His father-in-law passed on an evening.
Ye Chen and Liu Ruping were watching TV in the living room. He couldn't remember what was on—only that the light outside the window had shifted from orange to gray, and night was coming.
Liu Ruping stood up suddenly.
"Why hasn't Dad come out yet?" She glanced at the closed door at the end of the hallway. "He said he was going to nap this afternoon. That was hours ago."
Ye Chen looked at the clock. It had been a long time.
Liu Ruping walked over and knocked twice. No answer. She knocked again, louder. Still nothing.
She pushed the door open.
Ye Chen was still sitting in the living room. He saw her back go rigid—her whole body frozen in the doorway, like someone had hit pause.
Then she made a sound.
Not a scream. Something that came from deep in her throat, like a string pulled to its limit, about to snap.
"Chen——"
He ran.
Her father was lying in bed the same way he always slept—on his side, one hand resting near the pillow, blanket pulled to his chest. But his color was wrong. Not the relaxed stillness of sleep. Something Ye Chen had never seen before. A quiet that didn't belong to the living.
His mind went blank except for one thought: call.
He grabbed his phone. His fingers missed the numbers twice before he got it right. Ambulance. Then he snatched his keys, pulled Liu Ruping by the hand, and ran.
By the time the ambulance arrived, Liu Ruping had cried herself past words. She was crouched in the doorway, both hands wrapped around her own head, folded into herself. Ye Chen pulled her up, got her into the car, and followed the ambulance to the hospital.
He ran every red light on the way.
He couldn't say how many. He only remembered the red and blue lights strobing across the windshield, and Liu Ruping in the passenger seat, both hands clenched around her seatbelt, knuckles white, tears running silently down her face.
He called her older brother and older sister while he drove.
Her sister arrived first. She came running into the emergency room with one shoe missing, bare foot on the hospital floor.
During the resuscitation, the monitor still showed a faint pulse. Weak—like a thread about to break, rising and falling, each interval a little longer than the last.
The doctor said, "There are still vital signs, but they're very faint. Is the whole family here?"
Liu Ruping shook her head.
She knew. She knew who hadn't arrived yet—her brother. The family had always leaned toward the son. Her father's heart had never fully let go of that disappointing boy.
She called again. Once, twice, three times. Her brother's phone rang for a long time before he picked up. He said, "I'm on my way," and hung up.
They waited.
Time moved slowly in the emergency room. The pulse on the monitor grew weaker with each beat, as if every flicker was asking: Is he here yet? Is he here yet?
Liu Ruping stood beside the bed, holding her father's hand, saying over and over: "Dad, just a little longer. Brother's almost here. Hold on."
Ye Chen stood behind her. There was nothing he could do. He just stood there.
More than an hour later, her brother finally appeared.
He came running into the emergency room with mud on his shoes and his clothes wrinkled, like he'd crawled through something to get there. He threw himself to his knees at the bedside.
"Dad——"
One word. Slammed out of his chest.
And then—as if on cue—the line on the monitor jumped one last time, and went flat.
A long, unbroken tone. Like a road reaching its end.
People say that the dying hold on until their hearts are at peace. Her father had been waiting for that one word. When it came, he let go.
His heart was at rest.
Liu Ruping didn't cry. She stood beside the bed, holding her father's hand as it began to cool, eyes wide open, dry. Her expression was empty—like a room stripped of all its furniture.
Ye Chen moved to her side and placed his hand on her shoulder. It was rigid. Like stone.
The days that followed were consumed by funeral arrangements.
When it was over, Ye Chen wanted to take Liu Ruping out for some air.
She hadn't eaten properly in days. Her face had thinned, dark circles carved deep beneath her eyes, lips cracked and dry. He'd made congee and set it in front of her. She took two bites and put it down.
"Let's go for a drive," he said. "Nowhere specific. Just get out of the house."
She nodded.
