Chapter 42

Chapter 42

Fire in the Yu Family (III)

This was the first time that Yu Manyi had come to the town at night. In the past, she would never have imagined that she would, in the middle of the night, go to the hospital with her third aunt.

Every word seemed to have no connection to the others.

Though it was called a hospital, it was only the size of a clinic, and it had only opened in the town a few years ago. The people working there were dressed and behaved differently from the doctors and pharmacists at the traditional medical hall.

Yu Manyi saw several girls dressed in white clothes enter the ward, and they were called nurses. She watched their backs and thought that if she had known earlier that women could become nurses, it wouldn't have been a bad idea to learn nursing.

The lamp was smashed by the third aunt, and the shards flew all over the room, cutting her hands and face, causing them to bleed profusely. Old Master Yu was furious and told her to get out with her family, including her husband.

Halfway out, he called Yu Manyi to follow, showing how few people were left in the Yu family. He told the carriage to take them to the town's clinic to treat the injuries and asked that it not be spread around that the Yu family had beaten someone. After all, the reputation of the Yu family still mattered more than the You family.

The clinic had a faint smell of alcohol. The nurses pushed carts back and forth, and the lighting was dim. Yu Manyi sat on a chair outside the ward, rubbing her left hand's knuckles with her right thumb, trying her best not to listen to the arguing inside the ward, although every word came through clearly to her ears.

"You are all locusts, you damn pests!" The curses mixed with sobs, then continued, "I never received any benefit from the Shen family; I'm the one giving benefits to the Shen family! Don't try to get close to me anymore, my blood is dried up, my blood is already dry!"

"Please don't move," a nurse's voice said. "The tweezers can't hold the fragments."

"Yingmei, the child has her own thoughts; we can't stop her," her brother-in-law and sister-in-law spoke with a tone of helplessness. "You don't have children, so you wouldn't understand the difficulty of protecting a child..."

"It’s not my fault I don’t have children! It's his fault!" The third aunt screamed as if she had been stabbed. Yu Manyi could hear her uncle’s sighs and muttering.

"Who doesn't have difficulties? You all have difficulties, but why is it that no one thinks of my difficulties? No one has ever pitied me, but I am the most pitiful one!"

"Manyi is the most pitiful," possibly provoked by her, her uncle finally spoke clearly. "You arranged the marriage all on your own, and now look, you're older, and your maternal family broke off the engagement. Eighteen... eighteen years old, how can they still match her? In other families, the marriages are settled when they're thirteen or fourteen; no good family is going to leave a place open waiting for her!"Yu Manyi only realized at this point that this farce was actually related to her. If this had happened a year ago, she would have cried to the heavens, feeling as if the sky had collapsed.

But she didn’t know what had happened to her... She didn’t know, but she felt as calm as a canal outside the city on a windless, wave-less day.

If she were to say her emotions had shifted at all, it was due to the few young nurses suddenly gathering, not because of her cousin breaking off the engagement. Perhaps it was because the position she was sitting in wasn’t directly facing the third aunt's ward, and they mistook her for an accompanying relative of another patient.

They stood outside the ward preparing medication, surrounding the small cart in a circle. Yu Manyi overheard them speaking in hushed voices:

"Was it chaotic before we came? Is this the You family or the Yu family?"

"The Yu family, it’s the Yu family," someone confirmed. "The sister who changed the dressing just now told me. It's the third young mistress of the Yu family, who gave her adopted daughter to her maternal family. Old Master Yu supported her distant nephew to study abroad because of that, but he ended up breaking off the engagement."

"Broken off the engagement?"

"Yes, Old Master Yu is notoriously stingy here. That man spent the family’s money to study abroad, and now he won’t return to marry the Yu family’s young lady. Old Master Yu is sure to vent his anger on the third young mistress. Her future days will be difficult."

"Will he vent his anger on Miss Yu?"

"Miss Yu didn’t do anything wrong."

"They’re just like that, with issues. Miss You had two engagements broken off, but did she ever do anything wrong? They just take out their anger on her. Who knows if the Yu family will be the same?"

"Even if they don’t take it out on her, how can a woman whose engagement has been broken off live on? Her later life is ruined. If she hasn't married yet, everyone will stab her in the back. Even if she marries, the husband’s family will think they’ve been wronged and find ways to torment her over it."

Yu Manyi clenched her hand and lowered her head, only to find her nails embedded in her flesh, her joints scraped open, and blood beginning to flow.The young nurses sighed for a while, then continued talking:

"Over the years, many of the broken engagements were because of those students who went abroad. Even if they didn’t study abroad, they went to places like Beijing or Shanghai to study some useless subjects, and then came back thinking they were all noble. They hold a diploma, spout all these progressive ideas, and say that arranged marriages were just feudal practices, and shouldn’t count..."

