Chapter 27: The Handsome Guy in the Village
When he heard himself addressed as Brother An Yi, An Yi froze for a few seconds.
It had been a long, long time since anyone had called him that.
Back when he still lived deep in the mountains, the girls in the village used to call him that. But ever since coming to the city, An Yi had never heard it again.
Being suddenly called that now, his mind almost instantly flew back to the mountain where he had spent the first twenty-three years of his life.
Though life there had been hard, in his memory, every spring that mountain was wrapped in green, full of trees and bursting with vitality, every inch of it alive with the breath of life.
All his memories of that mountain remained fixed in spring.
Because he loved spring in the mountains.
At the sound of the title, he lifted his head.
The model before him was dressed in a beige luxury-brand autumn set. Most of her palm-sized face was hidden behind the sunglasses she wore. Her thick black curls framed her face, her neck was long, and her figure was slender and tall. Her posture was excellent, and at around one meter seventy-six, she looked full of presence.
Beside him, Gu Lingling and Lin Jiu also froze, then turned to look at An Yi in shock.
What was going on?
Gu Lingling knew the woman in front of them very well. She often saw her in major magazines. She was Zhou Ya, the highly famous supermodel who had only recently walked an international runway show.
If she was here today, then the brand must have specifically invited her to walk the show too.
But just now, she had called An Yi Brother An Yi.
Gu Lingling: ???
Where on earth had this brat gotten to know someone like her?
An Yi looked at the woman in front of him with complete unfamiliarity. Under Gu Lingling’s probing gaze, he was just about to explain, because he truly did not remember ever knowing anyone like this.
But before he could speak, Zhou Ya’s excited voice rang out again.
“You’re Brother An Yi! You are, right?!”
Her voice trembled with emotion she could not suppress. Her tone rose, and her delicate hands made several uncontrollable gestures in the air. In high heels, she took a few steps forward, as if trying to confirm something.
The young man before her looked exactly the same as in her memory—except that his skin was no longer as dark as before. He stood there tall and straight in front of her. The eyes were the same. The nose was the same. The outline of his features was the same.
It was Brother An Yi.
She could not possibly be mistaken.
The person in front of her was her Brother An Yi.
The assistant and manager standing nearby were both startled by Zhou Ya’s loss of composure.
The tone Zhou Ya used made it sound like she knew him, but the young man standing not far away looked utterly lost, as if the two of them were complete strangers.
“Sister Ya-Ya, what’s wrong? Did you mistake him for someone else?”
“Let’s go inside first, we still need to do your makeup.”
Zhou Ya ignored the people around her. She took off her sunglasses and stepped forward a few paces, her eyes already turning red.
“Brother An Yi, it’s me, it’s me.”
The scent of her perfume reached his nose. Looking at the delicately made-up features in front of him, An Yi felt both familiarity and strangeness. Very soon, a face from his memory overlapped with the person standing before him now.
An Yi’s pupils shrank.
“Chun… Chunhua?”
Zhou Ya cried out, “Brother An Yi!”
The moment he recognized her, Zhou Ya got so emotional that she threw herself at him. Her move was far too sudden. An Yi was caught completely off guard and was knocked straight backward onto the lawn.
Everyone around them was shocked.
“Sister Ya-Ya!”
“Oh my god! An Yi!!!”
Lin Jiu rushed forward, ready to drag An Yi out from under her. What sort of grudge was this? Was she trying to crush An Yi to death?!
Had he become some kind of bad man in the past?!
But before anyone could step up, they realized the two of them really did know each other.
Tears rapidly filled Zhou Ya’s eyes until they were visibly brimming over.
“Brother An Yi, you came to find me, didn’t you? You finally came to find me!”
An Yi was equally shocked. He had never imagined that this glamorous, dazzling model in front of him was actually Chunhua, the little country girl who had grown up in the same village as him.
Since being suddenly yanked from the mountains and brought into the city, he had never really felt a sense of belonging. Seeing someone familiar now, he could not help but feel close to her.
“Chunhua, it really is you.”
An Yi’s smile lit up brightly.
“You’ve grown into such a big young lady—so pretty!”
