Just yesterday, Ye Yun had seen his eldest cousin, who had not come home for over two months, slouching against the wall with his legs crossed and propped straight on the dining table. Chen Guihua fussed over him at his side:
"My son, you haven't been home for two whole months. Your mother missed you to death. Oh, why have you lost weight? Is working as a porter in town too hard?..." Ye Yao answered Chen Guihua's endless chatter perfunctorily, his impatience plain on his face.
Ye Yun sneered inwardly. Ye Yao was lazy and gluttonous. He had worked as a porter when he first went to town, but he had later been thrown out for occasionally stealing goods to sell. Unwilling to come home and farm, he had lied to Eldest Uncle Ye and his wife, claiming he was still working as a porter.
In reality, he spent his days idling around town with a gang of hooligans, pilfering and stealing, and occasionally visiting gambling dens. A fellow villager who had worked with him had told people this upon returning to the village. Chen Guihua refused to believe it and had even gone to that person's house, hands on her hips, to curse them out for spreading rumors.
So the villagers all talked behind their backs, no longer bothering to warn a family that could not appreciate good intentions, and waited to laugh at them later.
Over the years, Ye Yao had come home once every few months, always with his hand out for money. Chen Guihua doted on her son without a shred of sense. When Eldest Uncle Ye refused to give him money, she slipped it to him in secret. Ye Yao also knew how to exploit her hopes that he would earn enough to take her to town for a good life, and he was always willing to spend time making her empty promises.
He must have come back this time because he had lost money at the gambling den again.
"Why did washing the clothes take so long? Were you slacking off again? You've been getting slower and slower lately. You spend half the day picking wild vegetables in the mountains. Don't think I don't know you're shirking work. If it weren't for your parents dying young, and my kindness in taking you both in, where would you be? Now that you're older, you're getting lazy and gluttonous..."
The moment Chen Guihua caught sight of Ye Yun returning to hang up the laundry, her expression changed, and she unleashed a torrent of abuse at him.
Ye Yun kept working without a word. That was how Chen Guihua was. She cursed when she was in a bad mood, cursed when he worked too slowly, came home and cursed after someone upset her outside, and found an excuse to curse even when she tripped over the threshold herself. Sometimes she would curse at them a few times for no reason at all...
In short, she cursed at Ye Yun and Ye Chen whenever she pleased. If they came close, she would shove them around and pinch his and Xiao Chen's arms hard enough to leave dark bruises. Sometimes she whipped them with a rattan cane, treating them as thorns in her side and outlets for her anger.
He had warned Xiao Chen to avoid them as much as possible when home alone, not to talk back or argue, and to run outside if they hit him.
But Xiao Chen later discovered that Chen Guihua was extremely petty. Whenever he ran away to escape a beating, she would deliberately find fault with them afterward, especially Ye Yun. So Xiao Chen stopped running and simply endured the blows.
When Ye Yun found out, he trembled with anger. That night, he gazed at Ye Chen's sleeping face and silently wept.
Ye Yao and Ye Bao had been cruel even as children. Once, they had tried to snatch the longevity lock hanging around Ye Chen's neck. Their late parents had put it on him when he turned one. Every night before bed, Ye Chen would speak to the longevity lock because Ye Yun had told him their parents could hear him that way.
Little Ye Chen had not quite understood that death was like a lamp going out, and that they could never hear his words again!
Ye Chen clung desperately to the longevity lock, refusing to hand it over. The two of them pushed him to the ground, and Ye Yao planted his foot on Ye Chen's tiny body, declaring arrogantly, "Hmph! Disobey me, and I'll teach you a lesson." Ye Bao egged him on from the side and added two kicks of her own.
When Chen Guihua returned, Ye Yao seized the chance to pretend he had been knocked down. Sitting on the threshold, he howled in pain and claimed that Ye Chen had been running around and slammed into him. Ye Bao fanned the flames, pouring out accusations as though they were true.
Seeing her precious son sitting on the ground screaming, Chen Guihua grabbed a thin switch without another word and lashed Ye Chen with it. She did not stop to consider how Ye Chen's scrawny little body could possibly have knocked down the sturdy Ye Yao.
The thin switch bit painfully into his flesh. Ye Chen sobbed in gasps, his screams drawing the neighbors over to watch. Unable to bear it, some of them hurriedly pulled Chen Guihua away.
"He's a child who doesn't know any better. Stop hitting him. You'll beat him to death."
"Stop! Chen Guihua, are you abusing your nephew?"
"Heavens, how could you hit him so hard? He's bleeding all over."
"How vicious. You really are going to kill him."
Chen Guihua threw down the switch and cursed them for meddling, saying Ye Chen was a born rebel who wanted to kill her family's only son.
When Ye Yun came home and saw Ye Chen covered in bloody welts and sobbing in gasps, he scooped him into his arms and fixed Chen Guihua with a fierce, red-eyed stare. For an instant, Chen Guihua felt a chill.
That night, Ye Yun gently applied medicine to Xiao Chen. Tears blurred his eyes, and he turned his head away, stifling his sobs as the hand applying the medicine shook uncontrollably.
"Big brother, can we go home? I don't want to live here."
Ye Yun could not speak. After weighing his words for a long time, he said, "Xiao Chen, Father and Mother are dead. I lied to you before. They really can't hear you anymore."
He stroked Ye Chen's back over and over, his voice choked with tears. "If they want this longevity lock, let them have it. Stay away from them from now on, and don't talk back or get into fights with them. Do you understand?"
He reached out and unfastened the longevity lock that Ye Chen was clutching tightly.
Ye Chen cried until he hiccupped. After all those days living under someone else's roof, holding the longevity lock and talking to his parents without ever receiving an answer, even at his young age, he had begun to vaguely understand what death meant. He had merely clung to a last shred of hope, which his brother had now finally shattered without mercy.
"I'll take you away from here someday, Xiao Chen. Be good." Ye Yun felt terribly guilty and miserable. They could not fall out with this family and leave now. Xiao Chen was only four. If the two of them lived alone and idle thieves and scoundrels found out, they would be in danger. This
was also why he had not resisted when his eldest uncle's family cleaned out their savings and took their land for themselves. They were too young, especially Xiao Chen. They had to live in a household with adults to be safe.
Later, Ye Yun gave the longevity lock to Ye Yao. From then on, whenever he expected to be out working for a long time, he took Ye Chen along. One day, he happened to pick up an herbal medicine book that a clinic had thrown away. Studying its blurry illustrations, he tried again and again to identify the medicinal herbs in the mountains. Time after time, he took them to the clinic, enduring disdainful looks as he begged the apprentice to check which of the herbs he had brought were useful.
He wanted to sell medicinal herbs in secret to earn money. Once he had saved enough and he and Xiao Chen were a little older, they could escape this life.
Now, seeing Ye Yun still hanging up clothes without answering her, Chen Guihua stormed into the courtyard, reached out, and gave his upper arm a vicious twist.
"Yun-ge'er, the older you get, the less respect you have for your elders! Can't you hear me calling you? Hurry up and cook. Pah, you ungrateful wretch."
She spat. "Go to the butcher Ye Guang's house and buy two jin of pork to build up my Yao'er's strength." Then she tossed thirty wen onto the ground as though bestowing charity.
Ye Yun was used to it and did not argue with her. He knew that the more he argued with Chen Guihua, the more worked up she became, so he picked up the money and went out to buy pork.