"We see a bit of the world in the hospital, so we know what kind of nonsense they're talking," an older nurse sneered. "But it's those girls who've had their engagements broken that are the real pitiful ones. What did they do wrong? They patiently waited for their betrothed to come back and marry them, did their duty to their parents, served their in-laws, did nothing wrong, and yet they become the products of feudalism..."

"Sister, what happened to those 'feudal products' who had their engagements broken?" asked one of the younger girls. "What did they do after?"

"If the maternal family isn't powerful, it's very hard for a girl whose engagement has been broken to get married again. Even if she does, she can't marry into a good family," the older nurse said. "Look at Miss You, isn’t it one disappointment after another?"

"Stop talking about Miss You," someone reminded. "People keep saying the You family is haunted. If you keep bringing her up, it makes me nervous..."

It seemed everyone was afraid of being labeled as a "feudal product," and this conversation quickly ended with the mention of Miss You. Yu Manyi, expressionless, watched them deliver the prepared medicine to the ward, then lowered her gaze. She saw that the wounds on her knuckles, which she had caused herself, were quickly scabbing over, leaving a thin red scar.

The third aunt was still crying and screaming, as if she was trying to cry out all the grievances of her life. Yu Manyi felt her pulse race uncontrollably with her shrill cries and was overwhelmed by a sharp headache.

A wave of fear hit her unexpectedly. Her cousin probably hadn’t even realized that with a single letter, meant to showcase his progressiveness and defend freedom, he had caused the heavens of two women from his hometown to begin collapsing one after another.

...

Yu Manyi’s concern about the sky falling continued for several days, and the injuries of Yu Shen were delayed at the clinic for a few more days. In those few days, she constantly fought and scolded her maternal family, throwing things around so that her room was a mess. The entire clinic heard her grievances, and the reputation Old Master Yu cared about so much was utterly ruined.

On the fifth day, the servant who went to deliver a change of clothes brought back a message from the third aunt:

She told Yu Manyi to go to her room and return the fabric she had bought for her cousin but hadn’t used. Her dowry would be kept for herself from now on, and no one should even think of touching it.

Second Aunt and Second Uncle had always been detached, merely observing the drama in the third branch without getting involved. Third Uncle seemed to have a headache and felt embarrassed, avoiding home for several days, afraid that Old Master Yu would cause trouble for him. In the meantime, Yu Manyi had become the most reliable person in the family.She sighed and could only go to the third aunt's room to gather the things, then took the family’s carriage to the fabric shop to return the goods.

She found the situation awkward. The fabric shop owner seemed no better off than herself. In just five days, the news of Yu Manyi being broken off with her engagement by her cousin had probably spread throughout the nearby villages, and the looks people gave her were filled with pity.

The shopkeeper neatly arranged the returned goods. Perhaps because she felt that both her husband's death and Yu Manyi's broken engagement had some similarities, her attitude toward Yu Manyi had become slightly more friendly. She no longer treated her like the young lady of a wealthy family.

"It’s better that way," the shopkeeper said with a tone of fairness and impartiality. "These students who study abroad, their thoughts can't be hidden. It’s better to break it off early, rather than marry and end up divorced. Once divorced, it’s even harder to find someone. If there’s a child involved later... tsk tsk. Don’t worry, your family is wealthy, and even if you marry again, it won’t be too bad."

Yu Manyi looked up at the shopkeeper, who was leaning on the counter with her arms crossed, cracking sunflower seeds. Her expression of concern seemed more genuine than that of her third uncle. She had previously only confided in Miss You, but now she realized talking to women of different ages felt quite different.

For example, this widow shopkeeper was very different from the young ladies of prime age. She took a bite of the peanuts, rubbed them for a while, removed the red skin, and gathered a handful to throw into her mouth. She spoke with her mouth full, "But I heard the nurses say," she said with her mouth full, "that once you've had your engagement broken off, every next one is worse than the last. Though my cousin wasn't that great either..."

Yu Manyi recalled the few encounters she had with her cousin.

"At least he was good-looking. If they say another one, and I've never even met him, I..."

"Never meeting him is normal," the shopkeeper said, grabbing a handful of peanuts and rubbing them again. "Before we got married, we didn’t know anything—height, weight, or looks. But we knew how many people were in the family, how much land they had, and our parents cared a lot about that."

"You didn’t know height or weight?" Yu Manyi twisted her skirt in frustration. "Then how do you get married? If you don’t like him after marriage, how do you get along?"

