On the Wedding Night, I Transmigrated to After the Divorce – Chapter 5

This One is a Real Wife

Really love my wife.

The relationship between Yu Yan and her mother, Yu Lan, was genuinely poor.

            

Yu Yan deeply disliked her biological mother, and Yu Lan was thoroughly dissatisfied with her useless daughter.

Yu Yan’s aversion to Yu Lan stemmed from many things. Setting aside the fact that Yu Lan had always been too busy with work to look after her growing up, the main issue was her incredibly cold and unfeeling personality.

From the time she could first remember, Yu Yan had been raised by her Grandma, living much like an orphan. She only saw her mythical biological mother once every six months. It wasn’t until she was ten that her mother finally brought her to live in Yuncheng.

            

Before she turned ten, Yu Yan had always yearned for her mother. Even though she hated to leave Grandma, back then, she was still brimming with anticipation for a new life with her mother—she didn’t have a father. Both Grandma and her mother told her she didn’t have one, refusing to elaborate on whether he was dead or crippled. Yu Yan had no desire or fantasies about having a father. Even though she didn’t like Yu Lan much, at least she was a woman.

Yu Lan was intensely strict with her. The moment she arrived in Yuncheng, she was thrust into the rocket class¹ of a key primary school, followed by endless after-school tutoring sessions. From the second she picked Yu Yan up, she had mapped out her entire life trajectory: she was to test into a domestic Project 985² university, study abroad for a few years, and then return to work her way up from the bottom of the company. Only after three to five years of solid performance would she qualify to be personally mentored by Yu Lan and shoulder the heavy responsibility of succeeding her.

Having run wild at Grandma’s place, Yu Yan simply wasn’t cut out for academics. She was terrified by these grand plans, but even when she tried, she fell short. No matter how many elite teachers Yu Lan cycled through or how many brilliant tutors she hired, Yu Yan’s mind was never on her books. No amount of tossing and turning yielded any results. While her grades never improved, she did manage to get along splendidly with every single tutor.

            

Yu Lan was always busy with work. She didn’t care if Yu Yan was happy at school or what she did all day; she only squeezed out a fraction of time upon coming home to check her report cards. She was too overbearing. Crushed under that oppressive aura, Yu Yan forced herself to study, desperately missing the days she had spent with Grandma.

Grandma wasn’t used to the big city and lived alone in their hometown in the south. Yu Yan worried about her constantly. One day, Yu Yan’s right eyelid kept twitching³, and her chest felt tight with panic. Sure enough—something had happened to Grandma.

Grandma had fainted at home and was found by the nanny. The hospital said it was a cerebral thrombosis; she was fading fast. Yu Yan happened to be right in the middle of her midterm exams and was kept completely in the dark. She woke up to find Yu Lan already gone, which wasn’t unusual. The driver took her to school. Only when she returned home that night, utterly distraught, did she hear from Yu Lan’s assistant that her mother had gone back to their hometown because Grandma was sick.

            

Yu Yan had originally been very obedient. She had wanted to be the well-behaved daughter Yu Lan liked. That was the first time she ever threw a tantrum. She refused to go to school, refused to eat, and demanded to go to the hospital to see Grandma—and frankly, if Yu Yan hadn’t caused such a scene, Yu Lan would still have weighed the pros and cons and ordered Yu Yan to continue her classes the next day.

It was then that the still-immature Yu Yan developed a profound rift with her mother. She realized, from the bottom of her heart, that this woman was truly made of ice, completely devoid of human warmth.

Yu Lan was completely different from the mother Yu Yan had imagined.

            

No matter what, Yu Yan could not bring herself to feel close to her.

They didn’t have the loving mother-obedient daughter dynamic of an ordinary family. Yu Yan wouldn’t tell her what was on her mind, because Yu Lan would just say she should focus on her studies. They didn’t hold hands when walking side by side, and there were no hugs when she was sad, because either action would feel excruciatingly awkward for both of them. They didn’t say caring things to each other. Even on her birthday, there wouldn’t be a single word of blessing. Yu Yan had tried it once, and Yu Lan had simply said, “Spend a little more time on your studies.”

