Li Siqi once joked to the media that his father was “a swallow before the hall” — a term for a swallow that nests at the eaves but can never enter the main hall itself.

The meaning was that no matter how great a name his father built, no matter how much wealth he accumulated, he was never permitted inside the inner sanctum — only allowed to wait outside at the threshold.

This was said when Li Siqi had just graduated from drama school and was preparing to make his film debut. As the eldest son of the country’s largest internet medical enterprise owner, combined with his openly blunt and frequently shocking manner of speaking, Li Siqi had been under intense media scrutiny from a very young age.

At a film promotional event, someone asked him: “You’ve chosen to pursue an acting career — what does your father, Li Xun, think of that?”

Li Siqi grinned. “Oh, he has plenty of opinions. I listen to them and let them go.”

The person pressed further: “Li Xun is one of the most formidable data experts of his era, and has made outstanding contributions to the development of internet medicine in China. Has he ever pressured you to take over the family business?”

“And what if he did?” Li Siqi raised his chin and pointed at himself. “You say he’s impressive — well, so am I! If it weren’t for my silver tongue, he would never have set foot inside his mother-in-law’s house for his entire life!”

The reporter felt the ground shift beneath them. Li Siqi, they thought, was practically a living, breathing news-generating machine — one casual pull and an avalanche of explosive material came tumbling out.

Li Siqi was afterwards thoroughly scolded by Zhu Yun over that unguarded interview, but he had been scolded so many times over the course of his life that it no longer fazed him in the slightest.

Li Xun stepped through the front door of Zhu Yun’s family home for the very first time when Li Siqi was in middle school.

From the day of their marriage, more than a decade had passed.

Zhu Yun’s mother was now seventy years old.

Before that day, Li Xun and Zhu Yun’s family had crossed paths in various settings — but her mother had never once spoken a word to Li Xun. In the period right after their marriage, her parents had not even contacted Zhu Yun.

Then they learned that Li Siqi existed.

More than three months after Li Siqi was born, Zhu Yun called home to tell her parents. Her mother had still been waiting for the marriage to fall apart. Instead, a baby had appeared — and she gave Zhu Yun another thorough tongue-lashing, threatening to sever all ties.

Later, Zhu Yun’s younger cousin Xiaofeng came to town on a work trip and stopped by to visit. Xiaofeng was a year younger than Zhu Yun and had been with his girlfriend for many years — their wedding was coming up soon.

He leaned over the crib, entertaining the infant Li Siqi, and said: “My great-nephew is so adorable.”

Li Siqi, at three months old, had shed the shriveled-potato look entirely. His eyes were open now, his little cheeks had rounded out, and he lay in the crib regularly waving his arms and legs — though his head still couldn’t turn much on its own. Zhu Yun had been committed to breastfeeding; he was robust and healthy, and when he cried, his voice rang out like a bell.

“The baby’s mouth looks like yours,” Xiaofeng said, peering over the crib at Li Siqi, eye to eye. “His eyes and nose are his father’s.”

Zhu Yun sat on the sofa beside the crib, reading.

“Let’s hope he doesn’t look like me — on a boy, thick brows and big eyes aren’t interesting. On a girl, that’s fine.”

Xiaofeng looked back at her. “My whole family has thick brows and big eyes — what’s wrong with that? It’s not like they all need to inherit your brother-in-law’s hooded lids. That look is too severe — when he looks at me, I don’t even dare speak.”

Zhu Yun didn’t lift her eyes from the page, just turned another one. “That’s called presence.”

Xiaofeng, when Zhu Yun wasn’t paying attention, made a face at Li Siqi and winked at her. He dangled a toy for Li Siqi to look at and said casually: “Come to my wedding with your husband and bring my great-nephew.”

Zhu Yun finally looked up from her book.

Xiaofeng: “Your parents should be there too. Let them see the baby. And with the relatives around to smooth things over — maybe your mom will soften.”

Zhu Yun said: “Unlikely.” She knew her mother too well. They had similar personalities — a frightening stubbornness about things they’d made up their minds on. Li Xun was practically the only defeat her mother had ever suffered, and she was not going to concede so easily.

Xiaofeng said: “Still, you should come. He’s their grandson. They can’t just never meet him.”

