The Stepmother's Counterattack: Raising a Child in a Bygone Era-Chapter 49 - Taking My Stepson to Find His Dad
Chapter 49: Chapter 49: Taking My Stepson to Find His Dad
Chapter 49 -49: Taking My Stepson to Find His Dad
Pei Ziheng’s words were like a sharp thorn, deeply embedded in Ma Sufen’s heart, causing her to become suspicious of her daughter-in-law, Shen Baolan.
She guarded Shen Baolan like guarding against a thief every day.
She wouldn’t let Shen Baolan be alone with Zhou Hao, nor did she continue to attend to Shen Baolan carefully during her pregnancy.
Shen Baolan was angry but didn’t dare to speak out, only able to vent her grievances to Zhou Shuhuan at night when they were in bed.
What could Zhou Shuhuan do?
One was his mother, and the other was the wife carrying his child.
Caught in the middle, he found it difficult to please both sides, so he practically stopped coming home.
He spent his days drinking and playing cards with friends outside, not coming home until eleven or twelve at night.
When he did come home, he’d just fall asleep instantly, not even thunder could wake him up.
This left Shen Baolan so angry that it hurt her heart, while at the same time, she held a deep hatred for Shen Mingzhu.
She was convinced that Pei Ziheng had said those words because Shen Mingzhu had instigated them.
—
Pei Ziheng had come in first place in the class activity, and naturally, Shen Mingzhu was happy, but she also wondered where Pei Ziheng had learned English.
Pei Ziheng explained that he had learned it from the radio, and Shen Mingzhu didn’t doubt him.
Pei Ziheng was indeed different from other kids.
While other children liked to play with toy cars and guns, he preferred Rubik’s cubes, Sudoku, and chess.
Other kids watched cartoons and martial arts films on TV, but Pei Ziheng loved to watch political news and listen to English on the radio.
Shen Mingzhu posted Pei Ziheng’s award certificate in a prominent spot on the living room wall.
As she was sticking it up, Pei Ziheng stood silently in the living room watching, his gaze not drifting away for a long time.
He deserved a good reward for coming in first place.
After all, it’s not every time one could achieve first.
Thinking that Pei Ziheng always stayed in his room and didn’t like to play with others, Shen Mingzhu planned to give him a portable radio cassette player.
Such a device was a rarity at the time, and one needed a special coupon to buy it.
Shen Mingzhu had gone to great lengths to get the coupon and spent more than two hundred yuan.
While paying, she felt the pinch, but looking at her stepson’s handsome face and picturing him standing on a stage in the future, astonishing everyone with his fluent English, she felt it was worth it.
That night, Pei Ziheng held the portable radio cassette player in a daze for a long time, because he was well aware that the woman hadn’t used his father’s money to buy it, but rather her own savings from making pastries.
What a foolish woman, to squander the money she had managed to save just like that.
—
Before long, the day of Shen Mingzhu’s exams arrived.
The weather had grown colder, and the snow on the road was thicker than bricks.
Shen Mingzhu was worried about Pei Ziheng going to school alone and didn’t want to trouble others, so she simply took a couple of days off for him, allowing him to stay at home and play.
Before her transmigration, Shen Mingzhu had been a graduate student, and compared to that era, the exams of forty years earlier were just too easy for her.
There were only two subjects, and Shen Mingzhu had finished both half an hour early.
A few days after the self-study exams, the kindergarten began its winter vacation.
Shen Mingzhu could clearly feel her stepson’s happiness.
Although his fair face remained expressionless, small actions and details revealed his excitement.
Happy just to see his father?
Shen Mingzhu felt a sting of sorrow but also became curious about Pei Ziheng’s real mother.
She must have been quite the woman to have a child out of wedlock in this backward era still clinging to feudal thoughts.
In fact, she had occasionally heard people from the family compound talk about it, saying that Pei Ziheng’s real mother died soon after giving birth to him, that Pei Yang had kept the woman a secret so well that even the people in the family compound had never seen her.
It was precisely because of this that there were all sorts of rumors about Pei Ziheng’s real mother.
Some said Pei Ziheng’s mother was a female soldier on the same battlefield as Pei Yang, who had died accidentally, leaving behind a month-old baby and Pei Yang.
Others said Pei Ziheng’s mother came from a bad family background and left for distant parts after giving birth so as not to drag Pei Yang down.