They got in the car. He started the engine. Before he'd even pulled out of the alley, his phone rang.
It was his family.
He answered. The voice on the other end was urgent, and said only one thing:
"Come home. Grandpa's gone."
Ye Chen sat in the driver's seat, phone in hand, unable to move.
Liu Ruping read his face. She didn't need to ask. She reached over, took the phone from him, set it on the center console, and said quietly, "Turn around. Let's go home."
Another bolt from the blue.
Again.
He turned the car around. All the way back, his hands gripped the steering wheel, knuckles white—the same way Liu Ruping had gripped her seatbelt in the car behind the ambulance.
Another funeral. Another altar, white cloth, incense, kneeling, sutras. Everything he had just done, done again.
Two funerals, back to back.
As if the universe had decided one blow wasn't enough and needed to throw another.
When both funerals were behind them, the house went quiet.
Not peaceful quiet. Empty quiet. Like a building that had lost two of its load-bearing walls—still standing, but you knew it could come down at any moment.
Ye Chen and Liu Ruping didn't talk much. Not because they didn't want to. Because there was nothing left to say. Everything that could be said had been said. Everything that couldn't be said wouldn't help anyway.
He started taking her out for drives. No destination—just the road. Country lanes through fields and past temples, roads they'd traveled together on better days. Windows down, wind coming through, minds empty.
One afternoon they were on a rural highway.
A small pickup truck was parked on the shoulder, its bed stacked with wire cages holding chicks and piglets. A middle-aged man sat on the tailgate with a cigarette in his mouth, next to a cardboard sign written in marker: CHICKS AND PIGLETS — CHEAP.
Liu Ruping saw it.
"Pull over," she said.
He pulled over. She got out, walked to the truck, and crouched down to look at the cages. The chicks were packed together, chirping. There were several piglets—all miniature pigs, small and pink, with black spots on their skin.
She looked them over, then stopped.
Her gaze settled on one piglet in particular.
It was different from the others. On top of its head was a tuft of fur—not black, but gold. And the gold fur had grown into a shape. Like an ingot.
"Look at this one," Liu Ruping said, turning back to Ye Chen, eyes lit up. "It has an ingot on its head."
He crouched down beside her. She was right. That tuft of gold fur was shaped exactly like the gold ingots used in offerings during the New Year—round, full, sitting right in the center of the piglet's head.
The piglet looked up at them, gave a short grunt, then buried its snout under the belly of the piglet next to it and went back to sleep.
Liu Ruping laughed.
It was the first time Ye Chen had seen her laugh since her father died.
"We're buying it," she said. No room for argument.
He looked at her. There was light in her eyes. Light he hadn't seen in a long time.
"Okay."
They bought the piglet. Liu Ruping held it in her arms on the way back to the car. It rooted around in her lap, wet snout nuzzling against her arm.
"What's its name?" Ye Chen asked.
She looked down at that little gold tuft on its head, and without hesitating said:
"Yuanbao."
Yuanbao's arrival was like a single blade of grass pushing up through rubble.
Not a rare flower. Just grass. But it was green, and alive, and growing. In a season when everything seemed to be leaving, Yuanbao was the only new life that had come.
Liu Ruping raised Yuanbao like a child.
Fed it well—not pellets, but food she cooked herself. Rice porridge with sweet potato, blanched greens chopped fine and mixed into rice, sometimes fruit. Yuanbao ate fast, snout working furiously, and when it was done it would look up at her with a grain of rice stuck to its nose.
She bought it clothes. Yes, clothes. She found outfits for pet pigs online and ordered several. One was a blue-and-white striped T-shirt. When Yuanbao wore it, all four stubby legs stuck out from the bottom, waddling with every step. The first time Ye Chen saw it, he stood in the doorway and laughed for a long time.
"What's so funny?" Liu Ruping asked.
"It looks like a zucchini wearing a shirt."
She shot him a look, but the corners of her mouth were turned up.
