Chapter 1

I want to kill my daughter.

I never believed anyone could be born evil.

Until she was born.

When she was two, her grandmother was feeding her and said with a smile:

“Sweetheart, give Grandma a bite of banana.”

She immediately drove her chopsticks at Grandma’s eye.

Caught off guard, my mother-in-law had to be rushed to hospital.

Once, my husband teased her that he would take her toy.

She smashed it on the floor, stamped it to pieces, and shrieked.

When she was four, a friend’s child came to play.

Somehow, the children quarreled. While we comforted the other child, my daughter ran into the kitchen, grabbed a cleaver, and hurled it at him.

There was almost blood on the floor.

She enjoyed watching our panic.

The louder we screamed, the happier she became.

She clapped and giggled as though it were a wonderful game.

She only grew more frightening.

One day, my husband, exhausted in body and mind, said:

“Why don’t we have another child?”

Through the gap in the door, one cold, dark eye watched us.

At first, I was carrying twins.

I thought they were a gift from heaven.

At the next checkup, only one remained.

After the ultrasound, the obstetrician said the surviving fetus had absorbed the other.

“It’s normal. The remaining baby looks very healthy. You don’t need to worry.”

I stared.

“Absorbed? By whom?”

She paused, then explained.

“In simple terms, weaker embryos, or those unable to develop, struggle to survive. The human body is better suited to a single pregnancy. Two fetuses compete for nutrients. The weaker one is absorbed by the other.”

Sadly, I took out my earlier scans.

“But when we first discovered the pregnancy, both were developing normally. Their hearts and fetal poles were almost the same size.”

The doctor sighed softly.

“I’m sorry.”

My husband and I went home.

He reassured me that one child would be enough.

I thought he was right and gradually let it go.

Afterward, afraid this baby might suddenly disappear too, I became extremely careful.

The fetus grew.

My body began developing all sorts of problems.

Severe morning sickness.

Anemia.

The doctor told me to eat well to support the baby’s development.

My family took turns feeding me nourishing meat and fish.

I did my best to eat plenty.

Yet I grew thinner and thinner.

My belly was abnormally large.

At the next appointment, the doctor saw something was wrong.

I was frighteningly thin.

She feared the baby was failing to develop.

The tests showed the opposite.

The baby was doing very well.

No.

Exceptionally well.

As though it had stolen every nutrient I consumed.

“The baby is growing too large,” the doctor said. “You need to restrict your diet. You can’t keep eating like this.”

I saw hesitation in her eyes.

A skeletal woman carrying an abnormally large fetus.

That was hardly normal.

An oversized baby was indeed a problem.

At home, I reduced my food.

I was constantly hungry.

Whenever I was hungry, the fetus became violently restless.

As though kicking and punching in protest at being denied nourishment.

A few days later, I fainted from anemia and was taken to hospital.

The doctor said I was malnourished and needed intravenous supplementation.

The fetus was still larger than normal.

Finally, she said:

“We’ll deliver by cesarean when the time comes.”

She allowed me to resume eating.

To strike a balance, I ate only a little more.

Enough to keep the baby from growing excessively.

Enough to keep myself alive.

By the seventh month, I was skin and bone.

Sunken cheeks.

Stick-thin limbs.

Only my belly was grotesquely large.

I looked like a deformed creature on a horror-film poster.

Whenever I looked in the mirror, I could scarcely believe I was still seeing myself.

I knew pregnancy was an ordeal.

I never imagined mine would be this terrible.

For both our safety, I eventually stayed in hospital.

I had left my job at three months because I could no longer bear the sickness.

With one income gone, the entire financial burden fell on my husband.

He loved me dearly.

Besides his regular job, he took extra work.

Countless times, I begged the baby not to be so greedy.

To leave a little nourishment for me.

So we could both live healthily.

But a fetus could not understand human speech.

It kept taking from my body, as though determined to drain me into a husk.

Greedily absorbing everything.

Keeping me in and out of hospital.

Leaving me scarcely human.

Our medical bills reached almost three hundred thousand yuan.

My mother-in-law came from our hometown especially to care for me.

She also gave us money.

During the cesarean, I hemorrhaged severely.

I nearly died on the operating table.

At last, my daughter was born.

She weighed 5.5 kilograms.

The doctor said she was the largest baby he had ever delivered.

And that was after I had tried to control her nutrition throughout the pregnancy.

Weak on the hospital bed, looking at her adorable little face, I thought:

The suffering was finally over.

I kissed her soft cheek.

“You little thing. You’ve put your parents through enough. Be good from now on, all right? We’ll love you so much.”

She looked at me and smiled.

Newborns are red and hardly beautiful.

