A Young Woman's Heart

Chapter Seventy: Li Wanyan Returns Home

There is a kind of loneliness that is the desolation of being in a bustling city street, yet feeling that everything is irrelevant to oneself.

It felt as if I and everyone else existed in two parallel worlds.

This was Li Wanyan's feeling at that moment.

She had returned the bedding she had used to An Ruosu, and then she carried her schoolbag and walked towards the somewhat unfamiliar direction of her home.

Because her homeroom teacher, Ye Wen, told her that the school had already resolved everything.

She wasn't particularly surprised, perhaps because she had already guessed that An Ruosu would tell the homeroom teacher.

I actually felt a little grateful.

However, although the matter was resolved, Li Wanyan's parents were still not found.

The school has decided to arrange for her to live on campus free of charge and will submit an application to waive her tuition and fees as much as possible, and to obtain financial aid for students in need.

Before that, she had to go home and bring out everything she needed to take with her.

After all, if you don't pack your things and leave early, the landlord will probably throw everything away as garbage when the lease expires.

After all, if rent isn't paid, the landlord has no obligation to keep the tenant's personal belongings—at least that's true in this day and age.

Li Wanyan's home was in a farmer's house, which was not a large house among farmers' houses. There was only one square room with two bunk beds.

They are separated by only a curtain.

Li Wanyan usually sleeps on one of the beds, while the space under the bed is filled with all sorts of odds and ends.

The house was filthy and messy, just as it had been when she left.

There were several messy footprints on the ground, as well as various empty bags or old clothes scattered around.

It was clear that both parents were in a hurry when they left.

They didn't leave at the same time, but in the end, they both abandoned Li Wanyan.

Perhaps they always felt that the other person wouldn't abandon their daughter.

"Why did two immature people have to get married? Why did they leave me with a broken family?" Li Wanyan gritted her teeth, her expression twisted and ferocious, tears streaming down her face.

When she got home, she had no interest in unpacking. She simply took off her shoes, kicked them aside, and climbed onto the top bunk of the bunk bed to lie down.

At school, she was always running into other people, so she was barely managing to keep going.

During military training, she tried her best to forget all of this.

But when they returned home, those wounds were reopened.

She remembered the slap and punch her father gave her under the bed, and her mother's sudden departure at night.

This made her feel like an abandoned rag doll, and she felt terrible.

The more I thought about it, the more upset I became, until finally I broke down in tears.

It's that kind of crying where you just shed tears but can't make a sound.

Li Wanyan kept hiccuping, feeling like she could hardly breathe.

She tried hard to stop crying, but the more she tried, the harder it became.

She didn't understand why life was always so difficult.

Will life stop being so painful when we grow up, or is this just how life always is?

But then she thought of Mo Xueyao, and also of Wang Jiale, Hua Yinyin…

Perhaps it is only she who is suffering.

Everyone's life is different.

Everyone is born destined to be treated fairly.

She envied others who had a complete family and a happy childhood.

Actually, her wish wasn't big; that was all.

She didn't have many things she wanted to eat, nor many things she wanted to do.

Giving her an environment where she can study peacefully will make her happy.

The world outside the window was pitch black; that wasn't the city's original color.

The window faces the kitchen of a restaurant, and the fumes from the range hood have made the window greasy and black. The window must be kept closed all year round to keep the house free from the fumes.

Dark, cold, and damp.

Li Wanyan felt like a sewer rat barely clinging to life.

Even though life was so difficult, they still held onto hope for survival.

Filled with deep resentment and a touch of sadness, she drifted into a dream.

She was eventually awakened by a nightmare.

She dreamt that her mother was hacked to death by her father while he was drunk. After he sobered up, he frantically hid his mother in the closet and ran away, far away from the place.

Later, the debt collectors arrived and hacked Li Wanyan to death in her home...

It is bloody, terrifying, and cruel.

It gave her a real fright.

She shakily turned on the dim light, carefully opened all the cabinets in the house, and used a not-so-bright flashlight to check under all the beds.

In the end, they even opened the refrigerator's freezer compartment.

It was completely empty inside.

This actually relieved her.

At least it wasn't like in my dream, where my mother's body was hidden somewhere, nor like in those horrific murder stories where my mother was dismembered and stuffed into a refrigerator...

But she still felt uneasy.

"It's just a dream," she told herself, glancing at the worn-out clock on the wall.

It's only four in the morning.

But she just couldn't fall asleep.

She turned on all the lamps in the house to make it as bright as possible, and then, while letting the cold sweat dry in the wind, she began to pack her luggage.

There was a brand new red suitcase at home, which her mother had bought for her a month ago, intending for her to take it with her during military training.

The reason for buying a new one is simply to save her face.

Because her mother cared for her so much, she simply couldn't believe that woman would abandon her and leave...

Li Wanyan didn't have many clothes; clothes for all four seasons plus two sets of bedding without cotton filling just filled one entire suitcase.

Then she found a bag and stuffed the cotton, which was the filling of the quilt, into the bag, and finally put some odds and ends into her schoolbag.

Most of the items were things I would need, such as a pencil sharpener, a desk lamp, new dry cell batteries, and three hundred-yuan bills found in a hidden compartment in the wardrobe.

As for her piggy bank, which was originally full of coins, her father had long since smashed it and taken all the loose change out of it.

Perhaps the three hundred yuan was deliberately left behind by my mother.

Li Wanyan said to herself, "Perhaps this is a kind of comfort."

By the time I finished organizing, it was already past seven in the morning.

Even though there weren't many things, it took so long to pack them.

Rather than packing up to leave, it's more like packing up one's memories to prepare for departure.

—Even though she didn't leave any memorable impressions in this house.

She squinted at the rising sun, took a deep breath, dragged her suitcase, slung her backpack over her shoulder, and carried a bag containing a comforter in her right hand. She left the room, which she had tidied up a bit and was no longer so messy, and knocked on the landlord's door.

"Who?"

"It's me, the landlord. Um... the rent should be due soon, right? I'm just here to pay the utility bills and then I'll be leaving," Li Wanyan said, pursing her lips.

"Oh, it's you. It's nothing. Someone already paid your bill. I'll treat you to yesterday's water and electricity bills."

"……who?"

"It seems he's the principal of your high school."

"Okay... thank you." Li Wanyan nodded gently and turned to leave.

As she walked out of the farmers' housing area, she suddenly felt a sense of relief.

It was like escaping a nightmare and turning back into the light.

Perhaps, leaving one's parents is not such a bad thing.

At that moment, she stood on the street, thinking, with three hundred yuan in her pocket.

The white clouds in the sky looked very soft, and the morning sun felt especially comfortable on my skin.

Across from these dilapidated farmers' houses stands a much neater and cleaner ordinary residential building.

The buildings here are all five or six stories high, and they are arranged in a very regular way, which has a kind of charm that can cure obsessive-compulsive disorder.

On one side are dilapidated urban villages, and on the other side are neat residential buildings.

They're just one street apart.

The streets were bustling with activity. Although it was the weekend, the breakfast shops were still doing very well. After all, many people in this city don't have weekends off.

Working from Monday to Friday, with only a few days off throughout the year, yet receiving only meager wages—this is the reality for many.

But what can we do about it?

Life still goes on, doesn't it?

Li Wanyan smiled as she looked at the sunlight and walked towards the station.

Actually, she was not very willing to live at the school.