Yu Lan’s tone was always that cold and hard.

            

At first, Yu Yan put up with it. But later, with the onset of puberty and Grandma’s passing, Yu Yan simply let herself rot. She started letting her true nature run wild without any scruples. She was beaten, scolded, and even ran away from home. Slowly, Yu Lan was forced to accept her daughter’s mediocrity. She didn’t have the time to manage her anyway. However, Yu Lan still had to maintain her high-and-mighty posture. She constantly kept belittling words on her lips, endlessly warning Yu Yan: “Your current comfortable life is all given to you by me. If you leave me, you wouldn’t even be able to compete with others picking up bottles on the street.”

How could she possibly lose at picking up bottles? There weren’t even that many people out there picking up bottles. She wasn’t about to let herself be PUA’d⁴.

Even when forcing her into a marriage of convenience with Fu Yunqing, Yu Lan had used the same rhetoric: “I have fed you and housed you with the best of everything for twenty years. It’s one thing that you’ve squandered my efforts and learned absolutely nothing, but you can’t even create a single shred of value for me. What exactly do you want to do?”

            

Then, she froze her cards and cut off her allowance.

Yu Yan’s world collapsed.

All in all, over so many years, Yu Yan had never once felt a trace of the maternal love she had fantasized about during those first ten motherless years.

            

However, Yu Lan did keep her promises. She had promised Yu Yan a reward of three million if she went and got the marriage certificate with Fu Yunqing. Yu Yan had gone back to her room and slept. When Auntie woke her up for dinner that evening, she saw that the money had already hit her account.

Yu Yan’s mood was beautiful and carefree. She even ate an extra crab leg for dinner.

Yu Yan basked in her good mood for a while, calculated her finances, and then sent a WeChat message to Fu Yunqing asking for her card number. She wanted to transfer the money for today’s purchases back to her.

            

Fu Yunqing quickly replied: 【No need. Consider it a gift.】

A gift?

Yu Yan knew the Fu family had a massive business empire. This tiny amount of money was a drop in the bucket for Fu Yunqing. Since Fu Yunqing said it was a gift, she didn’t stand on ceremony. She replied: 【Thank you, Fu-jiejie.】

            

【Cat kissing .jpg】

Fu Yunqing didn’t reply again.

So aloof, Yu Yan grumbled internally.

            

That was fine. Aloof women were the most charming.

Yu Yan went to chat with her girlfriends for a bit, scrolled through Weibo, and in her boredom, suddenly thought of something. She felt that ending the conversation there was a bit too hasty. She really ought to sweeten up her wife-jiejie a little more.

And so, Yu Yan rolled out of bed, neatly arranged all the things she had bought today, and snapped a picture with them. She posted it to her WeChat Moments⁵ with the caption: 【Really love my wife, 55⁶】

            

After posting, Yu Yan wondered: Will Fu Yunqing see it? Does she normally scroll through Moments? She probably does, right? Otherwise, how would Fu Yunqing know I’ve been so happy these past two months? Could she have been secretly paying attention to me all along?

Yu Yan didn’t get a response from Fu Yunqing, but she did get a swarm of her girlfriends drooling with envy—

: 【Serving up dog food⁷ already?】
Yu Yan replied: 【My wife is just too sweet.】

            

: 【Didn’t you say you were going to run away from the wedding? How come you’re accepting her gifts?】
Yu Yan replied: 【Ah, it can’t be helped.】

: 【You’ve got another wife, Sister Yan.】
Yu Yan replied: 【This one is a real wife.】

: 【You’re so happy you could die, little girl.】
Yu Yan replied: 【When has this big sister ever not been happy?】

            

: 【When are we drinking the wedding wine?】
Yu Yan replied: 【Let me ask my wife.】

Wife, wife… she was calling her that entirely too smoothly.

