When little Niannian was born, he let out one symbolic cry, then closed his eyes and went to sleep.
Newborns sleep constantly, and there was nothing wrong with that. But when he slept, his tiny face scrunched up into a frown. Most newborns already looked a bit like monkeys, and his scrunched-up face made him look even worse. Liang Chengmin glanced at him and felt a sudden pang of worry. She whispered to Luan Mingrui, "Do you think he'll grow up ugly?"
"Nonsense. How could my son be ugly?" Luan Mingrui looked at Niannian again. He really was rather ugly. Privately, Luan Mingrui felt a flicker of doubt too. What if he stayed this ugly? He checked himself in the mirror and decided there was nothing particularly wrong with his own face, and Liang Chengmin certainly didn't need checking. What a beautiful woman she was. In his heart, no one compared to her. Every other woman fell to the wayside.
Liang Chengmin lay weak in her hospital bed, and every time she turned her head she saw that wrinkled little face, which put her in a foul mood. The feeling hadn't faded even after they'd been discharged and gone home. Niannian slept right beside her, brow furrowed, looking like a little old man when he slept and fighting for his life when he nursed, grunting and straining with all the strength he had.
It was one night that Liang Chengmin discovered just how bad her son's temper really was. He was hungry, and Luan Mingrui got up to change his diaper before feeding him. Being a new father, he wasn't quick with a diaper yet, and by the time he'd finished, the baby had already started crying. His face turned red as he wailed, as if he might choke on his own screams, sounding for all the world like a pig being slaughtered. The two of them ended up sweating through the whole ordeal in the middle of the night. They tried pushing the bottle into his mouth, but he refused it, spitting it out and crying harder. Only once he'd cried himself exhausted did he finally take his milk.
While nursing him, Liang Chengmin said to Luan Mingrui, "That settles it. This child's temper is definitely a mix of both of ours."
Luan Mingrui wasn't convinced. "He's not even a month old and you can already tell his temper is bad? I was too slow. He got so hungry that's why he cried like that." He started reflecting on himself, even mentally running through how he could change a diaper faster.
During her postpartum recovery, both sets of grandparents came by during the day to help out. But Luan Mingrui wasn't at ease unless he could see everything with his own eyes, and he insisted on cooking every meal for her confinement period himself. Back then, the custom was to eat eggs at every meal during postpartum recovery, but Luan Mingrui didn't buy into it. "If you ate eggs every single day, wouldn't you throw up? Wouldn't you get sick of them?"
He didn't even want to eat them himself. Why should Liang Chengmin have to eat them every day?
So instead, he varied her meals constantly. The elders said she should protect her teeth during confinement and avoid anything hard, so he mashed shrimp into paste for shrimp ball soup, steamed fish after first removing the fishy smell, simmered crucian carp soup until the broth turned milky white, and braised chicken soup until the meat fell off the bone. Light on oil and salt, but always full of flavor.
Their home smelled so good that the neighbors could tell what was cooking just from the scent. Sitting around chatting, people would say Dr. Liang really had married the right man, look what she got to eat during her confinement compared to everyone else.
It was an era when most families couldn't even afford eggs every day during postpartum recovery, and yet their household had fish, meat, and shrimp without fail.
Luan Mingrui knew exactly how much all this cost, but he never once begrudged the expense. When he'd set out to marry her, he'd promised her a lifetime free of worry over shrimp and crab. He meant to keep that promise.
It wasn't just about feeding her well. He wanted her to be happy too. Throughout her pregnancy and even after giving birth, her temper had been terrible, but Luan Mingrui never once fought back. When she pushed him to the edge of his patience, he would put on his coat and go stand in the yard, calming himself down, and only go back inside once his anger had passed.
He had grown a little gentler.
Could marriage really change a person? Perhaps it could.
Luan Mingrui had once been the most stubborn man alive, a hard bone to crack no matter the occasion. Liang Chengmin was much the same. Two hard bones living together made for a lot of clashing at first, and both of them came away bruised.
But slowly, they both learned to give a little, and life grew sweeter.
After giving birth, Liang Chengmin gradually grew gentler too.
It didn't happen all at once. It happened bit by bit, so slowly that she herself never noticed. She still bickered with Luan Mingrui, but it wasn't real bickering anymore. Sometimes in the middle of an argument she'd end up laughing despite herself. She'd always had a bright, radiant face, and when she smiled it turned gentle, sometimes leaving Luan Mingrui staring. He confided to his friends, "Sometimes I feel like I've been given a whole new wife."
"Don't like it?" his friends teased. They remembered all too well how she used to run him ragged.
