Chapter 3

Chapter 3

If life is like a game of cards,

then there was no doubt I had been dealt an utterly rotten hand.

My dad was a rural punk with dyed yellow hair. My mom was a delinquent party girl.

They both dropped out of middle school and met on an assembly line. When my mother was six months pregnant, they held a simple wedding in the two mud-brick rooms of my father’s old family home.

Later, they had four children in total.

My older sister, Lin Li, and me, along with a pair of twins six years younger than I was.

There aren’t that many fairy tales about climbing the social ladder in this world.

Poor families can no longer raise noble sons.

Children like us usually end up repeating our parents’ path: enter a factory, get married, have children, then send those children back onto the assembly line.

Lin Li dropped out at seventeen and went to work in a factory. In the same workshop, she met her future husband, Li Cheng.

Three years later, it was my turn.

When I tentatively said I wanted to go to high school, my mother was at the mahjong table.

She burst into a loud, shrill laugh and joked with the people around the table, mocking me. “Looks like our family’s about to produce a top student!”

She didn’t even look at me.

She didn’t even give me a proper answer.

I went to work at Lin Li’s factory and spent three years on the assembly line.

One night, she and Li Cheng took me out for a late-night snack and tried to set me up with Li Cheng’s fellow townsman, Zhou You.

Zhou You was a technician at the factory. He was tall and handsome, considerate and attentive, and plenty of the female workers had crushes on him. I had eaten with him a few times, and every time he looked at me, his eyes seemed to sparkle, bright as stars. I could also feel my own heart pounding hard.

I knew this was what it felt like to have feelings for someone.

But I also knew.

Back then, my mom and dad, Lin Li and Li Cheng, had probably started out the same way.

I refused with silence.

Lin Li’s expression darkened. In the same lecturing tone she had always used on me, she snapped, “Lin Xiao, are you stupid or just brainless? If you weren’t my own sister, would Li Cheng have introduced Zhou You to you? What’s wrong with us sisters marrying into the same place? Why are you such hopeless mud that won’t stick to the wall?”

Ever since we were little, I had always been suppressed and belittled in front of her. Compared to my meek obedience, our parents preferred Lin Li’s shrewdness and sociability.

At that moment, for some reason, I felt a little sad. So I looked at Lin Li and slowly said, “I don’t want to live the same life as you and Mom.”

Lin Li froze for two seconds, then slapped me across the face. After that, in the middle of the noisy night market stall, she pointed at me and started cursing at the top of her lungs.

“You filthy bitch! Who do you think you are, acting like you’re too good for us? If I hadn’t pulled you out of that pond back then, you’d have been dead long ago! Since I’m your sister, it’s my responsibility to slap you awake!”

Li Cheng had a cigarette between his lips, watching like he was enjoying a show.

Zhou You stood up and blocked her from me, but his head stayed lowered the whole time.

I wiped the blood from the corner of my mouth and left without saying a word.

Not long after, Lin Li went back to Li Cheng’s hometown with her pregnant belly to get married.

I quit my job at the factory.

With the only three thousand yuan I had left, I walked into a high-end shopping mall for the first time and bought myself a set of clothes that showed off both my figure and my poise.

After that, I went to the biggest matchmaking agency in the city.

I didn’t think I was anyone special.

It was just that a fierce longing surged in my heart, painfully clear.

I didn’t want to keep living this kind of life.

I didn’t want my younger brother and sister to repeat this kind of life a few years later.

I didn’t want my future children to be unable to escape this kind of life.

I had no family background, no education, and no one to support me.

The only things I had

were a beautiful face that somehow surpassed my parents’ genes,

and an age that was still in the prime of youth.

I had to make use of the few advantages I possessed to the absolute limit.