Five years without pregnancy means you're too weak; I remarried a powerful man and had triplets

The crying pierced through the door, each sound striking his temples, making it impossible for him to fall asleep.

Xu Zhesheng felt his nerves tremble along with the child's cries, as if they were about to snap at any moment.

He endured it for ten minutes.

For a full ten minutes, the child continued to wail like a tireless alarm, while there was still no sound of Su Manman or her mother trying to comfort her from outside the door.

The temper that had been suppressed for so long finally exploded completely in this suffocating frustration.

He sprang to his feet in bed like a caged beast, flung open the door, and growled at the living room with a grim expression:

"Can you please stop her from crying!"

Su Manman hadn't finished eating her durian when she heard his angry roar, so much so that she dropped the durian flesh back into the box.

She blinked, seemingly trying to understand her situation, then realized what was happening and immediately raised her voice even louder than Xu Zhesheng's, almost jumping up: "What are you yelling about?"

"Did I make her cry? What could I do if she wanted to cry?"

Her voice overlapped with the baby's voice, and under the double blow, Xu Zhesheng felt his head hurt even more.

His temples throbbed, but he still had to suppress the irritation in his heart and the churning in his stomach, trying to reason with Su Manman.

He tried to suppress the impatience in his voice and said gently, "Manman, the child has been crying for so long. As her mother, why don't you hold her and comfort her? Look, her voice is hoarse from crying..."

"Don't try to fool me!"

Before he could finish speaking, Su Manman interrupted him, her eyes filled with hostility:

"Who was it that begged and pleaded with me to give birth to this child? They promised me all sorts of things, like having my mother take care of me, feeding me the best food and drink, treating me like royalty! And now, after it's a girl, you've turned your back on us? We haven't even named her yet, or registered her, and it's just me and my mother taking turns looking after her! We, as her mother and grandmother, don't find it noisy, but you're complaining? Who do you think you are?!"

Xu Zhesheng trembled with rage at her accusations that twisted the truth, his stomach churning. His voice was icy cold: "Is this a matter of boy or girl? I thought the child was mine, but later I found out it was someone else's bastard! I'm being kind by not strangling her!"

"What do you mean? Now you're blaming me, are you?"

Su Manman raised an eyebrow, a calculating glint flashing in her slender eyes, and instantly switched to full combat mode.

She stood with her hands on her hips and her chin held high.

"I never said the child was definitely yours! I told you you could have an abortion, but you acted like an idiot and wouldn't let me, kneeling down and swearing oaths, coaxing and lying to me into giving birth. What, now that it's born, you realize it's not yours, and you're coming to bother me?"

She spoke more and more fluently, logic seemed to be kneaded into shape in her mouth like clay, and her eyes were full of disdain that she deserved it.

"You've got the wrong idea. You insisted on being the one to take the fall, and now you're blaming me? I, Su Manman, have always acted with integrity and honesty. I never held a knife to your throat or forced you to do anything!"

In her twisted way of thinking, she never explicitly admitted that the child was Xu Zhesheng's. She believed that Xu Zhesheng was the one who eagerly wanted to be taken advantage of, that he was stupid, and that she was to blame.

She even felt like she was the victim, after all, she had gone through the hardship of carrying the child for ten months and giving birth to the baby, and now he dared to despise her.

"Don't bring up the past with me. You can't have children anyway, so what's wrong with getting a free baby?"

Su Manman retorted sharply, her tone matter-of-fact: "Someone else gave birth to your child, and you became a father directly. What more could you want?"

Xu Zhesheng was struck dumb, his pupils suddenly contracting.

He was all too familiar with that phrase.

He knew every word so well that it felt like a poisoned boomerang, stabbing him back into his own throat.

At that time, he thought it was Shen Zhiyi who was infertile.

He sat on the sofa, legs crossed, and casually advised her in an almost condescending tone, "Zhizhi, what's the big deal? You can't have children anyway, so what's wrong with getting a baby for free? It saves you the hardship of ten months of pregnancy and the harrowing experience of childbirth. Someone else will give birth to the baby for us, and we can become parents right away. Isn't that the best deal in the world?"

At that time, he felt it was an immense blessing.

He couldn't understand why Shen Zhiyi was crying so sadly, or why she refused to accept it no matter what.

He even felt that she was ungrateful and that she was being unreasonable.

So what if she can't have children? Now that someone else is having children for her, what more could she possibly want?

He simply didn't understand that it wasn't a free gift; it was the deepest humiliation she could suffer as a woman and a wife.

She wasn't upset about the child; she was upset about his indifference, treating her pain as a joke and trampling on her dignity.

until today.

It wasn't until he discovered that he was the one who couldn't have children, until Su Manman forced this child—whose father he didn't even know—into his presence and pressured him to accept it with the exact same words, that he finally understood the pain Shen Zhiyi had felt back then.

The humiliation of being deprived of his fertility and forced to accept a bastard child, the suffocating feeling of having his most basic dignity crushed and being accused of being ungrateful, overwhelmed him like a tidal wave.

He opened his mouth, wanting to refute or roar, but his throat felt like it was stuffed with a wad of waterlogged cotton, and he couldn't make a sound.

It turns out, retribution never comes late.

He spoke those words so frivolously back then, and now he has to pay such a heavy price to swallow them back, bit by bit.

He seemed to have lost all his strength, staggered back a step, and leaned against the wall, grief welling up inside him.

The baby's cries and Su Manman's screams were unbearable for him.

He could no longer control himself, went back to his bedroom to pack his things, and then pulled his suitcase to leave.

But how could Su Manman let him go?

She spread her arms to block his way. "Where are you going? Where can you go now?"

"Xu Zhesheng, let me tell you, you've already said you'd marry me, and I've already sent the message. If you dare to go back on your word, I'll die in front of you!"

You'll never get rid of me in this lifetime!

"I understand." Xu Zhesheng replied as if talking to himself, knowing full well that he couldn't get rid of her.

His life has been completely changed because of that drunken incident a year ago.

He hated himself and wished he could castrate himself.

He always told others that he was drunk that night, but only he knew that at that time he had won the Golden Duck Award and felt that his future was limitless, so he became arrogant.

There were too many women around him who were into casual sex, and he had restrained himself for so many years, but on that day he just wanted to relax.

At that time, he was half-heartedly refusing, with only one thought in his mind: it's just one night, it's no big deal.

But now he realizes that some things are simply not to be done.