The water had long since gone cold, and the small booklet remained between them, still and silent. The cacophony of the rain mingled with Chen Jinyue’s sobbing; neither showed any sign of stopping.
Chen Fang’s phone sat at the corner of the table. An hour had passed, yet there was no movement. The WeChat messages remained stuck in the "sent" state. She checked her signal again—full bars—but no new calls came in.
Facing her daughter, Chen Fang thought she had perhaps said too much. Chen Jinyue had never known those details about her mother’s and Lin Yunsheng’s past; she needed time to digest them through her tears. Chen Fang stood up, poured a fresh bottle of mineral water into the kettle, and pressed the switch, waiting for it to boil.
Then, Chen Fang asked her daughter, "Do you want some hot water?"
The girl shook her head without a word. So, Chen Fang brewed a cup of tea for herself and sat back down.
Chen Fang’s eyes were red, though she hadn't shed tears. Seeing that Chen Jinyue’s sobbing had subsided slightly, she hesitated, wondering whether to begin the next part of their conversation.
"I’m sorry..." Chen Jinyue choked out the three words.
"Yueyue, I didn't tell you all this to make you feel guilty. You don't need to say you're sorry. In all of this, you didn't do anything wrong."
But what else could she say besides "I'm sorry"? She used to think happiness was simple, never imagining its true face was like this. Her happiness had been woven together by two generations—Chen Fang and Lin Yunsheng—who had stepped over their own wounds to create it for her.
There seemed to have been a long-standing, unspoken understanding between Chen Fang and Lin Yunsheng regarding how to raise Chen Jinyue. And she was the spoiled child who enjoyed that love while remaining blind to what was right in front of her.
The only variable in all of this was that she had fallen in love with Lin Yunsheng.
Chen Jinyue reached out and pulled the booklet toward her. Wiping her tears, she flipped it open. Inside was a sentence: *I know you have many worries, and they aren't things I can explain just by writing a few words here.* In the end, all she could give were those few, weightless words.
If pain could be imagined, then a loss of control would no longer exist. It was impossible to measure how Lin Yunsheng had repeatedly endured a slow, internal execution between her loss of control and her restraint.
"Mom... so you knew all along?"
"Yes."
"Did you two ever talk about it?"
Chen Fang choked up and shook her head. "I didn't dare. I just pretended it never happened."
Chen Fang picked up her teacup and blew on the surface. It was still too hot to drink.
She set the cup down and said, "There was a minor accident at the construction site that night. The site was closed, and we were told to rest for three days. It happened to be your birthday, so I thought I’d come home and give you a surprise. And then..."
Chen Fang closed her eyes, and the tears she had hidden for so long finally fell. "You... how could you and your sister..."
Chen Jinyue lowered her head, propping her forehead with her right hand, her fingers clutching her hair. "And then?" At this moment, she felt she had lost all sense of shame and forgotten her previous fear. The desperate desire for answers had overcome everything else.
"I forgot how long I sat there in that chair. I didn't turn on the lights. Then your sister came out of the room. She closed the door very softly, afraid of waking you. And then she saw me."
Chen Jinyue kept her head down, taking a desperate, deep breath, her throat trembling uncontrollably.
"She stood there, frozen. After a long time, she called me 'Mom.' I didn't answer. I just got up and left."
"I walked for over three hours until I got back to the container housing. I spent two weeks trying to calm down, but no matter what, I couldn't accept it. Until the next time I went home, I didn't contact Shengsheng, and she didn't look for me. I pretended nothing had happened, treating that night as if it were a hallucination."
She sighed and said, "By the time I came back, everything had changed."
Chen Jinyue covered her eyes with both hands, tears dripping through the gaps in her fingers. The rain was behind her, and tears were before her. She was caught in the middle, slowly dissolving.
Even seven years later, hearing this brief account made her feel like she couldn't breathe.
"And then you said because I was about to take the college entrance exams, you were coming back to take care of me, so Sister moved out..."
"Yes. After she moved out, she and I rarely contacted each other. There were only two times I asked her to come back for dinner. She came, but she had become so distant from both me and you. She became just like she was when she was seven, the first time I met her."
