Although he later did not mistreat her financially, the early years of their marriage had been filled with hardship.
In the worst moment, when she was giving birth, her husband was guarding his heart-diseased nephew’s surgery instead. She nearly died of hemorrhage on the operating table because no one signed the consent form for a C-section—her mother had to kneel and beg the doctors to save her life.
Even in smaller moments—like when they went hiking and she sprained her ankle—he ignored her pain, yet when Zhou Yuwei said she was tired, he carried her without hesitation, sweating profusely but never complaining.
Even more absurdly, when Zhou Weidong attended his nephew’s parent-teacher meeting, someone mistakenly assumed he was Zhou Yuwei’s husband—and he never corrected them.
These scenes from the dream flashed through her mind like a montage, washing away part of her heartbreak.
No matter how good he might be in other ways, in this lifetime, a man like this—a hopeless “sister-maniac”—was absolutely not someone she could have.
Carefully putting the money away, she headed toward the rented room on the outskirts of the county.
She had chosen it because it was cheap. The apartment was on the seventh floor, a tiny five-square-meter room barely big enough for a wooden bed.
When she finally climbed back up, panting, and saw the damp, moldy walls, she once again felt like she had lost her mind.
Who on earth had given her the courage to come so far away for a military marriage in a place completely unfamiliar to her?
There was a post office nearby. She borrowed a phone and called her mother.
Her home was in the south, far from Zhou Weidong’s military base in Jindi—it would take several days by train.
Soon, the call connected. Her mother’s loud voice came through the receiver:
“Hello? Who is this?”
Hearing that familiar voice, Song Xuezhi’s nose stung and tears she had just held back began to fall again.
“Mom! I want to come home…”
After everything that had happened over the past two days, the emotions from two lifetimes overlapped, and she suddenly missed home terribly.
She missed her mother and older brother. She longed for the comfort of home.
Her mother was shocked to hear her crying so badly.
“What’s wrong, girl? Don’t panic, tell Mom slowly—what happened?”
Through tears, she cried, “I don’t want to marry Zhou Weidong anymore!”
“What?! Did that boy bully you?!” her mother exploded instantly.
She immediately asked a coworker to cover her shift and comforted her daughter over the phone.
“Don’t worry, it’s a military marriage. If he treats you badly, you go straight to his superiors!”
Sniffling, Song Xuezhi said, “I already did. The leaders canceled our marriage application. Mom… can I come home?”
Her mother froze.
She knew how much her daughter liked Zhou Weidong—she had even defied the family and given up her job to marry him.
So hearing this, she immediately realized her daughter must have been deeply wronged.
After hearing the full story, she became furious.
“That damn bastard! I knew he wasn’t reliable…” she cursed loudly, rolling up her sleeves. If they had been closer, she would have gone straight to settle the score.
“How can he treat you like this? And he calls himself a soldier? I spit on him!”
“Girl, wait for me. Don’t come back yet—I’ll take leave right now and buy a train ticket.”
But Song Xuezhi quickly stopped her.
“Mom, it’s too far. I can handle it here.”
“You? You’re soft as paper—how are you going to handle it? This has to go to his unit. I’ll report him to his leadership. Do they think our Song family has no one?!” her mother said before hanging up.
Helpless, Song Xuezhi called her stepfather’s steel factory, asking him to persuade her mother.
But to her surprise, her stepfather was also furious and insisted her mother should come to confront the situation.
He also advised her to reconcile with Zhou Weidong.
The family situation was complicated.
Her mother, Song Hongmei, and her stepfather, Yang Laishun, were a blended family. Both brought children from previous marriages.
After remarriage, due to the family planning policy, they had not had more children.
The household already had four children, making things very crowded and tense.
Song Xuezhi’s older brother, Song Bin, had previously been sent down as a “sent-down youth” for five years and had only recently returned, working as a temporary laborer at a cement factory.
The Yang family had two children: an older daughter, Yang Zhaodi, and a younger son, Yang Tiezhu.
Yang Tiezhu had just graduated from high school and had gotten a classmate pregnant, and they were preparing for marriage.
But the girl’s family demanded he have independent housing before agreeing.
However, the entire family was squeezed into a 40-square-meter dorm provided by the steel factory, making it impossible to separate living spaces.
Yang Laishun did not want Song Xuezhi to return mainly because of housing issues.
It wasn’t that he was heartless, but simply that there was no room left.
After hanging up, Song Xuezhi walked back in a daze.
She could sense her stepfather’s underlying meaning—he still wanted her to stay with Zhou Weidong and not make things complicated.
After all, she had been the one who insisted on marrying him in the first place.
He had never treated her badly. When she insisted on marrying Zhou Weidong, he even gave her 150 yuan as a dowry gift and let her bring a radio so she could listen to military broadcasts.
Sometimes, there really was no way around it. With limited resources, fairness was impossible.
Parents naturally favored their biological children.
Her mother was even more obvious about it, openly favoring her son.
But Yang Laishun was already considered a decent stepfather.
There were only two rooms in the house, and he had tried to divide them into three so the youngest son could get a place to marry.
As for Song Bin and Yang Zhaodi, they took turns sleeping on the floor or near the doorway.
Sitting by the roadside, Song Xuezhi cried for a long time and slowly realized something:
Even if she broke off the engagement with Zhou Weidong, she had no real home to return to.
She had benefited before—her mother favored her, she avoided hardship while her brother and stepsister went to the countryside, and she even secured a supply-and-marketing job through connections.
Now that her brother and stepsister had returned, it was time for her to make space.
That was also why she had decisively sold her job to Yang Zhaodi and chosen to come here to marry into the military.
Otherwise, at only twenty years old, she would not have rushed into marriage.
With no place to go home to, she realized she still had to stay here. Zhou Weidong had already paid three months’ rent for her, so there was no need to rush to terminate the lease.
However, without marriage, her introduction papers would soon expire. She needed to find stable work if she wanted to stay.
But jobs were extremely hard to find these days.
After the wave of returning sent-down youth, locals fought fiercely over every available position, let alone an outsider like her.
Her eyes were swollen from crying when she finally stood up, preparing to get something to eat.
At that moment, heavy rain suddenly began pouring down. She had no umbrella and was instantly drenched. The cold rain slapped against her face, mixing with her tears as it soaked into her collar.
For a moment, she felt truly miserable.
She ran toward the opposite shelter without noticing a military jeep passing by.
Inside the vehicle, Li Chengyuan caught sight of her familiar, disheveled figure through the rain. His gaze tightened.
A strange, unreadable emotion flashed through his eyes.
He immediately ordered the driver in a low voice:
“Stop the car!”