Yuanbao's presence lifted Liu Ruping's mood considerably. Her body seemed to follow—she was eating again, going outside again, smiling again.
Every evening when Ye Chen got home from work, the first thing he did was give Yuanbao a bath.
At first, Yuanbao screamed through every bath. High-pitched, ear-splitting—like it was being murdered. The whole alley could hear it. The neighbor from next door leaned over the fence one day and asked, "What are you people doing over there?"
"Bathing a pig," Ye Chen said.
The neighbor's expression was something to behold.
But after a few rounds, Yuanbao got used to it. More than used to it—it started cooperating. When Ye Chen poured water over it, Yuanbao would turn itself around to let the water hit its back. When he scrubbed its belly, it would splay all four legs out and lie there with the air of something being pampered. After the towel-dry, it would shake itself off and trot to the living room floor to roll around.
Yuanbao's most maddening habit was stealing food.
It figured out how to open the refrigerator.
Nobody taught it. It taught itself. It would work its snout under the bottom edge of the door, angle it just right, and the door would swing open. Then it would stick its head in and eat whatever it found. One evening Ye Chen came home to find the refrigerator wide open, a half-eaten apple on the floor, a torn bag of bread, and an overturned carton of milk. Yuanbao was sitting in the puddle of milk, snout smeared white, looking up at him with an expression of complete innocence.
Infuriating. Also hilarious.
He tried tying a rope around the refrigerator door. Yuanbao nosed it loose. He switched to a clip. Yuanbao spent two days on it and got that open too. He finally bought a child-safety latch, and that, at last, held.
When Yuanbao got a little older, it developed an unhealthy fixation on the couch.
The reason was simple enough. It was in heat.
It would climb onto the couch and do things that were deeply awkward to witness. Liu Ruping would shout "Yuanbao!" and haul it off. It would be back on the couch before she turned around.
Sometimes Ye Chen lost his patience and grabbed a bamboo stick to discipline it. But Yuanbao was exactly as fast as the stories said—it bounced across the couch from one end to the other, launched itself onto the coffee table, hit the floor, looped around the dining table, and was back on the couch. Fluid as a stunt performer. Completely uncatchable.
Ye Chen chased it three laps around the living room before collapsing on the floor, out of breath. Yuanbao stood at the far end of the couch, head tilted, and gave a short snort. The look on its face said: *That all you got?*
Liu Ruping laughed until her stomach hurt.
At night, Ye Chen would lay a thick pad outside the bedroom door for Yuanbao to sleep on—an old quilt folded over, soft and wide. Yuanbao would root around on it, find a comfortable position, and close its eyes.
But it never stayed there long.
*Thump. Thump. Thump.*
Yuanbao, knocking on the door with its snout.
Ye Chen would lie in bed with his eyes closed, pretending not to hear.
*Thump. Thump. Thump.*
Louder.
Liu Ruping would nudge him. "It wants in."
"It can sleep outside."
*Thump thump thump thump thump——*
Rapid-fire, like a drum.
Ye Chen sighed, got up, and opened the door. Yuanbao stood there, looking up at him, snout glistening. It grunted once, then walked past him into the room with great dignity, found a spot near the door, and lay down.
It was hot. It wanted the air conditioning.
Yuanbao sprawled on the cool floor, all four legs spread wide, belly flat against the tile, snout pointed toward the AC vent. Within two minutes it was asleep. Deeply asleep—breathing slow and heavy, a thread of drool pooling on the floor beneath its mouth.
Ye Chen looked at it, shook his head, closed the door, and got back into bed.
Liu Ruping already had her eyes closed, but her mouth was curved.
"You say every time you won't let it in," she said, voice warm with amusement. "You open the door every time."
"It's too loud."
"You're just soft."
Ye Chen didn't answer. He lay down and listened to Yuanbao's breathing and Liu Ruping's breathing weaving together—one heavy, one light, one slow, one steady. Two rhythms braided into one.
