“From now on, you’ll go with your uncle to the city. The city is so fun — there’s so much delicious food, and so many children to play with.”
“Mama, I don’t want to… I don’t know him!”
“Silly girl, he’ll be your father from now on.”
“I have a father!”
“Stop it! This is such a wonderful opportunity. You don’t understand now, but when you grow up, you’ll thank us for it!”
Fu Xingyue stepped out of Ba Yunye’s vehicle. Having been seen through, her outward demeanor was as calm as a still sea, yet inside, waves crashed violently. In her ears, it was as though she could hear again the sound of her own wailing cries from that time — the keening of someone who had lost everything. She could no longer remember what the “countryside” Fu Yingtao spoke of had looked like; what remained were only faint impressions: grey brick walls, a well draped in cobwebs, and a dead golden-headed fly on the windowsill.
Her face utterly expressionless, she looked across the other climbers at Fu Yingtao — just as she once had to strain upward through the legs of several adults to finally make out that face. It couldn’t be called loving. There had always been a certain haughtiness and detachment to it, condescending, radiating an endless sense of superiority.
She had heard that he was the only college graduate among all the brothers in his generation of the family — and the only one who had left the village and come to the city. Yet this man, whose first half of life had been so glorious, had been found unable to have children. Unwilling to adopt an orphan with no blood ties to him, he could only stoop to taking in a child from among his cousins’ offspring. To the outside world, he simply said that his wife was infertile. None of the brothers would pass on a son, so in the end, they chose her — the third child of her family. Word had it that her birth parents received a substantial sum as a so-called “childcare compensation.”
She had come to her new parents in terror and despair, trembling, a young child desperately suppressing her grief and fear.
To this day, his “earnest teachings” still echoed in her ears —
“Listen. From this day forward, you are my daughter. I am the one who brought you out of the countryside, and I will raise you to adulthood. Without me, you would have had no future in that village. Do you understand?”
“How many points did you score this time? A perfect double hundred? First in the class? Very good. It seems I have taught you well. Without me, given your natural aptitude, you could never have scored like this. You must keep working hard — you absolutely cannot fall behind others.”
“You want to know why I hit you? You took the breakfast money I gave you and spent it on comic books?! Don’t put your mind toward such useless things — go study. I raise you so that you will take care of me in the future. Without me, think about whether you’d be back in the countryside playing in the mud. If you can’t outperform others, what am I relying on you for?”
“Why would you want to go to a university so far away? Hmph — change it! You are not going to university in another province. I see that your third-choice school is perfectly fine — a city right here in our province. Move that third choice to the first. What are you crying for? Without me, you think you’d even be going to university? Let me tell you — not one of your country sisters and brother passed the college entrance exam. Your eldest sister dropped out after middle school to go work. Without me, you’d be the same. Change it. Change it right now!”
“Don’t stay and work over there — come back. Work at my danwei. Why? You’re asking me why? Why did I raise you? If you go work somewhere else, how will you look after this old man in the future? Could you be where you are today without me? Think about it yourself.”
The wind blew sand into Fu Xingyue’s eyes. She rubbed them a few times, and tears welled up, carrying the grit out with them. “Without you…” she said silently. “Without you…”
She felt nearly suffocated.
What Fu Xingyue intended to do — this question had lodged itself firmly in both Ba Yunye’s and Diao Zhuo’s minds. Until they had an answer, the two, as if by unspoken agreement, kept separating that married couple from Fu Yingtao, trying their best not to give Fu Xingyue any opportunity to approach him.
Everyone’s backpack was heavy, packed full of the equipment and supplies needed for the summit push. Lu Jianyi said that they didn’t need to bring too much food — there was plenty at C1, left behind by other climbers before their own summit attempts. Everyone was curious why other climbers would leave so much food behind. He kept it a mystery, saying they’d understand once they got there.
“Even if he slips and falls somewhere, the most he’d do is break a leg — it won’t kill him. The medication route… that should have fallen through too. The medicine I gave him is safe; many guests have taken it without any trouble… Altitude sickness… I think he can manage that as well…” Ba Yunye murmured quietly. From the moment the hike began, her gaze had not left Fu Yingtao.
Diao Zhuo, walking up ahead, kept looking back, as though searching for something. Catching her troubled expression out of the corner of his eye, he teased: “Is there actually someone Master Ba can’t handle?”
