Shallow Fate (Lily ABO) mute A - Chapter 12
Xie Yuefeng seemed to be quite fond of this newly acquainted female student. The day after the dance, she published a notice in the newspaper:
[On April 2, I became friends with Miss Shen Zhimo.]
Five months later, the newspaper published the couple’s wedding announcement. This time, Xie Yuefeng bought the entire page, and even included a picture of the marriage certificate:
[Two families unite in marriage, a contract is established, a good relationship is eternally bound, and they are matched in name.
Looking at the peach blossoms today, they are blooming brightly, suitable for a harmonious family. In the coming years, may our love be sweet and everlasting, and may we thrive and flourish.
With a vow of growing old together, I write on this fine paper, wishing to record our bond of red leaves in the love history.
Xie Yuefeng Shen Zhimo
This certificate.]
As long as Fang Yu bought a newspaper, she would see her wife wearing a new-style wedding dress, holding the arm of a strange alpha.
Unfortunately, newspapers are not yet something that can circulate in rural areas.
At this time, she was queuing at the very end of the line, waiting for the foreman to distribute this month’s wages.
The foreman was a kind person. Fang Yu worked neatly and didn’t slack off. Usually, he was willing to take extra care of this honest mute, but this time, he frowned with the pen in his mouth.
“Xiao Fang, your wages were already collected by your mother-in-law.”
This did not surprise Fang Yu very much. She had worked here for five months, and the actual wages she received were only for one month. The rest were all taken away by Shen’s mother under various pretexts.
Oh well, there was still rice at home, as long as she could eat enough.
Fang Yu nodded to the foreman, indicating that it was okay.
On her way home, she met Shen’s mother. This person changed her previous shameless appearance. When she saw her, she avoided her like she was avoiding a plague god.
Was she afraid that she would ask for the wages back?
Fang Yu didn’t think much about it, and continued walking home.
She saw the village postman’s donkey cart parked at her door from a distance. The postman also saw her, and shouted from afar:
“Mute! There’s a letter for you! Hurry up! I have to deliver a letter to Wang Xuemei!”
It must be sent by A-Mo!
Thinking this, Fang Yu ran over. Perhaps she was too hasty, and she accidentally tripped on the road. She didn’t bother to pat the mud off her body, took the envelope and ran into the bedroom.
Along with the letter, there were also a few large bills. Fang Yu felt an ominous premonition in her heart. She unfolded the letter paper. It was still that delicate and familiar handwriting, but the meaning between the lines made her feel particularly strange.
[Fang Yu:
You and I do not have a marriage certificate, which does not constitute a de facto marriage. Now I have found another good person and married. You should not come to me, nor should you write letters. Even if you send them, I will not read them.
Shen Zhimo
September 1, 2009]
With just a few words, Fang Yu read it over and over dozens of times, only hating that she couldn’t tear the words apart and sew them back together, so that they wouldn’t seem so heartless.
She even took the dictionary left by Shen Zhimo and compared the words one by one.
She didn’t understand, what did she do wrong?
Why did A-Mo abandon her less than half a year after leaving?
A-Mo said that there was no de facto marriage between them. These words were too trendy for a farmer. She understood the meaning of the word by looking it up in the dictionary.
In equally trendy terms, A-Mo meant to divorce her, right? But divorce requires the consent of both parties to be called divorce.
So, in old terms, she was abandoned by A-Mo.
How… could it not count…
They had kowtowed to the hall, held a banquet, and Shen’s mother personally handed Shen Zhimo’s hand to her.
They had also had s3x. Isn’t this something that can only be done between wives?
A drop of water hit the paper, blurring the handwriting. Fang Yu hurriedly rubbed her eyes.
She couldn’t get it dirty, this was the last thing A-Mo left her.
In order to divert her attention, Fang Yu took the pile of letters on the desk that had not been sent and read them.
She wrote to Shen Zhimo every day, and most of the letters were about trivial matters in life – which day she weeded, planted sunflowers that Shen Zhimo liked in the yard, and which day she went to the street to buy kerosene, so that Shen Zhimo would not lack light when reading at home.
But she didn’t know Shen Zhimo’s address in Feng’an. Page by page, accumulating and accumulating, it was actually such a thick stack.
Her vision gradually blurred to the point where she couldn’t see the words clearly, and the letter paper was also beaten into a paste by the tearful beads like broken threads.
Fang Yu crumpled the pile of paper.
Anyway, there was no chance to send it out again.
Before she had time to think more, a figure even more distraught than her staggered past the window. Fang Yu felt that the figure was very familiar, put down the letter and chased after her.
It’s Widow Wang.
“Mute… she… won’t come back either…”
Widow Wang lost the style of the former pretty widow, and stared at Fang Yu blankly.
She was swollen all over, her belly was high and bulging, and she was draped in a few pieces of ragged clothes that she didn’t know where she had picked up. Since her pregnancy was discovered by her in-laws, she was kicked out of the house.
Her in-laws only wanted her to tell the name of the adulterer and get rid of the bastard in her belly, and then they would still recognize her as their daughter-in-law, but no matter how they beat and kicked her, she stubbornly refused to say a word.
The old people in the village said that they would drag her to be drowned in a pig cage, but after making a fuss for a long time, no one dared to do it.
They let her wander on the street, picking up some leftovers to survive.
Only Fang Yu occasionally helped her.
Fang Yu once asked Widow Wang to tell Zhou Jun’s name. She swallowed a mouthful of steamed bun hungrily, choked for a long time before speaking, her tone full of expectations for the future:
“Xiao Jun will come back to marry me after finishing this semester’s studies.”
But… just now, the letter sent back by Zhou Jun told her that she would not come back, and would go to the other side of the ocean with her newly acquainted classmates.
“If I had known today… if I had known today…”
Widow Wang muttered this sentence, dragging her swollen body away.
That afternoon, there was an extra female corpse on the old banyan tree at the entrance of the village.
No one was willing to get involved in this bad luck. Widow Wang’s in-laws even spat a few times at the corpse, lamenting that their family was unfortunate.
Fang Yu carried her down, wiped her body clean with a white cloth, rolled up a straw mat, and buried her in her own back mountain.
She sat by the pile of loose dirt mounds in a daze all night, until the first ray of morning light penetrated the thin mist, making her tear-dried eye sockets hot and painful, and then she finally made up her mind.
She was going to find Shen Zhimo, even if she was abandoned, she had to hear it from Shen Zhimo herself.