DLRC – Chapter 4 Cell Phone

It was almost a reflex. Yu Wei quickly lowered her head and bent over, shielding the little one in her arms. The feather duster landed squarely on her thin back.

“Ugh…”

A muffled groan escaped involuntarily from Yu Wei’s nose.

From childhood until now, this was the first time she’d ever been hit. Even when she was mischievous as a kid, her father would only scold her harshly, never had he disciplined her in such a crude and violent way.

Yuan Guifang was stunned for a few seconds. When she saw Yu Hui suddenly dart out, she didn’t have time to react. She couldn’t stop the swing, and the stick came crashing down.

Luckily, Yu Wei’s reaction had been fast. Otherwise, if that blow had landed on the frail little Yu Hui, even if it didn’t kill him, it would’ve skinned him!

“How did I give birth to such a useless daughter?!”

Yuan Guifang’s eyes suddenly reddened. She flung the feather duster hard to the ground. The force was so great that several feathers flew off, startling her sister-in-law Jiang Min, who quickly stepped out to resume cooking in the kitchen.

“I worked so hard to raise you—tell me, how could you do this to me? Do you think this is how you repay your mother?” Yuan Guifang switched tactics, turning to emotional appeals.

Yu Wei was still trying to ease the aching pain in her body while sensing the little one’s unease in her arms. She lowered her head and gently rubbed the crown of his head. His soft, delicate hair felt comforting in her palm. He stared up at her without blinking.

Looking into his bright, doe-like eyes, the heavy gloom in her chest lifted a little. Then, lifting her head, she met Yuan Guifang’s gaze and said, word by word, “I will earn money and pay you back.”

Silence fell between them. They stared at each other in silence for a long while. Yuan Guifang sat in the same seat that Director Luo had just occupied, frowning and glaring at Yu Wei, who sat quietly at the edge of the bed, cradling the child and gently teasing him.

Although the little one had no expression on his face, his tender, pale hands were trembling slightly as he tightly gripped the hem of Yu Wei’s shirt.

It was 1985, a few years after the economic opening up. For an ordinary working-class family in town, lunch was never anything too extravagant. Today’s meal had more dishes than usual—because Luo Dongshen had visited.

There was a plate of stir-fried shredded pork with chili peppers, a bowl of egg soup, and three plates of simple stir-fried vegetables. Though food and groceries were no longer as scarce as they were before the reforms, a family like Yu Wei’s still couldn’t afford to eat meat every day.

About ten minutes after Luo Dongshen left, Yuan Guifang finally exhausted herself from all the scolding and slumped into a chair, catching her breath. Around that time, Yu Wei’s eldest brother and father returned home from work.

Her elder brother and father were both ordinary workers at the textile factory. Her brother was more skilled and, thanks to his connection with Director Luo, had just been promoted to Grade 2 worker last month.

After a long day of labor, the two men returned home, saw the table full of good food, and cheerfully asked Yuan Guifang what the occasion was.

“What occasion? It’s the day your second sister acted out!” Yuan Guifang was furious, and her response was full of sarcasm.

“What happened now?” Yu Yi asked in confusion and turned to his wife, Jiang Min.

“Ask your sister!” Jiang Min shouted back irritably, slumping into a chair beside her mother-in-law, seething with anger.

The two men glanced strangely at Yu Wei, who was now sitting at the bedside soothing the child. They tried asking her, but she said nothing.

Fine then. All the women in the house had clearly lost their minds today.

Eventually, Jiang Min couldn’t hold back and began crying as she ranted about Yu Wei’s “disobedience.” Yu Yi and their father Yu Dachao followed suit, reprimanding her for being unfilial and irresponsible.

Yu Wei was speechless. Their words made her head throb. Hugging her son tightly, she simply got up and walked into the bedroom, closing the door behind her. She blocked out the scolding from the other side and sat quietly on the edge of the bed, staring blankly into space with Yu Hui in her arms.

In a family like this, in an environment like this, it was no easy feat for a single mother to survive while raising a child.

She let out a long sigh. From outside, the clatter of enamel bowls and chopsticks began—it was lunchtime.

Though Yuan Guifang had said some vicious things earlier, she was still a mother. She wouldn’t truly let the whole family go hungry. The women might skip a meal if they were angry, but the men couldn’t—after all, they had to go to the factory to work. How could they do that without eating?

“You useless girl, get out here and eat!” Yuan Guifang shouted angrily.

“Can’t you talk without yelling?” Yu Wei snapped, annoyed. She glanced down at the little one resting quietly in her arms and, finally, carried him out.

“If you didn’t always pull these stunts to piss me off, would I have to talk to you like this? Why don’t you think about why I don’t treat others this way?!”

Yu Wei knew there was no reasoning with her and gave up on responding.

Five people sat around the dining table. Yu Hui sat quietly beside Yu Wei. Because he was still a child and not yet accepted by the family, Yuan Guifang wouldn’t let him sit at the table. Instead, he had to sit on a small stool nearby, holding a gray, rough-textured bun and nibbling away.

The little one’s teeth hadn’t even come in yet, and he was already being fed food this tough and chewy.

Yu Wei frowned uncontrollably. She took the rock-hard steamed bun from his hand, soaked it in water, and only gave it back to him once it had softened.