"Just deal with it," the shopkeeper said. "Anyway, when the lights go out, as long as it works, you won’t care...”

Yu Manyi looked up at her, confused. The shopkeeper quickly spat out the red skin from her mouth, pressing her lips together. The two women stared at each other for a moment, and then the shopkeeper said, "Didn’t your third aunt tell you this?"

"Tell me what?""Nothing," she quickly changed the subject, "Miss Yu, don’t worry. In life, when soldiers come, we block them; when floods come, we dam them. There’s always a way to live, look at me, isn’t that right?"

Yu Manyi nodded, placed the money she had returned on the table into her clothes, and then prepared to leave. After taking a couple of steps, she couldn't help but be curious and turned back to ask, "That thing... is..."

"Go! Go!" The shopkeeper suddenly waved her hands and shooed her away. "You’re just a half-grown girl, don’t ask about these things, go!"

Not understanding the ways of the world, Yu Manyi could only sit in the carriage, returning to the Yu family, pondering what that thing could be. By the time she reached home, she still had no answers. Her intuition told her that although the shopkeeper had asked her why her third aunt hadn’t told her, it was probably best not to consult her third aunt about it.

However, there was one thing the shopkeeper said that really made Yu Manyi think: "In life, when soldiers come, we block them; when floods come, we dam them." Though the broken engagement itself hadn’t harmed Yu Manyi much, if her family was going to casually offer her to someone else just because she couldn’t marry her cousin, then she had to start worrying about her future.

Not to mention that graduation diploma. Initially, she thought her cousin, being someone educated in the Western way, wouldn’t mind her learning to paint or even working. Besides, such a student who studied abroad would hardly be content in a small place and might one day decide to move to places like Beijing or Shanghai.

But if it were another man who hadn’t received any education, and he was to be her husband, then her fate would become very uncertain. Based on her understanding of the local gentry, it wasn’t impossible for Old Master Yu to have her married off to one of the young masters from the You family.

It was really... troublesome, very troublesome.

These past few days, the Yu family had become quite sparse. Second Uncle’s family went to the temple to find his elder brother, who had already become a monk to avoid the chaos. The third aunt was at the clinic, and third uncle’s whereabouts were unknown, with servants gossiping that he had gone to the pleasure districts to escape reality.

For the time being, the large house was only inhabited by Yu Manyi and Old Master Yu, who came and went. Meanwhile, rumors outside the house were growing louder—

Everyone was saying that the Yu family’s son-in-law had found a blonde, blue-eyed girlfriend abroad and was involved in a free-love relationship. He no longer wanted the second young lady of the Yu family, and by extension, he no longer wanted the Yu family itself.

However, the Yu family had been local landlords for several generations. Even if the son-in-law had studied abroad, he was still just a student—how could he be so arrogant as to look down on the Yu family? That’s when the gossip started. It seemed the Yu family wasn't as glamorous as it appeared. You couldn’t just rely on the family’s wealth to make a son-in-law give up a foreign teaching position. On top of that, there were rumors in the local business association that Old Master Yu had made several business mistakes last year, and now all that was left in his hands were those fields.

The rumors spread through the streets and alleys, and with the very real fact of Yu Manyi’s broken engagement added in, it became increasingly hard to distinguish fact from fiction.

The servants in the Yu household dared not speak of the matter, so the quiet courtyard was only filled with the creaking sound of Yu Manyi’s footsteps on the wooden stairs every time she went downstairs. Day after day, it seemed the house grew more fragile with each passing day.Yu Manyi never quite understood why people, when faced with different situations, would have completely different reactions. For instance, when she realized the deficit in the Yu family’s account books, her first instinct was to ask Old Master Yu if the little skills she had learned could be of any use to lighten the family’s burden, even just a little. As she had thought that day in Shanghai: She was the daughter raised by the Yu family. The Yu family had provided for her food, clothing, and education for eighteen years, and in the end, she didn’t harbor any deep resentment toward them.

Yet her thoughts were so impractical. What Miss You had understood before her death was the true reality—

Many things in this world cannot be negotiated; they can only be completely shattered and then remade.

When she stood at the grave, she thought she understood. But that was just her believing she understood.

It wasn’t until she saw her third uncle, who had been lingering in brothels for days, walk through the gate of the Yu family with the matchmaker who had been arranging a marriage for a northern landlord, that she truly understood—

The wedding procession’s suona (a traditional Chinese wind instrument) that Miss You had turned into a death dirge, now found its purpose in the Yu family, whose situation had already taken a turn for the worse.