Chapter 36

The nurse on night duty at the town hospital was the same little nurse from earlier that day.
She’d been half-asleep, but when she realized it was the same beautiful woman from the afternoon, she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her.
After triple-checking, she couldn’t help asking, “Is your husband running a fever?”
Husband? Everyone trailing behind her froze. Wasn’t Qin Yuanzheng already dead?
Bai Xinmei: I… honestly don’t know where to start explaining.
“No, nurse. The one from earlier was the injured one. He was being a hero today back in our village, and I was the person he was protecting, so I came along with him.”
The nurse glanced over the people clustered at the registration window, expression turning a bit complicated. “All right then, let’s register first.”
Inside, Liu Mazi was howling nonstop, making everyone’s ears ring. But they’d all seen it when the team leader showed up earlier, Liu Mazi had popped up from the ground lively as anything.
He really didn’t look like some gravely injured victim. Even if he was hurt, it definitely wasn’t as bad as he was pretending.
Bai Xinmei let out a frustrated groan, raking her fingers through her hair. She just wanted the hospital to quickly check whether this guy had any serious internal damage or if it was all superficial, so she could clear Comrade Song’s name.
While Liu Mazi was inside being examined, Song Jinping told the pacing Bai Xinmei he needed to use the bathroom. She waved him off, telling him to go, just to remember to come back, they still had to return to the village together.
As for her, she was busy praying that they wouldn’t find some major injury.
What kind of mess is this?
No one had seen Liu Mazi lying in wait for her at the river, but everyone had seen Comrade Song beating him up to defend her. If Liu really turned out to be badly hurt, it’d be Comrade Song who ended up taking the blame.
What a disaster.
It was early spring, March, still bitingly cold at night. Song Jinping walked into the wind and went straight to the police station to file a report, calmly recounting the whole string of events from that night. He focused on how Liu Mazi’s intentions had been clearly malicious, how rotten his character was, lying in ambush by the river, waiting for a woman to walk past so he could lay hands on her.
Brazen, lawless, shameless.
Then he described how, after stepping in as a good Samaritan, he himself had been falsely accused and forced to accompany Liu Mazi to the hospital, and might even end up in jail for it.
With his silver tongue and years of literary polish, Song Jinping framed the incident as one with serious political impact, touching on the broader issue of the women’s movement and the social consequences.
He spelled out Liu Mazi’s motive, time, and place, and reconstructed the whole thing backwards from his own perspective, step by logical step.
The duty officer listened, thoroughly impressed. This educated youth’s logic was tight and orderly. One look and you could tell he wasn’t some ordinary person. A man like this was unlikely to do something that would ruin his future for no reason.
It was the Liu Tiangui he described that sounded truly vile, if the investigation confirmed it, his behavior would be extremely malignant.
“Comrade, don’t worry. We’ll investigate properly.”
“Thank you for your hard work.”
When Song Jinping came back out, he rubbed his frozen hands together and went to a nearby phone booth. When he’d first been sent down, he’d decided he wouldn’t dial this number at all, treating the whole thing as a tempering experience.
But Liu Mazi really had… pushed him too far.
“Hello? Who is this?”
“Fifth Uncle, it’s me, Song Jinping.”
“Jinping? You rascal, I thought you’d never call. When you first got sent down, your grandma was worried sick. She chewed out your father, my third brother, for ages. You were already in Jiangcheng and still wouldn’t come sit at your fifth uncle’s place.”
On the other end came a deep, hearty middle-aged man’s voice, Song Jinping’s Fifth Uncle, deputy secretary of the Jiangcheng Municipal Party Committee.
“Even over New Year, when we told you to come eat at Fifth Uncle’s, you turned us down three times. Now look at you, actually giving me a call.”
“Fifth Uncle, I only just got properly settled in Lotus Village around New Year. You know I was sent down for that person’s sake… I’ve actually got news on that front. But a small problem’s cropped up over here.”
Song Jinping laughed as he parried his uncle’s teasing.
