Chapter 3: Blood, sweat & home.
On the day the house was purchased, I was working at a construction site four hundred kilometers away.
It was on the third basement level. We were rushing to meet the deadline, and I worked for thirty-six hours straight. My phone died, and by the time I climbed out of the excavation pit, it was already noon the next day.
When I turned on my phone, there were seventeen missed calls. Every single one was from my mother.
I called her back.
The first thing she said was, “We've found the house. Hurry up and transfer the money.”
The second thing she said was, “Put your eldest brother's name on it. It'll make getting the loan easier.”
The third thing she said was, “We're family anyway. It doesn't matter whose name it's under.”
At the time, I was standing beside a water tap at the construction site. I was covered in mud and hadn't even taken off my safety helmet.
Water poured from the tap. I splashed my face and said into the phone, “Okay, Mom. You decide.”
After hanging up, I borrowed a power bank from a coworker, turned on my phone, and transferred 370,000 yuan.
Recipient: Chen Qiang.127Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwn5iHCb9e5
Remark: House Payment.
That night, I lay on the wooden board bed in the workers' shed, staring at the underside of the bunk above me, calculating an account.
From fourteen to twenty-four, ten years.
I had carried bricks, hauled cement, climbed scaffolding, and tied steel reinforcement bars on construction sites. My daily wage had risen from thirty yuan to three hundred.
Along the way, a steel pipe had smashed into my foot. I had fallen from scaffolding. I had fainted from heatstroke. In winter, the cold had cracked the skin on my fingers.
I calculated that I had sent home nearly 400,000 yuan over those ten years.
That house had cost me 370,000 of it.
The remaining 30,000 yuan was everything I had.
At the time, I thought:
It was worth it.
My parents had somewhere to live. My eldest brother could get married. At least the family would finally have a stable home.
It didn't matter if I had to work a little harder. I was still young. I could earn more.
I was fucking stupid.
The house was in the county town. It was a second-hand apartment, two bedrooms and one living room, eighty square meters.
The original owners were an elderly couple whose son had taken them to the provincial capital. They were eager to sell.
The total price was 480,000 yuan. The down payment was 350,000, and the remaining 130,000 was a mortgage.
My mother said the loan would use my eldest brother's housing provident fund, and he would make the monthly payments. I didn't need to worry about any of it.
I said okay.
I never saw the apartment in person.
I didn't have time to go back, and I couldn't bear to spend 600 yuan on transportation for the round trip.
My mother took pictures and sent them to my cracked-screen phone.
The living room was fairly large, with good natural light. The master bedroom had a balcony, while the second bedroom was a little smaller.
My mother said, “Your eldest brother will take the master bedroom. Your father and I will use the second bedroom. When you come back, we'll put a bed in the living room for you.”
I said, “Okay. The living room is fine.”
At the time, I was renting a place in an urban village beside the construction site.
It cost 150 yuan a month.
Five square meters. One bed. One rice cooker.
No air conditioning in summer. No heating in winter.
I lived there for ten years.
But the house I bought for my parents had a balcony, heating, and a private bathroom.
On the day the contract was signed, my eldest brother Chen Qiang said to me over the phone, “Little Brother, we'll all live in this house together. Mom and Dad can take the master bedroom, and you can use the second bedroom.”
I said, “Brother, there's no need. The living room is fine.”
He said, “How could that be? You paid for it.”
I laughed.
That was one of the few times I ever did.
On the day the property certificate was issued, my mother took a picture and sent it to me.
Under the column labeled “Rights Holder,” there were two words:
Chen Qiang.
Under “Ownership,” the space was blank.
I stared at that picture for a long time.
It happened to be drizzling at the construction site that day. I squatted outside the workers' shed, zooming in on the picture, then zooming out, then zooming in again.
There was no name of mine.
There were no names of my parents either.
Only my eldest brother's.
I called my mother.
She answered casually, as if nothing was wrong.
“The certificate is out. Don't worry.”
“Mom, why is only Big Brother's name on the certificate?”
“Oh, because of the loan. We're using his provident fund, so it's more convenient to put his name on it. Once the loan is paid off, we'll add your name. We're family. Don't you trust your brother?”
I was silent for three seconds.