She barely had a moment of peace before her mother started in again.

Setting down her half-eaten bowl, chopsticks still in hand, she sighed dramatically in Yu Wei’s direction.

“I know you resent me for sending you to the countryside as an educated youth in place of your brother—but I had no choice!”

She had a younger brother? Where was he?

Yuan Guifang went on sighing, and even shed a couple of shiny teardrops. “But you didn’t have to do something like this just to spite me!”

Yu Wei chewed on the dry steamed bun in her mouth, baffled. “What did I do to spite you?”

Yuan Guifang glared at her, pointing at Yu Hui, the little boy next to her gnawing randomly on a bun. “That brat is your way of getting back at me!”

“If you didn’t blame me for sending you to the countryside, would you have messed around and brought back a burden like him? Ever since you returned, people outside haven’t stopped mocking me. Saying I, Yuan Guifang, raised a shameless daughter who’s now refusing to marry. If this were the old society, you’d already have been—!”

“Been what?” Yu Wei genuinely didn’t understand.

Yuan Guifang was furious. “What what what! Drowned. In a pig cage! Don’t you know?”

Yu Wei was speechless. “…Oh.”

Well, it’s not the old society anymore, so who’s drowning anyone in pig cages?

Yu Wei still didn’t fully understand what kind of situation the original “Yu Wei” had left behind. Mealtimes became her best chance to subtly dig for information about her predecessor.

Now she knew—the original was twenty-three years old, and had the exact same name as her.

But their personalities couldn’t have been more different. The Yu Wei from the 22nd century was calm and composed, while this one had been rebellious from a young age. This kid she brought back from the countryside was the fruit of that rebellion.

As for the boy’s father, the original never mentioned him to her family. Aside from herself, probably no one else knew who he was.

The Yuan family also had no intention of marrying Yu Wei off to some rural bumpkin. They never even brought up the idea of having the father take responsibility. To outsiders, they simply said the child’s father had died.

The original Yu Wei had been a decent student, managing to finish elementary through high school despite the chaos of the times. Because the schooling system was shortened back then, she finished it all in just a few years. Then, at her mother’s insistence, she was sent in her brother’s place to the countryside as an educated youth. After five years, she returned seemingly fine—only to discover, four months later, that she was pregnant.

By the time the pregnancy was detected, she was already seven months along—too late for a safe abortion. The hospital even warned that with her physical condition, a termination could leave her infertile at best—or dead on the operating table at worst!

At that point, even Yuan Guifang didn’t dare force her daughter to get rid of the baby. They could only wait cautiously for the child’s birth—and raise him all the way until now.

“Alright, enough. Just looking at you makes me angry. Wash the dishes and go apologize to Factory Director Luo. I’ve got places to be!”

Yuan Guifang was a housewife, but ever since her daughter returned from the countryside, all the housework had fallen to Yu Wei. Later, when Jiang Min was married into the family by Yu Wei’s older brother, the two women shared the chores.

But truthfully, Yu Wei still did the bulk of the work. After all, Jiang Min had a job to go to—Yu Wei was the only idle one at home.

That morning, Yuan Guifang had already made plans with her old friends to go buy yarn from the wholesale market. Not only had Yu Wei bailed, but she also drove off Factory Director Luo in the process.

The more Yuan Guifang thought about it, the angrier she became. She truly wanted to crack her daughter’s head open and see how much water was sloshing around inside.

Jiang Min was also furious. Watching Yu Wei chase away such a wealthy suitor, she was so frustrated she could barely breathe. She glared daggers at Yu Wei and said coldly, “Second sister is really useless.”

And just like that, the whole family stormed off to work in a foul mood—leaving the only unemployed member, Yu Wei, behind to clean up.

Staring at the mess on the table, Yu Wei felt utterly hopeless.

She let out a long sigh, carried Yu Hui to the bed and settled him down, then reluctantly began clearing the dishes. Her mind was already racing with thoughts of how to survive in this backward economy.

And she had a surprise son to raise, too.

After tidying up the house, Yu Wei’s head began to ache again. Yu Hui had already fallen asleep on the bed, so she picked him up and moved to the inner room—the same bed where she had first woken up that morning.

The room was tiny, barely livable. It had only two beds and two small wardrobes. Nothing else could even fit.

The bed was just right for Yu Wei alone, but with a little boy like Yu Hui on it too, it felt a bit cramped.

But she had no choice. With nothing else to do and feeling terribly unwell, she lay down on the bed with the little one. Soon, she drifted off to sleep.

She woke again, this time from the heat.

Somehow, the little boy she had placed at the far end of the bed had crawled into her arms. His tiny white hands were clinging tightly to the collar of her shirt, his forehead dotted with sweat, his thin shirt soaked through—but unlike her, he hadn’t woken from the heat.

Yu Wei rubbed her eyes and sniffed the faint milky scent on the child’s skin. She stared blankly at the ceiling.

No fans, no air conditioning. Every step forward in this life felt like it would be an unbearable trial.

Bzzzz—

In the stillness, a strange buzzing startled Yu Wei. It was coming from somewhere near her thigh, something vibrating—a very distinct sound. She couldn’t be imagining it.

And… it sounded suspiciously like a cell phone’s vibration?