"No, I came out ahead." Luan Mingrui felt his life had become so smooth there wasn't a single rough patch left in it. With everything going so well, he carried himself with an air of quiet triumph. That contentment lit up that whole stretch of his life, and it stayed with him for the rest of it.
By the time the baby was a little over three months old, they were finally getting a few solid hours of sleep at night. Liang Chengmin curled into Luan Mingrui's arms, her cheek against his chest, feeling that life had started to feel easier.
Luan Mingrui studied her by the light of a small lamp and saw that her face had filled out more than it had during her pregnancy. All his careful feeding hadn't gone to waste. She'd finally returned to her old self. Pleased, he kissed her softly, and then again.
Liang Chengmin tilted her head back and kissed his chin, cupping his face in her hands, unable to stop looking at him.
"What's wrong?" Luan Mingrui asked, noticing her open collar, a little distracted.
Liang Chengmin didn't answer. Her tongue traced lightly along his jaw and came to rest at his throat, teeth grazing his Adam's apple as it moved beneath her mouth.
Then she went still, and suddenly pushed him down.
She pressed herself on top of him and looked at him.
Liang Chengmin knew, medically speaking, that a body needed time to recover after childbirth. Though she looked unconcerned on the surface, she'd secretly been practicing on her own, deep breaths, tightening, releasing. She believed in science, and yet for the first time she felt a flicker of nerves.
Luan Mingrui pulled her close, and in the dark they studied each other for a long while, a storm slowly building between them.
But both of them felt uneasy, because the baby was asleep right there beside them.
Luan Mingrui kissed her gently, their tongues meeting, and each found the other delicious.
"Not in this room," Liang Chengmin said. A colleague had once told a story at work, about how during intercourse when their child was three years old, right at the height of things, they'd heard the child call out "Mama," and sat up to find him sitting there staring at his tangled-up parents. Liang Chengmin had recognized the makings of a lifelong trauma in that story.
"All right." Luan Mingrui carried her off to another room, one that no one normally used. The bedding was cold, and when her body touched it she curled up against the chill. Luan Mingrui pressed down over her, drawing her in. She heard herself let out a small sound before he covered her mouth with his own.
"Don't wake Niannian," he said.
It had been so long that neither of them could fully hold back. All of Liang Chengmin's attention was focused on how much she'd changed, how much she'd healed, but she couldn't tell either way, only felt affection spilling over everywhere.
Luan Mingrui, competing with the baby for his share, found her sweet and lingered, reluctant to let go. Liang Chengmin felt embarrassed and yet couldn't help but enjoy it. When their tongues met again, she tasted herself on him.
Luan Mingrui was unusually, extraordinarily gentle.
He'd done his homework beforehand. After his cousin's wife had given birth to Luan Siyuan, their first time resuming intimacy hadn't gone well, and for nearly half a year afterward, she had been reluctant. His cousin had complained to him about it, wondering why it had turned out so difficult. Luan Mingrui had taken the lesson to heart, and so he was especially careful now.
Even though he was nearly desperate with wanting her, he still didn't dare be rough, and kept asking, "Is this all right? What about this?"
"Does it hurt?"
"Do you want me to stop?"
Liang Chengmin nearly cried. Luan Mingrui being this careful and cautious didn't seem like him at all. So she pushed him down instead.
What followed hit them like a storm, and left them both thoroughly satisfied.
Luan Mingrui felt he'd cleared a hurdle.
The next day, he was unusually gentle with the baby. Past the hundred-day mark, the child finally stopped looking like a little old man, or a little monkey. He'd actually started to look rather nice.
The two of them sat side by side watching him gnaw furiously at his own hand, grunting and fussing at himself, and they'd glance at each other and sigh.
"Mom, was Mingrui like this as a baby?" Liang Chengmin asked her mother-in-law. She'd seen her colleagues' children, and none of them were like Niannian. Other hundred-day-old babies would giggle the moment you teased them, but not Niannian. He'd give a token little laugh and then pull his smile back, as though everyone around him were being foolish. And right now, with no one bothering him at all, he was gnawing at his own hand until he'd worked himself into a fury.
"Every child is different. Mingrui didn't seem to get worked up like this when he was little."
"Then he takes after you," Luan Mingrui said, finally seizing his chance to pin the child's strange temperament on Liang Chengmin.
"Nonsense. My mother says I was very well-behaved as a baby, that people would carry me around, pinch my cheeks, kiss me, and I never got upset once. Not like Niannian, who won't let anyone touch him."
Niannian, indeed, would not let any of the neighbors touch him.