Ba Yunye raised an eyebrow, reached out, and gave his backpack a light tug. “As long as I can handle you, that’s enough!”
“And have you managed to handle me?”
She strode forward and threw her arm around him. “What do you think?”
Diao Zhuo was already taller than her, and with one easy reach, he rested his hand on her head, scratching through her hat in an affectionate way. “In that case, the people you can’t handle, you might as well leave to me.”
She feigned shock. “You want to handle her the same way you handle me?!”
“Rest assured, I have no interest in being a scoundrel.”
Ba Yunye rolled her eyes and shoved his hand off her head with force.
Then a new idea came to her. “I have a plan. Once we reach C1, all the summit gear and supplies for everyone are to be prepared and distributed by Lu Jianyi and Pu Lan — don’t give her any chance to pull any tricks.”
“Do you know what tricks she’s planning to pull?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Chocolate.”
Ba Yunye was momentarily stunned. Diao Zhuo deliberately offered no explanation and turned to keep walking. She grew anxious, half-jogging to catch up, slightly out of breath, grabbing his sleeve. “Tell me then — what chocolate?”
“He’s allergic to chocolate.” Diao Zhuo pulled her close and said near her ear, “He can’t come into contact with it at all.”
“How do you know?”
“He has never touched the stuff.”
Ba Yunye was skeptical. “Some people just don’t like eating it. I have a client who absolutely refuses to eat it — says one bite gives her terrible breakouts all over her face, bad enough to ruin her looks. So even during that exhausting hike through Yubeng Village, she’d rather gnaw on crackers than touch a single piece of chocolate.”
“I carefully went over everything about their behavior since they arrived at the West Grand Beach — when you warned people not to feed Huzi chocolate, Jiang Ao’hang offhandedly said, ‘Dogs can’t eat chocolate,’ and that set him off with obvious displeasure. Clearly, that sentence hit a nerve. Just now, you told me that Fu Xingyue said he was a very proud man — that’s his weak spot and vulnerability. He probably doesn’t want anyone knowing about it.”
Ba Yunye was still uncertain. “But based on just one remark…”
Diao Zhuo was quiet for a moment, then drifted back from the people ahead, letting himself and Ba Yunye fall to the rear of the group. “Jiang Ao’hang once brought him hot cocoa; when he refused it, Jiang Ao’hang poured hot water into the same cup that had held the cocoa. He still wouldn’t drink it — and what’s more, when a few drops of cocoa splashed onto his hand, his reaction was far too intense. At the altitude we were at, even water boiled to a full rolling boil is only about sixty to seventy degrees Celsius; one or two drops of hot water wouldn’t cause a burn. Jiang Ao’hang saw him refuse, then quickly drank the entire cupful himself — which means the water wasn’t hot enough to hurt. This isn’t a matter of hot or cold, sweet or not sweet. It’s a question of whether he can come into contact with anything containing chocolate at all.”
Ba Yunye was thrilled and gave him a hard punch. “You figured all that out — you’re incredible!!”
“Who’s calling me??” Da Qiang up ahead suddenly called out.
Ba Yunye rolled her eyes and shouted back: “Not you! I’m talking about Diao Zhuo!”
“You can tell how incredible Diao Zhuo is just from climbing a mountain?” Dongbo laughed heartily.
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder — and so is brilliance!” Da Qiang shot back immediately.
Diao Zhuo paid no attention to his friends’ banter and jerked his chin toward Huzi, signaling to Ba Yunye that the dog could come in useful. “We need to make absolutely sure there’s no trace of chocolate in the older Fu’s water bottle or any of his food. Fu Xingyue seems very confident about this — she may not do it herself. She might use Jiang Ao’hang as her hands.”
“Right — she said she’d never seen this before.” Ba Yunye pulled out the medicine bottle. “Who knows whether she’s truly in denial, or whether she genuinely hasn’t.”
Diao Zhuo shook his head, indicating that her words were not particularly credible.
This month was the last suitable climbing month of the year for Yuzhu Peak. The snow line was far lower than during the summer peak climbing season. Despite the clear weather, the altitude was bitterly cold; the wind that constantly poured through cuffs and collars accelerated the body’s rate of heat loss, and whenever they stopped to rest, a shivering would set in.