There was no trace at all of the old Chunhua from the village, the one with two bright red mountain-berry cheeks.
Zhou Ya clung to An Yi’s neck and refused to let go. Looking at him, she cried tears of joy and spoke in a thick village accent.
“It’s me, Brother An Yi, it’s me! I’m Chunhua! Take a good look at me—haven’t I changed a whole lot?!”
Everyone around them: …
What was with this sudden wave of rustic flavor?
Zhou Ya lowered her head to look at An Yi’s face, but when she spotted the broken eyebrow, she froze.
“Brother An Yi, what happened to your eyebrow?”
At the mention of his eyebrow, An Yi went silent for a few seconds.
“Well, isn’t that broken-eyebrow thing trendy these days? I was chasing fashion, so I shaved it.”
But Zhou Ya stared at his broken eyebrow. There was clearly a scar there.
Zhou Ya and An Yi had both grown up in a village deep in the mountains. At the time, she had not yet been called Zhou Ya. Zhou Ya was a name she changed later. Back then, she had been called Chunhua—Chun for spring, hua for flower.
There had been quite a few children their age in the village. In a backward place like that, there was no concept of fewer, better births. Every family had three or four children. Besides her, Chunhua still had two younger brothers.
Only An Yi was the sole seedling of his family.
Because he was an only child, every time people saw him working in the fields, he was always alone.
He would be wearing a sweat-soaked undershirt scrubbed clean until it shone white in the sunlight, a hoe over his shoulder, and in his hand a midday flatbread along with some battered schoolbooks.
Every time there was a break at noon, An Yi would sit under the shade of a tree, eating his flatbread while reading. His profile was bright and handsome, and whatever he did, he was unlike the other rough, careless boys in the village. When he smiled, he looked especially good.
As the old folks put it, he was so handsome it was ridiculous. One glance at him and sweetness would start overflowing straight out of your heart.
Sometimes a girl would pass by the ridge between the fields and secretly peek at him, only to get caught. Then he would smile and greet her, asking why she was still out here in such heat instead of going home.
When the girl heard that, she would shyly mutter, “I’m just going back.”
That was the kind of person he was. He understood nothing of the thoughts between men and women. He always did everything openly and naturally, never thinking in terms of romance. It never occurred to him that a girl staying out under the midday sun instead of going home was actually there to look at him.
All the girls in the village liked An Yi.
It was not only because he was handsome, but also because he respected people and possessed a kind of education and cultivation that others did not.
Of course, if one talked about culture and education in the mountains, people would laugh at you for it.
They would say that all you did was throw around fancy words all day. What use was that? It was just pretending to be cultured. What did mountain villages need with cultured people?
Whenever people said that, some would be shamed into silence.
But not An Yi.
He would step forward and reason with them, arguing logically until the other side was left speechless.
Culture and education were good things. Just because you did not have them did not mean others should not.
And there was another reason too: An Yi never joked carelessly about girls.
The village boys, once they reached sixteen or seventeen and had learned about such things, would say anything that came into their heads. Dirty jokes spilled endlessly out of their mouths. But An Yi did not speak like that, nor could he stand hearing others use those kinds of words to make fun of girls.
He thought it was vulgar, crude, and disrespectful.
When boys his age in the village saw girls walking by the field ridges, they would whistle and shout at them in that slippery, low manner of theirs. He was the only one who could not stand it, always telling them not to treat girls that way.
Once, a boy from the Zhou family joked with the youngest daughter of the Li family. An Yi happened to be nearby. Seeing the Li girl’s face flushed red, tears nearly coming out in desperation, and the Zhou boy still refusing to stop, An Yi frowned and told him to cut it out.
But the Zhou boy refused.
The two of them nearly started fighting right there in the field.
Very few of the village boys liked An Yi. They thought he was putting on airs. Who brought books to the fields when working unless he wanted to attract girls’ attention?
As if he’d actually studied.
And yet, damn it all, the girls in the village all revolved around An Yi.
When they went out to the market and wanted someone to help bring things back, they only looked for An Yi.
If a family had daughters, then in conversation they would say Brother An Yi, Brother An Yi every other sentence, as if he were the only young man left in the whole village.
