Chapter 58: Having a Home

At the beginning, Yi Xingyue did not like her grandmother very much.

That was when her father had just passed away and her mother sent her back to the countryside.

She felt her grandmother was old and ugly, and moreover, she disliked her for being a girl.

She remembered very clearly that back then, her grandmother often looked at her and sighed, "If only you were a boy..."

But she did not know when she started to like her grandmother.

Perhaps it was when she wanted to eat chicken, in the dead of winter with freezing cold, and her grandmother got up early to kill a chicken for her...

Perhaps it was when she wanted a ballpoint pen, on a rainy day, her grandmother stepped through the mud, one foot deep and one foot shallow, to go to the town to buy her a pen, even though what she bought back was a pencil...

Perhaps it was when she cried and made a scene, and her grandmother never got angry, but just used her rough hand to rub her cheek with a smile...

Perhaps it was in the summer, lying beside her, closing her eyes and gently fanning her with a palm-leaf fan...

Yi Xingyue did not answer her grandmother's question, and her grandmother did not ask again.

The two of them went to the town together, and her grandmother, as usual, went to the scrap station to sell things.

However, she did not, as usual, drag her small cart back home in a hurry.

Instead, she went to a shop in the town and bought a hairband.

It was the very old-fashioned kind of hairband, black, twisted with wire, with no decorations or ornaments at all.

Her grandmother put the hairband on her head and asked Yi Xingyue with a smile.

"Isn't this much neater?"

"Grandma looks very good," Yi Xingyue said happily.

Her grandmother chuckled, "An old woman like me, how can I look good?"

Then she took Yi Xingyue's hand and went to the toy shop next door to buy her a pair of butterfly wings that could be worn on her back.

She chose the largest and most beautiful one, and naturally, the price was the highest.

She took out an old handkerchief from her pocket, counted the scattered coins for several minutes, and only then paid.

"Grandma, do you remember?" Yi Xingyue held the butterfly wings, feeling her eyes sting.

Besides stationery and food, her grandmother rarely bought her toys; she thought those things were useless, would eventually be thrown away, and were a complete waste of money.

The sentence she liked to say most was, "What is eaten into the stomach is truly one's own."

The last time, she wanted her grandmother to buy her a pair of butterfly wings because she saw a child in the village carrying a very beautiful one on her back.

But her grandmother always said, "Next time, I'll buy it for you next time..."

And then there was no next time.

Yi Xingyue really wanted to tell her grandmother that she didn't like this anymore, that she had grown up and was no longer a little girl.

But—yet for some reason, she was still a little happy.

On the way back, her grandmother helped her put them on her back.

"It looks so good, just like a little fairy," her grandmother said with a smile.

"Grandma, I'm dead now, I'm a ghost, not a fairy," Yi Xinyue said.

Hearing this, her grandmother fell silent, walked quite a distance, and then said, "But I feel like you are still alive. Where is there any sign of being dead? Your mother lied to me, didn't she?"

Yi Xingyue shook her head, and then told her about Shen Siyuan.

"So you met a master."

Hearing this, her grandmother was very happy for Yi Xingyue.

"Then you must thank him properly," her grandmother said, and then asked in detail what the master's name was and where he lived.

Yi Xingyue thought she was just chatting with her grandmother, so she told her.

About two weeks later, one day when Shen Siyuan got off work and returned home, he saw a note on the door saying someone was looking for him at the residential gatehouse.

So he met the old woman; she had arrived in the morning and waited until he got off work. She was carrying a cleaned and slaughtered chicken, a basket of eggs, and some scattered coins wrapped in a handkerchief, as well as that pair of butterfly wings.

No one knew how she found her way here, or how she managed to carry all these things over...

That is a story for later; let us not speak of it for now.

From beginning to end, her grandmother never asked Yi Xingyue why she committed suicide.

Instead, Yi Xingyue herself could not help but ask her grandmother why she didn't ask.

Her grandmother said, "When people are alive, they often encounter hurdles they cannot cross. When I was young, I often wanted to die too, but I am an adult; I gritted my teeth and stepped over them. But you are still a child; it is normal if you cannot step over them..."

Hearing this, Yi Xingyue burst into tears.

She had not cried like this for a very, very long time.

Her grandmother rubbed her cheek with her rough hand and wiped away her tears.

With tear-filled eyes, she said, "The thing I regret most is handing you over to your mother. She is your mother; she should have helped you step over it..."

"I didn't want to either..."

"Mom, was my dad really a gangster before?"

Seeing her father go to the kitchen, Zhu Tingting asked her mother in a low voice.

Du Xiuzhi pulled her daughter into her arms, stroked her hair, and said softly, "Don't listen to outsiders talking nonsense. Your father was very honest when he was young."

"But... but..."

"You want to ask about the tattoo on your father's arm?"

Du Xiuzhi turned her daughter's body around and looked at her.

Zhu Tingting nodded obediently.

"That one was to protect me; he got it on purpose. I guess he must have been crying loudly at the time. Your father was a crybaby when he was young; he cried all the time..."

Zhu Tingting widened her eyes, revealing an expression of disbelief.

"Mom didn't lie."

Du Xiuzhi smiled as she recounted past events.

"That was me—I was your father's neighbor, but I was a good student, while your father was a fool, so when we were in junior high, he dropped out and went to work outside..."

"He worked, earned money, and often bought things for me..."

"Later, some accidents happened in my family—your grandparents passed away, and your relatives, seeing I was just a little girl, thought I was easy to bully; one by one, they showed up at our door causing trouble..."

"Your father protected me, argued with them, fought with them..."

"To scare them, your father got tattoos, dyed his hair, grabbed a knife, crying as he swung it—your relatives all scattered like birds and beasts..."

"Then your father was arrested by the police, locked up for several months, but before he was taken, he threatened your relatives, saying if they ever bullied me again, he'd come out and kill their whole families..."

"After that, no one dared come to bully me again..."

"Wow, Dad is so awesome."

Zhu Tingting widened her eyes; for the first time ever, she felt awe for her father.

"So, don't be too weak—weakness invites bullying. First, learn to be strong yourself. Don't hide things from those closest to you—face them and solve problems together. You're still a child..."

Du Xiuzhi lightly tapped her nose, implying something.

"Then... then what happened after?"

"After that... your father kept working, I kept studying; when I graduated, we got married, and then you came along..."

Du Xiuzhi smiled faintly, lost in memory.

Zhu Guangfa stepped out of the kitchen and saw the mother and daughter laughing happily.

He asked suspiciously, "You're not talking about me behind my back, are you?"

"Mom says you were a little crybaby when you were young."

"How could you tell her that? Don't I have any dignity?" Zhu Guangfa protested.

The mother and daughter laughed even louder.