"Seventeen years... it took seventeen years to build that bond, and then it felt like it was suddenly gone..."
"Do you really love your sister?" Chen Fang asked the question she already knew the answer to, her voice sounding as if her heart had died.
Chen Jinyue reached out, pulled two tissues, and wiped away her tears and nose. She looked up, her nose and eyes red, and looked at Chen Fang. "Mom... I don't know exactly when I started liking her. I only know that all of this started with me. Don't blame her."
She didn't answer whether she loved her or not; she only said it started with her. It had started a long time ago.
A hopeless smile appeared on Chen Fang's face. "Blaming you, blaming her—does it matter? Both the palm and the back of the hand are my own flesh. I might as well blame myself."
The tears she had just wiped away began to fall again, and Chen Jinyue’s shoulders started to shake. She clenched her right hand into a fist, her nails digging into her palm. "Mom... Mom, I can't help it. I can't control it. I'm sorry..."
Chen Fang said nothing more. She picked up the tea in front of her. It had cooled slightly. She took a shallow sip; it was bitter and astringent.
She remembered the night she had returned to the container housing alone. The older woman in the neighboring bed had been woken by her and asked why she was back at that hour. She had stammered, "Oh, it's nothing, go back to sleep," and then hid under her covers.
She had taken out her phone and searched: *Is being gay a disease?*
The screen displayed: *No. The World Health Organization (WHO) removed homosexuality from the list of diseases in 1990, and the 2001 'Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders and Diagnostic Criteria' also removed the entry for homosexuality.*
She had felt a temporary sense of relief and clicked the search bar again, wanting to continue. She wanted to ask...
She typed and deleted, typed and deleted. In that room, there was no light except for the glow of the screen reflecting on her face. Her tears fell continuously; as she typed, her trembling hands tried to wipe them away, smearing the screen with water. She would wipe the screen against the blanket, and the water marks would temporarily vanish.
She wrote: *Biological sisters.* No, she deleted it. She wrote: *Not biological sisters, but grew up together.* She deleted that too.
*Family. They are family. How could this happen?*
She threw the phone to the edge of the bed. That tiny search box couldn't possibly describe her despair or hold her tangled thoughts. She couldn't even use a smartphone properly; how could she expect it to give her an answer in such a complex situation?
The last bit of light in the room went out, leaving only the sound of falling tears. Even her crying was silent.
She didn't know where it had all gone wrong.
"A few months after you went abroad, I finally went to find her. I told her to move back in; I couldn't bear her being out there alone. Neither of us ever mentioned it again, and she never talked to me about you."
Chen Fang squeezed her eyes shut, appearing to be in great pain.
"You asked me last time why I didn't go to see you for six years. You said if I went, would Shengsheng come or not? If she came and things got complicated again, what then? I was afraid..."
"Then six years passed, and she had someone she was supposed to be dating, and you just happened to say you were coming back. You even told me you had a boyfriend. I clung to a fluke, hoping that this matter could just pass, as if it truly never happened."
Chen Jinyue finally understood the situation with Jiang Haitao. It wasn't just to trick her into coming back; it was to trick their mother. Yunsheng had taken such a huge risk just to let her come home this once.
—*There is nothing between him and me. But I am indeed considering it.*
—It was too late. Tears were always a delayed reaction.
Chen Jinyue closed the booklet in front of her. She said, "If I had been more careful that night, would things have been better?"
Only slightly better, because an ending that is merely postponed will eventually happen anyway.
Chen Fang shook her head slightly and said nothing. She reached for her phone, checking once more for new messages and the signal strength. Everything was the same as before.
She returned to the previous topic—would it have been better? No.
How could Chen Jinyue have hidden it? One uncontrollable hug resulted in Lin Yunsheng looking at Chen Fang with a terrified gaze, leaving Chen Fang alone on the beach with her mind in a turmoil, continuing to lie to herself.
Jinyue would stare at her chat logs with Lin Yunsheng and giggle like a fool, then say she wanted to return to Haicheng, regardless of non-refundable hotels and expensive flight change fees.