“A problem? Things haven’t gone smoothly since you were sent down?”
What he really meant was: Has anyone been making trouble for you? But as a man in politics, he had to speak in a roundabout way.
Song Jinping laid out the entire story. Song Fifth Uncle at first thought it was nothing serious, just some petty rascal causing trouble.
“This kind of scum needs to be made an example of. Your Fifth Uncle’s got it now, another month or two and it’ll be Dragon Boat Festival. Why don’t you come have dinner at your Fifth Uncle’s then?”
“Then I won’t be polite, Fifth Uncle. I’ll come freeload a Dragon Boat Festival meal.”
“Oh, right, Fifth Uncle, if I remember right, Cousin Yueting’s in that import–export business now, isn’t she? I was wondering if she could… ahem… help me get two dresses, and maybe some of that stuff girls put on their faces…”
As he said it, Song Jinping felt a little embarrassed. Back on the tractor earlier, he’d suddenly realized something: maybe he did have feelings for Comrade Bai.
Otherwise why would he go blank the moment he saw her? Why would his mind go completely white when he heard Liu Mazi might have done something to her? All his usual careful weighing of pros and cons, thinking three steps ahead, that had all gone out the window.
He’d even gone in with his fists. The very sort of “brawling brute” behavior he’d always sneered at. Fine, maybe he’d been too judgmental in the past.
He remembered his cousin at Fifth Uncle’s house, fashionable, bright, doing import–export trade. Would Comrade Bai like those imported goods too?
“Dresses? Face… stuff?”
On the other end, Fifth Uncle was completely baffled. This nephew of his never liked to trouble people and had always been sharp as a tack. The fact that he was asking a favor at all made him think something big had happened. In the end, it was just… teaching a hooligan a lesson.
Given his nephew’s temper, he normally wouldn’t even bother engaging with that sort. As his nephew liked to put it: the moon in the sky doesn’t dim itself over the mud on the ground.
And now he wanted dresses and face cream? That was even less like him.
When his uncle stayed quiet, Song Jinping felt awkward.
“Ahem… just some imported things girls like. Is Cousin Yueting home? Fifth Uncle, could you let her take the phone? She’ll definitely…”
Before Fifth Uncle could react, his cousin had already snatched the receiver, nosy as ever.
“Dad, give that here. Our Little Song is asking me for dresses and imported skincare. Hey, you’re the one who used to look down on us for ‘worshipping foreign things,’ remember? Hahaha.”
“They’re all things girls like… mm? So who’ve you got your eye on? One of the girls at the educated youth spot, or a village girl?”
Cousin Yueting sounded utterly delighted with herself.
“No one. I’m just asking for a friend. She happens to like that sort of thing.”
“‘Friend’? Oh, please, you mean girlfriend, right? Our family’s very open-minded. Third Uncle and Third Aunt are both senior intellectuals, you really think they’ll object?”
Cousin Yueting had zero mercy for a cousin whose romantic feelings had just started to sprout, merrily poking at all his attempts to dodge.
“No…”
“Then is it a village girl? What’s so hard about admitting it? Bring her home at Dragon Boat Festival, let the family take a look.”
“…She doesn’t know yet…”
The moment the words left his mouth, Song Jinping regretted them. He sounded like he was underselling himself.
Sure enough, his cousin shrieked down the line, “Dad, did you hear that? Our Little Song is in one-sided love! ”
…The line isn’t even cut yet, Song Jinping complained silently.
Out loud, he muttered, “I still have things to do, I’ll hang up first,”, then beat a hasty retreat. He didn’t dare imagine what kind of storm that one slip of the tongue would stir up in the Song household.
In the end, the hospital didn’t find anything seriously wrong with Liu Mazi. Everyone piled back onto the tractor and rattled home.
The next morning, the three people involved were all summoned to the police station.
When the team leader saw uniformed officers walking into the village, his palms instantly went clammy.
This was exactly what he’d been afraid of. He’d never wanted any kind of stain on his record while he was in office. Admittedly, he’d thought it over all night and had to admit: odds were high it really had been Liu Mazi with the bad intentions.