A short while later, her wife actually came looking for her.

            

Fu Yunqing: 【You left your lipstick in my car.】

Lipstick?

With Yu Yan’s scatterbrained personality, she had lost countless lipsticks, lip glazes, eyebrow pencils, and compacts this year alone. It was nothing unusual. If it was lost, it was lost; she didn’t lose any sleep over it. But Fu Yunqing picking it up was a completely different story.

            

Yu Yan thought for a moment and sent: 【Could Fu-jiejie help me keep it safe? I’ll get it next time we meet.】

Didn’t that just guarantee an excuse for them to meet again? That was how you had to interact with girls—you had to owe each other a little something. This was an indispensable lesson whenever Master Yu imparted her romance bible.

Fu Yunqing: 【Alright.】

            

The conversation seemed to have died again. The Fu Yunqing on WeChat was exactly like the one offline: a woman of few words, incredibly aloof.

Yu Yan’s fingers flew across the keyboard: 【Did Jiejie see my Moments?】

She was just that proactive, not bothering to hide it at all. The Moments post had been posted specifically for Fu Yunqing to see.

            

Fu Yunqing replied a bit slower: 【I saw it.】

Yu Yan: 【If you saw it, why didn’t you give me a like?】

Fu Yunqing: 【I don’t have the habit of liking posts.】

            

Yu Yan: 【Actually, I took another photo, but I don’t want to show it to anyone else. I only want to show it to Fu-jiejie.】

After dropping Yu Yan off earlier, Fu Yunqing had returned to the old family estate to keep Granny company and entertain guests, right up until now. She was a little tired. Leaning back against the rear seat of the car, she hadn’t put any music on. The driver’s silence harmonized with the hustle and bustle of the streets outside, muffled by a layer of tinted film.

She held her phone, replying to Yu Yan’s messages.

            

She had seen Yu Yan’s Moments post earlier while socializing.

No like, no comment.

Fu Yunqing truly didn’t have such a habit. In fact, before adding Yu Yan on WeChat, she rarely even checked Moments at all. It was only out of curiosity, after adding Yu Yan, that she had clicked into her profile to take a look. Since then, she would scroll through from time to time.

            

Yu Yan said she wanted to show her, but didn’t send the photo over right away. She was baiting her. Naturally, Fu Yunqing felt curious. She typed a reply: 【What photo?】

Yu Yan still didn’t reply right away.

Fu Yunqing didn’t tab out to do anything else; she just waited for her. And as she waited, her mind lingered on the girl, involuntarily recalling their time together today.

            

Yu Yan was vastly different from the rumors she’d heard. She seemed to be…

Just as her thoughts drifted, Yu Yan sent the photo over. Fu Yunqing tapped it open.

It was a mirror selfie of Yu Yan.

            

The background was her walk-in closet, where various shirts and dresses hung haphazardly. In the frame, she held her phone up, angling her body slightly to strike a pose as she snapped a picture of her reflection.

Fu Yunqing recognized it. The dress Yu Yan was wearing was the one she had picked out at the mall today. She had wanted it very much, but having run out of pocket money, she had taken Fu Yunqing’s hand, given it a gentle shake, and wheedled, “Can Fu-jiejie pay for me first? I’ll pay you back soon.”

It was a white, floral strapless slip dress with a butterfly motif. It fit her perfectly, pairing well with the Mary Janes on her feet. The warm white lighting highlighted the soft, delicate pallor of her skin. The raised phone obscured most of her face, leaving only a pair of slightly downcast eyes beneath her straight bangs.

            

Her eyes were curved into a slight smile, the lying silkworm⁸ beneath them very distinct, and her eyelashes were long and slender.

She was smiling.

Yu Yan: 【Does it look good?】

            

Yu Yan: 【I’m only showing you.】

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The author has something to say:

I changed to a new cover. I feel it fits the style of this book much better.

            

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