“Drink a little more if it’s good; next time we can stew chicken soup again.”
Lin Shiheng finished speaking and looked up, “Why hasn’t Mom come yet? Didn’t she say she was bringing something?”
He Xuezhu quickly put down her bowl and stood up, “I’ll go call Mom right now…”
“No need, no need. I’m already here.”
Li Chunhua lifted the curtain and coincidentally heard this, quickly wiping the corners of her eyes in response as she walked down the steps.
As soon as she stepped down, she saw her son looking at her with a tense expression, his voice trembling, “Mom, why are your eyes so red?”
In a fluster, he got up and asked, “Did you go into my room?”
“No, no!”
Seeing her son poised to walk into the room at the slightest acknowledgment, Li Chunhua waved her hands quickly, stuttering as she found an excuse, “I… I just got some sand in my eyes earlier and rubbed them a bit, so they’re red now.”
Lin Shiheng visibly relaxed, a mix of relief and concern washed over him as he stepped forward, “Are your eyes still uncomfortable? Do you want me to blow on them?”
Clearly, a simple “not uncomfortable” would have solved it, but Li Chunhua, afraid her son wouldn’t believe her, quickly nodded, “It still hurts; you help me blow on the right eye.”
Li Chunhua stood there, one eye propped open, struggling to use the other eye to look at Lin Shiheng before her.
He was handsome, tall, and just standing there exuded a military demeanor, and now he was seriously blowing on her eye as if it were some important duty.
Tears she had been holding back began to flow down her cheeks.
Her son was so obedient and good-looking; he had never really given her any trouble since he was little. After joining the military, he got promoted quickly, and now he was already a regiment leader.
What kind of good child couldn’t have children of his own someday?
She didn’t care about the Lin family’s lineage, but the thought of her wonderful son growing old, sick, with no younger generations to care for him, and eventually passing away alone in a grave, left her heart aching. In the future, on Qingming Festival, families would burn money and offerings, but he would have no one to visit him. The idea made her heart hurt intensely.
Just when she was caught in these troubling thoughts, her son asked worriedly, “Mom, why are you crying??”
“Isn’t it because of you that the sand went back into my eyes? Hurry and blow it out for me.”
Li Chunhua choked out a response, and seeing that her son was genuinely starting to search for the nonexistent sand, she desperately swallowed the remaining tears.
She couldn’t cry. She couldn’t let Shiheng know that she was aware!
Shiheng cared so much about his pride; after all, who would want to let others know one couldn’t bear children? Seeing him hide it from her, surely he was afraid that it would hurt her feelings as his mother. She couldn’t let her son’s filial heart be in vain.
So what if she couldn’t have children?
They could just adopt a child and raise him from a young age, never telling the child he wasn’t biologically theirs.
Thinking of that, Li Chunhua’s nose tinged with sourness; oh, her poor Shiheng, why couldn’t he have a biological child of his own?
“Mom, how are you feeling now?”
“Ah, much better. Okay, Mom will go wash her face. You should go sit down and eat.”
Li Chunhua went to the kitchen, washed her face clean, took a deep breath, and told herself not to give anything away in front of her son before lifting the curtain and stepping outside.
Just then, she noticed that in front of her daughter-in-law, He Xuezhu, there was a bowl of chicken soup, and her son hadn’t even had a bite yet!
Li Chunhua’s expression cooled, ready to get angry, but just then a steaming bowl of chicken soup was placed before her, and when she looked up, Lin Shiheng was smiling at her.
“Mom, you’ve worked hard. Drink the soup.”
Oh…
Her poor son, it’s not her who’s worked hard, it’s him!
As Li Chunhua was about to drink it, a thought flashed through her mind, and she glanced at the bowl of soup in front of He Xuezhu, “Did you serve that bowl for Xuezhu too?”
“Yes, she’s worked hard too. I couldn’t be home, so she’s taking care of you for me.”
As he spoke, a hint of sorrow appeared on Lin Shiheng’s face.
Seeing her son in pain made Li Chunhua’s heart ache too. She felt sad, knowing that Shiheng must be even more upset; they were both feeling it so deeply, and he was the one personally serving soup to Xuezhu, the child, how could he be so filial?
Feeling sorrowful, Li Chunhua lacked the energy to pick a fight. She lowered her head and drank the soup, its warmth entering her stomach, melting into copious tears.
Her son…
He Xuezhu, tense with fear of being scolded by her mother-in-law, prayed that Lin Shiheng wouldn’t notice that the mother didn’t like her. But unexpectedly, she managed to pass through the moment unscathed and immediately sighed in relief, lowering her head to take a sip of soup.
The moment the soup went down, she suddenly felt nauseous and quickly turned to the side to dry heave a few times, not having time to think.
When she finally calmed down and turned around, she saw her husband and mother-in-law staring at her, and realizing she had dry heaved while they were eating, her face, already pale from discomfort, turned even more white.
“I didn’t mean to, my stomach has been feeling a bit off lately, and I keep wanting to throw up.”
Great, her mother-in-law would surely scold her now…
At that moment, He Xuezhu could be described as feeling utterly hopeless. She wasn’t afraid of being scolded; after all, she had grown up being scolded, she had experience, just enduring it was fine. But she had just begun to feel a bit of tenderness from her husband; if her mother-in-law ended up disliking her, Shiheng, being so filial, would surely revert to how things used to be.
She was frightened and regretting it, just about to stand up to properly apologize when her hand was suddenly grabbed tightly by Li Chunhua.
He Xuezhu nearly thought she was going to hit her; although Li Chunhua had never laid a hand on her, she had received plenty of beatings in her own family, and her body immediately responded, tensing up as she instinctively lowered her head and dared not meet her mother-in-law’s gaze.
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