To me, she was the loveliest angel in the world.

I thought our ordeal had ended.

I never imagined…

The nightmare had only begun.

2

After the operation, I was almost completely drained. When the anesthetic wore off, the incision felt as though it were tearing apart. My daughter lay in the bassinet beside me. A nurse said we needed more mother-and-baby contact. I should hold and touch her often.

At that moment, it was beyond me. I could barely move. Where would I find the strength to lift her? Yet I desperately wanted to hold her.

It was a strange feeling. I don’t know whether others who have been pregnant have felt it. I knew I had a child. I knew I would love her. But that love seemed separated from me by a membrane, almost a formula: “I’m her mother, so I must love her.”

When the child actually appeared before me, that love suddenly became astonishingly real.

She was the most important person in my life.

Not because books, morality, or the law told me to love her.

It arose naturally within a mother’s body.

Instinct.

“Waaah!”

The cry came from the bassinet.

“She must be hungry.”

My mother-in-law smiled, picked her up, and laid her beside me.

New motherhood made me a little shy. I asked my husband to close the curtain, then awkwardly opened my clothes to nurse her.

A sudden, fierce pain struck.

I screamed.

It felt as though an animal had bitten me.

Her face was innocent and adorable, but she bit hard enough to leave me numb.

“It hurts so much,” I complained when the nurse came.

“That’s normal. Everyone’s different. Some people are more sensitive to pain. Nursing hurts at first. You’ll get used to it.”

She reassured me gently.

I was embarrassed.

Another woman in the ward had delivered the same day and nursed calmly.

“Does it hurt?” I asked.

“A little, but it’s bearable.”

I had never been a mother. Assuming it was normal, I endured it.

My daughter particularly liked nursing.

The intervals were very short. The moment we put her down, she screamed.

A middle-aged woman caring for the patient next door grew irritated.

“If she fusses like that, just keep feeding her.”

My husband apologized and brought the baby over.

The moment he laid her down, she clamped onto me.

I cried out again.

“Must you make such a performance?” the woman snapped.

“Everyone gives birth. Everyone breastfeeds. Who screams every time like you? She hasn’t even got teeth. How much could it hurt?”

My husband’s face darkened.

“It isn’t your place to tell her what to do.”

“Your wife is disturbing my daughter!” she retorted. “My grandson was sleeping nicely. Your baby keeps crying and sets him off. My daughter can’t rest!”

His fist tightened.

I hurriedly called:

“Mục Tranh.”

He turned and left the ward.

Soon afterward, a nurse moved me to a private room.

I worried about the cost.

He only stroked my forehead.

“I’ve earned ten thousand yuan from a side job recently. Enough for a better room for you and the baby.”

“Mục Tranh…”

I burst into tears.

Strange.

I hadn’t cried through the misery of pregnancy.

Nor when the incision hurt unbearably.

Yet one sentence from him made me weep with all my pent-up hurt.

They said women became more emotional after childbirth.

Perhaps it was true.

3

My husband was attentive, constantly busy caring for me. My gentle mother-in-law accommodated every wish.

Compared with other women in hospital—some arguing with family because they hadn’t borne a son, others ignored while relatives fussed only over the baby—I was fortunate indeed.

So fortunate that I sometimes thought I was making too much of the pain while nursing.

At home, my husband stayed beside me almost constantly.

If I hadn’t asked him to hold our daughter, he might hardly have picked her up.

A little worried, I asked cautiously:

“Mục Tranh, don’t you like having a daughter?”

Was he unhappy because I hadn’t borne a boy?

He gently pinched my cheek.

“Don’t be silly. I’d love any child you gave birth to.”

Only then did I relax.

His mother never showed any preference for boys either.

Every day, she washed clothes, cooked, and cleaned. She never said anything she shouldn’t. She was wonderfully considerate.

It was hard to imagine that, only a few years earlier, she had been a wealthy lady living in luxury.

After the family went bankrupt, she taught herself to cook and clean and faced hardship calmly.

I admired her sincerely.

We were a harmonious, happy family.

With their care, I tried to endure every pain.

Within days, however, the skin where I nursed became damaged and even ulcerated.

Only then did they realize I wasn’t weak or seeking attention.

It truly hurt.

My husband immediately stopped me from breastfeeding and switched to formula.

Our daughter refused it.

She wanted only to nurse.

I felt she liked biting me more than drinking my milk.

“No more!” he told her angrily.

He firmly prevented me from nursing again.

She screamed with hunger.

I cried too.

He held me back, standing beside us with the bottle and a cold expression.

After a whole day, she finally yielded and drank the formula.

Feeding wasn’t our only difficulty.

She fussed constantly.

I was awake all night.

So was my husband.