Chapter 10
Edward Quan ·
Over Song Yao, she’d even felt she’d “won”—she’d married him, while I hadn’t.
Now she was still a farmer in the village, while I owned a large factory.
The gap wasn’t merely financial.
It was in how she felt.
After that day, she stopped contacting me first.
In spring 1989, Lin Shu and I married.
A small wedding. Five tables at a restaurant in town.
Fang Zhiguo came, drank half a jin of strong white liquor, and slapped the table.
“The two best decisions of Xu Heng’s life: first, following me. Second, marrying Lin Shu!”
He laughed until he bent over.
“Wrong order, Auntie Fang. Marrying me comes first.”
Everyone roared.
I sat beside him, watching him laugh.
At this point in my first life, I’d been lying in a hospital bed.
Song Yao sat beside me, feeding me porridge.
The porridge was warm.
His face was cold.
Now Lin Shu put a piece of red-braised pork in my bowl.
“Eat. What are you staring at?”
I ate.
The pork was hot.
His eyes were warm too.
I lacked nothing now.
**Part 10**
Before I knew it, 1994 arrived.
My factory was no longer small.
Motorcycle parts had expanded into automotive components.
The original dozen or so employees had become more than three hundred.
We sold beyond the province and began taking export orders.
Annual output value exceeded ten million yuan.
I was a well-known entrepreneur in the county—no, the city.
Whenever city leaders discussed private enterprise, they added, “Xu Heng’s Hengda is our model.”
I didn’t care about titles.
I cared about what was real.
Earn enough, and give my family a comfortable life.
Stabilize the factory, and keep the workers who’d followed me employed.
Reassure Lin Shu, and let him know I’d never let him down.
In autumn 1994, our daughter Xu Nian turned two.
A plump little thing, she ran around the courtyard all day. If she fell, she got up and ran again without crying.
Lin Shu said she was like me.
“How?”
“Stubborn. Won’t cry when she falls. Just quietly gets herself up. Exactly like you.”
I lifted her and bounced her in my arms.
This little life had never existed before.
I’d had no children.
Song Yao hadn’t wanted any.
“With your body like this, who would look after a child?”
I knew that wasn’t the real reason.
He didn’t want a child with me.
He didn’t want an unbreakable tie to a woman he didn’t love.
Now I had a daughter.
Every day of this life was a gain.
Something happened that winter.
I was working late in my office when the door opened.
Someone I hadn’t expected stood there.
Song Yao.
His padded coat was washed almost colorless. His face was sallow, his eyes sunken.
Nothing like the man I’d met at the village entrance ten years earlier, about to become a father, smiling peacefully.
That smile was gone.
“Xu Heng.”
His voice was small.
“Brother-in-law? What is it?”
He didn’t answer. His eyes reddened.
“Liu Jin… something happened.”
She’d fallen from scaffolding at a construction site.
A broken spine.
Paralysis from the waist down.
My head rang.
A broken spine. Paralysis.
Last time, me.
This time, Liu Jin.
I sat speechless for a long while.
He stood before me, tears falling.
“The doctor says… she may never stand again. We’ve spent everything. Borrowed everywhere we could. Our child’s only ten…”
His voice broke.
“I haven’t come to borrow money. I just… don’t know who else to talk to.”
I was silent.
Fate was strange.
Song Yao had fallen into the river. I’d saved him. I’d been paralyzed.
Now he’d still fallen. Liu Jin had saved him. She’d become paralyzed.
As though there were a hole someone had to fill.
I didn’t save him. She did.
I wasn’t paralyzed. She was.
The pattern stayed. Only the person carrying it changed.
A chill ran down my back.
Only briefly.
I rejected the thought.
My injury had come from a factory safety failure.
Hers came from substandard scaffolding.
There was no connection.
Coincidence.
I stood, opened a drawer, and took out a stack of money.
“Ten thousand yuan. Take it for treatment.”
He shook his head.
“Too much. I can’t repay it.”
“You don’t have to.”