Guan Baiyu waited until the female customer who bought the rice ball left before talking to Shi Zhen, and then handed Shi Zhen the boiled broad beans he was holding.

Shi Zhen is already prone to hunger at his age, not to mention he has a lot of work to do, so he immediately grabbed a few broad beans and stuffed them into his mouth.

But before he could eat a few more, a guest arrived, ordering five rice balls at once... Shi Zhen immediately got busy.

Shi Zhen now sells two kinds of rice balls, and the rice balls made with soy sauce and lard sell much better than the rice balls made with white rice. More people are buying the one-yuan rice balls.

His hands would often ache after three or four hours of kneading.

"Xiaoyu, do you want a rice ball? I'll make one for you. I'll make a small one with mostly filling and not much rice." Shi Zhen looked at Guan Baiyu.

"Brother, just make me a regular rice ball. I'll take it with me for lunch," Guan Baiyu said.

Shi Zhen glanced at Guan Baiyu, but ignored Guan Baiyu's words. Instead, he took out the lunchbox he had bought for Guan Baiyu earlier and started filling it with food.

This stainless steel lunchbox has two flat layers. On one layer, he put various vegetables mixed with lean meat, and on the other layer, he put a ball of white rice, and placed some peanuts and egg skins next to it.

Guan Baiyu didn't want cold dishes that could be sold at a high price, but Shi Zhen paid special attention to his nutrition.

Finally, Guan Baiyu could only offer a small suggestion: "Brother, add some pickled vegetables for me." Rice mixed with pickled vegetables and peanuts is especially delicious.

Shi Zhen disagreed: "Children shouldn't eat too much pickled vegetables."

Guan Baiyu: "..." His aunt has been telling him to be more careful and find him a partner, but his brother still treats him like a child!

However, it's good that his brother doesn't want to find a partner for the time being.

Guan Baiyu wanted to ask his brother's opinion on finding a partner, but he was afraid that if he asked, it would give Shi Zhen something to think about, so he simply didn't ask. As for Chen Juanjuan, he could use the excuse that his brother didn't want to find someone for the time being.

Guan Baiyu carried a lunchbox into the Xinhua Bookstore.

He comes to the bookstore almost every day, and the bookstore staff have known him for a long time. Even some regular customers know him.

As soon as he entered today, an elderly man in his sixties greeted him with a smile: "Little friend, you've come to read again?"

"Mm." Guan Baiyu smiled at the other person.

The man then asked, "Are you doing your homework again today?"

Guan Baiyu nodded and took out a notebook and pen from his bag: "Yes, I still have some questions to do."

He helped Shi Zhen, and unlike Shi Xinghuo, Shi Zhen didn't pay him a salary, but every week Shi Zhen would give him five yuan as pocket money.

He rarely uses this money, but he still uses it to buy school supplies, so now he has enough paper and pens.

Guan Baiyu has already finished reading the few supplementary textbooks for the third year of junior high school in the bookstore, and now he is reading the ones for the second year of junior high school.

There were some things in there that he, a ninth grader, hadn't fully understood... Now he understood why Shi Zhen was so eager for him to get into a good high school.

There can be a big difference between a good school and a bad school.

"There aren't many people who study as diligently as you," the old man exclaimed.

Guan Baiyu smiled but didn't say anything more.

The old man was a retired teacher from the town. He often came to Xinhua Bookstore to read books, and we became familiar with him.

Recently, whenever he has any questions about math, he asks this teacher, and he always gets a solution.

Seeing that it was noon, he took his lunchbox outside the bookstore and ate his lunch.

You can't eat in the bookstore.

While Guan Baiyu was eating at the bookstore entrance, Shi Zhen had already gone home and taken a nap, and was just getting up to have lunch.

The house was a bit stuffy because something had been simmering inside, so the two of them took their bowls and ate in the shade under a tree by the door.

Since it was just the two of them, Shi Zhen was too lazy to cook complicated dishes, so he just made a salted vegetable and egg fried rice, and he and Shi Xinghuo each had a big bowl.

They were eating with great relish when a little girl suddenly ran towards them and hid behind them.

At the same time, an elderly woman who looked to be in her fifties caught up with the little girl carrying a bowl and used a spoon to scoop a spoonful of rice and feed it to her.

He said, "Little Yi, just one more bite, just one more bite!"

The little girl hid and refused to eat.

The old lady tried her best to coax her: "The food today is really delicious, have one more bite."

"If you don't eat it, the stray cat will."

"Eat one more bite, or Grandma won't let you eat anymore."

...

The little girl didn't like to eat; she would often hold a mouthful of food in her mouth without swallowing it.

Her grandmother would seize any opportunity to stuff food into her mouth.

Seeing the old lady trying her best to feed the child whenever she could, promising only one more bite but then another, Shi Zhen felt a little sorry for the child.

Anyway, if he put himself in the little girl's shoes, he wouldn't be able to stand being forced to eat.

But there are many things he can't control, and people don't listen to him anyway.

“Look how well-behaved your brother is while eating! If you don’t eat, your mother will come back and beat you!” The old lady suddenly mentioned Shi Zhen and Shi Xinghuo.

