Chapter 295: The Parenting Manual (Part 1)

I stood in the kitchen staring at the bottle warmer as it heated up. He Yu’s giggles as he pulled funny faces with toys out in the courtyard were still echoing in my ears, and I suddenly felt that my recent decision had been ridiculously rash.

Leaning against the counter, I counted on my fingers. It hadn’t even been half a month, yet the improved spirits and daily routine I had worked so hard to rebuild had all been dealt a severe blow.

My insomnia was cured, but the new problem seemed even worse!

It all started on a bitterly cold winter day. We didn’t have many guests, and as it got colder, I became increasingly reluctant to move. I spent whole days cooped up indoors with the heater blasting, playing on my phone. Finally, after I managed to give myself a heat-induced cold^[1], He Yu boldly declared he would take me up the mountain for early morning exercise.

That day, the guy dragged me out of bed at four-thirty in the morning. I washed up in a daze, pulled on a down jacket, wrapped a scarf around my neck, and let him lead me by the hand along the morning exercise trail, which was usually full of elderly folks, all the way up the mountain.

We had set out too early. It was barely five o’clock when we reached the foot of the mountain, and the local seniors hadn’t even left their houses yet. I followed behind He Yu, yawning with every step.

A sweet, clean scent hung in the mountain air. It had snowed a few days prior; while the snow down in the county seat had already been cleared, the mountain was different. It was more wild here, and a thin layer of leftover snow still blanketed the withered yellow leaves everywhere.

Halfway up the mountain, I stopped. I had never been awake this early before, so I stood there rubbing my face to shake off the sleepiness. When I looked up, though, I caught sight of a strange bundle sitting amid the misty woods and grass. Thinking my eyes were playing tricks on me, I rubbed them and squinted for a better look.

It was something wrapped in a white cloth, resting atop a pile of fallen dry branches. The cloth looked a bit old and had a pattern of polka dots.

I quickly called for He Yu to stop.

“What’s wrong?” He Yu looked back at me.

“Wait a second, there’s something over there.” Without another word, I swung my arms and trudged through the crunching twigs and leaves toward that bundle of patterned cloth.

He Yu clicked his tongue. “Is your professional instinct kicking in again? This is just a tiny hill, and it’s solid earth. Even if there are graves, they’d just be abandoned plots from decades ago. Let’s not get our hopes up!”

I ignored him. Brushing aside the few leaves placed over it in a flimsy attempt at concealment, I touched the bundle. The instant my hand made contact, I knew something was off. There was something soft inside, and damn it, it was still radiating warmth!

I had climbed this mountain often as a child. It was part of the foothills of the Tongbai and Funiu ranges^[2], neither high nor deep. The paths were well-maintained, and there were no strange, towering ancient trees.

When I was little, I often heard my family say that you shouldn’t bring children up the mountain before dawn. The reason was that abandoned infants often appeared in the wilderness up here; babies only a few months old would freeze to death in the woods in no time. Children were naturally curious, and my elders feared that seeing a dead baby might scare the soul right out of them.

Of course, I wasn’t afraid of such things anymore. Whether breathing or not, dead and moving, or half-dead, I had seen basically everything, no matter how disgusting. So I just pulled open a gap in the white swaddling cloth.

With just a single glance, I immediately scooped the child up and instinctively called out to He Yu, “Hurry over and help!”

He Yu was startled, thinking something had happened to me. He scrambled down from the mountain path, his boots sliding over dry leaves. I freed a hand to steady him. He looked at the bundle in my arms and asked, “What? What is that?”

I used my fingers to part the cloth slightly for him to see. He instantly let out a loud cry of surprise.

I slapped him right away. “Can you stop being so jumpy?”

He Yu covered his mouth, unzipped his down jacket to shield the bundle, and leaned in curiously to look again. He clicked his tongue. “What kind of heartless parents would leave a child here? It’s so, so, so cold out, and they used white cloth of all things. Isn’t that intentionally making it hard to see? If we hadn’t spotted it, wouldn’t the baby have frozen to death right here? What a sin!”

