Family Conflict

The year I turned eighteen, my mother took five taels of silver and married me off to Ji Songzhu, a man infamous far and wide for bringing death to his wives.

Before me, both of his previous wives had died of sudden illness three days before the wedding.

My father was famous throughout the surrounding villages for being a good man.

One freezing winter during a famine, he gave the last of our rice to a mother and child passing by.

After they left, they told everyone they met that my family still had grain.

The starving refugees, driven mad by hunger, came to our door to steal it, only to find an empty rice jar.

Humiliated and enraged, they forced my three-year-old sister into their arms and carried her away.

“If there’s no rice, then your daughter will do!”

I ran after them. In the end, all I found in the ruined temple was my sister’s mangled remains.

When I returned home, my father wailed through his tears, “I was trying to save people! It’s not my fault… That was just her fate!”

He saved someone else. In the end, my sister died, and I died too, in the bitter winter when I was fifteen.

When I opened my eyes again, I saw my father handing the freshly cooked rice to that mother and child.

I picked up the flower hoe beside me and stepped up behind him.

After my mother got divorced, she became the fiercest woman in the village.

She often cursed at me, “If I didn’t have you dragging me down, I would’ve remarried some rich man long ago.”

Behind her back, the villagers gossiped, “She can’t get anyone to marry her, so she uses her daughter as an excuse.”

My father mocked her even more. “With your mother’s firecracker temper, and since she can’t even give birth to a son, the only man who’d want her is one with four sons who can’t find wives.”

Later, a small business owner really did want to marry my mother.

Then my father regretted it. “Yufen, let’s get married again. The three of us can live a proper life together.”

“My youngest uncle is Yin Boyu. You’ve heard of him, right?”

My blind date asked the question with a hint of contempt.

“I have.”

“He’s only a few years older than me, but he’s already the one in charge of the family company.”

“Impressive.”

“My uncle really is impressive. Handsome, loaded, the whole package. Too bad he’s so cold. He’s almost thirty, and there’s still not a single woman by his side.”

Is that so? I took a sip of my milk tea and didn’t tell him.

My divorce certificate with Yin Boyu was tucked away in my drawer.

Everyone knew that Fu Shengchao, the titan of the Beijing Circle, loved his wife more than life itself.

On the day she died in a car accident, his hair turned white overnight.

From then on, he grew more and more violent, and his relationship with his son became increasingly distant.

Father and son ended up treating each other like enemies.

Later, Fu Shengchao finally relented and agreed to find his son a stepmother.

I was among the candidates.

When our cooking skills were tested, everyone else presented delicacies fit for a banquet. I served a plate of stinky tofu.

When our talents were tested, everyone else showed off music, chess, calligraphy, and painting. I performed a set of tai chi.

When our knowledge of Fu Shengchao was tested, everyone else praised his abilities and glorious past achievements.

I leaned in and said, “CEO Fu, you have a mole on your left butt cheek.”

Fu Shengchao: “…”

That very night, I was kept behind.

Fu Shengchao pressed a gun to my temple, his expression cold.

“Talk. Who sent you?”

I dropped to my knees at once, but my eyes darted to the side.

Over there, a female ghost who had been dead for ten years was flying around in a panic. “That shouldn’t have happened! Everything I taught you was right!”

Bullshit! She also said her husband was cold on the outside but kind on the inside, and easy to coax!

In my third year of disguising myself as a man and sneaking into the Prince’s Mansion to work as a guard, I got involved with the prince’s male favorite.

I had meant to cut things off with him and sever all ties for good.

But whenever he took my hand during our secret meetings, my resolve would crumble.

And just like that, spineless and useless as I was, I committed a capital offense.

Dad didn’t like me. I knew this from a very young age.

Because I wasn’t the boy he wanted.

To have a son, he sent me away, saying, “Sons are the roots, and I don’t lack daughters.”

Never having been loved, I was upset about it for a long time.

But when it came time for him to need support in his old age, he said, “Sons are unreliable; daughters are the most caring.”

“Second Sister, when Dad gets old, it’ll all be up to you!”

On the day my stepsister was murdered.

I told my dad and the police that I had gone to school to do homework, that I hadn’t been home, and that I really didn’t know what had happened.

But the truth was, I lied.

Mom had a Leather Handbook that recorded every woman Dad kept on the side.

One of them, Aunt Wei, was marked in particular.

In Mom’s delicate handwriting, she had written: This is the little toy I’m leaving you. Enjoy this life to your heart’s content, my daughter.

After Mom died, that woman buzzed into my life like a fly.

And I swatted her straight down into hell.

My stepmother had been my mom’s best friend, and she had always doted on me.

She spoiled me so thoroughly that Dad became utterly disappointed in me and turned to grooming his stepdaughter instead.

After Dad died, my stepmother swallowed up the inheritance and threw me out of the house.

I died on the streets one snowy night.

When I opened my eyes again, my stepmother was secretly stuffing money into the hands of my soon-to-be second-year high school self.

“Don’t worry about your dad. I support you studying music and chasing your dreams.”