Chunhua was no exception.
Whenever she gathered with the other girls, they would always talk about An Yi. They all felt Brother An Yi was the best young man in the village. Not only was he good-looking, he understood civility, courtesy, and justice.
Every time they saw him, he always greeted them with a smile. After enough time passed, it was only natural that the girls started wondering what kind of person An Yi might like.
They discussed it for ages and still could not figure it out. But whoever Brother An Yi liked surely could not be bad.
In the village, people married early. Some boys and girls who did not continue school started families as early as seventeen or eighteen.
People in the village thought studying was useless. For several years, many girls were no longer allowed to continue school by their families. It was only after teachers and the village secretary made rounds of home visits that some girls were able to stay in school.
Not long ago, they had just finished the college entrance exam. If they could get into university, they would be able to leave that mountain.
How wonderful it was to have education.
Just like Brother An Yi.
He always talked about what the outside world was like. At home, he even pasted up pictures from books showing buildings beyond the mountains, calling that the new world.
That day, Chunhua had gone home as usual after weaving flower crowns together with the other girls. But on the way back, whenever people in the village saw her, they all wore expressions like they were waiting to watch something entertaining.
At first Chunhua thought maybe there was dirt on her face or clothes, so she lifted a hand to wipe herself clean. But at that moment, a boy from the Zhou family came over and slapped her on the shoulder, saying teasingly, “I heard your family’s about to have a happy event. You know that?”
A happy event?
Their family?
Chunhua had never liked that Zhou boy. Last time, after he joked with the Li girl, he had nearly come to blows with An Yi. But she was puzzled—what happy event was her family supposed to be having?
She asked, “What happy event?”
But the moment she said that, the Zhou boy burst out laughing, the smile on his face full of ill intent.
“So you really don’t know?!”
Chunhua was completely confused. What did he mean, know or not know?
If her family was having some celebration, she had not heard a single thing. The boy had to be messing with her.
But he would not explain. With a grinning, slippery face, he turned and left. Along the way home, every place Chunhua passed, people would glance at her, then lower their heads and whisper to the person beside them.
Chunhua began to feel that something was wrong.
People in the village had long tongues. The older ones loved poking into any family’s affairs and gossiping endlessly. Could something have happened at her house?!
Alarmed, Chunhua quickened her pace and hurried home.
But the moment she stepped through the doorway, she was met with the overly eager smile of her father.
“Chunhua.”
Her whole expression slackened.
Looking at the row of yellow teeth in her father’s smile, the sense of foreboding in her heart began growing wildly, like a sprout breaking through the soil.
Her family always valued sons over daughters. If not for her mother, Chunhua would almost have been sold off when she was little. Since her mother passed away at the start of the year, her father had liked her even less. To survive properly in the household, Chunhua took on all the work at home every day. The moment she returned from school, the first thing she did was cook for her father and younger brothers. She went to the fields too, and after coming back, she never rested, but turned around and headed straight for the kitchen to prepare food.
Looking at her father’s eager smile, Chunhua took a step back. Remembering the whispers of the villagers on her way home, she forced herself to stay calm and asked, “Dad, what are you smiling about?”
She drew in a breath.
“On the way back just now, I heard people saying our family is about to have a happy event. What happy event is it?”
The man rubbed his hands together with a beaming smile, his eyes rolling greedily over Chunhua. It was not the gaze of a father looking at his daughter, but of someone looking at a money tree.
“Yes, there’s a happy event all right. It’s just been settled. Very good, very good.”
Chunhua’s lips trembled. “Whose?!”
The man looked up, smiling like a demon cave that devoured people whole.
“Who else’s could it be? Yours, Chunhua.”
As he spoke, he grabbed her. “It’s a good family. The man’s just a little older than you, but you won’t lose out marrying into it.”
“I won’t marry!”
Panic filled Chunhua’s face.
“I won’t marry! I won’t marry!!”
“Hey, what kind of talk is that? The bride-price has already been taken. How can you not marry? It’s already agreed, and the date’s set for the day after tomorrow. Whether you want to or not, you’re getting married!”
