The three of them, grandmother, daughter, and granddaughter, each had a room. Every room was spacious, equipped with cabinets, tables, and heated brick beds, which were still popular amongst the villagers. Qin Xiangnuan also liked them; a single heated brick bed acted as both air conditioning and heating. In winter, the house was never cold.
Qin Xiangnuan hung her few clothes inside the closet, which still looked empty and scant. She kicked off her shoes, jumped onto the heated brick bed, and joyfully rolled around several times. It was wonderful; at last, she had her own room, her own home.
In her past life, from childhood to adulthood, her home was always that dilapidated house. After getting married, she lived with her in-laws in another rundown room. Until her divorce, until her death, she never had her own house. In fact, the last excuse Qin Xiangmei used to trick her into donating her heart for her own son was the promise of a house.
Was her heart, her life, really worth just a house? And at that time, she was already dead. Could it be that Qin Xiangmei would be so kind as to buy her a paper house to burn for her?
She rubbed her face against the quilt, which was warm from the sunshine, freshly aired by Granny Lu. It felt so comfortable to be covered by it, the soft cotton snug against her hands and face.
"Dead girl, try playing dead on me again?"
She suddenly opened her eyes, somewhat groggy, and *smack*—a sharp pain struck her face, taking her a while to process.
Hu Li stood in front of her with one hand on her hip, shaking the other hand in the air; maybe hitting someone had even made her own hand hurt.
"You unwanted thing," Hu Li jabbed Qin Xiangnuan’s forehead forcefully. "The Wang Family has already paid the bridal price, they even gave three hundred yuan, and you don’t want to marry? Do you expect me to support you for a lifetime? The Wang Family will come to collect the bride in a few days, so you better behave and get rid of any foolish thoughts about not marrying. If not, I will break your legs. You should be grateful that anyone wants to marry you at all. What, do you want to be like Xiang Mei? My Xiang Mei is so beautiful; she will marry into the city and eat state-supplied grain for the rest of her life."
Having vented her anger, Hu Li slammed the door shut, followed by the sound of a lock. The three hundred yuan was now in her hands, and there was no chance she’d give it up. It didn’t matter to her that the girl was not her own daughter; it was not her affair if Qin Xiangnuan was unsuitable for marriage, since she hadn’t given birth to her.
Qin Xiangnuan reached out to touch her face, numb from the pain. She moved her hands in front of her eyes, her fingers covered in chilblains, some split open, swollen and unsightly. *Drip, drop*—she heard something. Looking down, through her blurring vision, she still saw her own battered hands, and the tear drops falling onto the back of her hands.
Tears are the cheapest thing, incapable of achieving anything.
She lay on the old quilt and sobbed bitterly.
She was just sixteen, only sixteen years old. Other children at sixteen were still in school, preparing for high school, for college. But she was to be married, and to such a person—Wang Dali, whose character was well known. Short and stocky, with a face full of coarse flesh, with not a bit of genuine skill, nothing more than a hoodlum, his family dirt-poor. Everyone in the village had built new houses, but only the Wang Family’s home, built by Wang Dali’s grandfather decades ago, was old, decrepit, and leaky, forever unable to get ahead.