On the Wedding Night, I Transmigrated to After the Divorce – Chapter 33
by Little PandaHolding Hands
Wants a Mom
Yu Yan froze for a moment. Something indescribable welled up inside her. “No. It only started after I got to the bathroom.”
Fu Yunqing said nothing more. Yu Yan could sense her waiting outside the door the entire time, until she had changed into a sanitary pad and opened the door.
Yu Yan looked at her and whispered another thank-you.
Fu Yunqing merely looked at her, offering no response. Seeing her prepare to leave, Yu Yan couldn’t bear to let this rare moment alone slip away. She called out, “Teacher Fu.”
Fu Yunqing stopped, but did not turn around.
“Did you not like the Tangerine Pear Tea?”
Still, no answer came. The figure before her walked straight away. Yu Yan pursed her lips and followed obediently behind her into the classroom.
Fu Yunqing returned to the lectern. Yu Yan sat back in her seat, still replaying in her mind the question Fu Yunqing had asked in the restroom—whether her pants had been stained. Before long, she felt wave after wave of cramping pain surge through her lower abdomen.
It hurt…
Yu Yan couldn’t imagine what she had been through these past few years to have become so weak. Her periods hurt this much now—could she have developed a cold uterus1?
The feeling was truly unbearable—aching back, cramping stomach. She wilted, listless, too drained to pay attention to Teacher Fu’s lecture. She lay her head down on the cold, hard desk and endured.
During the students’ note-taking time, Fu Yunqing stepped down from the lectern to make her rounds. Yu Yan lay with her eyes closed, drowsy and on the verge of sleep, completely unaware she had approached. The girl beside her tapped her shoulder in warning. Only then did Yu Yan sit up in a daze, lifting her head to meet Teacher Fu’s eyes.
Teacher Fu truly possessed the commanding air of an instructor. Yu Yan instinctively straightened the notebook she had placed on the desk as mere decoration, stirred by a reflexive student instinct, her guilty conscience prompting her to put on an act.
Who was she performing for? The teacher knew she wasn’t a student at all.
Of course Teacher Fu paid her no mind. After a sweeping glance, she turned to leave—but before she walked away, she silently set down her own thermos on Yu Yan’s desk.
Yu Yan blinked, stunned.
Watching Fu Yunqing’s retreating figure, she suddenly understood that strange feeling she had experienced in the restroom when Fu Yunqing asked whether her pants had been soiled.
As a child, she had lived with her grandmother. The old woman had been nothing but good to her—a particularly kind-faced, hearty, optimistic woman. From childhood on, she never placed a single restraint on Yu Yan. It didn’t matter whether Yu Yan misbehaved, whether her grades were good or bad, whether she slept in class, or whether she skipped school to go off and play with whoever she pleased. Even if they were the neighborhood bad kids, even if they were young people who had dropped out of school in their teens, Grandma never told her not to learn from them. She would only say with a laugh that Yu Yan should get along well with others, then tell her: if Yanyan planned to learn smoking from them, Grandma would have to move out, because if she developed a smoking addiction and smoked at home every day, Grandma would soon die of lung cancer from secondhand smoke. Yanyan didn’t want Grandma to die so soon, did she? Mm, Yanyan wouldn’t smoke.
And so, Yu Yan’s inherent carefree, relaxed disposition had come from her grandmother. If she forgot her red scarf2 on a Monday, the sky wouldn’t fall—at worst, she’d stand in the corner as punishment. If she arrived late and the security guard blocked her to record her name, she simply wouldn’t go to school at all. She’d wander the streets at a leisurely pace, tailing stray kittens and following big yellow dogs. If a teacher called her to the office and demanded a parent be summoned, she’d cheerfully give them Grandma’s phone number, then compliment the teacher on how pretty her new skirt looked that day.
