Life Plan

Liu Chichi felt she might never forget this scene—Jiang Xiaonv's upper body was hanging off the edge of the bed, face down beside the bed, her face turned towards them, her mouth and nose covered in blood. Her lower body was still on the bed, her back facing them was covered in bruises and bloodstains, and a small pool of blood had accumulated under her head.

The wind and rain pouring in from outside made her disheveled hair sway back and forth, but she remained as quiet as a broken, old rag doll.

Sun Zhixiao's swollen legs made it impossible for her to walk normally, but she still struggled to break free from the police's grasp. She knelt down beside Jiang Xiaonv, crying, and carefully lifted her head.

The police responded from the nearest police station, but the ambulance had to navigate through congested traffic from the hospital to get there. Jiang Xiaonv's condition was too serious; no one dared to move the injured person unnecessarily. The police called to report the scene and inquire when the ambulance would arrive.

After Sun Zhixiao helped Jiang Xiaonv sit up, he noticed that her cheeks were highly swollen, her upper and lower lips appeared slightly misaligned, and her mouth was half-open. Fortunately, she was still breathing faintly. The blood on the ground mainly came from her mouth and nose and did not enter through her nasal cavity or trachea. As her head returned to its normal position, something fell out of Jiang Xiaonv's mouth.

Liu Chichi subconsciously reached out to catch it. Flesh and blood wrapped around a solid piece the size of a little finger. When the bloodstains faded, she was horrified to discover that it was a tooth!

Liu Chichi was both shocked and frightened, while Sun Zhixiao trembled as she reached for the bag, bursting into tears. The policeman's body camera flashed; he wanted to ask something, but seeing the scene, he hesitated several times before finally not speaking to Sun Zhixiao.

Sun Zhixiao held onto that tooth tightly until the ambulance arrived.

Jiang Xiaonv lay quietly on the stretcher, with Sun Zhixiao close beside her. Suddenly, Liu Chichi spotted a familiar face among the group of doctors in white coats and tentatively asked, "Attorney Yan?"

"Hmm." The man who had jogged over stopped next to the policeman, casually responding to Liu Chichi, and then held out his phone to the policeman: "I have some recordings here." It was his WeChat chat with "Jiang Xiaonv".

"What's your relationship with her?"

"I am her lawyer."

Liu Chichi snapped out of her daze and quickly pulled out her phone: "I have one too." Just then, Liu Chunhong's call popped up on her phone. She decisively rejected it, ignoring Liu Chunhong's pop-up messages.

Liu Chichi followed Sun Zhixiao and her daughter into the ambulance, while Yan Shaohai drove behind them.

Jiang Xiaonv was taken to the emergency room, while Sun Zhixiao and Liu Chichi lined up in the radiology department for X-rays.

On the first day of the new year, the hospital was bustling with people as usual. Sun Zhixiao and Liu Chichi, soaked to the bone, huddled together, shivering in the warm breeze. Occasionally, someone would try to complain, but upon seeing their disheveled state, they would all hesitate and leave.

Liu Chichi ordered two sets of thermal underwear and a cotton-padded jacket online, and the delivery arrived just as she came out of the radiology department. They changed their clothes in the restroom. The new clothes that Liu Chunhong had bought looked like they had just been washed and hadn't been wrung out yet, and the 1688 makeup and styling were now just smudged eye circles and false eyelashes hanging precariously on their eyelids.

Sun Zhixiao limped towards the building where the emergency room was located and jumped. Liu Chichi looked at the questions from Liu Chunhong and He Qing on her phone and angrily selected "Do Not Disturb".

The pain in her back spread to her waist, and she could only walk slowly with her body hunched over. She still had to give a statement to the police.

She felt so wronged, but didn't know who to tell, so she could only keep it all bottled up inside.

Sun Zhixiao stayed by her mother's side in the emergency room while they took statements in the corridor.

Sun Zhixiao was very clever. Before she knew what had happened, she sent a voice message to Liu Chichi and Yan Shaohai, which included not only the sounds of the fight but also Sun Qiang's words.

After seeing her mother fall to the ground, she quickly called the police and also sent a text message to the two of them asking for help.

When she called the police, Sun Qiang discovered her. Sun Qiang, who was drunk, tried to drag her out from under the bed with red eyes, but she kept hiding against the wall.

