TTLJDFL chapter 3

Li Jin was completely  dumbfounded. As a medical student, he was certain he could clearly tell the physical differences between men and women.

Whether it was the person who had  just taken the steamed eggs  from him, or the two people in the room chatting with the “mother-to-be,” or even the pale-faced “mother-to-be” on the bed, they all clearly looked like young  men.

Facing the door, Li Jin sank into a deep thought.

“If I can accept something as mystical as time-travel, I can also  accept a man giving birth…”

He repeated this to himself three times, but still , this was genuinely hard to accept!

As a medical student, even if he occasionally believed in mystical things, that belief never extended to the human anatomy .

But right now, nothing  mattered more than the life of the mother-to-be..no, the youth on the bed currently giving birth.

Li Jin could only rub his face with his hands, then go fetch a bucket of cold water to wash up and clear his head.

Occasional pained gasps drifted from the room now and then, though not continuously.

Li Jin knew this meant the contractions were arriving in waves, letting the youth adjust to the pain bit by bit.

After all, even though childbirth was truly agonizing, the body would still do its best to adapt.

It was like life itself. Though, suddenly  falling  into a low point was genuinely painful, but the longer you fell, the more you got used to it, and you could even find some bitter comfort in it.

Li Jin felt this was exactly his situation now. Back in the real world, his  life had honestly been quite comfortable.

He’d gotten into university at seventeen, finished his doctorate at twenty-five (an eight-year combined bachelor’s-master’s-PhD clinical medicine program), and spent three years on exchange in Germany during that time.

After graduating, he’d stayed on to work at his university’s affiliated hospital, and in just four years, by age twenty-nine, he’d already bought a house and car with his own money.

He didn’t have a partner, but he never felt lonely either.

And now, having suddenly traveled through time… he had a broken house in the name of a house . The house had two low mud-brick rooms, one a kitchen, the other served as the bedroom, though it wasn’t big.

If you open the bedroom door, you could see  the bed right away, which was exactly why he’d been able to see  the person on the bed so clearly.

Everything kept reminding Li Jin that  his wife  was a man.

Li Jin thought, being reincarnated and given a wife and child as a bonus for a single dog like him sounded like a pretty generous perk…

Generous my ass!

Given how frail and malnourished  his current body was, could it even support a wife and child?

Li Jin felt a sharp pain  in his stomach, then remember   the original owner of this body had been drinking without eating .

He could only suppress all his emotions, after all,  keeping himself alive took priority.

In the kitchen, Li Jin found a small amount of coarse flour , and the rice jar had only a thin layer of rice left.

He left the rice alone. The  household was too poor right now, and the rice needed to be saved for the youth to eat.

He scooped out a bit of the flour himself, put it in a mixing bowl, cracked in an egg, added a little oil, salt, and chopped scallions, then mixed it with water into a batter.

Li Jin lit the stove, coated the bottom of the pan with a layer of oil, and once it was hot, ladled half a scoop of batter to spread evenly across the pan. In under a minute the batter was done.

Though it contained bran husks, the scallions masked their faint earthy taste.

Once one side turned golden brown, he quickly flipped it,  the other side only needed about ten seconds. A flatbread came off the pan in no time.

The flour he’d scooped out was already little , so in total, the flour made five flatbreads.

Li Jin ate one himself, which finally settled the stomach acid that had been forcing its way up.

He folded the other three and set them on a plate. There really wasn’t anything else in the house to offer, so these would have to do for the people helping the youth through labor.

As for the last flatbread, Li Jin cut it into small pieces, ladled out some of the chicken soup, and soaked the bread in it.

The savory flavor of the soup seeped into the bread, making it easier to eat.

After ladling out a bowl of soup, he sealed the steam vent of the pot again with a clean cloth to keep the soup simmering.

He  carried the steaming flatbreads to the bedroom door, and knocked again.

This time, no one asked who it was, the door opened quickly. It was the same red-eyed youth as before.

Seeing what was in Li Jin’s hands, he blinked in mild surprise, why so much food this time?

Li Jin said, “I don’t know if all of you had eaten yet. These are three flatbreads,  there isn’t much food in the house, so this is all I can offer you. As for this bowl of chicken soup, feed it to him if he’s hungry. Giving birth burns through so much energy. If it’s not enough, call me again,  I’ll be in the kitchen.”

Having said this, Li Jin handed the items to the youth and quietly walked away.

He’d noticed something, these youths really did look different from ordinary men.

They all had Adam’s apples and flat chests, but their bone structure was smaller, they were shorter, and they looked frail overall.

Most importantly , Li Jin noticed that each of them had a red mole in a conspicuous spot.

He wasn’t entirely sure it was actually a mole. But regardless, this red mark was probably the key thing that identified their true nature.

