Xiuzhou City, Textile Factory Family Housing, at the Factory Director’s Doorstep
“Goodness gracious, Old Director, the marriage between my Xinxin and your Fu family’s second boy was something you arranged yourself!”
“You can’t just disown the engagement now that Fu Xiao’er has made something of himself, gotten promoted in the army, become an officer!”
“My poor daughter! How could you be so foolish? That Fu Xiao’er is ungrateful, a heartless wolf, a shameless Chen Shimei. You did nothing wrong, so why did you bash your head against the wall?”
Pain.
Her head was ringing with pain.
Qiao Xin listened to the woman’s clamor and felt like her skull was about to split open.
“Hiss—!”
She clutched her head and couldn’t help but gasp.
“Xinxin, you’re awake?”
Qiao Xin heard someone calling her and slowly opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was a large round face.
“Oh my god, who are you?”
Qiao Xin jolted. Why was this big round face so close, practically pressed against hers?
She instinctively leaned back, but found there was nowhere to lean.
She was half-lying on the ground, cradled in the arms of this round-faced woman.
But the moment she spoke, she startled herself. Why did her voice sound so pleasant? Clear and melodious, bright and ethereal.
The round-faced woman heard her question. Just moments ago, she’d been overjoyed that Qiao Xin was awake, but now her expression changed again.
She asked anxiously, “I’m your mother. You don’t remember?”
Qiao Xin stared at her blankly.
She was an orphan. Where would she get a mother?
“Oh heavens, my poor daughter! You didn’t scramble your brains when you hit your head, did you?”
Qiao Xin was speechless.
You’re the one whose brains are scrambled. Your whole family’s brains are scrambled.
Ten minutes later.
Qiao Xin finally understood one thing. This woman’s whole family included her.
Of course, that wasn’t important. What mattered was that she had transmigrated.
Other people transmigrated because they worked day and night overtime and suddenly dropped dead. But her?
Ha!
She’d stayed up all night binge-watching short dramas until her heart went into arrhythmia and killed her.
And then she arrived in 1983, in the body of this Qiao Xin who shared her name.
The 1980s Qiao Xin was twenty-three years old.
Seven years ago, the textile factory had been in disrepair. A support beam had come crashing down, and Qiao Xin’s father had sacrificed himself. In the instant the beam fell, he pushed Old Factory Director Fu Guodong out of the way, and was struck so hard his brains spilled out.
To repay this life-saving debt, the Fu family helped apply for a large compensation payment from the factory, a full three thousand yuan. They also offered to privately give another two thousand as a token of gratitude.
But Qiao Xin’s mother, Yang Xiuying, refused.
With three thousand yuan in compensation, she wasn’t short on money. What she was short on was a long-term connection to the Fu family.
It just so happened that the Fu family had a boy about Qiao Xin’s age, Fu Guodong’s eldest grandson, Fu Mingzhe.
Yang Xiuying shamelessly proposed a marriage alliance.
Fu Mingzhe’s parents were naturally unwilling. Their son had been outstanding since childhood, had gone to the Kyoto Military Region to serve as a soldier, and would become an officer in the future. The wife he married should at least be a match in status, or at minimum someone who would benefit his prospects.
And Qiao Xin? Her father was dead, she had no brothers to support her. An orphaned widow and her child could only be a burden.
But Old Factory Director Fu, mindful of the life-saving debt and considering that the other party was a widow and orphan, didn’t want to seem too heartless. He agreed to Yang Xiuying’s proposal.
Just like that, Qiao Xin and the Fu Mingzhe she’d never met were betrothed.
At the time, Qiao Xin was only a sixteen-year-old girl, and Fu Mingzhe was just eighteen, having been in the army for exactly one year.
Seven years passed. Qiao Xin had gone from a sixteen-year-old girl to a twenty-three-year-old old maid, waiting in vain for the good news that Fu Mingzhe would return home to marry her. Instead, she received the devastating news that he wanted to break off the engagement.
It was Fu Mingzhe’s younger sister, Fu Mingyue, who said it to her face.