Seeing him get more and more worked up, I quickly cut him off. “Enough, stop complaining. It’s freezing out here. Let’s get down the mountain and take the baby to the police station.”

“Right, right! Hurry, hurry!”

The two of us took turns taking off our down jackets to wrap the abandoned infant, rushing down the mountain in a hurry. By the time we returned to the old house, we were so cold we sat in the room rubbing our hands together. Even the air conditioner blowing hot air didn’t seem to be doing much.

Afterward, we returned to our normal lives, but this was the first time I had ever done such a good deed, and the first time I had ever dealt with such a tiny child. I couldn’t help but feel worried. Mainly, because her parents had abandoned her in such a cold, snowy forest, the doctors at the hospital said they weren’t sure if she would pull through.

This whole thing had gotten to me a bit.

I made inquiries through various channels and got in touch with the director of the orphanage that had taken her in. I picked a suitable time to visit the hospital. The director was a woman in her fifties. We were all from the same county; in a place like this, everyone knows everyone. She knew what my family did for a living, and I knew how difficult it was for her to run that orphanage.

I learned that the baby girl He Yu and I had rescued was premature. She was still in an incubator, and the daily expenses were draining funds like water. Even with subsidies, this was a small county after all, and the director was struggling to keep up. Furthermore, the orphanage didn’t have specialized nursing staff to care for a child less than two months old.

As we sat in the hallway, she indirectly expressed her desire for my help. Every word she spoke was tearful as she explained that if all else failed, she would have to resort to crowdfunding. With the New Year right around the corner, that would surely cause a lot of trouble.

In the end, the director left the hospital with a beaming smile before I did. I stood in the snow, hands in my pockets, watching her receding figure with a soft sigh. Then, with a cigarette dangling from my mouth, I walked over to the base of a wall and pulled out my phone to check the balances on my two bank cards.

Next, I dialed He Yu’s number, held the phone slightly away from my ear, and told him what had happened.

A moment later, the sound of pots and pans crashing to the floor came echoing through the receiver.

“What! You want to adopt?!”

I paid for all the follow-up medical expenses in one go. On the way back, my head was spinning, and both of my pockets felt as if the wind were blowing right through them.

He Yu was so furious that he paced around the courtyard brandishing a large cooking ladle, swearing at me. “You fucking never discuss anything with me beforehand! You just do whatever pops into your head!”

“Besides, have you ever raised a kid? This isn’t a damn kitten or puppy! You just up and decided to adopt her, so are the two of us supposed to spend the rest of our lives revolving around this little brat? Give me back my free life!”

I huddled on the sofa in the main room with my hoodie pulled over my head, aimlessly flipping through channels with the remote.

I waited for him to finish before stammering my rebuttal. “I… I admit I acted a bit impulsively, but… but think about it. That baby is barely the size of a palm. Do you really think she’d survive the year in that run-down orphanage? We saved her together, didn’t we? I had to save her!”

“So what? She’ll survive just because you’re the one raising her? Have you ever taken care of a kid? This is an infant! Do you have any experience at all?”

He Yu’s rapid-fire questions left me completely stunned.

“Well… do you have experience?” I stammered on.

He Yu marched into the room holding the ladle and pointed it right at my head. “I could manage one that can run and jump, but you bring back one that’s only a few months old? I’m telling you, I’m useless here! Let’s see how you clean up this mess.”

Realizing the severity of the situation, I sat up straight, preparing to butter him up with a few sweet words, but He Yu shoved me right back down. “It’s no use. Trying to act cute won’t work this time. You made this mess, so deal with it yourself.”

With that, he headed back to the kitchen, ladle in hand.

I slumped back onto the sofa, curling up again as I used my phone to look up information on infants. Fine, I thought. If he won’t help, he won’t. It’s just raising a child; how hard could it be?