Chapter 7
Chapter 7
Two brocade pouches remained, accompanying me as I grew up.
When I moved to the city for high school, life was tight while living under someone else’s roof. I didn’t have a room of my own; my folding bed was set up on the balcony. It was sweltering in the summer and freezing in the winter, but the rainy days were the worst, forcing me to curl up and sleep in a tiny corner.
My mother was biased, and my stepfather was a mean-spirited alcoholic. Even my three-year-old half-brother would curse at me to my face: “You’re just a freeloader! Get out of my house!”
I never lost heart. As long as I held those brocade pouches, I felt like Grandma was still with me. She would look at me with the most satisfied, joyful smile and say, “Our Shanshan is smart. You can succeed at anything you do!”
During university, I met my current boyfriend, Gu Weizhi.
He was three years older than me-gentle, considerate, and from a wealthy family. The first time he visited, my mother realized the Gu family was well-off and didn’t hesitate to make an outrageous demand: eight hundred and eighty thousand yuan for the bride price.
I was so embarrassed and ashamed that I didn’t know what to do, but Gu Weizhi gripped my hand firmly.
“Auntie, eight hundred and eighty thousand is no problem.”
Before my mother could celebrate, he shifted his tone. “But it won’t be in the form of a bride price. I’ll transfer it to Shanshan before the wedding. Our marriage is not a transaction. This money is for my wife to buy whatever she needs. She has suffered too much in this house, and I won’t give you another chance to bully her.”
His appearance perfectly filled the void left by my family.
After accepting his proposal, I almost opened the second brocade pouch on impulse. But Grandma had emphasized, “The second one must wait until your wedding night. Not a day early, not a second late.”
This pouch was made of coarse, deep blue cloth, embroidered with strange, peculiar patterns that gave off an inexplicably somber, forbidding feeling.
I didn’t dare cross the line. I waited until the day of the wedding.
Only then did I open it with excitement. I had imagined countless times what might be inside. Would it have my future husband’s name? Or the number of years we would spend together? Or perhaps something about our future children?
But there was nothing inside.
Nothing but a single word, written in blood:
RUN!!!