He had accepted two thousand yuan from the Chen family man in the neighboring village. All he had to do was send his Chunhua over in marriage.
Two thousand yuan was no small amount in the mountains.
Though that Chen man was already in his forties and had lost his wife less than two months ago before looking for another, her father had not thought too much about it once he saw the money.
After all, if she did not get married now, she would have to get married someday. By then, they might not even get this much for her.
Chunhua refused and started arguing with her father, but he raised a hand and slapped her across the face.
The slap made stars explode in her vision.
“Don’t be so fucking ungrateful. I’ve done more than enough by raising you all these years. Marrying you off isn’t harming you. That family doesn’t lack money. You’ll eat well and live well there. By then you won’t know how to thank me enough.”
Looking at the two thousand yuan lying on the table, tears streamed from Chunhua’s eyes and fell down her swollen face onto the ground.
She would not marry.
She did not want to marry.
That was not marriage at all. That Chen man had a terrible reputation. There had even been rumors before that he beat his wife when drunk. This was not marriage. This was shoving her straight into a pit of fire.
Her two younger brothers came home and saw Chunhua sitting on the floor crying. The younger one hurried over and asked, “What happened? Dad, why’d you hit Sis?”
“I told her to marry Chen from the next village, and she’s ungrateful and refuses. The Chen family is paying two thousand yuan to take her, and now she’s putting on airs. What, you think you’re worth that much? Two thousand still isn’t enough for you?!”
The older brother spoke up. “But didn’t that Chen man’s wife just die? He’s over forty. How can Sis marry him?”
“You two little bastards have lost your minds. So what if your sister marries him? It’s not some wolf’s den. Chen has money. You think your sister’ll still live a hard life after going there? So what if he’s older? Who doesn’t get to that age eventually?! And besides, do you think that two thousand yuan is only for me to spend? Aren’t the two of you going to marry wives and build families one day? Where’s the money supposed to come from? Isn’t it from me? If she doesn’t marry, then the two of you can just wait to stay bachelors forever!!”
The moment those words fell, the two brothers—who had been about to say more—instantly fell silent.
At first, they simply could not bear seeing Chunhua cry like that. But now, once it touched their own interests, they had nothing more to say.
That was right.
They would need to start families and marry wives in the future. If the house had no money, what would they use to get married?
That Chen man had money. Once Chunhua married into that family, maybe her life would actually be better than it was here. She just could not accept it for now. Once she got used to it after marriage, it would be fine.
Despair slowly filled Chunhua’s eyes.
She burst into loud sobs, scrambled up from the floor, and ran outside crying.
Seeing this, the man rushed after her and shouted at the two brothers, “What are you two standing there for?! Hurry up and chase her! If she runs off, so does the money!!”
An Yi was just returning from the fields with his hoe when he saw a crowd gathered under a tree.
He was not the sort of person who liked to gather around excitement. He figured someone’s family had probably gotten some novel thing again and everyone was just there to look.
He was about to leave and go straight home when a miserable cry reached his ears.
A girl’s crying.
An Yi froze, then immediately pushed through the crowd to look.
There was Chunhua, kneeling on the ground with tears and mucus all over her face, begging with both hands while clutching her father’s clothes. Her voice was raw and broken from sobbing, her whole body wracked with anguish.
“Dad, I don’t want to marry, I don’t want to marry! I took the college entrance exam! My grades are good! I can definitely get into university! Once I go to college and graduate, I’ll definitely earn lots and lots of money! I’ll definitely support you in old age and see you off when you die! I’ll definitely make money in the future, I’ll buy things for the family and help my brothers get wives! Dad, please, I’m begging you, I’m begging you—please don’t make me marry, I really won’t marry!”
The man remained unmoved. Looking at her, he cursed, “Enough of that nonsense. Who knows if you’d ever come back if you got out? If you don’t marry, then who will? The money’s already been taken. Hurry back home and stop embarrassing us here.”
As he spoke, he bent down to drag Chunhua away. Chunhua rolled and kicked wildly on the ground, landing several blows on him.
The man flew into a rage and shouted at his two sons nearby, “What are you standing there for?! Hurry up and drag her back! Haven’t we already lost enough face?!”