It wasn't fear. He simply refused to be touched, and if you touched him anyway, his little face would flush red with anger. What kind of temperament was that?
Maybe he'd grow out of it once he was older.
Liang Chengmin poured herself wholly into medicine and the baby, leaving Luan Mingrui a distant third in line.
Bit by bit, Luan Mingrui grew resentful. He started to feel jealous of his own son.
"You shouldn't be doing this."
"Doing what?"
"You're supposed to spend your whole life with me," Luan Mingrui reasoned with her. "You're supposed to think I'm the most important thing."
"Do you need someone watching you while you use the toilet? Do you need someone to feed you milk?"
"I don't need watching for that. Feeding, though... I wouldn't say no."
Liang Chengmin's face went red instantly. "Get out!"
Even as she told him to leave, she recognized his jealousy for what it was, and began coaxing him at night more often after that. They both enjoyed it, and always took it seriously. When the body felt good, the mood only improved further.
Under Luan Mingrui's care, Liang Chengmin had bloomed like a flower.
She had once been the most formidable woman in the small town, a young surgeon whom everyone pictured seriously examining patients in her clinic, rarely thinking of her as a woman at all. Now, walking through town, people would wonder who that beautiful woman was, only to realize, oh, that's Dr. Liang from the hospital. Dr. Liang had gotten married, to Luan Mingrui of the Luan family. Marrying the right man had only made her more beautiful.
Liang Chengmin sometimes overheard fragments of these conversations and pretended not to hear, hurrying past with a flush on her cheeks.
By the time the baby was nearly one, he could already toddle a few steps. Liang Chengmin noticed that whenever he fell while out walking, he wouldn't get up right away but would instead try to brush the dust off himself, and since he had no idea how to do that properly, he'd only grow more upset. He refused to walk through anything muddy. If anything got on his hands, it had to be washed off immediately. If his clothes got even slightly dirty, he'd tug at them himself and fuss until they were changed. And he didn't like broken toys.
Liang Chengmin began to realize her son might not be like the easygoing, likable children other families had. He was a little different. She talked it over with Luan Mingrui at length, and they agreed never to criticize him for these strict habits of his, to guide him gently, but never to force him.
Their efforts made only the smallest difference.
Niannian's first real fight came when he was a little past three. He'd been playing with other children, and when one of them grabbed his toy, he suddenly struck out. Children's fights were usually harmless, a scratch here, a shove there, nothing that really hurt anyone. But Niannian climbed on top of the other child and clawed at his face, terrifying Liang Chengmin. She rushed over and pulled her furious son away by force, telling the other parent, "Please teach your child not to grab other people's toys. Mine doesn't hold back."
Liang Chengmin was frightened by what she'd seen. That night, once the baby was asleep, she told Luan Mingrui what had happened. Luan Mingrui's mouth twitched, but he said nothing. He didn't dare say anything, since this trait really had come from him. He'd loved fighting since he was a boy, and people in the small town used to warn their own children to stay away from Luan Mingrui, not to provoke him. Luan Mingrui thought a boy being a little combative was only natural. Liang Chengmin didn't see it that way. Their son's hand was too vicious for that, more like he was trying to prove something through violence.
She began spending her spare time reading books on child psychology and behavior, studying her son's patterns systematically. She came to understand that her child showed signs of both violent tendencies and obsessive-compulsive behavior.
How much care would it take to raise a child like this? Liang Chengmin knew, and so did Luan Mingrui. The two of them poured enormous effort into it.
By the late 1980s, Luan Mingrui wanted to go to America. Many distant relatives of the Luan family had emigrated there years before, and after decades of silence, contact had gradually been reestablished in recent years. He discussed it with Liang Chengmin, telling her that if she didn't want to go, he wouldn't go either. Liang Chengmin didn't object. She wanted to continue her studies in America and pursue medical research. So the two of them threw themselves into studying day and night, language, customs, habits, bringing Luan Nian along to learn as well.
On the day they left the country, Liang Chengmin said to Luan Mingrui, "I'm going to come back. I want to do proper medical research, to contribute something to our country and to humanity."
"Then I'll just have to work hard and earn money, so I can support your research."
They began a new life together, but neither ever gave up on the other. The early days were hard, but every night they lay together and talked through the day, encouraging each other. Slowly, things grew easier. Liang Chengmin continued her studies and eventually joined a research team, formally beginning her work in medical research.
Luan Mingrui faced a world full of temptations, but he never wavered.
In their entire lives, they had fallen in love only once, loved only one person, and grown old together with that same person.
Neither of them ever felt it was anything to regret.