Chapter Twenty-Seven: Yearning for Change

Yan Xue felt her heart clench so suddenly that it was as if she could see the scene unfolding before her eyes.

“At the time, there was still a glass panel on the dining table at my house. You know how it was back then—having a glass top on a table was practically standard. Only, the edges of ours hadn’t been rounded off, so when I hit it, the skin right above my eyebrow split open at once. Blood was streaming down my face, and I couldn’t even open my eyes. My dad saw it and thought I’d smashed my eye. He was terrified out of his wits and bolted straight out the door. In the end, it was my mom who took me to the hospital to get stitches, and only then did we find out my eye was fine.

“It really did hurt at the time. Thinking back on it now, the feeling is still vivid. But it was lucky, too. Not just because I didn’t hit my eye. More importantly, because of that incident, my mom finally woke up to the truth. All the patience she had shown before had not, as those relatives claimed, protected my life. On the contrary, I had been hurt precisely because of her endurance.

“So this time, she was absolutely determined to get divorced. No one could talk her out of it, especially not those who tried to persuade her for the child’s sake. My mom would angrily ask them back: if he could hit someone, if he could injure a child and then run off, what was the point of keeping a man like that? Was she supposed to wait until he really made the child blind in one eye? That shut all those relatives up.”

Yan Xue sighed softly. For Kang Ge and his mother, this had finally led them to make one of the most correct decisions of their lives. In the larger picture, it was indeed something to celebrate, though the process itself had been rather emotionally complicated.

“So did you end up applying to police academy and becoming a cop because of that?” Yan Xue suddenly remembered a conversation they had had when they first became partners, back when they talked about how each of them had ended up on this path. At the time, Kang Ge had brushed it off, saying he had just filled in the application carelessly without much thought, and she had felt that explanation didn’t quite add up. Now, she could probably guess the real reason.

“Yes, that was definitely part of it.” Kang Ge had not expected Yan Xue to remember something they had talked about before. “My parents’ divorce wasn’t smooth either, so I spent part of my childhood living rather hard. Back then, I just wanted to become someone incredibly strong, strong enough to protect myself and protect other people too.

“After my mom left my dad with me, the two of us depended on each other for nearly two years. Then we met Uncle Lu. He was a very good man, and his personality fit my mom’s in every way. Bit by bit, through his actual actions, he dispelled all my mom’s shadows and fears about married life, and gave her the courage to start over.

“After that, they had Xiao Dong. Later, for other reasons, we moved to W City.

“The early stage of my mom and Uncle Lu’s business was also pretty difficult. When adults are struggling, children inevitably have to bear that struggle too. By the time things gradually improved and I had grown up past the age when a child still depends on adults, my mom had already transferred many of the regrets she felt over my childhood onto Xiao Dong.

“My mindset was pretty much the same. By the time Xiao Dong was old enough to remember things, the family business had already gone from being a small success to something stable and solid. She not only had both parents, but also a good older brother. Those were all things I had once longed for as a child but had no right to have, so I wanted her to stay carefree and happy forever.

“But, well, Xiao Dong really is happy, and she’s a kind-hearted girl too. She’s just too innocent, too inexperienced, too untouched by hardship. That was the kind of environment we originally hoped to create for her and worked hard to build. But now that she’s grown, sometimes even we feel conflicted. We don’t know whether protecting her this well has actually been good for her or not.”

“I suppose that counts as a happy kind of trouble,” Yan Xue said with feeling, though inside she was also deeply surprised.

Ever since she had met Kang Ge, he had always given her the impression of being a very outgoing, cheerful, talkative person, someone without much financial burden or pressure in life, fairly carefree, even a little unrestrained in a relaxed and easygoing way. So Yan Xue had always assumed that Kang Ge must have grown up sailing through life smoothly, and that was why he could be so composed and confident.

She had never imagined that such a man, who seemed so much like a polished young gentleman, had endured such a difficult childhood.

Her own parents had always loved each other deeply, and the atmosphere at home had been warm and harmonious. And yet, just a few awful relatives acting like a few rotten grains in a pot of porridge had already been enough to make Yan Xue feel clogged up and unhappy whenever she thought back on her childhood.