Looking at Chunhua’s tear-streaked face, the two brothers hesitated, but in the end they still stepped in.
Human nature was selfish.
For their own interests, even if they felt unbearable pain or reluctance, people could still make themselves act. After all, no one was ever someone else’s one and only.
If Chunhua married over there and there was money, then their own days would improve too.
“I don’t want to! I don’t want to!!!”
Chunhua broke down, her voice turning even more shrill.
As she was being dragged away, she looked up and saw An Yi forcing his way through the crowd.
Tears poured from her eyes like beads from a broken string, one after another. Her gaze was empty, hollowed out completely.
Looking at Chunhua’s face, swollen high from being beaten, and hearing people say her father had taken two thousand yuan to sell his daughter, An Yi’s grip on the hoe in his hand tightened.
He stepped forward, about to intervene, but before he could even take a few steps, his ear suddenly erupted in pain.
An Bingsheng twisted An Yi’s ear and hauled him out of the crowd. The whole way back, no matter how badly An Yi grimaced in pain, he did not loosen his grip. One hand held a bottle of liquor, the other dragged An Yi home.
The moment they got back, he flung An Yi hard onto the kang bed and warned him, “You little bastard better stop sticking your nose into other people’s business.”
An Yi sprang up angrily. “So we’re just supposed to watch Chunhua get sold off by her old man?! That Chen man from the next village is in his forties, his wife died less than two months ago, and people have said before that he beats women when he drinks. Chunhua is only eighteen—he’s the same age as her father! How can she marry into that?!”
A girl in the brightest, blooming years of her life was about to be buried here.
An Yi could not bear to watch it and did not want to keep watching.
Thinking of the hopeless look in Chunhua’s eyes, he clenched his hands into fists, remembering all the things she had once said to him.
“Brother An Yi, what’s it like outside the mountains? In the pictures in books, there are all those tall buildings. Are they taller than our mountain?”
“Brother An Yi, I want to go see the outside. Don’t you always want to go too? Let’s go together.”
“Brother An Yi, once the college exam is over, when the admission letters come, we’ll be able to go to university. I heard universities are really grand!”
An Yi got up and was about to rush out.
Who knew that An Bingsheng suddenly punched him.
Looking at his son’s indignant face, An Bingsheng spat at him.
“Go on, then! You really think you’re some god descended to save all living beings? Whether someone marries off their daughter or not, when is it your business? If you want to interfere, can you cough up two thousand yuan? What kind of hero are you pretending to be?! Meddling in someone else’s family matters—who the hell do you think you are? You’ve got nothing to do with them!”
An Yi refused to give in. “So we’re just going to watch Chunhua get married off like that?!”
How could they?
They were not taking her own wishes into account at all.
The girl had knelt in the village and begged. She did not want to marry. She still wanted to see the world beyond the mountains. She had studied, had education—and even if she had not, she still should not be trapped in the mountains all her life, like some puppet, married off to become someone’s wife, then later swollen-bellied as a mother, running an entire household.
She was a bright, spirited girl.
Not some lifeless rag doll.
An Yi gritted his teeth and looked at An Bingsheng. “All you know how to do all day is drink. What do you know?!”
“I don’t know, and even if I don’t, I’m still your father! You stay the fuck here and don’t move!”
With that, he strode out and locked the door to An Yi’s little room from the outside.
His son had ideas and education. Whenever he saw something unfair, he wanted to intervene.
But who in this world liked someone meddling in their affairs?
If An Yi kept doing that, the only thing he would gain was enemies. Nothing good would come of it.
If trouble later came to his doorstep, An Bingsheng was no heavenly god who could clean it up for him.
After Chunhua was dragged home, she was locked in the side room. The man ordered her brothers to take turns guarding her. The next evening, he forced Chunhua into a red cloth wedding outfit, then tied her hands to a pillar to stop her from running.
At daybreak, the Chen family would come to collect her.
A red bridal veil covered Chunhua’s head, and beneath that veil her tears had nearly run dry.
An Yi did not want Chunhua’s future to be cut off like this.
The next evening, after it was deep into the night, he broke out through the window and ran all the way to Chunhua’s house.
