CTF 0046

“Xu Yin—!”

Not long after leaving Da’ao Village, Xu Yin stopped her bicycle and turned around when she heard someone calling her name.

It was her deskmate, Tong Guihua. 

“You finally heard me! I’ve been chasing you for a while, but you were riding too fast. I couldn’t catch up.”

Tong Guihua rode up to her. She was panting and clutching her brakes. Her expression was filled with great annoyance. 

Xu Yin inwardly tee-heed. 

It wasn’t that she was riding particularly fast. Her electric bicycle was just quite speedy.

“What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be in school today?”

“Go where? We’ve already finished the college entrance exams. I mean, Xu Yin, what have you been doing all this time? Have you lost track of time?”

Xu Yin: “…”

She had been so busy lately that she hadn’t even been keeping track of the exam dates.

“So, you’re on vacation now?”

“Exactly. My estimated scores are out, and they’re a bit low for the universities I applied to. I’m going to stay at my grandmother’s house for a few days to escape my mom’s endless nagging. It’s hurting my ears..”

At this time, college entrance exams were followed by the application process for universities, a process filled with uncertainty. Mother Xu must be anxious about her daughter not getting into her desired university.

Xu Yin could understand her concern and smiled, saying, “I remember your grandmother’s house is in Dashi Village, and we’re heading the same way for a while.”

Dashicun was located just outside of Da’ao Village, and Xu Yin had to pass by it on her way home.

So, the two of them pushed their bicycles and chatted as they walked. However, it was mostly Xu Yin listening while Tong Guihua did the talking.

“Yinyin, did you know that one of the girls that go to our school, Fu Lingling, has dropped out of school? It was then that I found out she’s cousins with Chen Mei from No. 3 High School. 

“Remember what I told you about Chen Mei? She’s that nosy neighbour who lives in front of my house. Her cousin-in-law, whom I told you about? The one who died from excessive bleeding after giving birth to twins last year. That cousin-in-law of hers is Fu Lingling’s sister-in-law! 

“Chen Mei said that Fu Lingling’s sister-in-law had been paying for her tuition throughout middle school and high school because Fu Lingling’s parents favoured only sons and didn’t want to pay for her education. After her sister-in-law passed away, her family refused to pay for her tuition, claiming that they didn’t have any money since they had to raise the twins. 

“But you know what’s strange? Her parents made her drop out of school, but shortly after, they found a new wife for her brother and offered her family a 500 yuan dowry. However, they couldn’t spare a few bucks for her school fees. Are they even her real parents?”

Xu Yin was particularly sensitive to the mention of a “500 yuan dowry” because, in the original story, the female protagonist had married into the Xu family for a 500 yuan dowry. Her heart raced for some inexplicable reason, and she asked Tong Guihua, “What’s the name of Fu Lingling’s current sister-in-law?”

“How would I know? But my mom knows her. She said her father used to watch over a warehouse in a furniture factory and was known as Mr. Zhu. However, he was fired from the factory for stealing wood.

“Speaking of which, that woman is quite pitiful, too. She has a disabled brother who needs 500 yuan to find his wife. Her parents treat her very badly. They practically sold their daughter off and pocketed her entire dowry. They didn’t give her a single cent of it!”

“…”

“So, I wouldn’t know, but my mom knows her. She said her dad used to watch over a warehouse in a furniture factory and was known as Master Zhu. However, he was fired from the factory for stealing wood.

“Speaking of that woman, she’s quite pitiful too. Her family also has a disabled brother, and they’re eagerly waiting for that 500 yuan to find her a husband. Her parents treat her very poorly, it’s like they’re selling their daughter when she gets married. They’ve pocketed the entire dowry, and she didn’t contribute a single penny for the dowry. It’s really sad…”

Goodness gracious! It all matched up!

So, the female protagonist had gotten married and became a stepmother to a pair of twins? Xu Yin was speechless.

“What is Fu Lingling like?” she couldn’t help but ask. 

Could she be another terrible sister-in-law?

Tong Guihua shrugged. “I don’t know her well. According to Chen Mei, she’s very introverted. Her grades are okay. Apparently, her essays are often used as model essays on the bulletin board, but she sucks at Maths and fails that class often. If she had performed well in the college entrance exams, her performance would probably have been similar to mine. She might’ve gotten into a teachers’ college…

“Having said that, if it wasn’t for her sister-in-law financing her education, she might have gotten married long ago. Where would she be now if that’d happened? Oh, well. She’s staying home to help raise her sister-in-law’s twins now.

