She was a seed blown by the wind into a crack in the wall, with no one expecting her to bloom.
Qin Xiaoyu was born in 1997 into a family in southeastern Guizhou that favored boys over girls. Her birth brought no joy, only a sigh from her grandmother. With her parents away working, she was left in her grandmother’s care. Living in the shadow of her male cousin, she learned to stay quiet, give way, and swallow her saliva when she was hungry.
When she was five, her mother asked, “Do you want a little sister?” She nodded and said, “Yes.” Her sister arrived, but Qin Xiaoyu was pushed into even deeper darkness. She ate half a bowl of rice her sister had refused, and slaps rained down on her. From then on, the word “inferiority” was carved into her bones.
In middle school, she was a shadow that always sat in the corner. She tried to please everyone, but everyone mocked her. In her third year, her only friend turned against her, and the boy she liked led the bullying. On the day she failed her high school entrance exams, amid her mother’s insults, she heard another voice for the first time: “She isn’t your mother.”
Her diagnosis read “schizophrenia.” Medication, weight gain, and sluggish reactions turned her into a ghost during her three years at vocational school. In her final year, her mother said, “The colleges you can get into from vocational school aren’t the same.” Qin Xiaoyu tore up her application form herself. That was the second time she gave up on herself.
With 3,800 yuan in her pocket, she went to the provincial capital, hoping to change her fate by working in sales, but ran into obstacles at every turn. She wanted to be an office clerk, but her mother sneered over the phone, “They want someone educated and pretty. What do you have?” Yet fate gave her one gift: she really did become an office clerk. Her monthly salary was 2,200 yuan, but it felt as if she owned the whole world.
