Marry by Relying on Favor: Chapter 153 - Xinxin, Don’t Get Agitated. What You’re Showing Right Now Might be Signs of Postpartum Depression
Over the past two days, Qu Bixin hadn’t stepped out of the house. She was afraid of running into too many people outside—Shen Fu had plenty of friends, and if she happened to run into him partying at some club with his cronies, it would be awkward.
So she shut herself inside the villa and entertained herself. Sometimes deafening rock music blasted from the second floor; other times she played a piano piece. She’d turn on the huge TV screen in the living room, snack on junk food while watching a comedy variety show. For all three meals and late-night snacks, she ordered delivery from high-end restaurants, and an hourly cleaner came punctually to take out the trash.
Qu Bixin went almost insane—changing outfits every hour. The wardrobes, the sofa, even the carpet were piled with her glamorous dresses in utter chaos.
After putting on a face mask in the morning, she lay comfortably in the bathtub enjoying the sunlight, even poured herself a glass of red wine.
Just as she was drifting off, about to take a short nap, the villa’s doorbell suddenly rang and startled her awake.
Qu Bixin shot upright from the rose-petal bath, grabbed a clean white towel to wrap around herself, and hurried to the floor-to-ceiling window to look outside. The next second, her eyes widened in disbelief—she nearly fainted.
Outside the villa, Shen Fu stood there with a bag of fresh ingredients, trying to enter the password lock.
But she had already changed the code!
The doorbell went unanswered, and the password display showed an error.
When Qu Bixin saw Shen Fu take out his phone, her first reaction wasn’t shock at his return—it was to turn around and start frantically cleaning up.
There was no time to think. She hurriedly drained the bathwater, hid the wine bottle and glass in a drawer, and rushed breathlessly to the dressing room. But when she saw dresses thrown everywhere, she gave up instantly.
In five or six short minutes, she dashed downstairs, cleared away the junk food in the living room, and stuffed it into a random cabinet in another room.
Outside, Shen Fu was using his phone to crack the password lock.
Qu Bixin scrambled back upstairs. The bath had been for nothing; she was covered in a thin layer of sweat from all the rushing. Just as she grabbed a pair of scissors and crawled into the dressing room, the tightly shut door downstairs finally opened.
The villa fell silent. The bag of ingredients was placed in the kitchen.
Shen Fu glanced around and immediately knew the stove hadn’t been used since he left.
He walked out of the kitchen, passed through the living room, and even picked up a throw pillow and the remote from the carpet.
Then he headed upstairs.
The master bedroom door was half closed. When Shen Fu pushed it open, he saw the messy bed—but no sign of her. Soon enough, he heard a ripping sound coming from the dressing room.
He walked over and saw a woman wrapped in a towel sitting on the carpet, holding scissors, cutting up a dress in her hands.
The dressing room was indescribably messy.
If not for seeing her cutting the dresses, Shen Fu might have thought he’d walked into a trash heap. He stood quietly by the doorway watching her for a long time. Only when she ran out of strength and set the scissors down to rest did she turn her head—and see him.
Their eyes met across the space.
A minute passed. Or maybe ten.
Qu Bixin pressed down the wildly pounding heart in her chest—she’d nearly been scared to death by his sudden “inspection.” With a stiff face, she demanded, “What are you here for?”
Her tone was far from pleasant. Shen Fu walked over and lifted her up from the carpet.
She was so startled by his appearance that her limbs went stiff, not knowing where to put her hands.
Shen Fu simply placed her on the bed and covered her with a blanket, his voice low and calm. “I’m here to take care of you during your postpartum confinement.”
“…” Qu Bixin’s beautiful dark eyes flickered. She couldn’t even speak.
Shen Fu continued, “Even after a miscarriage, you need postpartum care. It was my responsibility that you became pregnant unexpectedly. During this time, you can make any request of me. I’ll take care of you until you’ve fully recovered.”
Qu Bixin was completely stunned by his attitude. Her first reaction was—was she going to have to suffer through an entire month of this?
Shen Fu’s stance was firm. He gave her no chance to refuse.
“For lunch, I’ll stew pigeon soup for you.”
It sounded like a question, but his tone had already decided.
Only when she saw him roll up his sleeves and head into the dressing room to tidy up her chaotic pile of dresses did Qu Bixin snap back to reality. She almost rolled off the bed and grabbed his trouser leg. “W-When did I agree to let you take care of me during postpartum confinement?!”
Shen Fu calmly countered, “Who else do you want to take care of you?”
“You can hire a nanny!” Her baby-soft voice turned urgent. She absolutely did not want him taking care of her.
Shen Fu emphasized, “You weren’t carrying the nanny’s child. It was mine.”
“I know it was yours…”
She tried to reason with him. “You didn’t really go bankrupt, did you? You could hire ten or eight nannies to take care of me. Why do it yourself?”
“I went bankrupt.”
Shen Fu automatically filtered out the latter half of her sentence and focused on correcting her. “When I gave all my assets to Shen Tingji, I was already bankrupt. The money I have now is commission from projects. I’ve taken a ten-year salary advance from the Wen Corporation, but the extra commissions belong to me.”
Even Wen Shuchen, the executive at Wen Corporation, didn’t draw a salary yet. These men were good at wordplay.