She never felt that studying was something she absolutely had to do, nor did she hold any belief that she must study hard to get into a good university. Because Grandma had never told her that if she didn’t study hard her life would be over. She had only ever told her to have fun at school, and that when Yanyan grew up and Grandma died, she would leave her a huge sum of money to spend for the rest of her life.
So Yu Yan had known from a young age that her family was exceptionally wealthy, and she had never worried about the future in the slightest. (Though every time she heard Grandma speak this way, she would throw a tearful tantrum, crying that she didn’t want money—she only wanted Grandma.)
With such an open-minded, generous grandmother and more money than she could spend, Yu Yan had indeed been the kind of child every other kid envied. But who would have known that there were times when she envied others deeply?
For instance, when she played with a friend and both ended up covered in mud and dust, and dinnertime came, the friend’s mother would come to pick her up. She would always say to her own child, “How did you get yourself so dirty again?” Then she would gently take out a tissue and wipe her cheeks and palms. Meanwhile, Yu Yan’s grandmother would still be playing mahjong. Yu Yan would stare blankly as her friend was led away by the hand, and once she came back to herself, she would scrub at her own dusty face with her sleeve, then get up and run back to the empty house, use the landline to ask Grandma when she would be home.
For some reason, Yu Yan had been particularly affected by such scenes. She would always space out at displays of mother-daughter affection, losing herself in watching other people’s mothers. She couldn’t help but fantasize, putting herself in the place of a child being cared for by a mother, and then she would happily tug at the corners of her lips, unaware of how utterly pitiful she looked to outsiders.
At such a young age, her only worry had been wanting a mother. Grandma had told her that she did have a mother, but that her mother was very busy in the big city. Once Yu Yan grew up and could take care of herself, her mother would come to take her away.
Yu Yan had truly wanted to grow up faster.
The year she turned ten and parted from her grandmother, she had truly been reluctant to leave her. Yet the pull of a mother had been so strong. In the nights before she learned she would be taken away by Yu Lan, she had been unable to sleep, constantly fantasizing about scenes of life with her mother. Would she too be taken home by the hand? If she fell, would a mother coax her? If her hands or face were dirty, would a mother cup her face and scold her even as she wiped her clean? Could she sleep curled up in a mother’s arms at night?
Yu Yan had longed for a mother so deeply.
At first, she had wanted so badly to please Yu Lan. To earn her mother’s praise, she had obediently gone to class and studied hard. But Yu Lan had continually shattered her fantasies, never letting her feel a shred of warmth.
Yu Yan still remembered her first menstruation in the first year of junior high. The blood had stained her pants bright red over a large area. She had called Yu Lan. Yu Lan had answered, told her it was a perfectly normal physiological phenomenon, and hurriedly hung up.
She had taken the call, yet Yu Yan’s helplessness and excitement, her desire to share this rite of passage into adulthood and her hope that perhaps her mother might show concern—Yu Lan had caught none of it.
And so… when Fu Yunqing had asked her that question, asking whether her pants had been soiled, Yu Yan had felt, for an instant, as though she had been transported back to that bewildering first menstruation.
She saw that Fu Yunqing, having returned to the lectern, picked up that cup of Tangerine Pear Tea, tilted her head back slightly, and took a small sip.
At noon, Teacher Fu announced the end of class right on time.
The students stood and dispersed. Yu Yan packed her things and sat obediently in her seat, waiting for the crowd to thin. As the flickering shadows of people faded from before her eyes, she was able to see the empty classroom and Fu Yunqing alone at the lectern, shutting down the computer and organizing her things. Only then did she rise and walk forward.
She suddenly found this moment rather marvelous. That high-ponytail female student had no questions to ask today. For now, Teacher Fu was hers alone.
Yu Yan thought that Fu Yunqing must share the same silent understanding.
“Teacher Fu.” She called out softly, her gaze landing bright and sparkling on Fu Yunqing’s face. She handed back the emptied thermos, well-behaved and polite. “Thank you for the hot water.”
