Call Me Daddy

“A30097, behave well after you get out, and don’t come back.”

The sunlight outside the prison seemed particularly blinding. Su Aobai shielded his eyes with one hand while taking his personal belongings from the guard with the other. He heard the guard’s earnest advice.

This time, his situation was somewhat special.

He was a prisoner who had confessed after committing murder and had been sentenced to 12 years. This was his ninth year in prison. Because he had performed well over the years and had received multiple opportunities for sentence reduction, he was released 3 years early.

Perhaps due to the original owner’s intense emotions, Su Aobai found everything around him very unfamiliar. In the rapidly changing world of today, 9 years in prison had created a significant gap between him and the world.

He cautiously took his first steps, moving beyond the shadow of the prison walls. The sunlight felt warm on his skin, and he slowly lowered the hand shielding his eyes. The warmth of the sun gave him a reassuring sense of reality.

There was a bus stop more than a hundred meters from the prison. He walked there slowly, mentally planning his next steps.

He had a daughter!

At the same time, he was penniless!

***

“Yi Xing, your dad is coming to pick you up soon. Are you happy?”

In the Aixin Orphanage, an elderly woman with a kind face, slightly bent over, patted a little girl’s head.

The little girl was extremely pretty, with fair skin and black hair flowing loosely behind her. Her almond-shaped eyes were framed by delicate willow-leaf eyebrows. At that moment, she looked down, her thick eyelashes fluttering slightly, resembling a living doll. Her slightly worn, bright red corduroy dress accentuated her snowy white skin with a touch of redness.

“Yi Xing, no matter what, he’s still your dad…”

Seeing the little girl’s silent demeanor, Dean Mother couldn’t help but sigh. Such is the fate of the children.

The little girl’s name was Su Yixing. Unlike many children who had lost their parents and had no relatives willing to take them in or who had been abandoned by their parents, Su Yixing’s father was still alive. He hadn’t abandoned her, but due to his imprisonment for his crimes, he had to entrust her to the only person he could trust—the Dean Mother of the Aixin Orphanage.

Su Yixing’s parents had also been children of this orphanage. The Dean Mother had watched them grow up.

Her father, Su Aobai, had lost his parents at the age of 5. Relatives unwilling to care for him had tossed him around like a hot potato until one relative left him at the orphanage’s doorstep, and he had rooted himself in Aixin Orphanage ever since.

Her mother had been left at the orphanage’s doorstep right after birth. Abandoning baby girls was common in those days. The Dean Mother took her in and named the child Ji Xing. Since many of the abandoned children here were given the Dean Mother’s surname, Ji was chosen as the name.

On the day Su Aobai was sent to the orphanage, Ji Xing was returned by the family who had previously adopted her. The couple who had adopted her had finally become pregnant after a long period of infertility. Returning an adopted child was against the regulations, but the couple, hardened by their circumstances, had simply dumped the child at the orphanage’s door and left.

The Dean Mother knew that sending Ji Xing back to the couple under these conditions wouldn’t result in a better life for her, so she went through the process of re-registering Ji Xing’s residency with the orphanage’s collective household registration.

On the day Su Aobai arrived, the abandoned little girl was crying uncontrollably. The originally sad little boy had focused on comforting her. Perhaps due to this fate, the two children became inseparable and formed a close bond.

It was natural for these two close children to develop feelings for each other during their adolescent years.

The financial situation at the Aixin Orphanage wasn’t good. Every child who turned 16 had to leave the orphanage, and the mandatory education provided by the state only covered up to junior high school.

Su Aobai, who was half a year older than Ji Xing, had left the orphanage 6 months earlier. He worked various jobs to save money, rented a small room, and on the day Ji Xing turned 16 and left the orphanage, he picked her up on a second-hand bicycle and moved them into their temporary home.

Ji Xing’s academic performance was excellent, so Su Aobai began working after graduating from junior high to save money for her education. He wanted to save enough to support Ji Xing’s studies and to buy a proper home for them in the city.

Ji Xing also worked towards this goal. She aimed to get into the best university, earn a lot of money, and buy a bigger house. By then, Su Aobai would no longer need to do hard, exhausting labor on construction sites. She would be able to support both of them, and when they had a baby, Su Aobai could take care of the child at home.

This was the hopeful vision of two naive young people for their future.

***

The Dean Mother of the orphanage was pleased with their relationship. She could see that it wasn’t merely the idle fancy of immature children. The bond they had nurtured from a young age had reached a level where no third party could interfere. She had never felt such intense, fiery emotions.

The Dean Mother believed that their future would be as beautiful as they had hoped.

But everything came to a sudden halt when the two children turned 17.

Ji Xing was pregnant.

When the two scared and panicked teens approached her, Ji Xing was already 5 months along. Abortion was no longer an option; they could only opt for induction, which posed a life-threatening risk to Ji Xing’s health.

The Dean Mother angrily scolded Su Aobai for being foolish. Despite her numerous warnings not to engage in such activities before Ji Xing entered college, the two teens had shamefully promised to keep their relationship within innocent boundaries.

Yet, Su Aobai had crossed that boundary. It wasn’t until Ji Xing’s pregnancy became too obvious to hide that they thought to approach her, their Dean Mother. If only they had come to her a few months earlier, it wouldn’t have been such a huge problem.

Now, for Ji Xing’s health, the only option was to carry the baby to term. The Dean Mother arranged for Ji Xing’s leave of absence from school and visited their rented room regularly to instruct them on pregnancy care.

Su Aobai diligently learned, but Ji Xing, as a mother, grew increasingly emotional.

Sometimes crying and sometimes laughing, the Dean Mother suspected Ji Xing was suffering from postpartum depression and took her to see a psychologist. However, she was still responsible for managing the orphanage, with many children needing her care. She couldn’t constantly focus on Ji Xing’s situation, so she often had to call Su Aobai, advising him on what to do and how to handle things.

After 10 months of pregnancy, an accident occurred during childbirth.

Ji Xing suffered from eclampsia during labor. The baby survived, but Ji Xing did not.

Even now, the Dean Mother still remembered the scene outside the delivery room; Su Aobai was frenziedly screaming and crying, clutching his hair and violently banging his head against the walls of the corridor.

It wasn’t until Ji Xing’s body was wheeled out of the delivery room that he suddenly fell silent.

In the days before the cremation, he hardly ate or drank. He spent all his savings and even borrowed money from friends to buy a good burial plot for Ji Xing. Afterwards, he spent every day sitting at the grave, talking to Ji Xing’s picture on the tombstone.

He ignored the daughter Ji Xing had fought to bring into the world. It was the Dean Mother who could no longer stand to see it. She took the baby to the cemetery and placed her in Su Aobai’s arms.

“Look at your and Ji Xing’s daughter. She looks so much like Ji Xing. She no longer has a mother. Are you going to let her have no father either?”

That was how she scolded him.

The baby in his arms seemed to sense the tense atmosphere and cried loudly. Unfortunately, she hadn’t absorbed well in the womb, and was small and thin. Her cries were faint and delicate. Her tiny hands clung to Su Aobai’s collar, perhaps drawing comfort from him.

The baby, just days short of a full month old, hadn’t fully developed yet, but her features already bore a strong resemblance to her mother, Ji Xing. She looked just like Ji Xing had as a child, even in her crying expressions, with furrowed brows and a twitching nose.