As soon as she returned to Haicheng, she was in a hurry to find Lin Yunsheng, only to be sent back a short while later with a dark expression. Zhao Man had come back with her, delivering two insignificant gift boxes and casually informing Chen Fang that Lin Yunsheng was at Jiang Haitao’s house.
She had forced Lin Yunsheng to come back and spend her birthday with her, and she became unhappy the moment she heard Jiang Haitao’s name.
At six in the morning, the sound of two bedroom doors opening and closing—even if Chen Fang couldn't see it, she knew who had come out of the other room and run back to her own bed.
How could Chen Jinyue have hidden it?
It was only this booklet that had forced Chen Fang to face reality.
"After your birthday, did you two fight again?" Chen Fang asked her.
"We didn't fight."
"That's worse than fighting..."
Chen Fang realized in hindsight that at the birthday dinner that day, not a single person had been truly happy.
After a few seconds, Chen Jinyue suddenly seemed to remember something. She looked up and asked, "Mom, did you say something to Sister?"
The phone suddenly rang at that moment. Chen Fang looked at it and quickly picked it up. It was Lin Yunsheng.
"Hello, Shengsheng." Her tone was anxious.
"Mom..."
"I'm sorry, I... I was a bit busy earlier," Lin Yunsheng’s voice came through, sounding exceptionally weary.
"Where are you?"
"I'm in Wencheng."
"Are you alone?"
"Yeah. It's fine, I'll be back in a couple of days. Don't worry. Mom, are you still in Jiangzhen?"
"I am. Are you okay? Where in Wencheng are you? Should I come find you?"
"It's okay, Mom. I'm fine." She gave Chen Fang a small smile through the receiver. "Mom, I'm going to hang up now. Don't worry about me."
"Okay..."
Chen Fang hung up and looked at Chen Jinyue. The girl had stood up the second she saw the caller ID. She asked, "She's in Wencheng?"
"Yes."
"Where in Wencheng?"
"She didn't say. As long as she's okay..." Chen Fang rubbed her temples and finally let out a sigh of relief, sitting back down.
She suddenly felt that compared to matters of life and death, nothing else was important. She seemed to be standing at another crossroads in life, only this one was absurd and nonsensical—yet, if she thought about it deeply, it had nothing to do with her.
The day after her birthday, Chen Jinyue had faced her with swollen eyes, casually explaining it was because she had watched a TV drama. And when she asked what drama it was, her daughter replied, "It's a genre you don't like."
Yes. A genre she didn't like, content she couldn't accept. But these were her two daughters.
Was this the greatest challenge of her life? It was ten thousand times harder than the decision of whether to take Lin Yunsheng away all those years ago.
If she had known then that today would come, would she still have taken Lin Yunsheng?
"Mom... I want to go find her."
Chen Jinyue was still standing. She picked up her phone and sent a WeChat message to Lin Yunsheng: *Where are you in Wencheng? I want to see you.* Then she placed the phone face down on the table.
"Aren't you leaving the day after tomorrow?" Chen Fang looked into her daughter's eyes. These eyes were just like hers, an exact replica, yet they lacked the weakness she had possessed back then.
"That's why I have to go, Mom..." Her tears fell again. "I have to make things clear before I leave..." She swallowed her tears; they were salty and bitter.
The tea in the porcelain cup grew stronger the longer it steeped. Chen Fang picked it up and drank the last mouthful; the bitterness made her frown.
She pointed a finger at Chen Jinyue’s booklet and said, "The day I saw this thing, your sister was still sick. I took the forehead thermometer to check her temperature."
"I joked with her, saying that during the days she was away, you were always distracted and even ran off to interfere with her work. Since she was so busy and had no time for dating, I said I wanted you to go back early."
"What..."
Chen Fang stood up. The water in the kettle was still warm, and she refilled her teacup.
"Then she grabbed my clothes and said, 'Mom... no, Xiaojin didn't interfere with me. Doesn't she still have two weeks of break left?'"
"Later, I left her room and saw you sitting on the sofa. I asked you why you were forcing your sister to spend your birthday with you when she wanted to spend her own Valentine's Day. Your face turned incredibly pale, and you said you weren't forcing her, and you wouldn't allow me to try and persuade her."