Compared with Kang Ge’s childhood experience, her own so-called unpleasant memories were truly child’s play, hardly worth mentioning.

And hearing him describe those old events, Yan Xue also understood why he had seemed so familiar with the roads when they went to Y City, and why his reaction had been so cold when Xiao Dong mentioned that someone had brought him and his mother local specialties from Y City.

If it had been her, she probably couldn’t have been that cold at all. In fact, if anyone mentioned Y City in front of her, she might explode on the spot and never want to think about the time she had lived there again for the rest of her life.

So she pretended she had not thought of that layer of meaning and did not confirm the matter of Y City with Kang Ge.

“Then after you moved to W City, did the relatives from your old home ever bother you again?” Yan Xue asked carefully.

She had not yet faced the full weight of marriage herself, but she had heard her mother say before that marriage was something one had to treat with particular caution. When you were dating, it was enough that the two people liked each other; nothing else needed to be considered. But after marriage, even the smallest matter could become entangled with both sides’ relatives and friends and grow complicated.

And the ties and feelings between relatives were sometimes like spider silk: so thin, so light, seemingly fragile enough to snap at a touch, and yet carrying a kind of wicked stickiness. Once attached, they were not something you could simply shake off.

A group of people had once been able to persuade Kang Ge’s mother not to leave an abusive man. And from what Kang Ge had said, his father had not gone into the divorce willingly either; the process had been full of twists and difficulty. Afterward, could the other side’s family have become resentful because Kang Ge and his mother had been “disobedient,” and resorted to all sorts of ugly tricks? That was hard to say.

“They didn’t dare,” Kang Ge said with a smile. “My dad voluntarily gave up custody back then. The relatives on his side all thought he was being ridiculous, especially my grandparents. They couldn’t understand how their grandson could be taken away by someone else. But my dad was dead set on not fighting my mom for custody.”

“Of course, the reason wasn’t that he suddenly found his conscience or realized his own problems. I remember it very clearly. In court, the judge asked for my opinion, then asked for theirs. My dad said he was giving up custody. The judge asked him why, and he pointed at me and said, ‘That little brat tried to strangle me. You want me to keep him? Are you trying to get me killed?’”

“So I guess there was a reason why my reputation wasn’t very good for a while when I was little.”

After he said that, Kang Ge laughed, as if the whole unpleasant memory had left no shadow at all and could only be taken as a joke.

“Your mother was lucky to have a son who was brave enough to stand up and protect her when he was still so young!” Yan Xue said with a deep sigh.

“No. What I did back then could at most be called an instinctive reaction to a threat, and it only helped get my mom out of immediate danger. The one who truly solved the problem once and for all was my mom.” Kang Ge’s words carried another meaning. “If she had kept blindly listening to those relatives’ so-called advice, if she had continued to endure and forgive and choose tolerance, then during my growing-up years there would probably have been countless more conflicts with my dad. Under that kind of situation, I don’t know what kind of person I would have turned out to be.”

Yan Xue froze for a moment, and quickly understood what Kang Ge meant. But aside from a sigh, she had nothing else to say.

In truth, she understood it very well too. Terrible relatives were indeed detestable. But looking back on all this time, with all the frustration and anger and the bitter aftertaste of having to clean up the mess afterward, the root of the problem still lay with the parents.

She herself had always been strong-willed about protecting her parents’ interests and defending her own world from being invaded. But her parents’ weakness had always been a short board, giving the other side the most favorable point of attack to break through her supposedly impregnable defenses.

Yet her parents had been weak all their lives, and she absolutely could not compromise or surrender. So how exactly was she supposed to find a balance that could actually solve the problem? That was the real difficulty.

“I understand what you mean, but I really do feel a bit at a loss. Do you have any good suggestions?” she asked Kang Ge.

Kang Ge grinned. “Of course I do. And it’s actually very simple. Just two words—show weakness.”

Seeing that Yan Xue had gone quiet, looking deep in thought, Kang Ge did not say anything else. He simply lowered his head and drank his coffee.

