Lin Yin returned from his part-time job at the bakery, and then successively received two phone calls from the hospital and the street office, telling him two things.
The first was that his mother, Du Qingfang, perhaps not, when viewed together with the second phone call, had passed away. She had developed diabetes two years ago, and after that her health rapidly deteriorated, yet because of the expense she had refused point-blank to be hospitalized.
Lin Yin had already been worn out to the bone by days of nonstop running around, and he had never had much to say to Du Qingfang to begin with, so he directly took her things to the hospital. But the doctor had still sent him a critical condition notice two days ago.
Lin Yin knew her condition was already bad, but he had not expected this day to come so quickly.
He stood there in a daze on the phone for a long while, before getting on his bicycle and rushing to the hospital, only to receive another call on the way, telling him the second, even more unbelievable matter.
“Xiao Lin, there is something I need to tell you,” the deputy town mayor, whose hypocritical smile was always vivid in Lin Yin’s memory, actually sounded somewhat ingratiating at this moment. “You are actually not Du Qingfang’s biological son. You and the child of the Ming family of Jiang Cheng were switched by mistake back then, you are the Ming family’s child.”
Lin Yin endured his impatience and listened to the end. If not for how familiar that disgusting voice was, he would have suspected this was a scam call.
The Ming family of Jiang Cheng, what kind of family was that? Even though Lin Yin did not know much about Jiang Cheng’s upper-class circle, he had still heard of the Ming family. They were the top tier of wealthy families in Jiang Cheng, the kind that could make an entire little patch of land cave in with a stomp of their foot. They would never even dream of something like this, because it was too absurd, too distant.
Lin Yin let out a scoff. He had just lost his mother, and his mood was so terrible that he could not possibly force himself to go along with this boring joke. “At your age, why do you also like dreaming about a sparrow flying onto a branch and turning into a phoenix? Why not be practical and tell me whether this month’s subsidy can actually be paid?”
“You don’t need to worry about money. You also won’t need this few hundred yuan subsidy in the future,” the deputy town mayor said, and even though Lin Yin’s attitude was so sharp and blunt, he did not get angry. He only gave an awkward laugh and said cautiously, “How could I joke about something like this? The DNA has already been matched. I know you definitely won’t be able to accept it for a while, and I also know your mother just passed away. Even if she wasn’t your biological mother, you were mother and son for a time. After you finish seeing her off, come to the police station and find me.”
Lin Yin stood by the roadside for quite a while with a look that was hard to read, before he muted the phone and stuffed it into his pocket. Then he pedaled on again, riding his bicycle toward the hospital with his mind in chaos amid the clanging and rattling sounds.
Du Qingfang had aged especially fast in these past few years. She was only in her forties, but at this moment, lying on the bed, she already looked like a little old woman. Even after death, her face was still the same as in Lin Yin’s memory, filled with sorrow, harshness, and hardship.
The nurse saw this child standing motionless beside the hospital bed, staring at the deceased, and felt a little unwilling to bear it. She knew this child’s situation, studying while working part-time to earn money for the medical expenses. A child as sensible as this, yet so ill-fated, always made people feel sympathy. Unfortunately, his mother’s situation had long since become irredeemable, and the hospital in their small place could not bring the dead back to life.
She took a handful of candy from her pocket, stuffed it into Lin Yin’s hand, and patted his shoulder in comfort.
Lin Yin looked at that handful of candy, forced a smile at her, and began packing up the belongings.
Lin Yin and Du Qingfang’s relationship had never been good. Even though his father died early and the mother and son should have depended on each other for survival, Du Qingfang seemed never to have treated him as her son. She never cared about him, and did not want to manage him at all. When he got into trouble outside and needed a parent to show up, no matter whether it was his fault or not, she would only look at him coldly and say, “I don’t care whose fault it is, solve it yourself.”
When Lin Yin was little, what he feared most was the start of school, because Du Qingfang never took the initiative to give him money to go enroll. When Lin Yin sensed what she intended, he would roll and rage in the middle of the street. When he got older, he would take the initiative to go out and work part-time to earn tuition. While others gathered for outings and fun, he spent most of every day shuttling between different part-time jobs. His grades were middling, but he did not want to drop out. If he dropped out, it seemed like he would truly have severed the last chance left to him.
