“You, what kind of muddleheaded fool are you? Three months pregnant and you don’t even know?”
Xie Wuling irritably lifted his robe hem, sat heavily on the bench by the window, those peach-blossom eyes that usually brimmed with laughter now dark and stormy, fixed on the stunned young woman by the bed. “Tell me, how many words out of your mouth are true, how many false? Isn’t even the name Ma Cuilan just to fool me?”
Shen Yujiao hadn’t even recovered from the shock of being told she was pregnant, and now, with his interrogation, her delicate face went even paler. Her head spun, her ears rang.
She… was pregnant?
Her head slowly lowered, eyes falling on her still-flat belly, unable to believe that there was life inside.
Thinking carefully, since fleeing the famine, her monthly water had indeed not come. But she always thought it was from hunger, exhaustion, weak blood. She had even read in medical texts that such things happened.
And with floods to escape, plague to flee, even when her stomach felt unwell, her limbs weak and drowsy, she had only blamed bad food and the hardship of running for her life, never once thought of pregnancy.
How could it be?
Her thoughts drifted back to the night before Pei Xia left the manor. That night, following the positions taught by Doctor Zhou, they had joined three times.
Could it be… it was that night the method worked?
Memories surged up like another lifetime. Shen Yujiao felt both grief and absurd irony.
Why now of all times? If she had known at Miaoan Hall, perhaps Madam Wang, for the child’s sake, wouldn’t have gone so far.
But now…
“Ma Cuilan! Foolish woman! Idiot!”
The man’s impatient voice dragged her back. Shen Yujiao lifted her eyes to see Xie Wuling sitting grandly, his already stern face darker still. “I’m talking to you! Are you listening or not?”
Her gaze flickered, she wanted to retort, but had no strength for it.
After a pause, biting her bloodless lips, she rasped softly: “That miscarriage medicine, do you still have more?”
Xie Wuling, sulking, froze at the words.
“What do you want that for?”
“What else.”
Her face remained pale, but her eyes and brows held a strange chill and calm. Her lips moved: “To miscarry.”
A jolt ran through Xie Wuling’s heart. He stared at that delicate yet resolute face, his expression hard to read. “You want to miscarry?”
Shen Yujiao’s eyes were vacant. “What else?”
She said it lightly, but not with the relief of release, rather with the despair of someone at the end of their road.
Xie Wuling’s chest suddenly felt as though a heavy block had been stacked upon it, oppressive, suffocating, with a tangle of emotions that he couldn’t even put into words.
Clearly, ever since Old Li had felt her pulse last night and discovered her pregnancy, he had already made up his mind. He would boil a bowl of abortive medicine, coax her into drinking it, and once that was done, the matter would be closed.
After all, a child once born couldn’t be stuffed back into the womb. If it really came into the world, they couldn’t drown it or abandon it; they’d have no choice but to raise it. But now that the child was still in her belly, if a single bowl of medicine could settle the problem, then of course he wouldn’t be raising someone else’s child. Anyway, in the future, once she became his proper wife, if she wanted children, he could give her six, seven, eight of them if she wished.
While he was simmering the medicine in the kitchen, he had even thought through the comforting words he would say to her once she lost the child.
But now, because of just one line from her, “I think you’re not a bad person”, his heart had softened. He even thought: fine, then raise it. Raising one is raising, raising two makes no difference. So long as she was willing to be his wife, the past was nothing worth fussing over.
Yet who would have thought, just as he had relented, she herself would insist on aborting the child?
“Old Li said the child in your belly is your firstborn…” Xie Wuling’s jaw tightened, his eyes fixed unwaveringly on her. “Then the one you brought with you, where did that child come from?”
Shen Yujiao knew she could not hide it. In a low voice, she said, “Ping’an is the son of the man who once saved my life.”
Xie Wuling understood. Looking again at her grave face, he sneered, “You treat another man’s child as if it were your own life, yet how can you be so ruthless toward your own flesh and blood?”
Ruthless?
Her slender hand unconsciously pressed against her abdomen, her eyes hazy, her voice barely above a whisper: “My husband is dead. I, a weak woman, fleeing famine with one child already, have spent every ounce of strength just to keep us alive. I can barely take care of myself, how can I raise another? Better to end it now, while the months are still few, with one bowl of medicine… at least spare him a life of suffering.”
Even if she managed to reach Lingnan alive and see her father and brothers again, they were still bondservants, their lives bitter and hard. They could offer her no real help. She dared not hope for much, only that she might settle somewhere close to them, find work, whether embroidery or washing clothes, so long as she could earn food enough to fill their stomachs. To raise Ping’an into adulthood, that alone would be a blessing.