Inside the room, the red-eyed youth picked up the flatbread and shared it with the others.

Li Jin’s eyes hadn’t deceived him, all four of them were indeed “ge’er” (a third gender).

And all of them had been taken in as “concubines” by villagers.

The only exception was the youth in labor on the bed, he was Li Jin’s main wife.

In this world, ge’er occupied a gender space between male and female, they lacked the physical strength of men, yet weren’t as naturally suited to childbearing as women.

For a ge’er, pregnancy was already difficult, and childbirth was practically a brush with death. This was exactly why poor families who had a ge’er born to them would often sell the child off in town early.

Li Jin’s village had mixed surnames, but the Li Daniu’s  Li family made up the majority.

They farmed the land and raised chickens and ducks, even in an ordinary year the harvest could support a family, not to mention they sometimes hunted in the mountains too.

The Li family had the most members, so they were also the wealthiest in the village.

As the villagers grew more prosperous, married wives, and had children, they started picking up habits from the local s town…

As the saying goes, people are slow to learn good habits but quick to pick up bad ones—like taking in a second wife or concubine.

Once the Li family struck it rich, they started thinking about bringing in extra spouses. But what young woman would willingly marry a village man as his concubine?

So instead, these men went to town to buy ge’er. After all, once the lights were out at night, it felt all the same to them.

As for ge’er bought into this village, there were at least seven or eight of them.

When these youths first arrived, they’d actually envied Li Jin’s spouse, since they were all concubines while Li Jin’s spouse was the one true wife.

But Li Jin turned out to be such a terrible person that, over time, the others felt nothing but pity and sighs for him.

As for Li Jin’s spouse, Li Jin never even asked his name after marrying him.

Every time he opened his mouth it was just “go do such-and-such for me” or “bring me such-and-such.”

Now, with a child on the way, that  jerk Li Jin still didn’t know his own spouse’s name.

The other ge’er, who pitied him, never asked his name either while  talking to him.

After all, they’d all been sold off, probably unwanted back in their original homes, without even a proper name to speak of.

At most they’d been called “Number One” or “Number Two” based on birth order.

Now, as Li Jin’s spouse was in labor, the youth in the room with red, eyes said, “I really thought that Li Jin wasn’t even human, that he didn’t care about you or the baby at all. Who would’ve guessed he’d actually make you egg custard and chicken soup…”

“Exactly, exactly. Turns out Li Jin isn’t such a jerk after all. My own man, when his wife was in labor, all he cared about was whether it’d be a boy or girl… Now I’m worried that when I get pregnant, will I even get fed properly?”

The youth lying on the bed was named Qin Muwen. He listened to them talk, staying quiet the whole time.

He felt like he was about to die, his stomach had been aching all day, yet there was no sign of the man of the house coming home.

In the end, he’d forced himself out the door, seen people chatting by the roadside, and begged them to send their own ge’er over to help him…

None of these ge’er had ever given birth before, seeing Qin Muwen like this, all they could do was cry.

Qin Muwen felt like he was starving to death, but he didn’t even know who to ask for something to eat.

He even thought that maybe dying would be for the best, except it would be such a shame for the baby in his belly to begone before ever seeing the world.

Qin Muwen wasn’t actually the type to give up easily, otherwise he wouldn’t have endured that jerk Li Jin for so long.

And  he would  still fought hard to protect the child in his womb. After all, whenever Li Jin got drunk, he would  come home and hit him.

Qin Muwen had nearly miscarried several times, but in the end, both he and the baby were tough enough to pull through.

Now, starving half to death, Qin Muwen realized he actually didn’t interact much with the other ge’er in the village.

He truly didn’t know what to say, the fact that these ge’er had come to help him at all was already just out of village courtesy.

Then Li Jin knocked and brought over a bowl of egg custard. The savory soy sauce and the fragrant egg blended together perfectly.

Qin Muwen, propped up against the headboard, ate it spoonful by spoonful.

The youth who’d been crying for a long while said, “Li Jin’s really not so bad after all. Didn’t he wait outside the door for ages earlier? He must’ve been worried the egg custard would get cold, so he kept cradling it in his hands the whole time, when I took it from him, his hands were covered in blisters.”

Qin Muwen stared blankly at the youth, completely  unable to picture Li Jin doing such a thing.

That Li Jin… Qin Muwen thought about it and closed his eyes.

When they’d first gotten married, that man had been infatuated with his body, but later, ashamed that his spouse was a ge’er and would often embarrassed him in public.  He didn’t  give him any kindness at all.

He truly held no expectations of Li Jin anymore.

Qin Muwen thought that if he managed to survive this, he would raise his child well, no matter what.

He absolutely would.