Chapter 16: 14

It was very odd that Jiang Se did not retaliate against her today. Whenever Du HongHong mocked or ridiculed her, Jiang Se would also say something mean in return, unable to hold herself back. This was the first time she was completely ignored, and it was the first time that Jiang Se just silently went to her room.

Du HongHong had noticed the changes in Jiang Se for a while now. But if someone asked her what had changed, she could only shake her head and shrug her shoulders. She was too young to figure out what exactly was different.

Sadly, no one else seemed to have noticed these things other than Du HongHong. She wondered, Is she heartbroken? Or did she get dumped?

Inside her bedroom, Jiang Se pulled the cord and turned on the light. She then began to calculate after taking the cash from her bag that she had earned the day before.

She had taken twenty yuan from the original Jiang Se’s bed and used half of it on the bus fares. The bus from Shen Farms had gotten back to the city rather late last night, but thankfully the buses had not stopped operating for the day yet. The buses would run until 11:00 p.m. on weekends and holidays, so she paid two yuan and boarded the final bus from Lu BaoBao’s residence to the stop close to the Du family home.

She earned a total of 370 yuan from yesterday’s filming and paid 100 yuan for her hotel room. Adding the ten yuan, she still had 280 left.

This amount of money, to her in the past, would have just been a drop in the ocean 1, but to the current Jiang Se, it was quite a sum of money.

She was simply too poor.

In her more than twenty years of life, she had never known the feeling of being poor, but now, not only did she have intimate knowledge of the value of a yuan, she was struggling to find ways to make it stretch.

 Jiang Se sighed to herself and carefully put away the money. She pressed down on the cover of the notebook, flattening the money wedged between the pages, then placed the notebook back under her pillow. The door was suddenly pushed open at this time, and Zhou Hui strode in.

Her eyebrows were wrinkled in an obvious frown of disapproval as she glanced pointedly at the lamp, then heaved a sigh. “It’s broad daylight; why are you wasting electricity? If your Uncle Du knows about it, you’ll get a cuss out again!”

After marrying Du ChangQun, Zhou Hui had never worked outside. For more than a decade, she spent most of her life at home, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the children.  

Jiang Se had not needed to inquire about these things. Du ChangQun’s mother, Zhou Hui’s mother-in-law, never failed to bring this up during dinner time.

At the dinner table, Du Mu2 would mutter endlessly to no one in particular, her words laced with sarcasm and contempt. The blatant dissatisfaction she aimed at Zhou Hui for bringing a superfluous burden 3 to the Du household was not a secret.   

Zhou Hui would often end up feeling embarrassed or indignant, but nevertheless, she never dared to contradict her mother-in-law.

The Du household only ever gave the bare minimum to Jiang Se, whether in food or clothing, she was not given any surplus. Du Mu managed the household money strictly, so whenever the plumbing and the electricity bills were too high, Du ChangQun would immediately berate Jiang Se.

The original Jiang Se was just a young girl, and she was surrounded with hostility inside what was supposed to be the safest place for a growing child. Therefore, the young Jiang Se would argue back whenever Zhou Hui tried to talk to her about these things.

Jiang Se did not have a proper bedroom. Instead, Du ChangQun hastily partitioned a 3 square meter room. There were no windows, so it was always dark and stuffy, even during the daytime. Leaving the bedroom door open did not help either; the light from the hallway was hardly sufficient to see your own hands.

However, Jiang Se was not about to start an argument for such a small thing. She quietly nodded to Zhou Hui and reached for the cord to turn off the light.

“Wait a second!” Quickly stopping her with a gesture, Zhou Hui turned to look out the door. As there did not appear to be anyone nearby, she entered the small room and shut the door. “Where did you go last night?”

“Tell me! Where did you go, and why did you only come back this morning,” she said with a biting tone as her hand was raised high to strike Jiang Se.

Jiang Se immediately reacted and leaned to the side, narrowly avoiding Zhou Hui’s hand.

An angry look came over Zhou Hui’s face after she failed to hit her daughter. She leaned forward and raised her hand again, but Jiang Se quickly cut her off: “I went to the library with a classmate.”

She used the same excuse Lu BaoBao had given her parents and covered up what really happened.

“I did come back last night. I knocked on the door for a long time, but nobody came to open it. I went and stayed the night at my friend’s house.”

Zhou Hui took a deep breath, threw a stern look at Jiang Se, and said, “Your Uncle Du came home from work yesterday looking for you. He wanted to bring you with him to see a friend of his. If you had been around yesterday you might have a proper job by now!”

“Who would have thought you had the nerve to stay out so late? You wasted your Uncle Du’s good intentions, do you understand?”

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“Ah,” Jiang Se nodded in reply and flashed a small smile at Zhou Hui. “I never thought of dropping out of school and going to work.”

“What?” Zhou was taken aback. She never thought her daughter would say these words.