“Haha, Qiao Xin, you still don’t know? My second brother wrote home saying he wants to break off the engagement with you. I bet he’s found a girl he likes in the army. He doesn’t want you anymore.”
How could she accept that?
Qiao Xin had waited seven years, already considered herself the Fu family’s daughter-in-law, and had her heart set on marrying Fu Mingzhe. How could she possibly agree to break off the engagement?
Yang Xiuying was even less willing.
The Fu family’s conditions were so good, they were hard to find even with a lantern.
Fu Mingzhe’s father, Fu Zhiyuan, was the current director of the textile factory, managing thousands of workers, with a rank equivalent to a department-level official.
If transferred laterally to the county, he could directly become county magistrate. If he stayed in the city’s administrative organs, he’d be a deputy bureau chief.
Although Old Factory Director Fu Guodong had retired, his status and influence were not to be underestimated.
One could imagine how high the Fu family’s standing was in Xiuzhou City, how many people wanted to marry into such a good family.
And that was just the Fu family. Fu Mingzhe himself was said to be exceptionally outstanding, handsome and talented, and in just a few short years in the army had earned several merits. He was already a company commander.
With such a good betrothal prospect, how could she agree to break it off?
In the end, mother and daughter put their heads together and went to the Fu family’s doorstep to bash their heads against the wall.
Originally, it was supposed to be just an act, to scare the Fu family into not breaking off the engagement.
But who knew the original host hadn’t controlled her force properly. At the Fu family’s doorstep, she’d slammed her head solidly into the wall, and immediately blood gushed from her forehead and she lost consciousness.
Yang Xiuying was terrified. Now there was no need to act. She was genuinely crying and making a scene.
The Fu family was naturally shocked and frightened. If someone died at their doorstep, how could they live it down?
They hurriedly invited them inside and began discussing the children’s marriage.
Qiao Xin had just barely pieced together the whole story when the two families had already roughly settled what would happen next.
“Fine, then let Xinxin go to the army to find Mingze, and have them get married there.”
This was the suggestion from Old Factory Director Fu, and Yang Xiuying couldn’t have asked for more.
Fu Guodong sat upright in the seat of honor, both hands resting on a cane. His aged voice sounded somewhat weary.
“Don’t worry. Mingze is a responsible boy. He only wanted to break off the engagement because the army is too busy and he has no time to come back for a wedding. He didn’t want to keep delaying Qiao girl.”
“Qiao girl can go straight to the army. We’ll give him a call to let him know.”
The Fu family also gave Qiao Xin eight hundred yuan, saying it was for betrothal gifts and to buy the three turns and one sound.
Yang Xiuying took the money with satisfaction and brought the dazed Qiao Xin to get her forehead wound treated.
By the time they’d finished treating the wound and returned home, the Fu family had even bought and delivered Qiao Xin’s train ticket to Kyoto. It was for the nine a.m. train the next morning.
Qiao Xin looked at the ticket in her hand and knew the Fu family was afraid she’d try to kill herself again and land them in a lawsuit involving a death. They couldn’t wait to send her away.
She tucked the ticket into her pocket, feeling a sense of unreality. She pressed the bandaged wound on her forehead.
“Hiss…”
It really hurt.
She’d finally accepted the fact that she’d transmigrated.
“Goodness, you stupid girl! Are you an idiot? How can you press the wound like that? Serves you right if it hurts!”
Yang Xiuying saw her daughter poking at her own wound and grimacing in pain. She scolded her with a glare, though there was no real anger in it.
Qiao Xin grinned, showing her teeth. Her cheap mother seemed fierce, but she actually seemed to care about her daughter.
In her past life, she’d been an orphan. She’d never felt a mother’s love. So this was what it felt like.
She said, “Mom, how about we forget it? I won’t go to the army to find Fu Mingze.”
She’d said Fu Mingze, not Fu Mingzhe.
It wasn’t that she couldn’t distinguish between the retroflex and non-retroflex consonants like everyone else. It was that she’d heard others call him that, and had assumed her never-met fiancé was actually named Fu Mingze.