hotmtlnovel Chapter 704 Qin Huairu Throws a Tantrum
Chapter 704 Qin Huairu Throws a Tantrum
She quietly touched the blue cloth bag hidden under the bed—it contained her savings accumulated over several years: small bills, warm coins, and a few crumpled bills, totaling more than twenty yuan. This amount was enough for her to escape to the outskirts of the city and find a small place to stay. As soon as He Feng traced her back, she would immediately run away with the money. She didn't want to stay a single day longer in this oppressive courtyard house, in this endless mess of family troubles.
"Mom, don't worry." Xiao Dang forced a relatively calm smile, trying to make her voice sound sincere, with a hint of feigned certainty. "I'll get up first thing tomorrow morning and go with you to search every alley. My brother is so clever, always full of mischievous ideas, he'll definitely be fine. Good people are always protected by heaven."
Inside the inner room, Jia Dongxu was already sprawled on the kang (a heated brick bed), his legs stretched out over the edge, his eyes fixed blankly on the blackened beams, as if his soul had flown away. He was actually preoccupied with something else: tomorrow the factory had an important batch of work, and Qin Huairu was specifically requested to oversee it. If she missed work because of looking for the child, the steel mill would inevitably deduct her wages, making their already tight budget for the month even more precarious.
Besides… a barely perceptible, cold smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, as quick as a fleeting shadow. That Jia Cai wasn't his biological son; all these years he'd only pretended to be a father out of respect for Qin Huairu. Now that the man was missing, feigned concern was one thing, but getting him to actually care or put in the effort was absolutely out of the question.
At this moment, Jia Dongxu's aunt walked in from the outer room, still clutching a piece of unfinished yarn in her hand. Her face showed obvious remorse as she rubbed her hands together, her voice trembling, "Dongxu, this...this is something I really did wrong. If I hadn't been so talkative in the alley, gossiping to Aunt Zhang and the others, this wouldn't have happened..."
Before she could finish speaking, Qin Huairu sprang up from her chair like a firecracker suddenly lit, rushed over like a madwoman, and slapped her hard across the face. The sharp "smack" was particularly jarring in the quiet room, making the window paper tremble.
"It's all your fault!" Qin Huairu roared, her eyes red, tears welling up again like a broken string of pearls. "If you hadn't been gossiping all day long in the courtyard, saying that Jia Cai's features didn't resemble Dongxu's, all that talk, none of this trouble would have happened! Now that the child is lost, are you satisfied?!"
Jia Dongxu's aunt covered her burning face, half of her cheek instantly turning red. Her eyes were filled with grievance, and tears welled up in them, but she ultimately swallowed back the words that were on the tip of her tongue—it was indeed she who had been gossiping. While chatting with some old ladies at the alley entrance, she had said that Jia Caizhang looked neither like Dongxu nor Qin Huairu, and that perhaps they had been switched at birth. The matter had spread like wildfire, and the people in the courtyard were looking at the Jia family with strange eyes. In retrospect, she did bear some responsibility.
"Alright, Qin Huairu!" Jia Dongxu finally sat up from the kang, his brows furrowed, and impatiently stopped her. "What's the use of hitting her now? She's already missing. Instead of fighting amongst ourselves and making a spectacle of ourselves in front of the neighbors, we should think about how to find the child tomorrow!"
He was actually happy to watch this drama unfold—his aunt had been beaten, which vented most of Qin Huairu's anger, saving him the trouble of mediating. After all, it was just some unpleasant family matters, and it would be over once it was over.
Qin Huairu felt as if all her strength had been drained away by his shout. Her legs went weak, and she covered her face, squatting on the ground and sobbing. Her cries were suppressed and desperate, making people's hearts tighten.
Xiao Dang stood aside, coldly observing the chaotic scene—her mother's cries, her great-aunt's grievances, and Jia Dongxu's impatience. She had only one thought in her mind: get out of here, get as far away as possible, leave this perpetually chaotic home, leave this suffocating courtyard house.
Qin Huairu clutched the empty wooden box tightly to her chest, her knuckles turning white from the effort, and her joints even turning bluish-purple. The box was the only memento Jia Cai had left behind—it felt like a piece of flesh had been ripped out of her heart, a pain so intense and urgent that even breathing was painful.
"It must have been you!" Qin Huairu turned her head sharply, her bloodshot eyes blazing as she stared intently at Jia Dongxu's aunt standing by the table. Her voice trembled with anger. "You were the one who was wandering around the room the most just now, looking here and there, touching everything. If it wasn't you, who else could it be?"
Jia Dongxu's aunt was a short, plump woman wearing a faded blue cotton jacket. She had high-set, triangular eyes and a mean-looking face. Upon hearing this, she spat fiercely on the ground, splattering the kang (heated brick bed) edge: "What nonsense are you spouting? I'm Dongxu's own aunt, this child's great-aunt! Would I steal from my own family? I think you're hiding it yourself, trying to extort my meager retirement money!"
"I'm trying to extort you?" Qin Huairu trembled with rage, her chest heaving. She took a large step forward and reached out to snatch the blue cloth bag tightly clutched in the other woman's hand. "Open that bag! Let me see what kind of monstrosity is hidden inside!"
The two women instantly began to wrestle, their hair tangled and pulled, their curses raining down like hail. Qin Huairu, though usually a docile woman, possessed a ruthless fierceness when enraged, gripping the other's arm tightly, her nails almost digging into her flesh. Jia Dongxu's aunt was no pushover either; relying on her size and strength, she reached out and scratched Qin Huairu's arm, her sharp nails leaving several bright red welts from which blood seeped.
Jia Dongxu, lying on the kang (a heated brick bed), frantically pounded on the edge of the bed, the "bang bang" echoing in the room. Paralyzed for years, his limbs had long since lost their power; he could only watch helplessly as the two women tore at each other in front of him, his throat gurgling like a broken bellows: "Stop hitting her! Stop hitting her! Let's talk this out!" Seeing that the two women ignored him, he vented his anger on Xiao Dang beside him, his eyes bulging like copper bells, almost popping out of their sockets: "Are you dead? Didn't you see your mother being bullied? Why didn't you intervene! Are you going to just watch your mother get beaten to death?!"
Xiao Dang had been squatting in the corner, hugging her knees, watching the farce unfold like a monkey show. She had long disliked her aunt; ever since she moved in, she had been sneaking things around, and yesterday she had even seen her stuff a bar of soap into her bag, but she hadn't bothered to make a fuss. She had been happy to have some peace and quiet since her mother hadn't called her, but now, after Jia Dongxu yelled at her, she knew she couldn't escape, so she slowly stood up and dusted off her trousers.
Her eyes darted around, her mind clear—her aunt was an outsider, destined to leave sooner or later, while her mother was the one she'd spend her life with. There was no need to think about who to side with or not. So, without a word, she pounced like a nimble kitten, shoving Jia Dongxu's aunt hard in the lower back, simultaneously grabbing her hair and pulling her back forcefully, shouting crisply, "You dare hit my mom! I'll show you!"