When Yang Ying first came to the city, Xie Yucheng was fifteen, while Wen Shiqing was only about ten and too young to remember many things. But Xie Yucheng remembered them all too clearly.
The first thing Yang Ying did after moving in was erase every trace of his mother, Yuan Ningwan.
The sofa had to be replaced. The old table had to be replaced. Even the peony painting his mother had painted herself had to go. All the bedsheets and pillowcases were changed, and all of his mother’s clothes were thrown away.
By the time Xie Yucheng came home from school, the house had already been completely transformed.
The entire place had been sprayed with the pungent scent of floral mosquito repellent. Not even the faintest trace of his mother’s presence remained.
He opened the wardrobe.
Inside were Yang Ying’s dresses and skirts, all newly bought by Xie Guoli.
He searched the drawers for the little things his mother had owned—a comb, her scented balm, her little silk scarves.
They were all gone.
The drawers were completely empty.
Even the small quilt he had kept in his own room as a keepsake, one his mother had sewn with her own hands, had disappeared. He had no idea where it had been thrown.
Fifteen-year-old Xie Yucheng went completely berserk. He confronted Xie Guoli and cursed Yang Ying, shouting every filthy word he could think of.
In the end, Xie Guoli slapped him so hard that he fell to the floor.
Yang Ying even handed Xie Guoli a cane and deliberately egged him on.
“Boys need discipline if you want them to amount to anything.”
At the time, Wen Shiqing was outside playing with the other children. She knew nothing about what was happening.
Xie Yucheng was brutally beaten by Xie Guoli.
Furious and unwilling to accept it, he retaliated the next day by taking all of Yang Ying’s new clothes from her wardrobe and cutting them to pieces.
Yang Ying told Xie Guoli that the boy needed to be properly disciplined, otherwise who knew what kind of trouble he would cause.
She brought over a rope and had Xie Guoli tie him up inside the woodshed beside the kitchen, where they kept their tools.
Xie Guoli said, “I’ll let you out when you’ve thought things through and apologized to your Auntie Yang.”
Xie Yucheng was stubborn to the bone.
He glared viciously at the two of them with a dark, resentful gaze, then spat on the ground.
He was still Xie Guoli’s biological son, after all.
Xie Guoli eventually told Yang Ying to bring him some food and water in the yard.
Yang Ying verbally agreed, but she never brought him anything.
For two whole days and nights, Xie Yucheng went without a single drop of water.
Just as he was becoming weak from dehydration, Wen Shiqing happened to be playing in the courtyard and accidentally pushed open the woodshed door.
She saw his cracked, dry lips and asked,
“Brother, are you thirsty?”
He nodded.
Wen Shiqing used a ladle to scoop up more than half a ladleful of water and gave it to him.
That was what kept him from dying of thirst.
Her little hand reached out and touched his face.
In a soft voice, she asked,
“Brother, are you playing some kind of game? I haven’t seen you in so long.”
When Yang Ying saw them, she hurried over, grabbed Wen Shiqing by the arm, dragged her out of the woodshed, and slammed the door shut.
Xie Yucheng heard her hitting Wen Shiqing on the butt and warning her not to come near the woodshed again.
A while later, Yang Ying came inside.
She gave a cold snort.
“Yucheng, I never wanted to be anyone’s stepmother. If you agree that we’ll stay out of each other’s way, I’ll tell your father to let you out soon. But if you insist on going against me, I guarantee you won’t have an easy life.”
Xie Yucheng hated her so much that his teeth nearly hurt from clenching them.
With his hands and arms tied, he summoned all his strength, stretched forward, and slammed his head into her stomach.
Yang Ying was knocked to the ground.
She sat there groaning for quite a while before getting up and slapping him twice, one after the other.
In the end, it was Xie Guoli who released him.
Father and son didn’t have some deep, irreconcilable hatred.
In those days, plenty of fathers beat their sons half to death.
Xie Guoli was simply one of them.
After seeing through Yang Ying’s hypocrisy, Xie Yucheng stopped confronting her directly. Instead, he began playing tricks on her behind the scenes.
She could never find any evidence and would often be left fuming with frustration.
As Xie Yucheng grew older, he shot up in height after entering high school. His tall, lean body was like a straight poplar tree.
