After empathizing with her, Jiang Tinglan poured out everything in one go.
“My mom’s the same! All she knows is making money and achieving her career goals. She doesn’t care about me at all.”
“My mom is incredibly ambitious. I remember that, when I was little, the three of us were very happy living in a small county town.”
“But my mom wasn’t satisfied. She worked while studying and earned her master’s degree, then moved to Pu City and got a job at a major corporation. My dad respected her immensely.”
“My dad used to be a tenured teacher. He could have lived a very stable life, but he still resigned and followed her to the big city.”
“Who would’ve thought that as her position rose and she gained more and more authority, she’d start looking down on my dad? She puts him down every single day, even though he’s always been so good to me!”
“Yes, she can make money and provide for all my material needs. But so what? That’s what she wants, not what I want!”
Yu Xiaxing’s face was full of envy. “At least you have a dad who loves you. Neither of my parents cares about me.”
That struck an even deeper chord with Jiang Tinglan. “My dad really is wonderful… But my mom and I are a textbook example of an East Asian mother-daughter relationship. We torment each other. My mom is a total NPD—a parasitic emotional vampire who makes herself feel better by making me miserable!”
“Do you understand? This isn’t just an ordinary mother-daughter conflict. This is a toxic family environment, the passing down of generational trauma!”
Yu Xiaxing looked utterly bewildered. “…Seriously? Your mother is a powerful career woman. Why would she need to be an emotional vampire?”
Jiang Tinglan immediately pulled out her phone. “I’ll recommend a psychology blogger to you. Before I followed her, I didn’t know any of this either. It was only after following her that I realized how much suffering I was going through!”
She held out her phone.
Yu Xiaxing leaned over to take a look. The account was called “Breaking Free.”
Its profile picture was a blue butterfly with its wings spread wide.
The page was filled with short videos and long-form posts.
Nearly all the titles revolved around the same theme: parents are the source of all suffering.
“Why Parents’ Love Becomes a Shackle,” “Girls, Stop Being Your Mother’s Emotional Blood Bank,” “True Growth Means Cutting Ties with Your Family,” “Emotional Control: The Specialty of East Asian Families”…
Yu Xiaxing clicked on one of the videos to see what kind of person Breaking Free was.
There was no person on camera. The screen showed only a butterfly slowly flapping its wings.
The voice had been altered, speaking softly in the background.
The content reduced every parent-child conflict to parental control and oppression.
Yu Xiaxing watched several clips and decided that this blogger was genuinely malicious.
There really were parents in this world who didn’t love their children.
But there was no need to blow every little disagreement out of proportion like this…
Take this example, for instance. A child had stolen his grandparents’ personal information to take out loans and spend the money on games. After the parents scolded him, Breaking Free began implying that the child had borrowed money because his parents were incompetent?
Besides, young people lacked life experience. They tended to see only what they hadn’t received and easily overlooked everything they had been given.
Those who had material support wanted emotional support, while those who had emotional support wanted material support.
Breaking Free simply kept magnifying everything the parents had failed to provide, driving families apart.
Jiang Tinglan asked earnestly, “What do you think?”
Yu Xiaxing was silent for a moment. “I actually relate to it quite a bit. What she says makes a lot of sense.”
Jiang Tinglan immediately asked, “Do you want to follow her?”
Yu Xiaxing took out her own phone and searched for the account.
She tapped Follow, then waved the screen at Jiang Tinglan. “Followed. Thanks for the recommendation.”
“No problem. Realizing that your parents are oppressing you is the first step toward breaking free!”
Yu Xiaxing didn’t want to continue the conversation, so she put away her phone and said disdainfully, “The school trustee has kept us waiting this long. What kind of attitude is that? We’re here to withdraw from school anyway. Why should we be afraid of her?”
Jiang Tinglan froze for a moment. “Then what do we do now…?”
Yu Xiaxing said, “Let’s just skip class. If we skip enough classes, the school will automatically count it as dropping out.”
“…”
Jiang Tinglan hesitated.
Although she was always talking about taking back control of her life, her mother had kept her under such strict control since childhood that she rarely even arrived late to class, let alone skipped it.
Besides, she had never seriously considered what she would do if she really stopped going to school…
Yu Xiaxing stood up. “Come on. The trustee definitely isn’t coming today. Let’s go shopping and get something to eat. Are you coming?”
Jiang Tinglan thought of everything Director Gao had said earlier… If she didn’t truly rebel now, she would end up being someone who only knew how to make empty declarations.
So she agreed. “Let’s go!”
—
Jiang Tinglan had been under far too much pressure lately. She really did need to take a breather.
She and her new classmate went out for a good hot pot meal. Afterward, they went to an arcade, where they played basketball, shot marbles, and tried to win prizes from the claw machines…
It was simple, uncomplicated fun.
The two of them split every expense evenly without so much as a word.
They had just come out of the arcade, each holding a cup of milk tea, and were strolling down a street lined with Chinese parasol trees.
Thinking of how decisively her classmate had paid earlier, Jiang Tinglan couldn’t help saying, “I could’ve treated you, you know. My mom is strict, but she gives me plenty of spending money.”
“No need. I’m not short of money either.”
What Yu Xiaxing lacked was serious money, not the few dozen or hundred yuan spent on little things like this.
“Kids from families like ours don’t lack money. What we lack is love!”
Hearing Yu Xiaxing say that she also lacked her parents’ love, Jiang Tinglan empathized with her again.
She gave Yu Xiaxing a sympathetic look. “Actually, I’m a little better off than you. At least I have a dad who loves me.”
Yu Xiaxing asked, “How exactly does your dad love you? I’ve never experienced that. I really want to know.”
Jiang Tinglan said, “Whenever my mom scolds me or criticizes me for doing something wrong, he secretly comforts me after she leaves.”
“Once, I went to take part in a dance competition, and I accidentally packed the wrong costume. My mom kept lecturing me. Things like, ‘Didn’t I tell you to check everything before leaving? Didn’t you say you’d already checked and everything was fine?’”
“I had forgotten, yes, but it had already happened. What good did it do for her to keep blaming me?”
“But my dad didn’t say anything at all. When I was feeling the most wronged, he quietly gave me a piece of candy to make me feel better.”
Yu Xiaxing looked at her in confusion. “Isn’t your dad just a shameless male hypocrite playing the victim?”
