December 18, 2021

Chapter 11: Later

The young lady originally had deep facial features, and she was born with neat eyebrows and piercing eyes. But because of her youthfulness, her skin was as white as a boiled egg that was peeled off, and her body was slender which weakened her look.

But when her eyebrows were full of hostility at this time, the delicate girlish feeling on her body faded and her sharpness was aggressive.

Everyone in the house was shocked and no one dared to step forward.

But Yingying watched as she rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out, as if she was going to die. Yansheng’s appearance was too scary. As the head of the family, Huan finally opened his mouth and shouted, “Yanyan! Yanyan! Let go of her first!”

Yansheng also saw Yingying’s dying appearance, so she retracted her hand and stood up.

The peak of her anger passed and she regained her composure. She just stood there watching coldly, not as emotional and noisy as before, but the pressure she was giving out to people around her was much greater than before.

Yingying clutched her throat and inhaled vigorously, but was choked by the large amount of air entering her trachea so she coughed, “Ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem.”

Shuocheng was scared a long time ago. Huan and Heling helped Yingying sit up. One of the high heels on her foot fell off, her hair style was messed up, making her embarrassed.

She tremblingly pointed at Yansheng, and finally managed to calm down. She cried out and yelled at Huan, “Your daughter! Your daughter wants to kill me! She wants to kill me!”

Huan said angrily, “Who told you to talk nonsense!”

After all, she was the person who shared his bed, who was so charming and fascinating, whom he married and took home, and did a good job of supporting and following him.

Yingying almost spit out a mouthful of blood, crying and trembling. “I almost died—”

“You can’t die.” Yansheng said, “For you, it is not worth it if you lose your life.

“It’s just that in the future, I don’t want to hear people always making noise in this house.” She glanced over Shuocheng and said coldly, “In the future, you have to be honest with me.”

Shuocheng shuddered.

His ‘three views’1Three views generally refer to the world, life outlook, and values, which is perceived by most as people’s Three Views. Their dialectical unity, interaction, lofty sublime are Three Views pursuit of goals. were really affected today.

In his world, as long as his parents were there, he could be lawless, so he had never been afraid of Yansheng. But today, she broke his world, and for the first time, he had realized that his parents were unreliable.

Yansheng’s cold eyes swept over Yingying again. “If you don’t know how to speak well, then just shut your mouth! If you let me hear something bad again, you’ll be responsible for the consequences.”

After Yansheng finished speaking, she didn’t look at these people again. She turned around to go upstairs.

Heling hesitated, caught up, ran a few steps, then turned around and said, “Dad, since you took and locked Shuoshuo’s game console, he came to grab mine and broke it. Then while Sister was having lunch, he went to her room and stole her game console, but Sister caught him on the spot. He has already confessed it all himself. He had already admitted his mistake with Sister. But now, he’s denying that he stole something from her!”

Yingying grabbed her high-heeled shoe on the ground and threw it. “Shut up!”

Heling was frightened and avoided the shoe.

If her mother had yelled at her like this, she would have been sad and wronged. But today, her emotions didn’t seem to be that strong anymore. Her mother didn’t seem to be that powerful in her heart now.

So she turned around and ran upstairs.

Yingying cried again and tugged at Huan. “You have to say something, look at how arrogant your daughter is. Does she have to treat her elders like this? Why can’t I scold her as a stepmother? A stepmother is also a mother!”

Huan who was not in a good mood said, “Just shut up for me! Don’t mention this in the future, you are poking Yanyan’s heart. If you really dare to say that she strangled you, then don’t come crying to me later. She has trained a lot and holds a black belt now.”

Then, he pointed at Shuocheng again. “Go and return to your room. Where is Mrs. Wang? Mrs. Wang!”

Mrs. Wang hid in the corridor and kept watching this show. After hearing him called her, she hurriedly ran out. “Sir, I’m here.”

Huan said, “Take him back to his room and monitor him! How much homework did he do during the summer vacation? You make sure to attentively watch him write!”

Shuocheng’s face collapsed when he heard about his summer homework. Mrs. Wang went over and dragged him, tugged him and dragged him upstairs.

“Go up, wash your face, and clean up,” Huan said, “Don’t let people see you making a fool out of yourself.”

Yingying’s skirt was also wrinkled, her hair was messy, she only had one shoe on her feet, and her face was full of makeup, which looked terrible now.

Her face turned pale with anger. “You really don’t care?”

“What do I have to care about? If you take care of your own mouth, I won’t have to worry about anything. How old is Yanyan and how old are you? Why do you have to fight and get angry with a child all day long?” Huan replied impatiently.

Yingying was startled. She was a type of person who relied on men to eat and she was keenly aware of the subtle change in her husband’s attitude.

She felt a little bitter in her heart and began to reflect on what she had been doing as Mrs. Zhang for a few years, and she was a little bit worried. She hurriedly adjusted her attitude, and said softly and aggrieved, “Then she can’t hurt me either. Take a look! Take a look, are there red marks on my neck?”

Pouting her mouth and acting like a baby, her husband attitude obviously softened.

Huan bought her trick and really checked her neck and replied, “Nothing, there are no marks. How strong can Yanyan be? There is no trace at all.”

In fact, there were really red marks on her neck and the traces of the hand strangulation that could be seen were a bit shocking. Huan was unwilling to tell her that. After all, didn’t he set up a ladder for Yingying to let her climb up? So, he just need to coax her and nothing more.

Yingying was relieved when his attitude softened.

The reason why she dared to provoke and secretly bully Yansheng in the past was because Huan didn’t particularly defend Yansheng, so she became more and more courageous.