Those nights with Yuanbao were quiet.
Not the empty kind of quiet. The full kind.
With Yuanbao around, the days slowly warmed back up.
Then one evening, not long after, Ye Chen came home from work.
Liu Ruping was standing in the entryway waiting for him. She never waited in the entryway—usually she was on the couch or in the kitchen. But that evening she was standing right there, holding something in her hand, her expression caught between wanting to smile and not daring to, wanting to cry and refusing to.
She held it out to him.
A pregnancy test. Two lines.
Ye Chen looked at those two lines, and something surged in his chest. But the surge was almost immediately pressed down by something else—fear.
What if it didn't hold?
He'd been through this too many times. Two lines, hope, then loss. The cycle was a trap. Every time it lifted them up and then let go. He didn't trust high places anymore.
So he didn't let himself react. He took the test, looked at it, and set it on the table.
"Don't tell anyone yet," he said. "Wait until it's stable."
Liu Ruping nodded. She was scared too.
And so they moved through the days carefully, like carrying a full glass of water down an uneven road, terrified of spilling. Liu Ruping avoided sudden movements, didn't lift anything heavy, didn't run. Every evening when Ye Chen got home, the first thing he did was read her face—if she looked normal, he exhaled; if she so much as furrowed her brow, his heart climbed into his throat.
One month.
Two months.
Three months.
Her belly grew a little more each day.
At three months, they finally told the family. But they still didn't let themselves hope too deeply. They knew by now that the higher you let yourself climb, the farther you fell.
For the first prenatal appointment, the two of them walked into the exam room knowing almost nothing.
The doctor they met that day was the same one who would later deliver the baby—a blunt-spoken, middle-aged man who somehow made you feel safe anyway. He moved the ultrasound probe across Liu Ruping's belly, and a blurry image appeared on the screen.
"That's the head," he said, pointing to a round shape. "That's the body. Heartbeat is normal."
On the screen, a tiny point of light was blinking. Fast and steady, like a star pulsing.
That was the heartbeat.
Ye Chen stared at that light, and something lodged in his throat. He wanted to speak. He couldn't. He just stood there, watching that small blinking point for a long time.
Liu Ruping lay on the exam table and turned her head to look at him. Her eyes were wet, but she was smiling.
"See," she said. "This one's real."
As her belly grew, the shape of their days shifted around it.
Whatever Liu Ruping wanted to eat, Ye Chen took her to get it or brought it home. Her tastes had changed—things she'd never liked before suddenly sounded good; things she'd always loved now made her nauseous at the smell. One night at two in the morning she said she wanted sour plums. He put on his sandals, drove out, and checked three convenience stores before he found them.
When he got back, she was asleep.
He left the plums on the nightstand. In the morning she woke up and saw them.
"Who bought these?"
"You asked for them last night."
"Did I?"
"You did."
She opened the bag and ate one, chewed twice, and frowned. "They're not even good."
Ye Chen looked at her and said nothing.
But the question of Yuanbao was beginning to press on them.
Liu Ruping's belly was getting bigger, her movements more restricted. Yuanbao didn't understand any of this. It kept on as it always had—running through the house, jumping on the couch, nosing open the refrigerator, knocking on the bedroom door at night to get at the air conditioning. One afternoon it came tearing around a corner and nearly ran straight into Liu Ruping's stomach. Ye Chen's blood went cold.
The two of them began to talk about something they'd been avoiding.
Something neither of them wanted to face.
That day, Ye Chen drove while Liu Ruping sat in the passenger seat and Yuanbao rode in the back.
They headed into the hills. The road wound upward through bamboo groves, and when the wind moved through them the leaves rustled like someone whispering.
The car stopped at the edge of a bamboo grove.
Ye Chen got out and opened the rear door. Yuanbao jumped down, pressed its snout to the ground, sniffed, then looked around. It had never been here before, but it wasn't afraid. Its little tail flicked back and forth, and then it started rooting through the grass, looking for something good.