Chen Fang carried her cup and walked forward, showing no intention of returning to her seat. This conversation, seven years in the making, seemed to be nearing its end.
"Yueyue, if you ask me if I accept this..."
The air froze for three seconds.
She took a deep breath and said, "I don't accept it."
"You're an adult now, so I'll be straight with you: this goes against traditional ethics."
She walked to the bedroom door and opened it. Before her was the suitcase she had half-packed earlier. Now, whether to leave or stay, and where to go, she suddenly had no idea.
"But if you ask me if I can control it... your mother has been muddled her whole life, but this time I'm a bit more clear-headed—I can't control it."
She closed the bedroom door, leaving Chen Jinyue alone outside.
She walked to the window with her teacup. The rain was still falling, a mist over the green peaks, obscuring the distant scenery.
During those six years, there was one time Lin Yunsheng had a high fever that wouldn't break. Chen Fang had cared for her at home for several days before she recovered.
When her fever hit nearly forty degrees, Chen Fang hadn't closed her eyes all night, keeping watch over her. She had heard her murmuring groggily in her sleep, "Mama..."
"I feel so tired..."
For some reason, even after all these years, Chen Fang hadn't forgotten that. That cry of "Mama"—who was she calling for? She thought it must have been Shengsheng’s biological mother.
Like the day Lin Chengjian was buried, when she held her mother's photo and wept.
She truly had no one left to say these things to.
And after ten, nearly twenty years, Lin Yunsheng would still call for her mother in her dreams. Perhaps she still wanted to ask her why life was so hard. Why was she always losing and never gaining?
Is love truly conditional?
Thinking of this, Chen Fang felt as if a piece of her heart had been gouged out by a rusty knife, a pain even sharper than that day twenty years ago.
—*If I had known then that today would come, would I still have taken Lin Yunsheng?*
—*I would have.*
If not for Lin Yunsheng, she would have been all alone raising Chen Jinyue. She wouldn't have earned enough money, nor could she have looked after her daughter properly. What would Chen Jinyue have grown up to be? Would her own life have had any hope or expectation? She didn't know.
And what were "traditional ethics"?
In that era, it was the idea that "a woman's lack of talent is a virtue," dropping out of school to work and support the family, only to be told when trouble struck that "a married daughter is like spilled water."
It was the chastity arches standing tall, where premarital sex made one a despised harlot.
It was being less than human if you gave birth to a daughter, and only being worthy of a name if you bore a son.
It was finally becoming a superior being with the right to oppress others once your son finally married a wife.
So, what exactly were traditional ethics?
She thought to herself that she wasn't well-educated; she had to search the internet just to know if being gay was normal. As for anything deeper, if no one told her, she would never find the answer.
The third impulsive act of her life was saying, "I can't control it." The older generation often said that children have their own fortunes. Her two daughters had their own lessons to learn.
As for how Chen Jinyue’s "joy" was to be realized, she thought she could no longer help. Let them be. Instead of worrying too much, she might as well play a few more rounds of mahjong and steal a bit of leisure from this fleeting life.
Is there truly unconditional love in this world?
How could she know?
It no longer mattered if Lin Yunsheng called her name the next time she was in pain. She only hoped that Shengsheng—sigh—would not have to experience such pain again.
Don't cry. Don't feel that there is no reliable love in this life.
She looked out at the view once more. The green mountains stretched away, shrouded in clouds and mist. Whether this rain stopped or not, the mountains would always be there.
***
**Glossary**
Chinese | English | Notes/Explanation
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常伦 | Traditional ethics / Social norms | Refers to the traditional moral principles governing human relations (Confucian ethics).
江镇 | Jiangzhen | A town name.
温城 | Wencheng | A city name.
海城 | Haicheng | A city name.
手心手背都是肉 | Both the palm and the back of the hand are flesh | A Chinese idiom meaning both options (or in this case, both daughters) are equally dear and it's hard to choose between them.
青山雨雾 | Mist over the green peaks | Literal: Green mountains, rain, and mist. Used as a metaphor for the enduring yet obscured nature of the situation.