He spent most of his time outside and rarely came home.
As long as they didn’t see each other, there were fewer opportunities for conflict.
Yang Ying’s attitude gradually softened. She even began deliberately trying to curry favor with him.
Two years earlier, Xie Yucheng accidentally discovered that Yang Ying was fooling around with another man outside.
After thinking it over carefully, he told Xie Guoli.
Xie Guoli merely limped around on his bad leg and said,
“Don’t get involved. And don’t tell anyone.”
Xie Yucheng couldn’t understand why Xie Guoli insisted on maintaining such a hollow marriage.
Was it because Yang Ying was still young and beautiful?
But since the old man didn’t care, there was nothing he could do.
If Xie Guoli wanted to wear the cuckold’s hat, what did it have to do with him?
After Wen Shiqing returned to the house, she saw the bags on the table.
“Mom, are these the things Brother just brought back?”
Yang Ying was sweeping the floor. She glanced at them and hummed in acknowledgment.
Wen Shiqing opened them.
One bag contained a thermos.
The other held a bag of golden, fragrant honey rolls.
Her nose suddenly stung.
She glanced outside at the empty doorway.
By mid-August, another wave of summer heat had arrived.
Xie Yucheng hadn’t come home for many days.
In the height of summer, the relationship between the two of them had fallen to its lowest point.
Wen Shiqing stared at the wristwatch on the table, her heart aching.
This was how she and Xie Yucheng had lived for the past few years—maintaining their fragile brother-sister relationship in a strange, twisted state.
The sun scorched the earth, and waves of heat shimmered in the air.
Their class reunion was held outdoors by a cool river on the outskirts of the city.
A lively group of young students had brought cooking pots, ingredients, musical instruments, and books. Two cars, along with several motorcycles and bicycles, were parked by the roadside.
Under the shade of the trees beside the river, they had already set up their cooking pots.
The boys gathered firewood and rolled up their trouser legs to catch fish in the river, while the girls washed and chopped vegetables.
Laughter filled the woods.
Several female classmates called out to Wen Shiqing,
“Shiqing, let’s go over there and pick mushrooms together. It rained a few days ago, so there must be plenty of fresh mushrooms growing.”
“Hey, we’re coming too! It’s dangerous for you girls to wander around somewhere this remote by yourselves. You need some handsome bodyguards!”
A boy came over jokingly.
“Zhou Chen, let’s escort these girls over there to pick mushrooms.”
A girl with a fiery temper snorted.
“Hmph! Who needs you to escort us?”
The group laughed and joked as they carried their baskets toward another part of the woods.
When Zhou Chen saw Wen Shiqing walking hand in hand with the other girls, he hurriedly followed along with the other boys.
The sound of gently flowing water filled their ears, while the fresh fragrance of lush vegetation floated through the air.
The mushrooms were scattered throughout the woods, so they had to search carefully.
Sometimes they would find an entire cluster of mushrooms growing together.
As they walked, the group somehow became separated into pairs.
The boy who had been joking earlier ended up walking alongside the fiery-tempered girl, while Zhou Chen gradually found himself beside Wen Shiqing.
Their feet stepped over the soft grass and fallen branches, producing faint crackling sounds.
“You seem a little distracted today,” Zhou Chen said.
“No, I’m not.”
“Last time, after we met, did your parents say anything?”
“They said you’re an excellent young man, your family is well-off, and that I should seriously consider you.”
Zhou Chen’s face lit up with surprise.
“Really?”
Wen Shiqing gave an awkward smile.
“Yeah. I couldn’t even be bothered to deal with them. We’re good friends. How could our relationship possibly turn into something like that? They’re just overthinking things.”
She didn’t feel like walking through the flowers and grass anymore, nor did she have much interest in picking mushrooms.
She walked back toward the main road.
Each of them held a stalk of foxtail grass between their fingers as they strolled along the roadside.
Zhou Chen had originally planned to confess his feelings to her as soon as possible.
But her earlier words felt like a bucket of cold water thrown over him.
He understood that she had no romantic feelings toward him for the time being and only regarded him as a good friend.
Still, he wasn’t discouraged.
Good things took time.
Besides, they had only just graduated.
He would slowly find a way to let her understand how he felt.