Gao Wu's face fell, and he looked up toward the house, only to find Gao Huizhi staring right back at him.
"Huizhi?" he blurted out, stunned. "What are you doing back here?"
"What, are you disappointed to see me home?" Gao Huizhi's voice trembled, her eyes fixed sharply on him. He was her own brother. Their father had passed away early, and their mother had taken over his job to raise the two of them, relying on each other to get by. But ever since he married that woman, her brother had changed completely—he had become so easily swayed that he could no longer tell right from wrong.
Gao Wu was stung speechless by her words. "What nonsense are you spouting? I'm your brother. Of course I'd be thrilled to have you back."
"Let's go inside first. We can't have a scene out in the hallway," he said, reaching for Gao Huizhi's arm. The response he got was a sharp slap across his face.
Gao Huizhi immediately launched into a torrent of accusations, but the things she was saying left Gao Wu more and more confused.
"Weren't you supposed to be at the Production and Construction Corps? At first you said you'd be back in two years, then you claimed you wanted to get more training and stay longer. I even sent you money every month. Last month, when the weather turned cold, I mailed you a padded winter coat. You're my sister—how could I ever abandon you? Just the other day, I was telling your sister-in-law that you should come home soon. You're not getting any younger, and it's high time you came back to find a partner and get married, so I can finally answer to our parents in good conscience. And what's this about you getting hurt? I never got any letter saying you were injured. What on earth is going on?"
Gao Wu didn't look like he was putting on an act, and the onlookers who had gathered to watch started chiming in to mediate, saying there must be some misunderstanding. Everyone knew that back when they were little, Gao Wu had always been very protective of his little sister. They had grown up relying on each other without a father, so it didn't make sense that he would be so cruel as to send his sister away to the countryside and then ignore her.
Then Gao Wu's eyes widened as something dawned on him. He turned to look at Chen Guixiang, demanding to know what was really going on—why had the Production and Construction Corps turned into a rural resettlement program? Where had all the money he'd wired and the packages he'd sent gone? Why had he never received a single letter from his sister saying she was hurt?
Chen Guixiang just stammered out a few words: "I don't know."
Hearing her answer, Gao Wu understood everything. He raised his hand and slapped Chen Guixiang hard across the face. They had been married for years, and Gao Wu rarely lost his temper. No one had expected him to hit her, especially not when she was pregnant.
Chen Guixiang covered her cheek, wailing and cursing at Gao Wu through her tears.
"When I married you, your sister was still in school, and all the money you earned had to go toward household expenses. But when your mom died, she left her job to her daughter! Which family doesn't pass a job down to the son? You already had a job, so what was I supposed to do? A dual-income household lives nothing like a single-income one! So what if I tricked her into going to the countryside? This place is tiny—how's a grown woman supposed to live with her brother and his wife without things being awkward? You have three kids to feed, and you make barely any money—don't you have any idea how little you earn? You make 37 yuan a month, and you wanted me to send 10 of it to her? What gives? She's already an adult—why should her brother keep supporting her? That's ridiculous."
"And besides, you think you're such a great older brother? All these years, have you ever once asked exactly which corps she was stationed in? You just told me to send her money and write her letters, but you never bothered to do any of it yourself! If you'd actually cared even a little bit about her, you would have found out I was lying ages ago. Even when she wrote back home, you just asked me what her letters said—you never even thought about reading one yourself. What's with this sudden big show of brotherly affection now? I spit on it!"
"You leave the house at dawn and get back late every night, and after all these years, you're still just a team leader. You never lift a finger to help with anything around the house—people would think you were the director of the canned food factory, the way you carry on!"
"You never even cared about your own sister before, and now you're taking all your anger out on me? What gives?"
Chen Guixiang's words made everyone turn to look at Gao Wu. She had a point—if he had paid even the smallest bit of attention over the years, things never would have gotten this bad.
"Neither of you needs to air all this in front of the whole neighborhood," Gao Huizhi said, her face devoid of any emotion. "I'm back now, and this house was left to us by our mom. Half of it belongs to me. I'm moving back in. As for you, sister-in-law, I don't have anything to say to you. Gao Wu, I want my job back. The job your wife got for her own little sister is mine. Tomorrow, you're coming with me to the hospital to testify so I can get it back. That job was promised to our Gao family by the hospital, and it has nothing at all to do with the Chen family. If you won't help me get it back, I'll have no choice but to go talk to the leaders at the canned food factory and the hospital myself."