The way she smiled and called out “Teacher Fu” betrayed not a single flaw. Aside from Fu Yunqing, no one would know she wasn’t a student here—only an impostor who had come for a pretty face, an unemployed vagrant.
Fu Yunqing silently took the thermos back. As for the bottle of Tangerine Pear Tea Yu Yan had given her, she had already drunk one-third of it. Yu Yan secretly rejoiced and asked enthusiastically, “Teacher Fu, did you think it tasted good? Was it a little too sweet? I only added a tiny bit of sugar. I thought it was just right, but I’m not sure if the unsweetened kind would suit Teacher Fu better?”
Fu Yunqing gave no answer, busying herself with packing her things. Yu Yan stole a glance and saw her place the Tangerine Pear Tea into her bag.
She really had kept it. Yu Yan knew it—Fu-jiejie simply couldn’t refuse her goodwill, could she?
Just as she was feeling pleased with herself, Fu Yunqing suddenly looked at her. “You don’t even remember your own menstrual cycle?”
Menstrual cycle?
Yu Yan remembered that her cycle came around the middle of the month, but it hadn’t come at mid-month. She felt that after three years, some change in her cycle was perfectly normal. But how was she supposed to explain this to Fu-jiejie?
“Because…” She hadn’t expected her to bring this up. Yu Yan hesitated a moment, then blurted out a lie in her panic. “It’s irregular.”
“Irregular.” Fu Yunqing frowned.
Why would her cycle be irregular? And why would it hurt?
It had never been irregular before, and she had never suffered menstrual cramps.
How was she taking care of herself? Hadn’t she said she would be happier after leaving her?
Sensing the shift in Fu Yunqing’s mood, Yu Yan realized she cared deeply about this and hastily tried to patch things up. “It never used to hurt. It’s just that this month is a little irregular. I thought it would come in a couple of days, so I drank something iced yesterday. That’s why it hurts today.”
Even after hearing her explanation, the woman’s heavy air of displeasure showed no sign of easing.
“You thought it would come in a couple of days, so you drank something iced yesterday? Yu Yan, is this how you’ve been living all year?”
“I…” Yu Yan didn’t know how to argue her way out of it for a moment. Fu Yunqing knew her too well; seeing that look in her eyes, she knew Yu Yan was making excuses.
Yu Yan also knew she had been “seen through.” In her fluster, she quickly stepped forward and took Fu Yunqing’s hand with both of hers, looking up at her. She rubbed Fu Yunqing’s hand as she spoke softly, “It was just yesterday. I only drank something iced yesterday because I was thirsty on the road, and that shop only had iced water. That’s the only reason. I never drink iced things normally. Really.”
“It doesn’t hurt at all now. Jiejie, don’t be angry.”
After so very long, she was finally holding Fu Yunqing’s hand again. Fu-jiejie’s hand looked icy to the touch, yet felt warm. The posture of holding hands, the intimate distance—Yu Yan looked up at her from so close, so very close.
Fu-jiejie did not pull her hand away at the first opportunity. Yu Yan’s insatiable urge to press her advantage3 began to stir, and a surge of impulse rose in her heart—to burrow into Fu Yunqing’s embrace and hold her.
But she knew this was not the time or place. This was Teacher Fu’s classroom; it would not be good for her reputation. So she merely held her hand, gripping it a little tighter, and gazed at her with longing eyes. She loved Fu Yunqing’s concern and hoped she wouldn’t be harsh. Even if she was harsh, it didn’t matter. She could endure it.
Footnotes
- 'Cold uterus' (gōng hán) is a Traditional Chinese Medicine diagnosis describing a condition of internal coldness in the lower abdomen believed to cause menstrual pain and infertility.
- The 'red scarf' (hóng lǐngjīn) is the neckerchief worn by members of the Young Pioneers of China, a national youth organization for children aged six to fourteen.
- 'Dé cùn jìn chǐ' (gain an inch, take a foot) is a chengyu describing the insatiable tendency to push for more after receiving a small concession.
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