Many times, Du Qingfang would get busy until she forgot he even existed as her son, leaving nothing to eat at home. He often went hungry for an entire day, forced to shamelessly go everywhere to mooch meals. When he hated her to the point of death, he would also comfort himself by thinking that perhaps Du Qingfang really was simply too busy to care about him, after all, who could not love their own child?
Looking back now, the thought he had had then was truly laughably absurd. Everything had already given signs. He really was not her son. It would have been strange if Du Qingfang had given him a good face.
When had she found out that he was not her biological son? Or had she known clearly from the very beginning? The hospital the Ming family went to was certainly Jiang Cheng’s top-tier hospital, so why would Du Qingfang have appeared there, and how had the children been switched?
All the questions blocked his chest, and in truth, the answer had already surfaced.
Lin Yin’s face showed no expression at all. He quickly packed up the belongings, put the simple mourning clothes on Du Qingfang, settled the medical expenses, called the funeral home, and arranged the time.
Du Qingfang’s body was soon taken away, and the staff told him to come tomorrow to collect the ashes box. When everything was finally done, Lin Yin walked out of the funeral home, squatted beside the flowerbed outside the funeral home, and with a numb expression watched the other people coming and going, their expressions all different.
The heartbeat in his chest would not calm down. Only then did he realize that his hands had been shaking the whole time, as if a lump of air were stuck in his chest, unable to rise or fall, choking him until he wanted to vomit.
He thought of Du Qingfang’s yellowed, wrinkled face lying on the black iron bed. He thought of the faint disgust in her eyes whenever she looked at him in the past. He thought of the rich family he had never even met. Suddenly, he could no longer hold back. He sprang to his feet and started vomiting, until he had thrown up everything in his stomach and his vision was blurred.
He began to feel an uncontrollable fury and resentment, resentment toward Du Qingfang’s selfishness and coldness, resentment toward fate for toying with him. She had selfishly exchanged his life, yet was stingy to the point of not giving him even the slightest trace of love. And in the end, he still could not simply ignore her and leave her be.
He looked forward in bewilderment. In truth, he did not want to go to the police station, to learn about his so-called “real relatives.” Whether it was the upper-class life he had never touched, or the unfamiliar relatives he had been separated from for seventeen years, he had no courage and also resisted blending into it.
But where else could he go?
Lin Yin found a faucet and roughly washed his face. Only after feeling his utterly blank brain finally start working again did he let out a breath, get on his rusted bicycle that clanked and clanged loudly, and go to the police station.
Just as he stepped into the police station, he saw the deputy town mayor pacing anxiously back and forth. Seeing Lin Yin arrive, he immediately put on a smile and a delighted expression as he hurried over to greet him.
“Xiao Lin, you’re here!”
“Xiao Lin, you’re here!”
Lin Yin looked at him coldly and did not respond.
In the past, whenever Lin Yin brought over a subsidy application form that required the man’s signature, merely seeing him had been harder than ascending to the heavens.
He had never imagined that there would come a day when he would see the deputy mayor waiting for him in such desperate anxiety.
As though he could not see the mockery on Lin Yin’s face, the deputy mayor straightened the old suit he had buttoned and pressed into rigid neatness. With an amiable smile, he led Lin Yin into the office.
Only after entering did Lin Yin realize that a middle-aged man was already sitting inside.
Although Lin Yin knew nothing about luxury goods and could not distinguish high-quality items from inferior ones, even he could tell that the man’s clothing and the watch on his wrist were unquestionably expensive.
They were nothing like the old station chief’s counterfeit goods, which were worn merely to put on a respectable appearance.
Lin Yin stopped hesitantly.
He did not know who the man before him was.
Could this perhaps be his father?
But the man did not look much like him.
Seeming to understand what Lin Yin was thinking, the middle-aged man gave him a friendly smile and extended his hand.
“Hello, Young Master. I’m Mr. Ming’s assistant. You can call me Uncle Zhang.”
Lin Yin froze for a moment before awkwardly reaching out and shaking his hand.