“There’s one thing I don’t know if it’s appropriate to ask you…” After a while, Yan Xue spoke again, cautiously.

“Whether it’s appropriate or not, just say it and let me hear it. Then I’ll know,” Kang Ge replied in a light tone. “Don’t worry. If I think it’s inappropriate, I won’t answer. You don’t need to carry any burden.”

“Oh. All right. Actually, I just wanted to ask whether your stepfather treated you badly?”

“Why would you ask that?” The question was indeed unexpected, and Kang Ge looked a little surprised.

“It’s nothing. It’s just that you said before that you started living at school in middle school. And if you think about it, a first-year middle school student is only twelve or thirteen, still very young. Unless conditions made it necessary, so that a child’s studies and rest could be protected, most parents wouldn’t bear to send such a young child to live at school… so I may have been overthinking it.”

“To be honest, Uncle Lu treated me pretty well. After all, you’ve seen the house my mom chose for me, haven’t you?”

“I wasn’t talking about material things like houses and cars. I meant emotionally and spiritually,” Yan Xue hurried to explain what she really wanted to ask, so Kang Ge wouldn’t misunderstand her. “Did he treat you well?”

Kang Ge smiled, his eyes still bright in the night. “Very well, really. My mom may have been badly hurt by her first marriage, but deep down she’s actually quite lively and cheerful. Xiao Dong is basically my mom’s innocent and romantic side made into a person.

“Uncle Lu is the exact opposite. He doesn’t talk much, but he’s very steady and always knows what he’s doing. The two of us get along very well. Rather than stepfather and stepson, it would be more accurate to say we’re like friends across generations.

“When he and my mom got together, my mom was divorced with a son, while he had never been married. So you can probably imagine how much pressure Uncle Lu had to bear from the outside world back then. People always say a stepmother’s role is hard, but a stepfather doesn’t have it any easier. If he’s strict with a child, people say he’s harsh; if he spoils the child too much, they say he’s irresponsible.

“Especially after Xiao Dong was born—one child being biological and the other not, with so many eyes watching, waiting to pick apart everything and nitpick every little thing. So when I started living at school in middle school, I was also just trying to avoid unnecessary trouble and not make things harder for anyone.”

Hearing Kang Ge’s answer, Yan Xue felt her heart grow heavy. “I really didn’t expect that. You’ve actually had it pretty hard too…”

“Don’t say that!” Kang Ge laughed. “Let’s be honest with our conscience here: people live in the present. The past is just the past. With the life I’m living now, if you say I’ve had it hard, then that would really make me the kind of person everyone hates!”

His optimism infected Yan Xue, and the heaviness she had felt just now faded quite a bit.

“Earlier I heard Xia Qing say that you once gave your family some advice, and then they opened a new shop according to your idea, and it became super popular!” Yan Xue suddenly remembered another thing she had been curious about before she knew Kang Ge. “Since you have such insight in that area and a talent for business, why didn’t you help manage the family business?”

“Maybe everyone has their own ambitions,” Kang Ge said after a serious moment of thought. “I only want to live my own life. As for business, whether I have talent for it or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s not where my heart lies.

“I’ll leave the comfortable job of helping the family ‘guard the territory’ to my useless silly little sister. I’m perfectly happy making a living with my own abilities.”

“Well said! Here’s to happily earning a living by our own skill!” Yan Xue raised her coffee cup.

“Exactly! Here’s to happily earning a living by our own skill!” Kang Ge lifted his cup too and clinked it against hers.

After that heartfelt conversation, the topic of Kang Ge’s family situation was set aside.

By midnight, the two of them took turns covering for each other and napped in shifts. Until the next morning, Lin Zhen still had not appeared, and it seemed she was probably sleeping soundly upstairs as well.

Looking at the time, it was almost eight in the morning. Kang Ge motioned for Yan Xue to get out of the car and get moving. “Even if Lin Zhen only went to sleep in the middle of the night yesterday, she’s had enough rest by now. Come on—let’s go up and give her a surprise.”