Liu Ruping climbed out slowly, one hand on her belly, one hand on the door. She walked over to Yuanbao and crouched down—slowly, the way her belly required now, not the easy drop she used to manage.
Ye Chen crouched beside her.
He began to undo Yuanbao's harness. One buckle at a time, unhurried. The straps slid free and fell into the grass.
Yuanbao felt the weight leave its body. It shook itself, then looked up at Ye Chen.
Ye Chen reached out and touched its head. He found that tuft of gold fur—the ingot-shaped mark. It was soft, catching the light in a faint shimmer.
When he spoke, his voice was quiet. The way you'd speak to a small child.
"The baby's almost here," he said. "We can't take care of you anymore."
Yuanbao tilted its head and looked at him, nose twitching.
"You're free now," he said. "Go live your own life."
Liu Ruping reached out and touched Yuanbao's head too. Her hand was trembling, but her voice was steady.
"Be good," she said. "Go on."
Yuanbao stood there for a moment, looking at them both. Then it turned and walked a few steps toward the bamboo grove.
It stopped.
Then it ran. Its four short legs hit the grass and it picked up speed, charging toward the edge of the grove.
Just as it reached the tree line, Yuanbao looked back.
It stopped at the entrance to the bamboo grove, turned around, and looked at Ye Chen and Liu Ruping.
Then it called out.
Not the usual snuffling grunt. Something that came from deep in its chest—low, short, and clear.
After that sound, Yuanbao did something.
Its front legs bent. Its knees touched the ground. Its head dipped down.
A bow.
Like a child who knew how to say goodbye properly.
In that moment, Ye Chen's eyes burned. He clenched his jaw and held himself still. Liu Ruping was already crying, both hands pressed over her mouth, tears slipping through her fingers.
Yuanbao rose, turned, and ran into the bamboo grove.
The leaves rustled for a moment, then went quiet.
It was gone. Off to live its own life.
Ye Chen and Liu Ruping stood at the edge of the grove, watching the place where Yuanbao had disappeared, for a long time. Wind came through the bamboo, carrying the smell of earth and green things.
Liu Ruping pressed her face into Ye Chen's shoulder. Her shoulders shook, but she made no sound.
Ye Chen took her hand.
"Let's go," he said.
They walked back to the car hand in hand, got in, and closed the doors.
He started the engine. The car moved slowly down the mountain road, and in the rearview mirror the bamboo grove grew smaller and smaller, until it disappeared around a bend.
Back home, they sat in the bedroom with the TV on.
Neither of them watched it.
The room was missing a sound. No snout rooting along the floor. No slow, heavy breathing. No thumping on the door at midnight. The quiet was wrong.
Liu Ruping sat on the edge of the bed, both hands resting on her belly, eyes on the doorway—the spot where Yuanbao used to sleep. The pad was still there. There was a depression in it, shaped like a small body pressed into the fabric.
Ye Chen looked at her back and knew what she was thinking.
After a long silence, he spoke.
"Yuanbao wants us to be okay too," he said. "So we have to keep moving forward."
Liu Ruping didn't turn around.
He added, "Maybe someday we'll see each other again."
Her shoulder moved. Then she turned, eyes red, no more tears.
"Yeah," she said.
They turned the lights off early that night. Ye Chen lay in the dark and listened to Liu Ruping breathing. Just one set of breaths now. Before, there had been two—one heavy, one light. Now there was only one.
He closed his eyes and said something to Yuanbao in his heart.
*Be good.*
Liu Ruping held on, and made it to eight months.
That evening, Ye Chen came home from work.
He knew something was wrong the moment he walked in. Liu Ruping was sitting on the couch, both hands gripping the armrests, face drained of color, a fine sheen of sweat on her forehead. When she saw him, her lips moved, but nothing came out.
"What's wrong?" He crossed the room to her.