But if another child came under these circumstances, she knew she could never keep it alive.
Xie Wuling listened, his thick brows knotting tighter and tighter, until at last he said in a deep voice: “So a man dies, and you crumble into such despair? This world is full of men. Find another one, what’s the matter with that?”
As he spoke, he pushed the oil lamp on the table closer to himself. His handsome face was thrown into brighter relief. “Isn’t there a perfectly good man right in front of you?”
Shen Yujiao froze, staring at that sharply defined face under the dim yellow light, her heart stirred by confusion she couldn’t name.
Tentatively, she asked, “Why… why would you…”
Why would he want a widow like her, already burdened with one, no, two, children who weren’t his?
Before she could finish, Xie Wuling already guessed what she meant. He gave a derisive snort: “Why does there have to be a reason? I’ve always acted on just this, ”
He thumped his broad chest.
Shen Yujiao blinked. “Your conscience?”
“What’s a conscience worth? I mean my mood.”
His jaw tilted upward again, his usual wild arrogance flashing back: “Anyway, you, I’ve already decided on you. As for the brat in your belly, when you were wandering outside like a starved ghost, it still clung to life. That proves the bond between you two isn’t shallow. Since that’s the case, just give birth to it in peace…”
As he spoke, he pointed at the sleeping baby on the bed: “From now on, that child will be called Xie Tian. The one in your belly, Xie Di. Once we marry, in another year or two, we’ll have more, sons named Xie Jingang, daughters named Xie Guanyin.”
The more he spoke, the more he felt four children was just right. Without waiting for her reply, he picked up the big bowl in his hand and stood: “Alright then, don’t be in such a rush to refuse. The doctor said you’re weak and need rest anyway. Stay here for now, think about what I’ve said.”
“Strength, I’ve got plenty. Looks, I’ve got them too. Follow me, and you’ll never come out short, that’s for sure!”
With that, Xie Wuling turned and headed for the door.
Watching his tall figure about to vanish through the wooden door, Shen Yujiao’s heart suddenly lurched, and she blurted out: “Xie Wuling!”
He stopped, turning half his sharply cut profile back toward her. “What else?”
“My name isn’t Ma Cuilan.”
Her lips pressed together before she spoke again: “My name… is Shen Yujiao.”
The man at the door paused, then slowly turned his other half toward her. His long, narrow peach-blossom eyes carried the hint of a smile, his tone lazy, unhurried: “Got it, little Jiaoniang.”
—
The night was cool as water, all was silent save for the occasional chirp of summer insects.
Inside the green gauze curtain, Shen Yujiao lay on the hard plank bed, her eyes fixed on the dull gray canopy above, both hands folded over her flat belly, her thoughts a tangled knot.
How had it happened?
Why not earlier, not later, why only now?
Ever since her marriage to Pei Xia, they had both longed for a child’s arrival.
She still remembered that morning when Pei Xia left the household, how his hand had lingered over her belly for so long.
Though he had said nothing, she knew he must have been hoping too.
That child would not only be their blood, but also a talisman he left for her.
In the inner quarters of a household, a woman secured her place through three things: her natal family, her husband, and her children. With a child at her side, she could have stood firm in the Pei household, no longer fearing the meddling tongues of others.
But now, the matriarch of the Pei clan was dead in a sudden accident,
The Pei household was lost to her, and this child in her belly seemed to have lost its meaning too.
Reason told her: while it was still early, giving it up was the wisest choice.
But then she thought: through all the jolting and flight for their lives along the way, this tiny life had quietly sprouted and grown inside her. Unlike other fetuses, so fragile that the slightest disturbance could snuff them out, this one was strong and resilient, never once letting go of its hope to come into the world.
It had endured floods and plague, endured hunger and exhaustion, yet in the end, it was to be abandoned by its own mother…
It was just a lump of flesh and blood.
And yet, it was her flesh and blood. Her, Shen Yujiao’s, child.
Perhaps, just as that Xie Wuling had said, this child truly did share a destined bond with her…
Shen Yujiao turned her face, gazing through the misty green gauze canopy toward the window.
It was the end of July, no moon in the sky, outside was pitch-dark. A commoner’s home was no grand estate; once night fell, it was darkness so deep one couldn’t see a hand stretched out before them.
By all rights, in such unfamiliar, all-encompassing blackness, she should have been afraid. But perhaps because she knew that in the outer hall, a tall, broad-shouldered man lay sleeping, even if she had only met him a single day, strangely enough, she did not feel so frightened.
The night was still vast and uncertain. Though her mind still wavered, unable to reach a decision, the balance in her heart had already, without her realizing, begun to tilt to one side.
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