Chapter 2024 - 668: Save Me...
In the empty corridor.
After a moment of silence, Li Meihua’s uncontrollable sobbing sounded.
Her face, roughened by life’s torment, was deeply buried in her palms.
Clouded tears continuously seeped through her fingers.
Qiuqiu just watched her quietly, watched this woman, for the first time in front of her, show such a disheveled and vulnerable appearance.
Her mood was indescribably complex.
Suddenly, she recalled.
During the summer vacation of her sophomore year, her mother indeed had subtly asked her for her ID card, saying she needed it to handle some formalities.
But at that time, she was filled with resentment and alienation towards this woman, unwilling to say more than a single word to her.
She stayed in that cold "home" for less than a week before leaving hastily, using the excuse of going to work.
In her persistent impression.
Her mother was a miser, a shrew, strong-willed, unreasonable, beyond redemption.
She never truly cared for her.
Her childhood sadness, her helplessness when bullied at school, all her adolescent troubles...
Were brushed aside lightly with words like "It’s just a little thing."
Later, when her grandmother died in the hospital for lack of money, she felt deep-seated resentment towards this woman.
Since then, she never spoke peacefully with her again.
Her mother wanted her to study education and become a teacher, she insisted on studying art;
Her mother wanted her to work in Rong City, she insisted on staying in distant Yan City.
She used every means to resist and to escape.
But at this moment, hearing her mother’s incoherent lament, Qiuqiu seemed to understand her a little.
Her mother’s feelings about her father’s death seemed far from as light-hearted as she thought.
Even until now, she couldn’t move past that hurdle.
As her mother said, she couldn’t keep her husband, and she couldn’t lose her only daughter too.
Qiuqiu bit her lower lip fiercely, struggling to prevent her tears from flowing.
After a long silence, she looked at Li Meihua, her voice trembling:
"You wanted to buy me a house, why didn’t you buy it earlier? Why wait until the house prices soared to buy? Ultimately, isn’t it because you couldn’t bear to spend the money."
Li Meihua rubbed her face randomly against the hospital gown, raising her head.
Her eyes revealed endless shame and regret.
"Yes, it was foolish of me! I was incompetent! But back then, I had no way!"
Then, through her stumbling narrative.
The frantic resentment and anger in Qiuqiu’s heart gradually faded away with her tears.
For the first time, she heard her strong-willed mother voluntary admit her mistakes.
For the first time, she learned about the unspoken details over the years.
In 2006, Li Meihua and her husband worked tirelessly at a construction site in Rong City, leaving their three-year-old daughter Qiuqiu in the hometown.
They were full of hope, wanting to save enough for a down payment, to bring Qiuqiu to the city when she started primary school.
However, her husband inexplicably fell to his death from a scaffold.
She saw his cold, mangled corpse with her own eyes.
Without work injury insurance, the developer was influential; as a clueless rural woman from out of town, threatened by them, she had no choice but to accept.
In the end, she settled privately, only getting eighty thousand yuan.
At that time, Rong City’s housing price was around three thousand.
A two-bedroom apartment cost about two hundred thousand.
But then, how could she even think about buying a house?
Her husband’s death drained almost all her spirit and energy.
In the hometown, she aimlessly accompanied Qiuqiu for two years. Without a man, in a village that favored boys over girls, the days of an orphaned widow were tough, only she knew how tough.
Besides, she didn’t want Qiuqiu to be like her, she hoped she could study and grow up in the big city, be a city child.
Eventually, she bravely returned to Rong City.
Laughably, Rong City’s housing price had doubled to almost six thousand by then.
She knew too well how hard it was to earn money; that was eighty thousand exchanged with her husband’s life.
With the turmoil, she couldn’t even afford the down payment.
She dared not gamble, unwilling to gamble.
So she gritted her teeth, saved the eighty thousand as a fixed deposit, and worked desperately in a restaurant kitchen, hoping to earn another down payment with her own hands.
Who would have thought, she happened to crash headlong into Huaxia real estate’s most frenzied Golden Decade.
From 2008, the prices started soaring, her earning speed far lagging behind the skyrocketing house prices.
The more it was like this, the more she cherished the "death compensation," and the more reluctant she was to buy a house.
Until 2014, to give Qiuqiu, who was entering middle school, a place to stay.
She finally rented a two-bedroom apartment in the current community and brought her daughter over.
To earn more, she continued working in restaurant kitchens and also rented a small storefront, starting her own snack business.
Busy every day, she completely neglected the sensitive, adolescent Qiuqiu.
Yet, housing prices continued to soar.
Especially in 2017, Rong City’s housing prices skyrocketed again; she looked at the numbers in the newspaper, feeling like her heart was being cut.
At this time, coincidentally, Qiuqiu’s grandmother was seriously ill and admitted to the ICU.
The other relatives, Qiuqiu’s uncle, aunt, none were willing to contribute financially.
Instead, they all eyed her "compensation money" and her little savings in Rong City with greed.