“Hello.”
“Sit down, sit down.”
The deputy mayor hurriedly brought over a chair and pressed Lin Yin into it. Uncle Zhang also sat down again.
Lin Yin took a moment to steady his emotions before looking toward the old station chief.
“Where are the paternity test results?”
“They’re right here.”
The deputy mayor handed Lin Yin a stack of papers.
“The tests were performed twice. There is absolutely no possibility of a mistake.”
There were two paternity tests, one for him and Du Qingfang, and the other for him and Ming Chengsong and Ke Ruolan. One report stated, The test results do not support Du Qingfang being Lin Yin’s biological mother. The other stated, The test results support Ming Chengsong being Lin Yin’s biological father. The test results support Ke Ruolan being the biological mother of Ming Yin.
Lin Yin lowered his head and stared at those two lines. He read them over and over again, feeling the strange buzzing in his ears begin again, and inside he was both self-mocking and sorrowful.
After a long silence, he asked, “How did they discover it?”
“A nurse who assisted Madam during the delivery happened to mention that the child had a birthmark on his waist,” Uncle Zhang said. “Sir noticed that something was wrong, and that was how he traced the matter and found out about it.”
Lin Yin froze for a moment, then subconsciously touched the left side of his waist, where there was a birthmark the size of a fist.
Uncle Zhang patted his shoulder, his voice very soothing. “I came to find you this time at the request of Mr. Ming and madam. Your current guardian has already passed away, and you are at just the right age to be going to school. Therefore, we all hope that you can return to the Ming family to live, receive a better education and a better life. This is what you should have received in the first place.”
Lin Yin did not speak and slowly tightened his grip on the fabric in his hand.
“Having let you live outside for so long, sir and madam both feel extremely guilty. They also very much want to see you.”
Lin Yin struggled to suppress the redness in his eyes and raised his head to ask, “Then why didn’t they come?”
Uncle Zhang seemed to have long since known that he would ask this question, and answered calmly, “Sir and madam are both very busy. It’s not that they don’t care about the young master. They’ve prepared a lavish banquet for you.”
Lin Yin looked at him, wanting to find the truth of those words in his eyes, but failed. He pressed his lips together hard and changed the subject to a more sensitive question. “You said I was switched at birth, so is Du Qingfang’s real child in the Ming family?”
He looked at Uncle Zhang with an extremely direct gaze. “How do you plan to deal with him?”
Uncle Zhang’s expression paused slightly, but he quickly concealed the strange look in his eyes and replied, “That’s how it is, young master. Sir and madam are both very generous people, and they have raised Juezhi for so many years. Now that Du Qingfang and her husband have both passed away, they won’t drive him away. Young master Juezhi is weak, and madam is worried that if he learns the truth, his illness will relapse, so she has decided to keep it from him for now. So we also hope that you won’t mention this matter in front of him.”
As though worried that Lin Yin would mind, he continued, “But young master, you don’t need to worry. Young master Juezhi has a very good personality, and sir and madam both hope that the two of you can get along harmoniously.”
Lin Yin could not help laughing, revealing his sharp tiger teeth, and in a voice that was light but sharp, he asked, “I had seventeen years of my life exchanged, and you think I can get along harmoniously with him?”
Uncle Zhang was unmoved, and still smiling, he said, “Sir and madam both know that young master is a pure and good child. The Ming family has always been under the attention of the outside world, so there’s no way to really cast Juezhi aside. I believe young master also understands, and won’t make things difficult for sir and madam.”
Lin Yin’s smile faded, and he looked at him in silence.
Uncle Zhang’s expression was flawless, like all assistants from wealthy families, wearing a gentle but distant false skin. From those eyes, Lin Yin saw his meaning, and perhaps the meaning of the entire Ming family:
For other people, going from a poor household that had lost both parents and relied on subsidies to get by every year to suddenly becoming the Ming family’s glittering young master was already an immense stroke of luck. So what if the Ming family raised one more child?
People had to know how to be content.
After a long moment, he lowered his eyes, placed the crumpled paternity test on the table, and said, “Got it. As long as you don’t say anything, I won’t say anything either.”