My name is Lin Xiaoshu. My parents died when I was five, my older brother was disabled, and our home was bare of everything. Just as I was nearing utter desperation, twenty-year-old Liu Hui came to our house alone through wind and snow. She asked for no bride price and brought no dowry. In a soft voice, she made me a promise: "Don't be afraid, Xiaoshu. I'll take care of you from now on."
Though she was my sister-in-law, she took on a mother's duties. During the catastrophic flood of 1989, she fearlessly leapt into the raging waters and risked her life to pull me back from the brink of death. When the village bully harassed us and a spiteful woman spread rumors, she always stood in front of me, swallowing all her grievances and pain alone. To pay for my education, she worked tirelessly day and night and lived frugally. She sold the only item she had brought as a dowry to send me out of the mountains.
As I grew up, people developed crushes on me, and I fell for someone too, but my heart held only the sister-in-law who had saved me, raised me, and protected me. The girlfriend I fell in love with in high school grew resentful because she could not accept how deeply I cared for my sister-in-law, so I let her go without hesitation. No one was allowed to hurt the most important person in my life. Later, after I had built a life and started a family, my wife and I solemnly kowtowed to my sister-in-law on our wedding day and accepted her as my mother.
I thought that, after all the hardship, I could finally let her enjoy her old age. But while sorting through old belongings, I unexpectedly found the diagnosis she had hidden for two whole years: terminal cancer. Afraid of burdening me, spending money, or disrupting my life, she endured the illness alone until the end.
She spent her life protecting me as I grew up, standing by me through hardship and even concealing her illness from me until death. I once vowed to protect her for the rest of her life, but in the end, all I had left was endless regret. This is a debt of gratitude etched into the bone, a story of hardship, protection, and all that was left unsaid: the story of an ordinary rural woman whose life was quiet, great, and utterly heartbreaking.
Lin Xiaoshu, a young man whose parents both died, has been guarded by his sister-in-law Liu Hui since childhood. He witnessed his sister-in-law being bullied by village bullies, being framed by a poisonous woman, and being abandoned by his own brother. With the support of a group of warm women, he worked hard to grow up, and finally used the law and responsibility to seek justice for his sister-in-law, guarding her throughout his life, and healing all her scars.
The story describes the pain of a poor family, the evil of human nature, the weight of family affection, and the warmth of goodwill, and finally ends with: She raised me up, and I will protect her throughout my life.
Lin Xiaoshu, a young man whose parents both died, has been guarded by his sister-in-law Liu Hui since childhood. He witnessed his sister-in-law being bullied by village bullies, being framed by a poisonous woman, and being abandoned by his own brother. With the support of a group of warm women, he worked hard to grow up, and finally used the law and responsibility to seek justice for his sister-in-law, guarding her throughout his life, and healing all her scars. The story describes the pain of a poor family, the evil of human nature, the weight of family affection, and the warmth of goodwill, and finally ends with: She raised me up, and I will protect her throughout my life.