Chapter 5

Five o'clock in the afternoon.

The big iron door of the main room made a slight creaking sound.

Lin Jiu, who was watching TV in the room, heard the noise and knew that his mother and grandmother had returned from playing cards.

Yes, playing cards.

Every afternoon when there was no farm work, her mother would take her grandmother to play cards.

So, Lin Jiu is always alone at home.

......

There are three people in Lin Jiu's family, namely her, her mother and her grandmother.

My mother's name is Yang Bing and my grandmother's name is Meng Juan.

As for my grandfather and father, they both passed away. My grandfather died of illness when I was three, and my father died in a car accident when I was seven.

Lin Jiu had no recollection of his grandfather's death, but he had a deep memory of his father's death.

To some extent...

Dad's death changed the family.

That day, Lin Jiu was sitting in the classroom during class when the teacher called her out and pulled her in front of Yang Bing.

Yang Bing looked very sad, but pretended to be calm and asked Lin Jiu to follow her.

Soon, they returned home.

At the doorstep, Lin Jiu saw many uncles and aunts from the village, and everyone was busy.

Lin Jiu didn't understand what was going on, so she subconsciously went into the main room to look for Meng Juan. She saw Meng Juan kneeling beside the coffin, crying and burning paper money.

Lin Jiu walked forward and wanted to snuggle in Meng Juan's arms, but Meng Juan ignored her.

She then knelt beside Meng Juan and imitated her movements, burning thick paper money.

The difference was, she didn't cry.

She was too young to understand the meaning of death, she just knew that she would never see her father again.

She often doesn't see her father and has long been used to it.

so.

She didn't feel too sad.

At that moment, the only thing that made Lin Jiu sad was that Meng Juan ignored her.

Lin Jiu was raised by his grandmother.

Her father and mother only had primary school education and no academic qualifications. When she was three years old, they went to work in factories in coastal areas.

The salary is good, including food and accommodation, and it’s over two thousand yuan per month.

I only have one day off, so I don't have much time. I went back once during the Chinese New Year, but I left in a hurry after not staying for long.

Ever since she was five years old, all she remembered was her grandmother, and there were very few fragments of memories about her parents.

To be honest, she is not close to her parents.

Meng Juan didn't pay much attention to Lin Jiu until she had burned all the paper money around her.

Lin Jiu thought everything would be fine after a while, but he didn't expect everything to change.

After the burial, Meng Juan began to behave abnormally.

She often stood outside the house, pointing her finger at the air, stamping her feet and cursing: "God, you have made me suffer. You took away my husband and my son." There seemed to be a ball of rage in her heart, and her face was grim as she accused all kinds of injustice.

Later, she began to lose consciousness and could not even recognize Lin Jiu and Yang Bing.

She shouted at them angrily: "Who are you! Why are you in my house? Get out!"

"Grandma, grandma." Lin Jiu was frightened by her. He ran up and tried to hug her legs, but was pushed away.

She seemed to be provoked, glaring at Lin Jiu fiercely and saying, "Who is your grandma? My son is still young, he is still working outside, and he is not married yet."

One morning, with the help of the villagers, Yang Bing sent Meng Juan to a mental hospital.

The doctor diagnosed Meng Juan with mental illness, so she was confined to the hospital for three months for treatment.

During the three months that Meng Juan was away, Lin Jiu lived with Yang Bing.

Yang Bing is a quiet person with a stern face. Lin Jiu is afraid of her and doesn't like to talk either.

So the house was dead silent.

I don’t know which day it will be.

There was suddenly a bustle at the doorstep.

Lin Jiu looked out through the crack in the door and found that it was his uncle and grandparents whom he hadn't seen for many years.

They didn't come to offer condolences.

Perhaps he heard from someone that Meng Juan was admitted to a mental hospital, and wanted Yang Bing to take her home.

In theory: we are connected by blood, and I miss them.

In fact, she came for her father's compensation.

The uncle was playing the family card: "You are my sister. Bring your niece home with us and we will treat you well."

Yang Bing looked at them mockingly, spat on the ground, and said, "I severed ties with you before we got married. You took my betrothal money and severed our agreement. Don't come here and cause trouble."

The stalemate lasted for a long time.

They finally realized the truth and found that they could not gain any benefits, so they left in disgrace.

Lin Jiu looked at Yang Bing's back and realized that she had changed as well, becoming more indifferent and more aggressive.

In addition, in daily life, Yang Bing always lacks the motivation to do things and has a casual feeling of just getting by.

After three months, Meng Juan returned.

Lin Jiu stuck to her and wanted to play with her, but he could never go back to the way things were before.

Meng Juan's disease has not been cured and cannot be completely cured. She needs to continue taking medication to maintain stability.

Once you stop taking the medicine.

She didn't want to eat and wanted to die.

After taking the medicine for a long time, her body developed a tolerance to it. Even if she took the medicine continuously, she would still talk nonsense every few days.

In her normal state, she always keeps her head down and remains silent, which is a big change in her personality.

