Come Pick Up Your Wife and Kids! [The 1980S]

My next novel, A Research Scientist in the Northwest in the 1960s, is now available. The main story is complete. Warning: the bonus chapters are an alternate-timeline modern AU. If you don’t want to read an alternate timeline, stop here. Shu Yuan transmigrated to the 1980s and found herself at a matchmaking meeting. The matchmaker was practically spitting as she raved, “Just look at this pretty girl! She’s back from the countryside and has never dated anyone.” Shu Yuan thought that couldn’t be right. The original owner had dated someone, and even had a child! The original owner had fallen in love with a doctor sent to the countryside, accidentally gotten pregnant, secretly given birth, and sent the baby to live with a farming family. The two had gone their separate ways years before they returned to the city. Shu Yuan hurried to find the child who had been sold. A skinny little boy was crouched on the ground tending the fire, with a runny-nosed girl who didn’t look too bright in front of him. Shu Yuan was furious. What was this, a child bride, in this day and age? The boy was a supporting male character in a novel, a literary giant who had been beaten and forced to beg for food. His life was full of hardship. He had spent years searching for his birth parents, wanting only to ask why they had abandoned him. And Shu Yuan was the supporting male character’s mother, who died a miserable death while he pursued his true love. His father, a leading figure in medicine, spent most of his life searching for his son in vain. After a great deal of effort, Shu Yuan found the child and called Chen Zai. “Come pick up your wife and child. Hurry.” There was a full thirty seconds of silence on the other end before the man replied in a steady voice, “All right.” When they registered their marriage, Chen Zai warned himself that he and Shu Yuan were only in it for the money, not love, and that there must be no physical contact between them. But Shu Yuan, who claimed to have no interest in men, gradually began crossing the line. At their child’s request, she would kiss him. When work went badly, she would ask him for a hug. Chen Zai’s boundaries retreated again and again. After two glasses of wine, Shu Yuan flopped into his arms and nuzzled him over and over. His warnings were useless. Dr. Chen had no doubt Shu Yuan would push his boundaries until they completely collapsed, so he used an IV tube to tie her to a chair. The next day, Shu Yuan studied the red marks on her wrists and fell into thought, then asked him what had happened. After a long night of being put through the wringer, Chen Zai replied in a low voice, “You’re allergic to alcohol.” Coming next: A Research Scientist in the Northwest in the 1960s Yunzhi, an artificial intelligence that unexpectedly developed human thought, transmigrated into the body of a rural girl with the same name in the 1960s while being destroyed. Yunzhi was a child bride. After a flood devastated her hometown, she followed her parents’ dying wish and went to find her fiancé so they could marry. But when she reached the research institute, he firmly rejected the arranged marriage and refused to acknowledge her, saying she was nothing but a beggar. To comfort Yunzhi, the organization assigned her an important task: caring for a sick researcher. The bad news: the researcher, the most handsome man on Earth in Yunzhi’s eyes, had been ravaged by radiation and was extremely weak. The good news: Yunzhi could convert radiation into energy that repaired cells. The handsome man was ill at ease and refused to let her near him. “No, really, you don’t have to.” Yunzhi had no idea what he was so shy about. “I’ll sneak a feel while you’re asleep tonight.” When the great scientist had an attack and the medical staff were helpless, Yunzhi held him and kissed him fiercely. His symptoms eased instantly. She kissed him, touched him, and he recovered. Yunzhi became the base’s darling. When researchers were exposed to radiation, she treated them. When equipment leaked or malfunctioned, she went to shut it down. When data boxes needed retrieving, she went to get them. She thrived at the base. Everyone loved her. Besides doing security work, she could hunt sheep in the desert, gather goji berries, and pick sea buckthorn. Yunzhi thought her work and life were both pretty good. But the research scientist, with eyes bright as stars and a gentle, refined air, was adamant. “You’re the only woman who’s ever had physical contact with me. We have to start dating.” Completed novels: After Turning Myself In in the 1960s, I Became a National Treasure; An 80s Professor’s Loving Wife; The Great Beauty of the 80s Courtyard Theme: Bloom even in adversity