PHRC 🍁 Chapter 13: The Vicious Family

Just yesterday, Ye Yun saw his eldest cousin, who hadn't returned in over two months, leaning crookedly against the wall with his legs crossed directly on the dining table. Chen Guihua fussed over him solicitously:

"My son, you haven't been home for two months. Mother has missed you so much! Oh my, why have you grown so thin? Is working as a porter in town too hard?..." Ye Yao responded perfunctorily to Chen Guihua's endless nagging, clear impatience showing between his brows.

Ye Yun sneered inwardly. This Ye Yao was lazy and gluttonous. When he first went to town, he had worked as a porter, but was later fired for occasionally stealing goods to sell. Unwilling to come home to farm, he deceived his uncle and aunt into thinking he was still working as a porter.

In reality, he spent all day loitering in town with a gang of hooligans, stealing chickens and dogs, and frequenting into gambling dens. This was what someone from the same village who had worked with him had said upon returning. Chen Guihua didn't believe it and even stood with hands on hips in front of that person's house, cursing loudly that they were spreading rumors.

Therefore, everyone in the village talked about it behind their backs, too lazy to warn this ungrateful family, preferring to watch their comeuppance later.

Over these years, Ye Yao came home once every few months, and every time it was to ask for money. Chen Guihua doted on her son mindlessly. When Uncle Ye refused to give money, she would secretly slip some to Ye Yao. Ye Yao knew exactly how to play Chen Guihua, who pinned her hopes on him earning money to live a good life in town, so he always took the time to paint her grand but empty promises.

This time he had definitely come back because he had lost money at the gambling den.

"Why did it take you so long to wash clothes? Were you slacking off again? You've been working slower and slower lately. Gathering wild vegetables on the mountain takes half the day. Don't think I don't know you're hiding somewhere being lazy. If it weren't for us kindly taking you two in after your parents died early, now that you're grown, you're starting to be lazy and greedy..."

Chen Guihua's eyes landed on Ye Yun, who had just returned to hang the laundry, and her face instantly changed as she launched into a tirade against him.

Ye Yun's hands kept moving without a word. This was just how Chen Guihua was: she scolded when she was in a bad mood, scolded when work was slow, scolded when she had been offended outside, even made excuses to scold when she tripped over a threshold, and sometimes would scold for no reason at all...

In short, she scolded Ye Yun and Ye Chen whenever she felt like it. If they got too close, she would push and shove them, pinching their arms so hard they turned black and blue, sometimes beating them with rattan canes, treating them like thorns in her side, objects to vent her anger on.

He had warned Little Chen to try to avoid them at home, not to talk back or argue, and if they were about to be hit, run away.

But Little Chen later discovered that Chen Guihua was extremely petty. If he ran away to avoid being beaten, she would deliberately make things difficult for them later, especially targeting Ye Yun. So Little Chen stopped running and endured the beatings instead.

When Ye Yun found out, he trembled with anger. At night, looking at Ye Chen's sleeping face, he silently shed tears.

When they were younger, Ye Yao and Ye Bao had also been terrible. Once, they tried to snatch the longevity lock hanging around Ye Chen's neck, a gift from his deceased parents on his first birthday that he wore constantly. Before sleeping, Ye Chen would talk to the longevity lock, because Ye Yun had told him that way their parents could hear him.

Young Ye Chen didn't quite understand that death was like a lamp being extinguished, that they could never hear his words again!

Ye Chen clung desperately to the longevity lock, refusing to give it up. The two of them pushed Ye Chen to the ground. Ye Yao stepped on Ye Chen's small body, arrogant and triumphant: "Hmph, disobedient? I'll teach you a lesson." Ye Bao cheered him on from the side, adding a few kicks of her own.

When Chen Guihua came back, Ye Yao seized the opportunity to pretend he had been knocked to the ground, sitting on the threshold wailing in pain, claiming Ye Chen had run around and slammed into him hard. Ye Bao added fuel to the fire, making accusations that sounded so real.

Seeing her precious son sitting on the ground shouting, Chen Guihua didn't hesitate to grab a thin twig and strike Ye Chen. She didn't stop to think how Ye Chen's thin, small body could possibly have knocked over the sturdy Ye Yao.

The thin twig cut into his flesh painfully. Ye Chen sobbed convulsively, his screams drawing neighbors to gather around. Some couldn't bear to watch and quickly pulled Chen Guihua away.

"He's just a child who doesn't know better. Stop hitting him, you'll beat him to death!"

"Stop right now, Chen Guihua! Are you abusing your nephew?"

"Good heavens, how can you hit him so hard? He's bleeding!"

"Truly vicious. You're going to kill someone!"

...

Chen Guihua threw down the twig in her hand, cursing them for meddling, saying Ye Chen was a rebellious ingrate who wanted to kill her only son.

When Ye Yun came home and saw Ye Chen sobbing convulsively, covered in bloody welts, he swept him up in his arms, his eyes red as he stared fixedly at Chen Guihua. For a moment, Chen Guihua felt a chill run down her spine.

That night, Ye Yun gently applied medicine to Little Chen, his vision blurred with tears. He turned his head to muffle his sobs, his hand trembling as he tended to the wounds.

"Brother, can we go home? I don't want to live here anymore."

Ye Yun couldn't speak. After careful consideration, he said: "Little Chen, Father and Mother are dead. Brother lied to you before... actually, they can't hear you anymore."

He stroked Ye Chen's back again and again, his voice choking. "This longevity lock... if they want it, let them have it. Stay away from them in the future, and don't talk back or fight with them, understand?"

He reached out and undid the longevity lock that Ye Chen had been clutching so tightly.

Ye Chen cried until he hiccuped. All these days living under someone else's roof, talking to his parents through the longevity lock and getting no response in return, the young child had vaguely understood what death meant, still clinging to a thread of hope that was now ruthlessly shattered by his brother.

"I will definitely take you away from here someday, Little Chen. Be good." Ye Yun felt deeply guilty and heartbroken. They couldn’t afford to fall out with them and leave just yet. Xiao Chen was only four, and if the two of them tried to live on their own, they would be in danger if word got around to the local idlers and petty thieves.

This was also why he hadn't resisted when his uncle's family had seized their savings and taken their land as their own. They were too young, especially Little Chen. They needed to live in a house with adults to be safe.

Later, Ye Yun gave the longevity lock to Ye Yao. From then on, if he estimated he would be gone working for a long time, he would take Ye Chen with him. One day, he accidentally found an old herbal medicine book discarded by a pharmacy. Studying the blurry illustrations, he identified medicinal herbs in the mountains over and over, taking them to pharmacy time and again, enduring disdain as he begged the medicine boys to look at which herbs were useful.

He wanted to secretly sell medicinal herbs to earn money. When he had saved enough and he and Little Chen were a bit older, they could escape this kind of life.

At this moment, seeing Ye Yun still hanging clothes and not responding to her, Chen Guihua stormed angrily into the courtyard and reached out to give Ye Yun's upper arm a vicious pinch.

"Yun ge'er, the older you get, the less you respect your elders! Can't you hear me calling you? Hurry up and cook. Pah, ungrateful wretch."

She spat on the ground. "Go to butcher Ye Guang's house and cut two jin of pork. My Yao'er needs to nourish himself." Then she tossed thirty copper coins to the ground as if bestowing charity.

Ye Yun was used to it and didn’t argue with her. He knew what Chen Guihua was like, the more you argued with her, the more worked up she got. So, he simply picked up the money and went out to buy the pork.