“Mom, it's not that I don't trust him. I was just asking.”
“All right, all right. Are you busy over there? Have you eaten?”
“Yes.”
“Then go ahead and work. Take care of yourself.”
She hung up.
I saved the picture.
Then I opened the notes app on my phone and took screenshots of every transfer record from before and after the house purchase. I arranged them in chronological order and saved them in a folder.
I didn't know why I was doing it.
Maybe it was because Old Zhou had once told me:
“When you're working outside, keep something in reserve. It won't hurt you.”
I never expected those words to save my life later.
After buying the house, I worked even harder.
On the construction sites, I took the night shifts nobody else wanted. I went to projects that others thought were too far away. I accepted jobs that others thought were too difficult.
I went from being a contractor to becoming a small business owner, with more than twenty people working under me.
Out of 365 days a year, I spent 350 of them on construction sites.
During Chinese New Year, when everyone else went home, I stayed behind to guard the construction site because wages were tripled during the holiday period.
The money I sent home went from 10,000 yuan to 20,000, then from 20,000 to 30,000.
Every time my mother called, she would say, “Stop sending money. Save it for yourself.”
But I sent it anyway.
My father needed money for his medicine.
My mother needed money for her blood-pressure medication.
My eldest brother's child needed money for school.
My second brother's company needed working capital.
Those were the years when my second brother, Chen Hui, was at the height of his success.
His company had switched from running an internet café to dealing in building materials. Using my connections at construction sites, I introduced quite a few clients to him.
He drove a BMW and wore cashmere coats. He entertained clients at the best hotels in the county town.
Every time he saw me, he would pat me on the shoulder and say, “Little Brother, you're the hero of this family. Once your big brother makes it big, I'll buy you a house in the city.”
I smiled every time.
I didn't believe what he said, but I was willing to listen.
In that family, only my second brother knew how to say a few nice things to me.
Even if they were lies, they still felt warm.
In the third year after buying the house, I suffered a workplace injury.
A tower crane at the construction site collapsed and hit the scaffolding beside me.
I reacted quickly and ran two steps, but I was still struck by a steel pipe in my right leg.
My shinbone fractured. I had a metal plate inserted and spent two months in the hospital.
The foreman compensated me 80,000 yuan, and my medical expenses were reimbursed.
But my leg was never the same.
I walked with a slight limp, and it hurt whenever the weather was cloudy or rainy.
I called my mother from the hospital.
The first thing she asked was, “Is it serious?”
The second thing she said was, “Your second brother's company is short of money lately. Do you still have any?”
The third thing she said was, “Your eldest brother wants to change cars. That 50,000 yuan you mentioned before…”
I said, “Mom, my leg is broken.”
She was silent for a few seconds before saying, “Then rest well. I'll hang up first.”
After she hung up, I stared at the ceiling.
I didn't shed a single tear.
On the day I was discharged, Old Zhou came to pick me up.
He drove that old battered van and took me from the hospital back to the workers' shed.
He didn't say a word on the way.
When we were almost there, he pulled the van over to the side of the road. He took a bank card out of his pocket and handed it to me.
“There’s 100,000 yuan in here. Take it for now.”
“Brother Zhou—”
“Enough with the nonsense.”
He lit a cigarette.
“The 100,000 yuan you lent me back then, I never touched a cent of it. I've been keeping it for you. I've seen through what your family is like a long time ago.”
“Take this money. Stop pouring it into that bottomless pit.”
I clenched the card in my hand and sat in the passenger seat of the van for a long time.
“Brother Zhou.”
“Hmm?”
“I want to go back.”
“Back where?”
“Back to that home. I want to see whether there is still a place for me in the house I bought.”
Old Zhou exhaled a plume of smoke and started the engine.
“Mo, remember this. Whose name the house is under doesn't matter. What matters is who paid for it. Every cent you paid has a record at the bank. They may refuse to acknowledge it, but the law will.”
I nodded.
Outside the car window, the county town's streetlights passed one after another.
I stared straight ahead.
There was only one sentence repeating over and over in my mind.
Eight years of bricks.
One house.
One name.
It was time to go back and settle the score.
ns216.73.216.62da2
and then Add to home screen.