Night had fully fallen. Dim yellow light glowed from the windows of nearby houses, and the voices of adults and children drifted over from far and near.
This little corner of the world was very quiet. Yang Yuan widened her eyes and looked around, tiptoeing along the wall inch by inch. She was truly thankful this body was reasonably well-nourished—she didn’t have night blindness.
The old house’s roof beams had completely collapsed, and in the corner at the base of the half wall with the window, there was a large dark shadow.
Yang Yuan silently praised the cleverness of it. This really was a blind spot—hard to see from either inside or outside.
She slipped over and pressed herself against the outside of the window wall. Just one layer of brick away from them, she could hear every single breath.
Only… she silently rolled her eyes. They were still tangled up in each other; she’d thought the talking would have started already, being that close.
Yang Yuan counted silently in her head. At 135 she finally heard voices. She quickly held her breath and perked up.
“It’s all your fault, dragging me out here. Now it’s already dark.” It was a girl’s voice, soft, intimate, reproachful.
The boy’s voice carried a smile. “Dark is just right. Let big brother have a good—”
“Hey, stop talking.” The girl sounded half shy, half annoyed. “I took all my money out today. I was planning to use the cover of darkness, when few people are around, to return the bride price to him and make everything clear—break off the engagement. But now, what do I do? Why wouldn’t you let me go? Do you know…”
“I know. Breaking off an engagement is disgraceful, and you don’t want your parents to be the ones to explain it—they’d lose face. I understand all that. But I can’t help my situation now. With parents like mine, even I don’t want to go home—how could I bear to marry you and have you suffer there?
“Or do you want me to just stand by and watch, after you break off with this one, your parents find you someone else? I couldn’t take it. Yinyin, I beg you, don’t torture me like this.”
Ugh… In the darkness, Yang Yuan clamped a hand over her mouth, goosebumps raining down. God, this was more dramatic than a Auntie Qiong melodrama.
A strange light flickered in her eyes. She bit the tip of her tongue to focus herself and keep listening.
“I just can’t bear to lose you. Do you know? My mom said today that she plans to ask his family when his job assignment comes through. She said I’m a year older than him, we can’t keep dragging it out—she wants to hold the wedding first.”
The girl’s voice choked up at the end. “What am I supposed to do? You’re the only one I love. You’re the only one I want to marry. So what if his family is well-off, so what if he went to university and paid a five-hundred-yuan bride price? My heart belongs only to you. And besides, I already—I think I…”
“What?”
She stopped talking, and there was only the sound of rustling fabric.
Yang Yuan had just been wondering why they’d gone quiet when something occurred to her and her eyes went wide. Holy crap, it’s that spicy?
People in the sixties and seventies were this open??
Just as she was hesitating over whether to leave or stay, the boy stammered, “You—Yinyin… you really… I… huh?”
Yang Yuan itched with curiosity inside. What?
The girl laughed through her tears. “I think so. I’m pregnant. We’re going to have a baby…”
This was serious trouble now. Startled, Yang Yuan didn’t want to listen any further.
She made sure her hat strings were tied tight, stuffed one sleeve into her pocket, drew her arm back inside her padded jacket, and pressed it against her throat. With her other gloved hand, she picked up a brick and jumped through the hole in the broken wall.
Thud—
“Don’t move.”
“Ah—mmph mmph!” The girl had barely cried out in fright before the boy clamped his hand over her mouth. He was so terrified he could barely stand, biting down hard on his own sleeve.
Outside, several households immediately turned off their lights, making the night even darker. Yang Yuan lowered her brick-holding arm slightly—ahem, mainly because it was a bit heavy.
“Wang Honghe, you little punk. Like father, like son—the crooked beam makes for crooked rafters.”
The boy trembled all over, lowering the arm he’d used to cover the girl’s mouth, his voice shaking. “U-Uncle… Uncle, you know me?”
It was no wonder Wang Honghe addressed him this way. In the darkness, the figure before him looked like a small mountain, thick-waisted and broad-shouldered, with arms thicker than both his legs put together.
“Hmph. Two choices. Either I drag you two lovebirds by the scruff of your necks to the public security office, or the money in your arms becomes my hush money.”
Going to the public security office—under the hooliganism laws of this era, one could face execution by firing squad. Even if the girl was willing to testify that it was consensual, having a child out of wedlock would still mean wearing a dunce cap and being paraded through the streets for public criticism.
After Yang Yuan finished speaking, she kicked a pile of gravel skittering far across the ground and raised the brick in her hand even higher.
Wang Honghe and the girl exchanged a terrified glance. They had hesitated at first, but hearing the consequences, and seeing the brick in the man’s hand—imagining who knew what—they hurriedly nodded in agreement.
The girl kept her head lowered, huddled in the corner. Wang Honghe turned to take the cloth bundle from her hands. Still too frightened to approach, he took a single step forward and placed the bundle on the ground.
In that moment, Yang Yuan caught a glimpse of half the girl’s face. It looked familiar somehow, as if she’d seen it somewhere before.
She lowered her voice. “You. Whose daughter are you? Get out here.”
The girl trembled even harder, shrinking down with her hands over her head. Wang Honghe pleaded a couple of times, but seeing that the man was unmoved, he could only coax and soothe the girl as he helped her take a step forward.
The girl was crying pitifully, tears streaming down her face. Though her outward appearance was like any other girl’s—old cotton-padded jacket and coarse cloth pants that gave nothing away—her skin was delicate, her cheeks full. One look and you could tell she’d never done rough work, the type from a very well-off family.
Yang Yuan’s aura suddenly turned ice-cold. The brick in her hand no longer felt heavy—in fact, she wanted nothing more than to smash it into this pair’s faces.
“Thud.”
Afraid she couldn’t control herself, she threw down the brick, picked up the cloth bundle from the ground, and stuffed it in her pocket, glaring fixedly at the girl’s face as she backed away step by step.
Her rubber boots felt like blocks of iron, each step landing squarely on Wang Honghe’s and the girl’s hearts, deafening as drumbeats.
Yang Yuan kept backing away until she had exited the broken-down courtyard. Only then did she turn, swing her arms, and run off along her planned route. Even though the money was in her hands, she didn’t feel as happy as she had at first.
After twisting and turning until she was certain no one had followed, she carefully headed toward the Big Locust Tree supply and marketing cooperative. But when she got close, she looked left and right and couldn’t find Yang Wenping anywhere.
“Fourth Brother, are you here? If not, I’m heading home myself.”
Yang Yuan tried saying a line that wouldn’t give anyone leverage over her. Suddenly, she heard a rustling from the big locust tree behind her.
“Little Sis, I’m here.” It was Yang Wenping. He slid down from the tree. “Why are you dressed like that? What did you go do?”
He’d noticed that huge figure approaching earlier and had broken out in a cold sweat. Unable to find a hiding spot, he’d climbed the tree to hide.
Yang Yuan was speechless. In the middle of winter, the tree was completely bare—if a bad guy really had come, climbing a tree would only make him easier to spot.
Not in the mood to talk, she urged Yang Wenping to hurry. She took off the bulky rubber boots, revealing her own cotton shoes underneath, and made Yang Wenping carry them since her hands were cold. The two of them carefully ran home.