The Stepmother in the Countryside

When the spring fields in the mountain hollow were just turning green, Lin Ling married into the Gu family.

She never hoped for a title. She only held on to the promise her husband had left her: to raise that child. No one knew the boy was the child of his old flame, and no one knew how her palm burned and trembled as Lin Ling clutched the crumpled adoption papers.

Over ten years in the countryside, she traded the money she earned gathering wild vegetables for his new textbooks, warmed his frozen feet with the last heat from the stove, and even pawned her own silver dowry bracelet just to cover his tuition. But the boy, Taotao, rebelled like a thorn in her side: tearing the shirt she had sewn, knocking over the hot porridge she had made, and shouting at her blue cotton jacket, “You’re not my real mother.”

Then came the day of the torrential rain. Lin Ling broke her leg tumbling down a hillside as she tried to retrieve his admission letter, which he had dropped by the field ridge. Even unconscious, she clutched the living expenses she had saved for him. With the mud-stained money in his hands, Taotao suddenly noticed the white hairs at her temples, like frost settling over the spring fields.

It turned out the countryside wind had not blown in vain. The warmth she had nurtured had already reached the boy’s heart.