“But—!” She had no evidence.
“There’s no need for evidence. Just tell me the truth,” Bo Junyan said.
Mu Huan understood what he meant. “Okay.”
To put it simply, this was the case.
After Mu Huan became an adult, in order to earn more money, she went to the bar to work part-time. There, she met the bartender in the photo. The two of them were in the same group. Once, the bartender skipped work for two days for no reason. The manager asked her, who lived not far from his house, to visit him. When she arrived at his rented place and realized that he was seriously ill, she wanted to bring him to the hospital. Unexpectedly, he refused to go to the hospital no matter what.
As she pulled, she realized that the other party was a woman.
Seeing that she couldn’t hide it from Mu Huan, she’d asked her to keep it a secret and even told her about her background.
The bartender came from a remote and isolated mountain village. Its culture was backward and the people valued boys over girls. She had three older sisters. When her mother was pregnant with her, her grandfather said that if she was born a girl, he would throw her away.
As the village was located in a remote area, it would take a day and a night’s drive to reach the town. At that time, no one had ever gone to the hospital to give birth, and there was no prenatal checkup either. An ultrasound would have shown the gender of the child, but here, it was only after the child was born that one would know whether the child was male or female. In such a poor village, many girls had been thrown out to save food.
The bartender’s maternal granny was a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner. If she were to take a mother’s pulse and say that there was a high chance that it would be a girl, a mother who would be willing to give birth to the child would be thrown out themselves. This was especially so in their village. If they were thrown into the wilderness, they would starve to death. At that time, the bartender’s aunt was about the same month along as the bartender’s mother when she was pregnant. Her granny said that her aunt might be pregnant with a boy. Hence, just in case, when her mother was about to give birth, she went to her maiden home.
At that time, people didn’t really care about pregnant women, especially a pregnant woman who had already given birth to three children. Most of the villagers were born at home, and her granny happened to be a midwife in the nearby village. Hence, her mother had given birth at her granny’s house, but her paternal grandfather didn’t know.
It was only after the bartender’s aunt had given birth to a son that her mother sent someone back to inform everyone that she herself had given birth to a son. However, because the child was weak, she had to take care of him at her maiden home.
At that time, the families were both poor but her family was willing to spend money to support them. Naturally, her grandfather was happy. They only came over to take a look after receiving the letter. After confirming that it was a grandson, they went back. But the grandson that her grandfather went to visit was actually her cousin.
When she was two years old at her granny’s house, her grandfather and father had gone away to work.
Every year, they would only come back during the new year. When the bartender was young, her mother would bring her cousin to their house for a few days. When she grew up and started wearing pants, she would be the one to go back. Because her mother had been telling her that she was a boy since she was young, she had always thought that she was a boy. When she started school, she returned to the village. Her aunt was her teacher. In addition, she was tall and strong, so she had never exposed herself.
Later on, after her father had settled down outside the village, he opened a refiner factory in Yun Cheng and brought the family there. Because her maternal grandmother and maternal aunt’s family treated them well, her mother brought her side of the family over and got them into the refineries to work.
Initially, her mother had intended to tell her father and grandfather the truth when she grew up. However, her mother did not manage to give birth to a son in the end. She could not tell the truth in the first place, but now, after her father had the family business, it was even more impossible to do so. If he did not have a son to inherit the family business, her father would definitely go out to find a third party. Hence, her mother hid the secret even more tightly.