Gao Huizhi knew full well that her brother might seem to be on her side right now, but once night fell and Chen Guixiang got to him with her manipulative whispers, who knew what he'd change his mind about by morning. And Chen Guixiang was right—during the three years she'd been gone, if he'd cared even a little bit about his sister, he never would have gone three whole years without finding out she'd been sent to the countryside instead of the corps. She'd known all along that Chen Guixiang was a greedy, selfish person, so why would she ever have expected her to actually send the money on? Her brother had clearly been pretending to be oblivious this whole time.
Right now, the most important thing for her was to get her job back. It was the foundation of her survival and her only source of security. If she didn't, Chen Guixiang would no doubt move on to plotting to control her next, and arrange a terrible marriage for her.
Gao Wu had never imagined that just three short years away would have filled his little sister with so much hatred for him.
"Huizhi, we're blood siblings, we came from the same mother. I can explain all this. There's no need for you to be so hostile toward me."
"Save it," she said. "If you have even a shred of a conscience left, just give back what's mine. We're way past the point where empty words do any good. My leg is lame now. No one but me knows what kind of hell I've been through out in the far northwest. I survived three whole years on just ten yuan a month. What kind of attitude do you expect me to have toward you?"
With that, Gao Huizhi turned and walked toward the house.
Chen Guixiang stood in the doorway, her hand still covering her stinging cheek, her eyes burning with rage. She stared at Gao Huizhi's retreating back, then suddenly grabbed a wooden bench by the door and lifted it high over her head.
"Watch out!"
Xiao Mandong shouted, and before she knew it, she had lunged forward. She instinctively threw her arm up to block, and the heavy bench slammed right into her arm. A sharp, throbbing pain shot through her all the way to the bone. She bit back a groan and pulled her arm back. The bench, deflected by her block, crashed hard into the doorframe, and one of its legs snapped clean off—everyone could tell just how much force Chen Guixiang had put behind that blow.
"Sister Mandong... Doctor Xiao..." Zou Yan and the surrounding onlookers cried out in alarm.
No one had expected Chen Guixiang to go completely berserk.
Chen Guixiang stood frozen in the doorway, the broken bench still clutched in her hand. Her face went deathly pale. She stared down at the bench in her hands, then looked up at Xiao Mandong, and only then did she snap back to her senses and realize exactly what she had just done.
Gao Wu rushed over and wrenched the bench out of her grip. "What do you think you're doing?"
"I... I didn't mean to..." She stumbled back a step, her legs giving out under her, and she slid down the doorframe to the floor, bursting into loud soars.
"She... she was the one who stuck her nose where it didn't belong! She ran into the bench on purpose! It's not my fault, everyone saw it!"
The more she thought about it, the more convinced she was that she was right. She pointed a finger at Xiao Mandong, yelling, "This is our family's fight! What's it to you?"
"Slap." Gao Wu raised his hand and slapped Chen Guixiang a second time.
"Do you have any idea? If Doctor Xiao hadn't stepped in to block it, that stool of yours would have smashed right into the back of Huizhi's head. Do you even know what the consequences would have been? Were you trying to kill someone?"
"Gao Wu, you actually hit me for another woman? Why would she take a stool blow for your sister? Your sister just got back, they don't even know each other at all. Tell me, what's really going on between the two of you?" Chen Guixiang knew full well she was in the wrong, so she shifted the subject and made unreasonable accusations out of thin air.
By this point, Xiao Mandong's arm was already swollen bright red, throbbing so sharply that she kept sucking in breath from the pain. She had no time to bicker with Chen Guixiang — she needed to get home right away and soak her arm in spiritual spring water.
Gao Huizhi, eyes all red and puffy, insisted on walking Xiao Mandong to the hospital, but Xiao Mandong turned her down. She used her uninjured hand to twist the doorknob, stepped out, and shut the door behind her, cutting off all the noisy commotion outside. The moment she stepped into her private space and dipped her injured arm into the spiritual spring water, a cool, soothing sensation seeped straight through her wound, and the pain immediately faded to a much more bearable level.
Right then, she spotted a small wooden box next to the spiritual spring, no bigger than the palm of her hand. She picked it up; it was very light, with a smooth, unadorned surface, no patterns carved anywhere except for four characters on the lid: A Gift for Good Karma.
She flipped open the lid, and three golden pills the size of soybeans lay inside, giving off a faint, gentle herbal aroma.
She held the pills right up to her nose and sniffed hard, but she couldn't identify what medicinal herbs they were made from. Still, her gut instinct told her these were definitely precious, high-quality things.
She pondered to herself: A gift for good karma? Did I get this because I saved Gao Huizhi today? Or is there some other reason?
She started looking carefully all around her space. She'd had this place for so long, but she'd never really explored all its wonders — up until now, she'd only ever used it as a storage room.