This was neither the first nor the second time she had discussed finding work after high school with Jiang Se. Jiang Se also never refused the idea; several times there were even signs that Jiang Se agreed with her. She was also eager to work and had mentioned becoming a celebrity to earn money. Jiang Se had told her multiple times that she wanted to be on TV and to one day become someone that the whole country would recognize.

In fact, she recalled mentioning work several days ago to Jiang Se. She did not refuse then, so she thought she had tacitly agreed. Why did her daughter suddenly change her mind?

“What do you mean? What are you going to do then, huh?” Zhou Hui burst out in worry. She moved to sit at the other end of Jiang Se’s bed, and the box-spring bed creaked in protest.

“You know you’re not that good at studying, and your grades have always been below average. Studying further will just be a waste of time and money!” After saying these words, another bout of anxiety and irritation gripped Zhou Hui, and she reached out, wanting to pinch her daughter. “Besides, the college entrance exams are not easy, and there is still the problem of the tuition fee!”

Jiang Se had already anticipated Zhou Hui’s response, particularly where money was concerned. She had given her answers considerable thought. “I’ll go out and find a summer job to earn some money.”

Zhou Hui looked exasperatingly at her daughter and shook her head in despair. “Money is not that easy to earn. Look at your Uncle Du, he works more hours than he’s awake and doesn’t even dare to take a rest for a single day in a month! He works even when he’s not feeling well, yet he only earns about 3,000 yuan a month! You’re only seventeen years old this year; what kind of work could you possibly get at your age?”

Jiang Se could hear a touch of nervousness and fear in Zhou Hui’s voice. It was as if she was apprehensive of society, of the ‘outside world.’ She wondered briefly what Zhou Hui was afraid of.

Zhou Hui was undoubtedly pretty when she was younger. She might not have been some big beauty, but she must have been quite attractive—pretty enough that Du ChangQun would marry her even when she was a divorcee and had a kid in tow.

Time had not been kind to Zhou Hui. All kinds of hardships, poverty, and life in general had gradually worn down what good looks she once had.

Jiang Se thought Zhou Hui was like a caged pigeon with its wings clipped, raised by Du ChangQun, afraid of the world, helpless to stand or think for herself.  

Maybe if she had not experienced this inexplicable ‘rebirth’ then, she, too, might have become someone similar. With all of the arrangements made for her before, plus her identity and education as the shackles that bound her, she would have been a ‘good daughter’ who then obediently accepted the family’s arrangements to marry the heir of Jiang Hua Corporation. She would then become a ‘good wife.’ From one cage to another, from the Feng family to the Zhao family, a different environment but with the same fetters—forever dependent on and subservient to men.  

The only difference between Zhou Hui and the her before was that Du ChangQun had no qualms displaying his resentment and contempt on his face. While it was extremely possible that her husband would have the same loathing, he would have definitely expressed it in different ways, concealing it in a different form.

“It doesn’t matter. You won’t know until you try.”

At first, Jiang Se wanted to share some of her plans with Zhou Hui, but seeing the look of impatience on her face, she decided against it.

“Whatever.” Zhou Hui muttered with displeasure, “Since you don’t want to listen to me, then I won’t  force you. I just want to remind you of one thing: the family does not have any extra money for you to waste!”

After saying these last few words, Zhou Hui silently exited the room after grabbing the cord to switch off the light.

__________

It was Monday, and there were four days until the college entrance exams.

Lu BaoBao lay listlessly on top of her desk, her head facing Jiang Se, and her eyes were gleaming with tears as she sadly recounted what had happened to her.

“When I got back home that day, I was scolded so much that my ears nearly fell off. My phone was also confiscated, and I’m not allowed to go out anymore.”

In school, Lu BaoBao was well-known for having an addiction to the internet. She almost always carried her phone, and even when class was in session, she would sneakily browse the gossip websites to read all about the lives of her favorite celebrities. Now that her phone was gone, it was a little hard to get used to not seeing her glued to the screen.

“Do you know how I spent yesterday and today?” Lu BaoBao asked, sticking her cheek sulkily onto Jiang Se’s arm. “I had gotten sunburns all over my body, and there were several light bruises on my arms and feet, so my parents eventually found out that we snuck to Shen Farms. They took away my forty yuan and forced me to get up at 6:00 a.m. to study! I had to start memorizing at an ungodly hour in the morning.”

Jiang Se pushed Lu BaoBao’s face away, but try as she might, she could not move the head that was rubbing itself on her arm.

“I don’t have any money left, SeSe! I can’t sleep at night, and I have a hard time getting up in the morning. My dad even threatened me! If I don’t do well on the college entrance exams, he is going to kill me. Huhuhu,” wailed Lu BaoBao sadly as she gripped Jiang Se’s arm even tighter.

Footnotes

九牛一毛 jiu niu yi mao – One hair from nine oxen  杜母 Du Mu – Du ChangQun’s mother  拖油瓶 tuo you ping – Literally translates to dragging an oil bottle. It is used as an insult to those women who bring their children from the previous marriage into the new one, adding an ‘unnecessary’ burden to the new couple/family. 

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