Fu Xingyue took a few deep breaths. Perhaps from the sting of the cold wind in her throat, she began coughing repeatedly. Jiang Ao’hang poured her some hot water, and the two of them wanted to find somewhere to sit and rest. Lu Jianyi cautioned them that it was better not to sit down — for one, sitting in the open only meant continuing to be blown by the wind, making one even colder; and for another, stopping to rest mid-way tended to breed inertia.
Fu Xingyue drank her hot water. Watching Jiang Ao’hang fussing attentively over Fu Yingtao — pouring tea and delivering water — she couldn’t help but smile faintly. His agreeing to let her marry Jiang Ao’hang had surely been entirely for his own sake. Jiang Ao’hang appeared far easier to control than Han Mu…
“You and young Han won’t work out — I can see that. You’re not compatible. I’m telling you, you two are not compatible! He’s the reason you insist on staying to work in the provincial capital, isn’t he, because that’s where he’s from? What, you’ve found yourself a backer now? Have you forgotten how I brought you out of the countryside? If you go to the provincial capital, what about your mother and me? I was the one watching over your studies, paying your tuition — without me, what university would you be attending?”
“Young Han wants to settle here with you? Look how happy you are about that. I don’t agree. Why do you keep asking me why? He has you completely bewitched. Who is raising you — him or me? Just because he’s a doctor with talent, able to plant roots anywhere he goes — if I allow you to be with him, in a few years you’ll follow him away!”
“Breaking up was the right thing to do. Very good. I haven’t raised you for nothing. What’s wrong with staying close to your parents? Even if you find someone to be with, it has to be a man who will come and take care of us alongside you — ideally someone whose own parents are both gone, so he’ll be obedient and well-behaved.”
“…I know Ao’hang has been very persistent in pursuing you. If you want to be with him, fine. He and you are the same — both from the countryside, neither of you planning to go back. Let me tell you clearly though: marriage is just a formality. I don’t want you to become too close with any man, because ultimately you are to live with me — to see me through to my eighties and nineties, to send me off properly when the time comes. After that, you can go enjoy your own twilight years. After all, without me, you wouldn’t have the life you have today. You must remember this debt of gratitude.”
Fu Xingyue thought back to those days, her head splitting. How pathetically had she knelt on the floor, sobbing and begging Fu Yingtao to allow her to be with her first love, Han Mu? From childhood she had complied with his every demand — he told her what to do, and she did it. But she truly could not bear to let go of Han Mu, and it was for that reason she had, for once, allowed herself to weep freely in his presence. Yet he simply refused. He even went to Han Mu’s family home to cause a scene, forcing them to part ways in the end.
All because Han Mu looked too difficult to control — born into a family of physicians, a top student at a medical university, not exactly handsome but with a refined appearance, who treated her wonderfully and was even willing to forgo graduate school to settle in her city with her.
To Fu Xingyue, Han Mu had been not only a lover, but a rebirth.
“A’mu — you know my background. I never once asked him to bring me to the city. Never asked him to support me. Never insisted on going to university. So why is it that in his mouth, all of it becomes a bestowing of grace? This is my situation, and I’m truly sorry — I don’t want to be this humiliated. Let’s end things.”
Several years ago, when she had typed those words on her phone screen, what flowed from her eyes was not tears, but blood.
First love always cuts to the bone. Watching Ba Yunye and Diao Zhuo’s occasional small, intimate gestures, Fu Xingyue always found herself thinking back to her time with Han Mu in university. The way Diao Zhuo looked at Ba Yunye was the same as the way Han Mu had once looked at her — deep, so focused, full of admiration and acceptance, like the ocean reflecting the entire sky full of stars.
She had only learned today that Ba Yunye was an orphan, and had never been taken in by any family. As for herself — though she had birth parents and adoptive parents — she might as well have had none at all. Her birth parents were heartless and faithless, and her adoptive father dangled his favors over her head like a blade, using them to hold her hostage.
Give a man a fish, and he feeds you for life — and never lets you forget it.
“Xingyue, what’s wrong?” Jiang Ao’hang came closer.
“A bit of a headache.” She rubbed her temples and coughed twice more. Every memory cut off abruptly.
“Normal — the altitude just keeps climbing; some altitude sickness is inevitable.” Lu Jianyi had heard from Hema the evening before that Fu Xingyue might try something underhanded during the summit push, and so he had already been keeping a close eye. Looking at her now, he thought to himself: what could this soft, fragile girl possibly do? She was clearly barely keeping herself afloat as it was.