That evening Li Xun came home from work, dusty from the day, and ducked straight into the bathroom to wash his face. Zhu Yun, in her nightdress, leaned against the door frame and told him about Xiaofeng’s invitation.

“Do you want to go? If things at the company are too busy, I can just go with the baby.”

Li Xun splashed his face quickly and turned around. Zhu Yun handed him the towel; he wiped himself off, then said: “Let’s go. When is it?”

Zhu Yun gave him the date, then hesitated. “At the time, if my mother —” Before she could finish, Li Xun tossed the towel back onto the sink. He was standing very close; he bent toward her neck, inhaled her scent, and finished her sentence naturally. “It’s fine. Don’t worry.” He slid his hand into Zhu Yun’s nightdress. Zhu Yun had just given birth and was still nursing; she had recovered beautifully over the month of rest, her skin soft and tender enough that it seemed it might yield at the slightest pressure.

Zhu Yun stood with her back against the wall. Li Xun’s kisses grew increasingly uncontrolled; he pressed close to her, breathing heavily, and asked: “Has it been eight weeks?”

Zhu Yun could barely breathe.

“What?”

“Eight weeks — it’s been eight weeks, hasn’t it?”

The doctors had recommended waiting at least eight weeks after a natural birth before resuming intimacy. Li Xun answered his own question: “It definitely has. I feel like it’s been a whole year.”

He scooped her up horizontally and carried her toward the bedroom. Zhu Yun’s chin rested against his neck as she said faintly: “It hasn’t been a year…”

All three of them attended Xiaofeng’s wedding.

Li Xun brought a sizeable red envelope for this distant young relative by marriage.

Inside the hotel, Zhu Yun ran into her mother. Her mother was admiring the string quartet. The third aunt noticed Zhu Yun first and smiled at her, then gestured toward her mother.

Her mother turned and saw Zhu Yun’s family of three — her expression did not change. The third aunt spoke beside her, gently urging. Her mother turned her head and walked away. The third aunt came over to entertain Li Siqi for a while, then said to Zhu Yun: “Your father is inside — take the baby and go see them. Your mother is stubborn in words only — she actually cares deeply about you. After Xiaofeng came to visit, she asked him all sorts of questions about the baby on the quiet.” The third aunt then glanced at Li Xun, standing beside Zhu Yun, and said carefully: “Perhaps Mr. Li should wait a moment.”

Zhu Yun went alone with Li Siqi to find her mother. At the table full of family and friends, everyone was drawn to the little baby, gathering to look. Zhu Yun greeted her mother, who responded with cool reserve. Noticing that her mother’s gaze kept drifting toward Li Siqi, Zhu Yun placed him in her mother’s arms.

Looking back afterward, it really did seem as though the credit for everything that followed belonged entirely to Li Siqi. For a three-month-old baby to be stared at by a crowd of strangers like some kind of exhibit and show not a flicker of shyness — to laugh delightedly whenever someone poked him, openly and joyfully, completely unconcerned by the attention.

When he laughed, her mother, her father, and everyone around them laughed too. Zhu Yun looked back — Li Xun was standing far away, watching them, and he too was smiling.

For the entire wedding, her mother held Li Siqi and would not let go — not even when Xiaofeng and the bride exchanged their rings.

After that wedding, whenever Zhu Yun called home, her mother would ask after Li Siqi. Before New Year’s, Zhu Guangyi called and asked Zhu Yun to bring the baby home.

“Just the two of you,” he emphasized.

Li Xun had no objection. He said: “Go. You don’t go back many times in a year as it is — it’s only natural your parents miss you.”

Zhu Yun felt a weight on her heart, but she didn’t let it show. To Li Xun, “family” was a paper-thin, fragile window, letting through nothing but an endless sense of loss and sorrow.

Zhu Yun made him a promise: “Don’t work on New Year’s Eve. Come with us. Wait for us at the hotel nearby. I’ll take the baby in for the New Year’s Eve dinner, and once my parents are asleep, I’ll come out.”

Li Xun glanced at Li Siqi, sprawled in every direction, and said slowly: “He sleeps that much — what if we wake him up?”

Zhu Yun straightened up.