Later, Sun Qiang threw a lamp at her, then lifted the bed board. As Jiang Xiaonv grabbed Sun Qiang's leg, she ran out the door.

Sun Qiang returned last night with two bottles of wine, and Jiang Xiaonv had cooked dinner for him. Sun Zhixiao slept in another room and heard Sun Qiang smashing things in the middle of the night, but it was normal for him to smash things when he was drunk, so Sun Zhixiao didn't pay attention and went back to sleep.

The parents never argued; it was always Sun Qiang who roared, because Jiang Xiaonv couldn't speak. Sun Zhixiao didn't know when he first hit her mother; she first discovered it in her first year of high school, when she urged her mother to run away. But Jiang Xiaonv didn't run away; she simply sent her to boarding school.

Later, when she returned home, she would always see new bruises on her mother's body. Because of this, Sun Zhixiao and Sun Qiang argued many times, and each time it ended with Sun Qiang hitting her and Jiang Xiaonv throwing herself on top of her.

After that, Sun Zhixiao stopped arguing.

She found her mother a day shift job, from 8 am to 9 pm, and she also worked part-time in a restaurant kitchen on weekends. Most of the time, she worked odd jobs at the factory to avoid being around Sun Qiang. She also worked part-time at the factory during winter and summer vacations. Whenever there was a hint of an argument at home, Sun Zhixiao would think of her mother's wounds and could only swallow her resentment.

The two women tolerated him repeatedly, which only made Sun Qiang more and more unruly. He had long been dissatisfied with Jiang Xiaonv for not letting him drink, and after hitting her a few times, he started blaming Jiang Xiaonv for not making any snacks to go with the drinks when he bought them and brought them home.

He originally didn't want to treat Jiang Xiaonv after she fell ill, thinking the cost would be too high. Jiang Xiaonv's salary for the past few years had been deposited into Sun Qiang's account, and if he didn't agree, they wouldn't have any money.

Sun Zhixiao jumped out and argued with him. Most of the family's money was earned by her mother. If he stopped her from getting treatment, her mother would quit her job and go home immediately. Since they were both going to die anyway, there was no need to work and wait to die. She also stopped going out for part-time jobs. The two of them would just wait for Sun Qiang to support them.

Sun Qiang had been the local tyrant of his family for three years, only occasionally doing odd jobs. The sudden loss of two sources of income was unbearable for him. Aside from cursing a few times while looking at the bank account balances, he stopped holding the card altogether.

Sun Zhixiao slipped into her mother's room at noon today while Sun Qiang went downstairs to use the restroom after lunch. She could tell from the slap marks on her mother's face that Sun Qiang had hit someone again. However, unlike his previous restraint, she saw hatred on her mother's face today.

Sun Qiang answered a phone call outside and came back into the house. Jiang Xiaonv, for some reason, told him to hide under the bed. Sun Zhixiao saw Jiang Xiaonv's phone on the bedside table and took it under the bed as well.

Sun Zhixiao didn't know what her mother was gesturing, but after Sun Qiang hung up the phone, he suddenly started cursing furiously. She hid under the bed and could only see the two of them excitedly moving legs.

Sun Zhixiao repeated the story with a gloomy expression, his eyes fixed on the direction of the emergency room: "I only remember him saying on the phone, 'Brother Lin's situation was an accident. That money of yours was a deposit. It's only a few dollars, and you're asking for it back. Next time, add some drugs, and it will definitely work.' I don't know why they started fighting. I just saw my mother lying on the ground, and he hit her with a table lamp."

Her gaze suddenly shifted, but it was unfocused, as if her soul hadn't quite caught up: "It's one of those bedside lamps with clips. She bought it for me when I was in boarding school. She heard from her coworkers at the factory that boarding school kids hurt their eyes by doing homework hunched over in bed, so she bought me a bedside table and a bedside lamp. It rained the day she delivered the lamp, but not as heavily as today. Later, the lamp ran out of power, so I took it home. Sorry, I've gone off on a tangent."

Sun Zhixiao apologized politely, her expression contorted, then looked back at the emergency room: "He found me when I was hiding under the bed making a phone call. He lifted the bed board to hit me, but my mom grabbed his leg. I threw a stool at him and ran away. I don't know what happened after that. I wanted to find someone to save my mom."

She murmured to herself, "I wish I could beat him."