The lights there had already been put out. But in front of the room where she was locked, her eldest younger brother was squatting guard outside.
An Yi took advantage of the darkness. Seeing that the boy had fallen asleep at the doorway, he crept quietly into the room.
He held his breath the whole time, barely daring to breathe, terrified of making a sound and waking the guard.
The moment he entered, he saw Chunhua in the red veil, sobbing to herself.
He stepped forward and yanked the veil away in one motion.
The veil fell to the ground.
An Yi’s handsome face came into Chunhua’s sight.
Chunhua would never forget that scene for the rest of her life.
As An Yi ripped away the red veil, moonlight broke through the gray clouds and poured through the window pasted with red double-happiness characters, falling all over him.
His eyes were resolute.
There was not the slightest trace of fear in the reach of his gaze.
He had come to save her.
In her tear-filled eyes, his reflection trembled.
“Chunhua, it’s me. An Yi.”
He covered her mouth and quietly told her not to make a sound, then quickly began untying the ropes.
Chunhua was crying so hard her whole body had gone limp. When she saw An Yi, her eyes stared at him in utter disbelief.
Brother An Yi had come to save her.
“Brother An Yi…”
An Yi helped her to her feet. “Big brother’s taking you away.”
With Chunhua, An Yi carefully felt his way through the night, guiding her out of the room as quietly as possible, afraid of waking the man sleeping outside the door.
The two of them bent low and moved softly out of the yard.
Just when they had barely let out a sigh of relief, the dog next door started barking.
“Woof! Woof!!!”
Chunhua’s legs instantly gave way in fright, and she collapsed to the ground. The barking thundered through the night. The person sleeping at the doorway woke up, opened his eyes, and immediately saw the room door standing open.
He exploded into a shout.
“She ran! Chunhua ran away!!”
The man and the younger brother, who had both been asleep inside, rushed out at once.
“Where?! Which way did that damned girl run?!”
An Yi supported Chunhua and led her out of the village at a run.
Chunhua was terrified. Her whole body kept trembling, and along the way she fell again and again. Each time she fell, she scrambled shakily back up, too frightened to say a word. She could not stop crying. The skin on her hands and legs had been scraped raw.
She could not be caught.
She absolutely could not be caught.
If she were caught, her whole life would be over.
Behind her was a cave that devoured people.
She did not want to go back.
When Chunhua fell yet again, the two of them heard hurried footsteps in the distance and saw the sweeping beams of flashlights. Some villagers who simply enjoyed a spectacle without caring about the consequences had come out to help search for Chunhua too.
Chunhua was so terrified she collapsed on the ground and could not get back up. She was shaking so violently it seemed she might faint the next second.
Seeing this, An Yi crouched down, hoisted her onto his back, and ran out of the village.
Chunhua’s frightened sobbing sounded by his ear.
An Yi ran as fast as he could, carrying her.
The boy’s voice came between gasping breaths.
“Don’t be scared. Big brother will definitely get you out.”
Staring ahead into the endless black road, his voice rang in her ear again.
“Chunhua, you still have to go to university. You still have to go look at the tall buildings outside. It’ll be soon—big brother will get you out very soon!”
With tears streaming down her face, Chunhua looked at the boy carrying her.
He kept running with her on his back.
The round moon above their heads was their only source of light—far away, yet always shining on them.
“Chunhua, don’t be afraid.”
He comforted her sentence after sentence, his steps never stopping.
“There they are!!”
Someone had caught up from not far behind.
Chunhua panicked so badly she shuddered violently, wanting to turn her head to look back.
An Yi barked, “Don’t look back!”
Chunhua’s whole body instantly went rigid on his back.
An Yi gritted his teeth. His throat felt as though someone had poured rust-water down it. He tightened his grip under Chunhua’s legs, and when they reached a small slope, he bent down and rolled with her down the other side.
There was a shortcut there—a little path they used to take to school. Hardly anyone in the village went to school, so very few people even knew about the path.
An Yi set Chunhua down and gripped both her shoulders tightly.
“Chunhua, follow this road right now to the school staff dormitories and find Teacher Chu. She’ll definitely help you.”
