Emotional Romance: Two Little Birds Leaning On Each Other
She wasn’t pretty at all; her eyes were small, her skin dark, and her face full of pimples. She had been living in this city for three years. She was just a nurse at a small hospital, earning only 1500 yuan a month. In this city, that amount was just enough for food and rent. Thus, she hadn’t saved a penny in these three years.
One day, she suddenly received a call from her father, who needed to come to the city for medical treatment. Her father had been suffering from back pain for years, and the doctor suspected it might be a kidney issue. He wanted to come to the city’s big hospital for a diagnosis.
She knew her father wouldn’t bring much money. His annual earnings from farming barely covered the living expenses for a year. The family had no savings, and her father couldn’t borrow much from the village.
She had never told her father how much she earned in the city. Whenever she went home, she always said she was doing well in the city and wasn’t short of money.
Being a nurse, she knew how much it would cost for a patient to be hospitalized in this city. But when she searched every corner of her rented room and every pocket of her clothes, she only found over 400 yuan. She thought of every friend and colleague she knew, whether close or not, and realized that, like her father, she also had no one to borrow money from in this city.
It wasn’t that she had bad relationships with people, but the amount of money she needed to borrow was too large. With her low salary and unremarkable status as a nurse, others might lend her three or five hundred yuan, but who would lend her 10,000 yuan all at once?
Tears blurred her vision as she thought of him.
He was from her hometown, someone she had met on the train during a trip home for the New Year. He was a welder working at a shipyard. After their first meeting, he had kept in touch with her, even organizing a hometown gathering to get closer to her.
At that hometown gathering, she deliberately drank too much, not wanting to leave a good impression on him. However, she was still a little touched by his warm words.
After the gathering, he took a taxi to send her home. Worried about the dark and unsafe stairway, he escorted her all the way to her apartment, helped her unlock the door, boiled water, made tea, and watched her drink a whole cup before closing the door and leaving. During all this, he hadn’t taken advantage of the situation to touch her inappropriately, which touched her a little.
The next morning, she woke up with a headache and didn’t feel like cooking. As she got dressed for work, she found a big bag of beef jerky on the table, her favorite snack. She knew it was from him. As she tore the jerky piece by piece and ate it, she realized he was an honest, gentle, and considerate man.
But he wasn’t the man she wanted to marry. They were both from the countryside. If she married him, both families would remain rooted in rural poverty. How many generations would it take to shake off the hardship and become city dwellers?
They continued their plain interaction, but she was determined not to accept his dinner invitations or go shopping or to the park with him.
Most of the time, they would chat on the phone. Each time, he patiently listened to her endless complaints, a ritual that had lasted for three years.
She went to the train station with him to pick up her father. When her father saw him, a smile appeared on his thin face. From her father’s eyes, she knew he mistook him for her “boyfriend.” She didn’t want to correct this misunderstanding, letting her father follow him to the hospital. They both accompanied her father through registration, seeing the doctor, and then the tests of blood, urine, and X-rays.
After this exhausting process, they were relieved to learn that her father had no major issues, just pyelonephritis. The doctor prescribed some medication, and her father could go home.
After seeing her father off at the train station, she didn’t let him take a taxi. They squeezed together on a crowded bus. Watching the city flash by through the window, she suddenly burst into tears.
He wiped her tears away, and she didn’t pull back. She said, “It will take some time to repay the 20,000 yuan. Thank you. You are the only one in this city who would lend me money.”
His eyes reddened as well. He said, “I want you to help me deposit that money in the bank, and keep the passbook with you. I’m afraid of losing it. Would you do that for me?”
She knew what he meant by this. She nodded and agreed to his request.
They both smiled through their tears.
Her father’s illness made her realize that even though she lived in this city, she was just a small bird wandering on the fringes. She was insignificant and couldn’t integrate into the city life she longed for. In this world, aside from him, who also came from the countryside, perhaps no one else would be willing to lend her 10,000 yuan and then give her 20,000 yuan. No one else would patiently be her “garbage can,” listening to her complaints for three years.
He was also a small bird wandering on the fringes of the city. Two little birds leaning on each other could find warmth.
Thank you for reading! ” Sitestorys “
