Title Four O'Clock Flower Chapters 9 - 12 ✅

Li Mihan’s maternal uncle was formerly in the same small research group as Zheng Hanweng and they had worked together at the Museum of Linan for many years. Both families were closely acquainted and wanted to become even more closely tied. Their relatives involved in this brought them together and altogether cheered them on, pushing them into thinking of marriage after just a few months of knowing each other. It was similar to many other ordinary marriages that followed the usual course of events. They each worked their own jobs, ate and lived together, could harmoniously interact and talk things over together with low voices and calm tempers, and could embrace each other and make love. But to wander around leisurely or go to the supermarket to buy things while still in their house clothes and slippers, fingers interlaced, was indeed a difficult thing for them. It wasn’t that there was no love; instead, there wasn’t enough love. Or perhaps, it was only something similar to love. When Li Mihan passed away, Zheng Siqi held Zheng Yu and seemed to have lost his soul, adrift in a helpless daze for three whole days. Li Mihan’s abruptly cut short life, her family, his own life, his own family, and also—the baby he was holding who was barely the length of his arm—Zheng Yu’s life. The responsibilities that he ought to and must bear suddenly had the weight of a thousand pounds, rendering him unsure what position he should adopt to bear them. How to do it so that the weight was bearable, so that it would not hurt. Like feeling for stones to cross a river, he stumbled through a few years. When Zheng Yu entered primary school, he finally could be more at ease and in his element. Zheng Siqi no longer treated dating and marriage lightly—one reason was because he was afraid of not being able to find the feeling of loving someone in his next marriage, and he was also afraid of wasting the other person’s life.
Li Mihan’s family had a very traditional mindset. There was a saying from olden times: No funeral rites shall be held for the death of a young person, for the death of a wife before her husband, and for the death of a person due to violence. Li Mihan fulfilled all three conditions and her parents insisted on following these rules and customs, refusing to change the old ways. Furthermore, Linan had a severe shortage of burial grounds in recent years and prices were practically weight to weight for gold. Many public cemeteries in the city were already at full capacity. To find a cemetery that had good fengshui, was located at a suitable distance and also did not come with sky-high prices was truly a very difficult thing. Two years ago, Zheng Siyi suggested to Zheng Siqi to have Li Mihan buried in the neighbouring city but he didn’t agree. He was thinking that when Zheng Yu grew up, whether or not Li Mihan’s existence was that of a mother to her, he wanted to let a mother stay beside her own child, so that her child could visit and talk to her at any time. Even if their lives had never intersected, even if they were practically strangers, it was still better than burying his head in the sand and forcibly erasing her unalterable identity from Zheng Yu’s life. Linan had welcomed the arrival of Yushui, the solar term of rain water, and a drizzling rain was falling. Zheng Siqi parked his car outside the memorial center. When he got down, he nearly kicked over the bucket of half-bloomed yellow chrysanthemums placed outside the shopfront and hastily apologised to the boss who was busy covering the paper money with a plastic tarp to keep the rain away. There were probably people holding a memorial service in the center. Funerary music could be faintly heard, carrying with it the low and blurry sound of a group of people