"You useless girl! Is this all that's left of your salary this month? How could you spend money so wastefully? Didn't I remind you at the start of the month that your brother must have a new computer for studies? I told you to save every cent of your wages! So where is the missing 1,000 yuan? Huh? Tell me, you unfilial daughter! You wretched little thing! You should be grateful I haven't turned you out at your age—you're still unmarried and don't even work a proper job. Everyone else in this family has a proper career and life… except you. You alone are the crooked branch in this family tree—can't do anything right. And now you don't even listen to me… You stupid girl!"
The words did not merely fall on me—neither did they strike like pebbles cast by a clumsy hand, landing on a spot already bruised a thousand times before. They carried weight, pointed tips, and the precision of years of training.
Her voice was a whip. Not the elegant kind from some drama where a flick of the wrist leaves a poetic red mark—no. This was the frayed, heavy kind that leaves welts for days, and every syllable cracked against me with that same merciless force.
I sat there, head bowed, like a criminal awaiting judgment, though the crime I'd committed was apparently… existing. The anger pouring from her was relentless, flooding every corner of the small room until it felt like I was drowning in it.
It wasn't new. Oh, she had an entire library of insults, an ever-expanding vocabulary dedicated solely to telling me how much of a disappointment I was. But hearing the same thing your whole life doesn't make you immune to it—it just makes you… tired.
Still, I stayed silent. Because what was I supposed to say? That I'd been careful with money? That I'd been sick? That I'd spent the 1,000 yuan to stop my own body from collapsing? Words like that never reached her.
The woman in front of me—my mother, by blood and biology, if not by affection—was glaring with the kind of loathing usually reserved for sworn enemies in a revenge novel. Her eyes narrowed into hard slits, scanning me like I was something she wished she could erase with a single swipe.
Anyone walking in on us might have thought I'd killed her beloved cat. But no. This was her normal. This was our normal.
Nine months in her womb. That was the one indisputable fact connecting us. The rest? A void. I couldn't remember a single moment of being held, comforted, or told I was loved. My childhood memories were like a house stripped of furniture—bare walls, cold air, and echoes.
Our tiny, almost airless room, the furniture had become old like a reluctant captive—too haughty to fall but too exhausted to remain upright. The wardrobe slanted drunkenly, one hinge creaking in protest when opened. The desktop was scratched so thinly that the wood underneath peeped through in some spots. A faint scent of dust and venerable detergent hung in the air, stale and stagnant.
She stood in the center like a general surveying a battlefield, one hand anchored to her hip, the other stabbing the air with her index finger as though each jab could pierce straight through me. Her features were plain—unremarkable, the kind of face you'd forget moments after seeing it. But the scorn in her eyes? That stayed.
Me? I sat on the lumpy bed like a discarded doll. Black hair, slick but unruly, clung to my soggy forehead. My eyes—big and brown—would have been lovely on anyone else, but in her gaze, they were nothing but targets. My cheeks blushed, but not for shame. Fever.
A strangling, burning fever that warmed my skin to sear. My head thumped in rhythm with the pounding of my heart, my limbs weighing as though they had substituted my bones for lead.
But she either didn't notice. or noticed and didn't care.
"Not only do you waste money, but you skip work as well! Weren't you supposed to work tonight? Why are you still lying in bed? Is eating and sleeping all you know how to do? You're a worthless failure—nothing like your sisters. They're all successful and capable, and you… Sometimes I wonder if you're even my flesh and blood."
Her tone was softer now, but it was the kind of soft that was more terrible than screaming. Ice under the surface. The words slid in smoothly and coldly and cut because they were so calculated.
And of course, I'd had the same question she just proposed. I'd even gotten a DNA test taken at nineteen, half-hoping that the results would release me from her shadow. But no. 99.99% perfect match. Fate can be heartless like that.
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to ask her if she had ever wondered how it felt to be the child who didn't count. The child who could break in two before her eyes and remain nothing.
But I did the reverse. I considered my life. My ever-exhausting, frayed life. Four jobs—two weekend and holiday part-time gigs at restaurants, one cashiering, and a freelance gig online—weekend after weekend, holiday after holiday, waking moment after waking moment filled with work. And the earnings? Not mine. Never mine. My checks disappeared into her hands the moment they cleared, translated into gifts, gadgets, and indulgences for my younger brother—the sun revolving around whose whole universe she was.
I had hauled myself to the hospital earlier that day, delirious with fever, and shelled out 1,000 yuan for medication, injections, and tests. My hands were shaking so hard that I had dropped the receipt twice. And here she was, striding into my room, not to check on my well-being, but to lament about why her golden boy must wait another week for his new computer.
Her voice snapped again, yanking me from my thoughts. "Lǐ Líng Xī! I'm talking to you—where's your mind?"
I leaned my head back slightly to glance at her, my tone serious but lacking any softness. "It's nothing. I'll come back to work tomorrow. I didn't miss my shift—I simply swapped shifts with a friend. And that 1,000 yuan was for medical expenses because I fell ill today and received injections and medication."
It was the truth, but I told it as you report the weather—dry, factual, with nothing personal.
The moment I informed her that I had not missed work, her face eased up, tension disappearing from her face as if that alone mattered. She did not even flinch when I said hospital.
And why should she? I'd lost hope for her worry years ago. I wasn't the weeping little girl anymore, with cold tears on my pillow at night. I wasn't pleading for warmth that never came. My heart had long ago crumpled in upon itself, shutting off whatever fragile hope it ever had.
Now there was only one human being in the whole world I loved—Shēn Luò. The rest was just hum in the background.
A couple of minutes later, she departed, her footsteps growing faint down the hall. The atmosphere was lighter the instant she was out of the room.
I'd survived storms like that my entire life. Eventually, you become less afraid of the rain because you know you already get wet.
I slumped back, letting gravity take effect, my body sinking into the mattress. The springs creaked under the motion, a groan of fatigue that matched my mood. I smiled a small, twisted smile—half-humor, half-give-up.
My hand had wandered beneath the blanket, fingers wrapping around the cold, comforting shape of my phone. The screen flashed to light, its intensity too much for my fever-addled vision. I returned instantly to what I'd been doing when the door suddenly swung open and her voice filled my being.