“My mom says that maybe it’s the good karma her sister-in-law accumulated. Without Fu Lingling’s help, the twins might suffer under their stepmother…”

“Does Fu Lingling’s new sister-in-law treat the twins badly?”

“Who knows? But how many good stepmothers are there in this world?”

“…”

Well, that was true.

In the original plot, Xu Yin’s sister-in-law’s two sons, Doudou and Dingding, fell victim to the female protagonist’s methods and became a pair of wastrels.

After parting ways with Tong Guihua, Xu Yin returned home with worries plaguing her mind. 

She should be breathing a sigh of relief. The female protagonist was married now, and she’d no longer have anything to do with her brother. 

However, when she thought about the innocent twins, and Fu Lingling, who could have taken the college entrance examination and changed her life… They would now be on a different path in life because of the female protagonist. Xu Yin felt like a butterfly that’d flapped its wings. In changing her own and her family’s fate, she’d doomed others to suffer her original horrible fate.

It was the principle of cause and effect. If there was a cause, there would be an effect. She had changed her own and her family’s destiny, and at the same time, she had changed other people’s destinies as well. If it was a positive change, everyone would be happy, but what if it wasn’t?

What was the point, then, of a cannon fodder flipping the script and rewriting her fate, if that fate just ended up being suffered by someone else?

That night, Xu Yin had a dream. In the dream, she saw Fu Lingling’s previous life.

In that life, Fu Lingling’s sister-in-law also died in childbirth, and the Fu family refused to let her continue her education. Instead, they had her go home and take care of the twins. 

Later, Mother Fu found a stepmother for the twins. This stepmother didn’t like the twins very much and often mistreated them when no one was looking. Fu Lingling discovered bruises and marks on her niece and nephew and got into an argument with the stepmother.

During the argument, Fu Lingling pushed her. She didn’t expect that the stepmother was already pregnant. Her push led to a miscarriage. 

The stepmother caused a huge scene, leading to Fu Lingling being married off. 

She was forced to marry an alcoholic, disabled old widower, beginning her life of misery.

After Fu Lingling was married off, the twins suffered severe abuse from the stepmother. One of them ended up being abducted, and the other drowned in the river…

When Xu Yin woke up from her dream, her pyjamas were soaked in cold sweat.

What was that dream? Was it telling her that even if Zhu Yunjing hadn’t married into Fu Lingling’s family, another woman would have, and sooner or later, the twins would still have gotten an evil stepmother?

If what she was was real, the switch to Zhu Yunjing would be an improvement. 

Zhu Yunjing, at the very least, wanted to maintain her good reputation. To maintain her bodhisattva-hearted persona, she would not abuse her stepchildren. Even after she had her children, to highlight the intelligence and sensibleness of her biological son, she would only pamper and flatter her stepchildren until they were ruined and became points of comparison to her biological son.

Thinking of this gave Xu Yin an idea.

She asked for Tong Guihua’s help to get Fu Lingling’s contact information. She started sending Fu Lingling letters praising her for her good writing skills. She could write some poems and prose and send them to the newspaper, Xu Yin wrote.

If she earned enough royalties, she could get the opportunity to repeat her last year of high school and take the college entrance examination the following year. It would be great if she could study in a college and become a Chinese language teacher in the future.

In addition to subtly influencing Fu Lingling’s thinking, she also reminded her to pay more attention to twins.

Children were like a blank piece of paper. The kind of person that they’d become in the future depended entirely on the careful teachings of the adults around them when they were young. If they were pampered simply because they no longer had a biological mother, they’d undoubtedly be ruined by it. 

In short, Xu Yin hoped that the twins would be able to break away from the fate of being used to make the female protagonist’s biological son look better, and instead lead a good, beautiful life.

Fu Lingling was confused when she received Xu Yin’s letter at first.

They attended school together, but they had been in different classes. They had never interacted with each other before.

However, as their correspondence increased, Fu Lingling came to understand that Xu Yin was there to help her.

Xu Yin encouraged her and supported her both spiritually and materially. From time to time, Xu Yin would also ask Tong Guihua to send rice noodles and brown sugar for Fu Lingling and the twins.

Thanks to Xu Yin, she learned how to supplement her nephew and niece with enough nutrition, since they couldn’t get breast milk during their confinement.

Thanks to Xu Yin, she also learned that having good writing skills could let her write articles for newspapers, for which she would receive a writing fee. After receiving the fee, she came to truly understand the meaning of the phrase, ‘Money will buy you confidence’.