Li Xun hadn’t refused her suggestion — which meant he was tempted. He didn’t want to spend New Year’s alone.

Understandably so.

With a wife and son, why should he spend New Year’s alone?

Zhu Yun looked at Li Siqi for a moment, then said without hesitation: “If he wakes up, he goes back to sleep. What’s the big deal?”

She had once, for Li Xun’s sake, run through the freezing streets in a thin dress in the dead of winter. Compared to that, asking her son to lose a little sleep was nothing.

This became one of the things Li Siqi never stopped complaining about —

“Compared to my dad, I am nothing but a blade of grass in this family!”

Li Siqi would pour out his grievances to the media: “You know that classic question that’s been passed down through generations? Go ask my mom — if me and my dad fell into the water, who would she save — it would absolutely be my dad!”

Every time he brought up his childhood, he would heave dramatic sighs.

“The things I’ve done for this family, and in the end I still had no choice but to bow to my father’s iron will! I once tried to take my mother’s hand and convince her to stage a joint uprising against the tyranny—”

The reporter jumped in eagerly: “And then?”

“Then?!” Li Siqi stared. “What do you mean, and then?!”

Reporter: “……”

Li Siqi took a sip of water and composed himself.

The reporter asked again: “You mentioned doing a lot for the family — what did you mainly mean by that?”

“Don’t even bring it up!” Li Siqi put down his glass. “It makes me furious every time! When I was finishing primary school and getting ready for middle school, my mother was pushing me hard on my studies, and I really couldn’t stand it anymore. So I told her — ‘Do you believe I can get Dad to come home with us for New Year’s?’ She said she didn’t believe me, so I made a bet with her: if I won, she’d stop forcing me to study.”

Reporter: “And your mother agreed?”

Li Siqi’s eyes narrowed. “Of course she agreed. As I said — when it comes to my dad, there’s nothing she won’t be fully invested in.”

Reporter: “And what did you do after that?”

Li Siqi slapped his thighs dramatically. “I went and shamelessly chatted up my grandmother, of course! My grandmother is the big boss of our family — she truly proved with her actions just how much she looked down on my father! No matter what award he won or how much money he made, she just looked down on him — no questions asked! That’s how she operated!” He pointed at himself and said to the reporter: “My grandmother passed away two years ago. I was exactly twenty at the time. You know what — in all twenty years of my life, not once did she ever call me by my surname when she said my name. Not a single time.”

The reporter was taken aback.

Li Siqi let out a short hmph. “And after I went to all that trouble to get my dad to come for New Year’s, my mother still made me study. I ask you — how can someone who does business be so utterly lacking in integrity?”

The reporter recovered and said: “Your parents aren’t exactly businesspeople, strictly speaking — they’re more research-oriented. They have always been—”

“Okay, okay, stop.” Li Siqi waved his hand. “I’m not going to sit here listening to a glowing interview about them from thousands of miles away.”

He leaned back into the chair and gazed toward the window. The reporter suddenly noticed that Li Siqi’s profile — turned to the side, unguarded — looked remarkably like a photograph that had once circulated of Li Xun.

Li Xun and Zhu Yun had three children together — two sons and one daughter. The other two inherited their parents’ high intelligence in full, especially the youngest daughter, who had completed her university education at just sixteen and gone abroad to further her studies. Only Li Siqi — who took two attempts to get into drama school, and very nearly failed on the written portion the first time.

Yet of the three children, Li Siqi most resembled his father.

That brow and those eyes, that bearing, that way of holding himself — they were the image of a young Li Xun. So when people watched him, they often found themselves thinking of his father, as if time had folded in on itself.

The reporter’s final question: “So before you started middle school, did your father spend every New Year’s waiting for you in a hotel?”

Li Siqi said, matter-of-factly: “No. He waited in the car.”

That way, he was closer, and quicker. Besides, the car had heat — no matter how hard it snowed outside, he wouldn’t be cold.

Li Siqi rested his hands behind his head and said easily: “Every time, my mother and I rushed out as fast as we could — and he still complained about the wait. But tell him to leave? He refused.” He rocked back in his chair, smiling softly to himself. “He was like a swallow who had made up its mind — coming back to the same eaves, year after year.”