There was also talk that Pei Ziheng’s mother abandoned her husband and child, eloping with a rich man overseas.
No matter which version, Pei Ziheng was undoubtedly a pitiful little thing.
Having lost his mother just after a month of his birth, Pei Yang, who was often away for long periods, could only live with his grandparents from a young age.
Now that his grandparents had passed away one after the other, he had been reduced to relying on his stepmother, who had a different surname.
It wasn’t surprising that his personality was aloof and unsociable.
——
Shen Mingzhu, who was accustomed to airplanes and high-speed trains, found it difficult to adapt to the green trains of this era.
Fortunately, Fengcheng wasn’t too far from Xicheng Port, and she arrived in a day.
When she arrived at noon, Shen Mingzhu, holding her luggage in one hand and pulling Pei Ziheng with the other, asked around and eventually found the dormitory for employees of the Ocean Shipping Company.
With her household registration booklet and a letter of introduction in hand, Shen Mingzhu smoothly obtained the key to Pei Yang’s dormitory room.
Pei Yang was considered a mid-level employee at the Ocean Shipping Company and was allocated a single-person dormitory.
The dormitory wasn’t large, about twenty square meters, with a small balcony, but the only drawback was that it lacked a private bathroom.
Having not been lived in or ventilated for a few months, combined with its proximity to the sea, the room’s air smelled unpleasant, musty and mixed with a fishy odor, along with the strange smell of furniture affected by dampness.
However, Xicheng Port had a temperate climate, with average winter temperatures ranging between 5-10 degrees, much warmer than Fengcheng.
Shen Mingzhu closed the door and began cleaning.
It wasn’t that she was diligent; she would have liked to lie down and get a good sleep, but the dormitory was covered in a thick layer of dust everywhere, the bed was unmade, and she couldn’t even find a place to sit.
Luckily, the dormitory was small and there wasn’t much furniture, so it didn’t take long to clean up.
After taking a break, Shen Mingzhu started organizing her luggage.
The dormitory had a one-meter-wide standing wardrobe.
The wardrobe was quite outdated in style, with its paint peeling off, but inside it was very pleasing to the eye.
On the left side were compartments, neatly storing folded men’s shirts and pants; even small items like socks and underwear were folded impeccably.
The right side had a hanging area for a few different styles and textures of men’s coats.
Seeing how clean and tidy the man’s wardrobe was, Shen Mingzhu’s favorable impression of him increased a bit. ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com
After putting away her luggage, Shen Mingzhu took Pei Ziheng out to have some simple food, bought some daily necessities, and then returned to the dormitory to rest.
She slept until dawn.
In the morning, Shen Mingzhu woke up to the sound of a ship’s horn, stretched lazily and walked out to the balcony, instantly captivated by the bright weather and the pleasant seascape.
The gentle breeze coming from the azure sea carried a slight fishy smell, but it wasn’t cold at all.
The cerulean sky was dotted with cotton-like white clouds; in the distance, the sea merged with the sky, where a few unnamed seabirds spread their wings and soared between the sea and the sky, enjoying the wind.
Although the city where Shen Mingzhu had lived before was also by the sea, it wasn’t close enough to see the sea from the balcony.
For a moment, she was utterly enchanted by the view.
It wasn’t until the sullen voice of her stepson came from behind, “I’m hungry.”
Shen Mingzhu turned around happily, “Let’s go out and eat, see what tasty breakfast options they have here.”
Pei Ziheng, rubbing his flat belly, neither agreed nor disagreed.
For breakfast, they had the local famous potstickers and sesame seed cakes; for lunch, fish balls and beef stew; for dinner, they enjoyed stir-fried skewers at the night market.
Shen Mingzhu was a food lover herself, and eating a variety of delicious foods three times a day without repetition brought her immense joy.
The next day, she was planning to continue taking Pei Ziheng out for delicious food, but visitors came to the dormitory.
Wang Huizhen and Wang Xiuzhu.
Knowing that Wang Huizhen was Pei Yang’s master’s wife, Shen Mingzhu naturally treated them with courtesy, but unfortunately, she couldn’t find any tea leaves in the dormitory after searching for a long time and could only pour them two cups of plain boiled water.
“Do you people from the countryside always serve guests with plain boiled water?”