"Pain," she said, voice barely there. "Different from before."
He didn't ask anything else. He grabbed his keys, helped her up, got her to the car, and drove straight to the hospital.
Emergency room.
The doctor examined her and his expression changed.
"We need to do a C-section," he said. "Now."
Ye Chen stood at the nurses' station. A surgical consent form was on the counter in front of him. A nurse held out a pen.
*In the event of a life-threatening emergency during surgery, prioritize— Mother / Baby.*
He'd heard this question in a hundred TV dramas. But when it was actually in front of him, he understood that every one of those dramas had gotten it wrong. There was no hesitation. No anguish. No dramatic pause.
"Mother."
Two syllables. He said it so fast the nurse blinked.
He signed his name. The pen scratched across the paper like a blade cutting through something.
Dr. Chen had been called at home and was already on his way. The same blunt, steady man from the prenatal appointments. He came down the hallway in his scrubs, spotted Ye Chen, clapped him once on the shoulder, said nothing, and pushed through the doors into the operating room.
Ye Chen sat in the hallway outside.
The hallway was long. The lights were white, bleaching everything colorless. He sat in a plastic chair with his hands clasped over his knees, thumbs working back and forth across his knuckles.
He didn't know how long he sat there.
Maybe half an hour. Maybe an hour. Time didn't move in that hallway. It pooled around him and he sat in it, unable to do anything at all.
Then the operating room doors opened.
A nurse wheeled out a small cart. On it was a clear incubator, and inside the incubator lay a very small baby.
Very small. Small enough that Ye Chen's mind couldn't quite process it as a person—it looked like a newborn animal. Skin red and wrinkled, limbs thin as twigs. But it—he—was moving. Fingers moving, toes moving, mouth opening and closing, releasing a thin, high cry like a kitten.
Mother and baby were both okay.
Dr. Chen came out of the operating room, pulled down his mask, and looked at Ye Chen. "Premature, but everything is normal. Mom is fine. Baby is fine."
Ye Chen stood in the hallway, looking at that small life in the incubator, and his legs gave out. He caught himself against the wall and slowly sank down, crouching on the floor, both hands over his face.
He didn't cry. But his hands were shaking. His whole body was shaking.
A little while later, Liu Ruping was wheeled out. The anesthesia hadn't fully worn off—her eyes were half-open, her lips colorless. But when she saw Ye Chen, the corner of her mouth moved.
"Where's the baby?" she asked, her voice coming from somewhere far away.
"Right here." He took her hand. "He's doing well. We're both doing well."
She closed her eyes. The curve at the corner of her mouth stayed.
When the baby came home, Ye Chen and Liu Ruping finally let themselves breathe.
That small life lay in the crib, eating and sleeping, sleeping and eating, crying now and then in a thin little voice like a kitten. Liu Ruping would pick him up and hold him against her chest, patting his back gently. His face pressed against her collarbone, his mouth opening and closing, and he would go quiet.
Ye Chen stood nearby and watched, and thought about many things.
He thought about his father-in-law. When he was still alive, they had wanted a child so badly, and couldn't hold onto one. He died, and the following year the child came. Strange timing. Strange enough that Ye Chen didn't know whether to feel glad or sad.
He thought: maybe this child was heaven taking pity on them. A gift.
Compensation. Comfort. After all the losing, something that finally stayed.
The baby's arrival brought everyone together. Ye Chen's parents decided to retire and move in to help. The house filled up suddenly—the baby's cries, his mother cooking in the kitchen, his father watching TV in the living room, Liu Ruping and her mother-in-law debating what the baby should eat.
Those sounds filled the rooms.
They filled the corners that had gone hollow after her father left, after his grandfather left, after Yuanbao left.
*He thought the worst of it was behind them.* *He thought from here on out, things would only get better.*
*He didn't know that fate never waits for you to be ready.* *It just knocks again when you think you're finally safe.*