Qu Bixin huffed angrily. “I still don’t want you taking care of me!”
She had finally gotten rid of him. She’d thought that after the miscarriage incident, he’d be furious enough to cut ties forever.
Who knew that damn Shen Fu would come back—and insist on taking care of her postpartum!
She hadn’t even been pregnant or miscarried. What postpartum confinement was there to observe?
The thought of having to lie in bed pretending to be weak for an entire month made her mentality collapse. Anxiously, she demanded, “Aren’t you angry? Why are you still here taking care of me? I killed your child.”
“—Do you even know I was taking revenge on you?”
Shen Fu pressed his thin lips together for a few seconds before saying, “Xinxin, I know you were taking revenge.”
His reaction was calm—nothing like before. He even seemed capable of seeing things from her perspective now. “In the beginning, I deceived your feelings. It’s understandable that you’d want revenge. As for that child—it was just an underdeveloped embryo, not yet a life form. You had the right to decide what to do.”
Qu Bixin was speechless, taking deep breaths to steady her emotions.
Had the shock broken him? Had he gone mad?
The night he stormed out in fury, he hadn’t seemed like someone who’d call an embryo “not a life.”
She couldn’t read him. Her heart pounded uneasily.
Shen Fu truly did what he said. He conscientiously acted like a nanny—cooking postpartum meals for her every day, rotating between chicken soup and pigeon soup. He even installed a small camera in her master bedroom, while he stayed next door.
She protested that, and Shen Fu explained it was so he could take proper care of her at all times.
Later, after she firmly objected again, he compromised.
The camera would operate from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m., and wouldn’t excessively monitor her privacy.
In other words, he needed to personally watch over her while she slept to feel at ease.
If she refused, there was a second option—he could move into the master bedroom to sleep with her.
Without hesitation, Qu Bixin chose the camera.
After a week of being bedridden, she felt like she was about to go insane along with him. Her daily routine consisted of being woken up early to eat, never missing a meal, and drinking nourishing soup even at night.
In just seven days, she felt like she’d grown a double chin.
Taking advantage of Shen Fu being out at noon, she finally couldn’t endure it anymore and hid in the bathroom to call He Qingchi. The first thing she said pitifully was, “He Qingchi, for the sake of us having wet the same bed as kids, tell your husband to send Shen Fu on a business trip to Africa. Preferably today. I’m going crazy!”
He Qingchi asked gently, “Weren’t you and Shen Fu living together day and night?”
“Living together my ass! That bastard is making me observe postpartum confinement!”
Having lied about the miscarriage, Qu Bixin lacked confidence, so she gritted her teeth and confessed to He Qingchi in complaint. “I get woken up at seven sharp every day. I can’t binge on my phone or watch soap operas all day. I’m forced to nap for only one hour, and I have to be in bed by nine at night. Is this any way to live?”
And Shen Fu practically didn’t need to go to the Wen Corporation office at all.
He split part of his afternoons and evenings to handle work in the study. Most of his time was spent taking care of her.
Since she couldn’t drive him away, she pinned her hopes on He Qingchi.
But what He Qingchi brought was bad news. “Earlier, when Shen Fu got drunk out of his mind, my husband gave him a month’s leave…”
So Shen Fu had plenty of time to finish serving her this entire month of “postpartum confinement.”
Qu Bixin’s world collapsed. She felt utterly hopeless.
He Qingchi comforted her on the phone, “The routine Shen Fu arranged is very healthy. It’s only good for you.”
For a modern night-owl beauty like Qu Bixin, that wasn’t comfort—it was torture.
She couldn’t accept it and hung up angrily.
At that moment, a light knock sounded at the bathroom door. It was Shen Fu, reminding her that she’d been inside for over twenty minutes—too long wasn’t good for her health.
Clutching her phone, Qu Bixin nearly fainted from rage.
Two minutes later.
She unwillingly opened the bathroom door and walked out, casually telling the man outside, “A bit of diarrhea.”
Without changing expression, Shen Fu replied, “I’ll call a doctor.”
“No need, thanks.”
Qu Bixin climbed back into bed lifelessly, pulling the blanket over herself, her face devoid of emotion.
Shen Fu didn’t follow. After a moment of silence, he left.
Listening to his footsteps fade away, Qu Bixin let out another heavy sigh.
She’d brought this upon herself. After all that scheming, she was the one exhausted in the end.
Because she’d claimed diarrhea, Shen Fu prepared a lighter dinner—no greasy pigeon soup.
Her appetite was poor. She barely picked at the food with her chopsticks.
Shen Fu didn’t urge her to eat. If she ate too little, he would simply prepare another meal soon.
The more Qu Bixin thought about it, the more irritated she became. She threw down her chopsticks. “Is it fun for you to play nanny like this every day?”
Her beautiful eyes flared as she lashed out at him.
Shen Fu, expression unchanged, picked up the chopsticks from the floor and calmly analyzed, “Xinxin, don’t be irritable. What you’re showing right now might be signs of postpartum depression.”
“If you lay in bed for a whole week without being allowed to go anywhere, wouldn’t you be depressed?”
Qu Bixin felt like she was about to explode on the spot. She couldn’t endure it any longer.
Fine. She might as well have a full-blown fight with him and lay everything bare.
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