Teacher Chu was a good teacher, someone who truly wanted her students to have a bright future. Once she knew Chunhua’s situation, she would definitely help.
As he spoke, he quickly pulled five hundred yuan from his pocket. It was money he had been saving for university himself. He stuffed it into Chunhua’s hands.
“Take the money and go. Go as far as you can. Once the university admission notice comes in a few days, go to the small town and get on a coach. Never come back again.”
Clutching the money, Chunhua asked, “Then what about you, Brother An Yi?”
An Yi said, “I’ll be fine. Nothing will happen to me. Chunhua, once you get out, study well at university. Big brother will come find you.”
Then he turned her around and shoved her forward.
“Run, Chunhua! Hurry and run! Don’t look back! Big brother’s here!”
Chunhua felt the tears on her face dry in the wind as she ran forward.
She did not dare look back.
She could not dare look back.
The moon hung over her head, its light falling onto her too.
Watching Chunhua disappear into the distance, An Yi straightened and climbed back up the slope, then ran in another direction to draw attention away from her.
It did not take long for them to catch him.
The man rushed over, saw that Chunhua was nowhere in sight, and grabbed An Yi by the collar.
“Where’s Chunhua?! I’m asking you, where is Chunhua?!”
An Yi glared at him. “Don’t know!”
“Bullshit! I saw you running off with her!!”
Very soon, An Yi was surrounded by Chunhua’s two brothers and a crowd of gossip-hungry villagers.
“Where did Chunhua run to? Talk! Talk!!”
“What business is our family marrying off our daughter to you? She ran away—what are we supposed to do when the Chen family comes tomorrow?!”
An Yi ground out through clenched teeth, “Then give the bride-price money back to them! You think the name of selling your daughter sounds good when it falls on your own head? Do you know how many people in the village are waiting to laugh at you? Everyone’s treating this like after-dinner gossip. Do you really think the people helping you look for her came to catch Chunhua? They just came to watch the spectacle and laugh!!”
Then he turned to Chunhua’s brothers.
“Chunhua always pinched pennies for you, always thought of you, did everything for you two—and this is how you treat her? This is really how you treat her!!”
The brothers were flushed red with shame by what he said, because what he said was true.
But now that it had been exposed, instead of feeling even a shred of guilt, they flew into embarrassed rage.
“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!!!!”
If Chunhua got married off, then their family would get money, and they could get wives later too. Otherwise where would the money come from? From that patch of farmland?!
The man raised a hand and punched An Yi.
An Yi wanted to fight back, but the two brothers pinned him to the ground. The villagers at the side did not step in at all. They only stood there and watched the show.
The three men from Chunhua’s family held An Yi down and beat him.
An Yi struggled and threw punches back at them.
Then one of them, red-eyed from the fighting, grabbed a stone from the ground and smashed it down toward An Yi.
At first light the next morning, An Bingsheng wandered around for a long time before finally finding An Yi on a small dirt slope about two kilometers from the village entrance.
An Yi lay on the ground, one side of his face pressed against the yellow earth. One eyebrow and one eye were covered in blood that had already dried, stiffly caked onto his skin. He was sprawled there in too much pain to move, his face mottled black and blue in places.
The man walked over and looked down at An Yi, who lay there half-squinting and panting.
As usual, An Bingsheng held a bottle of liquor in his hand.
But not a drop from it had been drunk.
An Bingsheng said, “I told you not to meddle in other people’s business. You brought this on yourself. You deserved it.”
Then he twisted the bottle open and poured all the liquor straight over An Yi’s face.
The alcohol stung so badly that An Yi could not even open his eyes. Every split-open cut on his face burned with piercing pain as the liquor washed over it.
After tossing the empty bottle away, An Bingsheng bent down, hoisted An Yi onto his back, and started walking home.
After walking a few steps, An Yi looked back at that little slope.
And smiled.
Chunhua had gotten away.
Carrying his son on his back, An Bingsheng knew from this alone that An Yi had managed it. He cursed with a laugh, “What are you grinning for? You got beaten up like this, and you can still smile?”
Looking at the little slope, An Yi said,
“Dad, I’m happy.”
“I’m happy.”