Now that his attitude suddenly became subtle, Yingying instinctively restrained herself.

She sobbed intermittently while going upstairs.

Huan breathed a sigh of relief. He circled around the hall and went to the second floor.

Both of his daughters’ rooms were on the second floor, and his only son was staying on the third floor with them. He came up and saw that the doors of his daughters’ rooms were tightly closed. He went over and knocked on Yansheng’s door. “Yanyan, it’s Dad. Yanyan?”

Soon, Yansheng came over and opened the door. But she just stood at the door and didn’t mean to invite her father in.

“If you’re here to speak up for your little wife, it’s not necessary,” she said coldly.

Huan was once again surprised by Yansheng’s attitude.

In the past, she was always full of resentment and grudges. As long as the topic involved Yingying, she could easily get angry and agitated. He couldn’t talk to her properly at all.

But she just graduated from middle school, so he wondered why did she suddenly seem to have grown into a big girl now.

Although her expression was a little colder, the intense emotions that were always ready to erupt seemed to be gone. This was a relief for Huan.

He kept a woman outside before his wife died and gave birth to illegitimate children, which was done unorthodoxly. He was not completely unscrupulous and felt a little guilty for his daughter. Yansheng’s emotions would activate this kind of guilt in him.

But who wanted to tremble in conscience every day? Of course, Huan didn’t want to live in guilt every day. He was nearly half a hundred years old and he just wanted to live peacefully.

Yansheng was an adolescent child and would get angry, resent, and hate from time to time. Adolescence had doubled and magnified these emotions, and Huan felt that it became more and more difficult to communicate with her in the past two years.

Now that she had grown up and figured out things by herself, it couldn’t be any better.

“No,” Huan said with a smile, “She has a loudmouth, so she deserves it. I won’t speak up for her. Hey, let Dad in. Let’s have a chat between father and daughter.”

Huan was surprised by his eldest daughter’s changes, and Yansheng was also surprised by her father’s attitude.

In her memory, Huan had never actively communicated with her at this stage. He always looked like he had a headache when he saw her and would want to escape from her.

Yansheng was silent for a while, then turned around and let Huan in.

They both sat down on the sofa.

“Why are you a little bit grumpy today?” Huan asked. “Although your Auntie Liang is young, she is an elder anyway, so you can’t do anything bad to your elders.”

Yansheng raised an eyebrow. “Liang Yingying wants to be my elder? In her next life! You heard what she said as well, she asked for it, so I strangled her.”

Huan coughed a bit. “She is just an outspoken person—”

“If she can’t speak well, then shut her up.” Yansheng’s eyebrows were hostile again. “My mother passed away. Does a mistress like her deserve to mention it? She has a big face. Since she doesn’t want a face, then don’t blame me for not giving her any face.”

This was not only to not giving Yingying a face, as this would not give Huan a face as well.

Huan cleared his throat and asked again, “What happened to Shuoshuo today? Hehe said he took your game console.”

“That’s why I beat him up.”

“He is still young—”

When he said that, he saw Yansheng glanced at him suddenly, which made him stop. Her dark eyes, with faint eyes, seemed to be full of ridicule.

He became inexplicably uncomfortable in his heart.

“Do you know that he is much taller than his peers?” Yansheng asked.

This was something Huan was proud of. “His mother is tall.”

“I guess he will be taller than me when he goes into middle school,” Yansheng said, “He’ll be tall and strong, just like an adult.”

Huan was happy. “I predict that he will have to grow to more than 185 centimeters in the future.”

“Then have you ever thought about what he will look like in the future?”

“He must be like me. There are no ugly people in our family, and your brother will definitely be handsome in the future.” Huan was so proud.

Yansheng held back her breath and said, “He is only in the first grade now, but he already dares to steal things.”

“Hey, how can you say you’re stealing in your own home?”

“If you don’t ask and just take it, then it’s stealing. I learned it in Chinese studies when I was in elementary school!” Yansheng said angrily, “Besides, can he enter my room?”

The topic about the room involved the sensitive territorial consciousness of adolescent girls, so Huan said, “I’ll scold him later.”

Yansheng concluded that her father didn’t listen to her words at all. He was a middle-aged man and had a son, and he really spoiled Shuocheng a bit.

He was actually a father who didn’t like to participate in parenting. In the past, Yansheng’s childhood was full of her mother’s figure. Huan only took her to show her face to others after she was all dressed up, or when relatives and friends talked about their children, mentioning her academic performance and various awards to show off.

He was a widowed parenting puppet.

However, not every wife could raise her children as carefully as Yansheng’s mother.

Yansheng once heard Yingying point to the tip of her children’s noses and said, ‘I found a rich father for you who will let you live in a big house, let you go to a private school, and let you be picked up by a car. It’s really worth it.’

For Yingying, the struggle to become ‘Mrs. Zhang’ had come to an end. There was no need for her to work hard and the next thing about her life was enjoyment.

As for the children? Wasn’t there a nanny? So, there was no need for her to worry about them if someone could take care of them.

With such a pair of parents, it was a miracle that Heling did not grow crooked.

But what about Shuocheng?

Adolescent boys had the same height and weight as adults.

When he lifted the female teacher’s skirt, Huan said that he was still young.

When he blocked a female classmate outside the school to harass her, Huan also said that he was still young.

When he finally became a rapist later, Huan could no longer say the words: ‘he is still young’.

  • 1
    Three views generally refer to the world, life outlook, and values, which is perceived by most as people’s Three Views. Their dialectical unity, interaction, lofty sublime are Three Views pursuit of goals.