Chapter 3: Preposterous
Wen Ning pursed her lips at his words, just a tiny bit, trying not to let him see.
She thought he hadn’t noticed.
Actually, she’d spotted him the second she got off the truck. He was looking down at the registration ledger back then, wearing that cold, don’t-come-near-me expression.
She stood at the very back of the line, sneaking glances at him several times, grumbling in her heart: So even a big shot like a Regiment Commander has to do this boring registration work himself?
The two walked into the military dormitory building one after the other, heading to the first room in the innermost row.
Along the way, every soldier they passed stopped and saluted Song Tingyue.
Once the pair went far enough away, their eyes all went wide with shock.
“Did I see that right? Commander Song actually brought a girl back! Weren’t the female comrades from the textile factory only arriving today for the mixer? Did he really find someone he liked that fast?”
“What are you thinking! Even if he did, he wouldn’t bring her straight to the dorms. Is our Commander Song that kind of man? Besides, those mixers over the years—when have you ever seen him care about them? The Division Commander had to force him and he still wouldn’t go. If dead wood could bloom, he wouldn’t be twenty-five and still single.”
Someone leaned in, lowering his voice mysteriously. “You two haven’t heard the rumors? A couple days ago, Commander Song went to the Barracks Section and applied for a room in the family quarters. The family quarters! Think about it, who gets to live there?”
“A wife?!”
The few men looked at each other, jaws dropping in shock.
“When did Commander Song get married? How did such a pretty little wife pop out of thin air! No wonder he turned down everyone introduced to him before. Even when the Division Commander tried his hardest to set him up with Comrade Shen Manli, it didn’t work out. Turns out Commander Song’s standards are just that high!”
This major piece of intel spread through the unit in no time.
-
“Nonsense!!!”
A furious roar came from the Division Commander’s office. The desk was slammed so hard it shook the room, making the enamel cup lid jump and clatter.
“Old Song, calm down, calm down. It’s a happy occasion, after all.” Political Commissar Li Shungang hurriedly patted Song Zhen’s shoulder, an awkward smile on his face.
He’d just heard the news from the corps and assumed Song Zhen, as the father, already knew about Song Tingyue’s wife coming to join him at the base. He’d originally come over to tease him a bit, joke about Old Song keeping secrets so well that he hid his own son’s marriage from everyone. Who knew he’d be kicking a hornet’s nest.
“Calm down? How am I supposed to calm down?” Song Zhen’s face was iron-gray. “They haven’t even gotten the marriage certificate yet, and he dragged that young girl here. Tell me, that household registration transfer—how do you move it without proof of marriage? Who pulled strings behind the scenes? Him! He’s abusing his position to play tricks! If someone with bad intentions catches him by the tail, I think they’ll strip that uniform right off his back!”
Song Zhen paused, letting out a heavy sigh. “I just knew it. With the Wen family in trouble, he’d never sit by and do nothing. But if he’d just come to me, I could’ve helped too. Does he treat me, his own father, like a decoration?!”
Outsiders didn’t know the details of the Song family, but Li Shungang, an old comrade-in-arms, had seen it all.
Fate really loved playing cruel jokes.
Song Zhen had been severely injured on a mission years ago. He was in a coma for a long time before waking up. His body healed, but he lost his memory. By the time he finally recovered, his wife was already dead. His son was found, but wasn’t close to him at all.
These past few years, Song Tingyue hadn’t relied on Song Zhen one bit. He made his place in the army entirely on his own, with real bullets and real guns. He became a Company Commander at twenty, right when the border self-defense counterattack broke out. He led his company to the front lines, earned military merit, and nearly gave half his life for what he had now.
Song Tingyue treasured that uniform more than anyone, and the soldiers under him were the strictest about military discipline.
Li Shungang never imagined he’d break the rules for the Wen family that once took him in—for that sister in name only.
“Anyway, the girl is already here. Settle her in and get the certificate done as soon as possible, consider it one less thing to worry about. Aren’t you always nagging Tingyue to start a family? Now your daughter-in-law practically walked through the door, aren’t you going to take a look?” Li Shungang said with a smile. “I heard that little girl is fresh and pretty, real good-looking. A standard Jiangnan beauty!”
Song Zhen muttered, “How pretty can she be? Prettier than my Lili?”
Li Shungang laughed. “Manli is the most outstanding flower in the art troupe, her temperament and looks are definitely flawless! But you’ve been trying to match them for so long and Tingyue won’t nod. What does that mean? It means she didn’t grow into his heart.”
Shen Manli was Song Zhen’s stepdaughter. Her biological father was Song Zhen’s comrade, and before dying, he entrusted his wife and daughter to Song Zhen.
Five years ago, Song Zhen formed a new family with the mother and daughter. To make things even closer, he was dead set on pairing his son and stepdaughter together.
It was just a pity that Song Tingyue always repeated the same sentence: “I only see her as a younger sister.”
-
Inside the dormitory building.
Song Tingyue used those exact same words to answer Wen Ning’s question.
“Younger sister.” Wen Ning murmured the words, then added sourly, “You sure have a lot of younger sisters.”
She’d heard earlier that Song Tingyue’s father wanted to set him up with his stepdaughter. But seeing that Song Tingyue was still single even now, she couldn’t hold it in anymore and gathered the courage to ask him.
After hearing the answer, she felt a strange sense of relief.
If he really had a girlfriend or a fiancée, she’d rather go to the countryside and work herself to death than listen to her parents and come rely on him.
But for some reason, hearing that he treated that woman as a younger sister too, her newly settled heart suddenly bubbled up with sourness. It surged to her throat, choking her.
Looked at it this way, she was just like everyone else. Nothing special.
Song Tingyue’s hand on the doorknob paused. He didn’t push the door open right away, but turned back to look at her. “A lot? Right now I only have Shen Manli as a younger sister. Do I have others? Wasn’t there someone who didn’t care to acknowledge me as her brother?”
Poking exactly where it hurt.
Wen Ning choked, unable to answer.
That sour, swollen feeling in her throat hit harder, blocking her up even more.
Song Tingyue paused, then continued, “You can rest easy. I’m completely alone right now. If I really had a fiancée, I’d never agree to this terrible fake marriage idea. That would be so unfair to her. I’ve already drafted the application. Tomorrow we’ll go to the commune and get the certificate, then you can stay here in peace.”
“As for Mom and Dad, as long as they cooperate and explain everything clearly, the final result shouldn’t be too bad. I’ll go pull some strings and try to get a favorable verdict.”
After all these years, Song Tingyue still hadn’t changed how he spoke. He still called Wen Ning’s parents Mom and Dad.
Wen Ning stared blankly at his back as he turned around, and softly hummed, “Mm.”
He pushed the door open. The room wasn’t big.
There wasn’t much furniture, but it was kept neat. The army-green quilt was folded into a perfect square block of tofu, the bedsheet pulled tight without a single wrinkle.
But other than that, there was nothing else worth looking at in the room.
The walls were terribly mottled, chunks of white plaster peeling off to reveal the blackened layer underneath.
Where the cracks were large, a few yellowed old newspapers were pasted over to barely cover them. The wind from the Gobi Desert poured in through the window gaps, carrying fine sand, rustling the edges of the newspapers.
Before coming, Wen Ning knew conditions in the Northwest military region were harsh. But this harsh was beyond her imagination.
Song Tingyue put the luggage on the table.
He looked back. The little girl was still standing in the doorway, not having taken a single step inside.