After dinner, Song Qingchun accompanied Song Menghwa to watch a little television. When her phone vibrated and she saw that it was Su Zhinian, she retreated to her bedroom. Her initial plan had been to conduct the test after the conversation with Su Zhinian, but she fell asleep while talking on the phone with him.
When she woke up, it was already 8 am the next morning. Her phone’s battery had died. Song Qingchun charged it and went to take a bath. When she got out and was blow-drying her hair, she switched her phone on. The first thing she saw was a message from Su Zhinian sent at 11.30 pm last night, saying, “Good night.”
Song Qingchun’s eyes twinkled with mirth. Then she turned around to face the mirror. She put down the hair-dryer and started applying her skin care products. When she was done, she glanced at her bag that was lying beside her. After taking a deep breath, she grabbed it and walked back into the bathroom.
She squatted on the toilet and took out the pregnant test sticks from her bag. She unboxed one and read the instructions closely. She followed them to the tee.
The instructions said that the result would be out in five minutes.
Song Qingchun did not get up from the toilet. She stared unblinkingly at the row of neatly arranged pregnancy sticks. The five minutes was as long and as tumultuous as a century for Song Qingchun.
She was deathly afraid that she was really pregnant, and as the more time dragged, the more anxious she became, to the point where she felt like she was having trouble breathing.
Sometimes, the more one wished desperately against something, the bigger the chance it would occur. Fate could be that annoying.
Of the ten sticks, the first to come out with the result was the fourth one counting from the right. It showed a weak positive. Song Qingchun matched that with the instructions. Weak positive did not necessarily mean pregnant. Song Qingchun was about to sigh in relief and was telling herself not to get so worried over nothing when the results for the third and sixth stick counting from the right also finished, and they both showed positive.
Positive means… you’re pregnant.
Before Song Qingchun recovered from this thunder strike, the remaining seven sticks all showed their results one after another, and they all declared in unison: Positive.
Ten pregnancy sticks, nine positive and one weak positive.
…
Song Qingchun felt like there was a bomb that exploded beside her ears, shattering her mind into pieces. I’m really pregnant…
Even though she had harbored that suspicion since the day before, but she had still managed to carry on as normal because there had not been a clear answer, but now…
Song Qingchun’s mind was a complete blank. She stood up from the toilet mechanically, wrapped all the pregnancy sticks with toilet paper, placed them back in her bag’s compartment, and walked dumbly out of the toilet.
Her lips were pursed as she walked to her bed and sat down on it. She stared at the morning sun outside the window with a pair of listless eyes. Sometime later, her brain finally started to move.
What should I do?
She was really pregnant. The thing that she was most afraid of really did happen.
Pregnancy, the welcoming of a new life, should have been a happy occasion, but for Song Qingchun, it felt like the sky was falling down. It was common knowledge that the child between biological siblings would mostly be born with defects, and they normally would be taken out.