But since nothing actually happened, he’d hoped to just turn a blind eye.
And now the police were here…
When the officers came to take statements and talk to people, most villagers leaned toward believing that Bai Xinmei and Song Jinping were innocent, that it had to be Liu Mazi’s fault. There were also testimonies from Wang Shuisheng and Wang Lanhua backing the two of them up.
What no one expected was the one dissenting voice, from Ming Xiaoxiao at the educated youth spot.
Her statement was vague, but the gist was: Song Jinping and Bai Xinmei were having an illicit affair…
If that was proven true, that would establish a motive for Song Jinping to attack Liu Mazi.
But another educated youth quickly shot her down. “She confessed to him before and got rejected. She’s probably holding a grudge. Comrade Officer, don’t believe her.”
“You!”
Everyone thought that was the end of it, but half a month later the village realized something: Liu Mazi was simply… not coming back.
Turned out that after the police reconstructed the case, gathered evidence, and brought in proof from Wang Shuisheng and the hospital, they arrested Liu Mazi for real.
Hooliganism, defamation, oh, and when he’d tried to escape, he’d taken a swing at a police officer. Throw in assaulting an officer, and he got slapped with life in prison. Liu Mazi was done for.
And it had all started because he’d held a grudge over not getting “his” share of fish. He blamed it on the time he’d harassed Bai Xinmei and the team leader had warned him that one day it would come back to bite him.
After hearing the noise in the village that day, he’d figured Bai Xinmei would be late heading home, so he’d lain in wait by the river at eleven at night, harboring evil thoughts…
Once all that finally wrapped up, Bai Xinmei was over the moon. She’d never expected to get rid of the walking time bomb that was Liu Mazi in one stroke.
On top of that, Aunt Wang had said she’d found a promising candidate for her, two happy events in one.
Today, she’d be bringing the blind date over to meet her.
Bai Xinmei dressed up carefully, put on her best skirt from the bottom of her trunk, and twirled around the room a few times. She was ready to meet this well-off blind date and win him over in a heartbeat with her charm.
“Wang Shuisheng?”
The tall young man stepping into the courtyard, when she looked closely, wasn’t that Wang Shuisheng?
…Aunt Wang came in beaming. “Shuisheng, come over here. Xinmei takes today very seriously.”
A little shy, Wang Shuisheng walked over carrying two bags of peach crisps.
When he first heard she was a widow, he had hesitated. But more than anything, his heart had gone out to her. Yes, Wang Shuisheng had fallen in love at first sight with Bai Xinmei. She must have had a hard time all these years… he wanted to take care of her.
Originally, Bai Xinmei had been planning to unleash her full charm. Instead, she’d ended up on a blind date with her own savior. Offer herself in marriage on the spot? The thought made her feel awkward.
The two of them sat facing each other for ages. Bai Xinmei refilled his tea twice, and they still barely said a word.
Knock, knock, knock.
“I’ll get the door.”
“Mm.”
Unable to endure the suffocating awkwardness inside any longer, Bai Xinmei slipped out to answer it, and blinked. It was Comrade Song.
“Comrade Bai, my grandmother sent me… that package. Ahem, she sent the wrong one. It seems she packed some things meant for my cousin, things girls use. Postage to send it back would be too expensive. You helped me apply ointment the other day and went to a lot of trouble, so… please, take it.”
Inside the parcel were exactly what Cousin Yueting had mailed: pretty dresses and imported skincare.
Afraid she wouldn’t accept, Song Jinping had casually made up an excuse. If he was being honest, he simply wanted to be good to Comrade Bai. Some part of him instinctively believed she needed to be cherished, treasured, that she ought to wear the prettiest skirts and use the finest “plasters.”
Seeing her dazed, he assumed she must be busy. After all, she still had to work in the Qin household.
“Are you in the middle of something? Then I won’t keep you.”
He glanced past her toward the house. It looked like the Qins had guests.
“I’m… on a blind date right now…”