Shi Zhen: "..." Good boy?

Taking the opportunity, the old lady fed her granddaughter a bite of rice and started chatting with Shi Zhen: "Guan Baiyu's brother, has your family arranged a marriage for you?"

Shi Zhendao said, "No."

"Would you like me to tell you one?" the old lady asked with a smile.

Shi Zhen was surprised that someone wanted to introduce him to someone so soon, and said helplessly, "Auntie, I'm still young and I'm not planning to find a partner yet."

“You’re not young anymore. It’s easier to find someone at your age. If you don’t find someone soon, you’ll end up only marrying someone from out of town,” the old lady said.

Shi Zhen, an outsider: "..."

"Those out-of-towners, they'll run away if things don't go their way. That woman from the Li family ran away and took all of Xiao Li's money." The old lady muttered, probably thinking that we should find a good partner soon, otherwise all the good ones will be taken.

As for Xiao Li, whom she mentioned, he was indeed an unlucky fellow. A few years ago, he was tricked out of the mountains and sold here. The women were all different. Some of them were happy to settle down here because they could eat their fill.

Some people feel their lives are miserable and accept their fate.

Some refused to compromise and went home.

Even more surprising is that some women have discovered a way to make money. They simply sell themselves, find a man who can't find a wife, tell him they'll live with him for a certain amount of money, and then run away after receiving the money to find the next target to scam.

The old lady mentioned Xiao Li, who was one of the people who were scammed.

The old lady spoke of her theories, which she had summarized from her life experiences, and advised Shi Zhen to find a partner.

Shi Zhen responded with a smile, not angry at all, but he just listened and didn't take the old man's words seriously.

Shi Xinghuo, on the other hand, stared longingly at the old woman.

Although Guan Baiyu and Shi Xinghuo's hometowns are not in J City, they are in the same province. Although the dialects of the two places are very different, they can still understand each other after listening to them for a while.

Shi Xinghuo roughly understood what the old lady meant; she wanted to introduce Shi Zhen to a potential partner.

He wants a partner too!

Unfortunately, Shi Xinghuo couldn't speak the local dialect, and he kept remembering his parents' promise to find him a wife when he returned home. He couldn't ask the old lady to help him find someone, so he could only look at Shi Zhen with envy.

Shi Zhen: "..." He didn't want to be envious like that.

However, no matter how much others urge him, if he doesn't want to get married, there's nothing they can do.

In his past life, he was with Guan Baiyu for many years, but no one knew about their relationship. His family and even the villagers kept urging him to get married.

But he didn't want to get married, and those people couldn't do anything about it.

After experiencing some things, he felt that the relationship between two men was unstable and even thought he was a pervert. He considered breaking up with Guan Baiyu, getting married and having children, but it was just a thought before something happened.

He later realized that he could never marry a woman and have children; he was the kind of person who only liked men.

After stuffing the entire bowl of rice into her granddaughter's stomach, the old lady was finally satisfied and left with her granddaughter.

Shi Xinghuo had already prepared the fried skewers to sell that evening, so Shi Zhen could take a break and went for a walk in the village.

Peas and broad beans have recently ripened, and these are the two things that villagers eat the most these days.

Since Guan Baiyu didn't have the seeds for either of these, Shi Zhen went to Guan Guangguo's house to buy broad beans from him.

Guan Guangguo's chicks have been raised for a month and have grown quite big. In another month, they will be ready to be sold.

After his chicks survived the first few days, they stopped dying frequently; the occasional death of one was within the normal range.

It was the weekend, and as soon as Shi Zhen arrived, he saw Guan Jinjin looking utterly hopeless, helping her parents clean up chicken droppings.

Upon seeing Shi Zhen, Guan Jinjin didn't know what to say.

She read Shi Zhen's book to her father in its entirety. After listening, her father realized that there were many things he hadn't done well, and he became even more attentive to raising chickens.

She was grateful to Shi Zhen.

But after her father took even more care of raising chickens, he always asked her to help take care of them, which she found a bit unbearable.

And for some reason, her father never seemed to get tired of the book. He would make her read it a second time after she finished reading it once, which made Guan Jinjin's mind filled with thoughts of how to raise chickens. She didn't even want to look at Shi Zhen's face anymore.

She even found reading interesting.

Anyway, it's much more interesting than cleaning up chicken manure.

Her pitiful appearance was quite amusing. Since it was Shi Zhen's first time seeing someone raise chickens, he watched for a while and asked Guan Guangguo some questions about raising chickens.

As they were chatting, people from the surrounding neighborhoods, who had nothing else to do, came over to watch the spectacle, and some even asked Guan Guangguo for the chicken manure he had cleaned up.

It was very lively here, and Guan Baiyu saw it as soon as he got home.

His brother stood out from the crowd, while Guan Jinjin and Guan Lanlan were both standing next to him.

"Brother!" Guan Baiyu called out.

Upon seeing Guan Baiyu, Shi Zhen walked towards him without hesitation.

Guan Baiyu finally breathed a sigh of relief.