Later, Lin Jiu treated her like a child and coaxed her.

Lin Jiu is responsible for Meng Juan's spiritual life, and Yang Bing is responsible for Meng Juan's material life.

After Yang Bing became Meng Juan's guardian, he never left home and took care of her. Meng Juan occasionally acted like a spoiled brat and refused to take her medicine, so Yang Bing would sternly watch her take it.

Yang Bing picked up farm work at home, raising chickens, ducks, and growing vegetables to save money. Every other month, she went to the hospital to get medicine.

The cycle repeats itself, day after day.

When Lin Jiu was in junior high school, Meng Juan came into contact with the activity of playing cards at the village entrance, which helped her pass the time.

When playing cards, she focused on the cards and concentrated her mind. Although she always lost, it was much better than sitting at home bored and thinking about random things.

Yang Bing did not stop her. Whenever he had time, he would take Meng Juan there and spend half a day there.

......

Not long after the door creaked, the sound of water was heard from the kitchen next door.

Lin Jiu's bedroom and kitchen are separated by a wall, so the sound insulation is not very good, and everything they do can be heard clearly.

Her house is a self-built house.

The house is four years older than her, built in 1995.

The houses built in the early years were not well laid out, being square and square in shape. The orientation was also not good, being a rare case of facing east and west.

In the middle is a spacious main room for entertaining guests.

There are two rooms on each side, three for living and one for the kitchen.

As for the toilet, a door was opened in the wall on the kitchen side, and a small room was built next to the house.

Originally, her house was very old, with cement floors, cement walls, exposed electrical wires, and no running water, looking shabby and rundown.

Two years ago.

When Yang Bing took Lin Jiu to the town to attend the market, they ran into her family.

Those people stood close to Yang Bing and started shouting loudly, mocking him for living in a rotten house and leading a rotten life.

Yang Bing was furious and made up his mind to spend some money.

The house had cheap white tiles on the floor, the walls painted white, and running water connected. The bathroom had gone from a dry toilet to a modern one, with a water heater and a squat toilet.

After returning home from town on the weekend, Lin Jiu was very happy to see the newly renovated house.

Although her house is not as good as others in the village, she is already content.

Minor noise issue...

Lin Jiu didn't take it seriously at all, and even often listened to the noises at home to judge what they were doing.

Open the bedroom door.

Lin Jiu took a few steps, turned a corner, and went straight into the kitchen.

Yang Bing was washing rice with her back to her.

Lin Jiu walked to a step away from her, staring quietly at the back of Yang Bing's head, watching her press the start button of the rice cooker.

Lin Jiu said suddenly, "Mom, I received a call from the teacher at No. 4 Middle School today. I was accepted."

Yang Bing turned and looked at Lin Jiu, her expression no longer cold. She opened her eyes wide in disbelief, "You got into No. 4 Middle School?"

She didn't pay much attention to Lin Jiu's academic performance in junior high school and just let him do what he wanted.

In her impression, Lin Jiu was still the poor student who failed several subjects in elementary school.

So, she was really surprised and needed to confirm again.

Lin Jiu took a few steps back, putting some distance between them, and nodded, saying, "Yes, I was admitted to No. 4 Middle School. The admission letter will be mailed to me soon, and I should go to town to pick it up."

"Good, good, good." Yang Bing said the word "good" three times in a row, each word more emphasized than the last.

Everyone in Guicheng knows the value of Guicheng No. 4 Middle School. It is no exaggeration to say that it has one foot in the door of university.

After the excitement, Yang Bing calmed down.

Life must go on.

As usual, she took out water spinach from the refrigerator and prepared dinner.

Lin Jiu glanced at Yang Bing's back and left the kitchen. She scooped a spoonful of rice from the fertilizer bag in the main room and went to the chicken coop to feed the chickens.

Then she walked into Yang Bing's bedroom.

Meng Juan was sitting on a small stool, her eyes unfocused, not knowing what she was thinking about.

As soon as she entered the door, Meng Juan had a moving target, her eyes focused on her, and she smiled at her.

Lin Jiu half-knelt, looked into Meng Juan's eyes, and said softly, "Grandma, can I play some TV for you and let you listen to some music?"

Meng Juan doesn't like watching TV because she can't immerse herself in the plot, but she can understand the songs.

Sure enough, Meng Juan nodded happily: "Okay, listen to the song."

Lin Jiu smiled.

Meng Juan, who loves listening to music, is the easiest to coax. Sometimes, when she is daydreaming, she doesn't even want to listen to music.

Just immersed in my own world.

Lin Jiu stood up and walked over to the TV. The screen was a little small, but it was clear enough. This was the only TV in the house.

She changed the TV channel in the afternoon and needed to re-tune it.

In a few seconds, she took the remote control and tuned to CCTV15.

This TV channel plays music most of the time and has become her grandmother's exclusive channel.

......

Getting admitted to No. 4 Middle School is undoubtedly a good thing.

The next day, everyone in the nearby village knew about it.

That morning, Lin Jiuben wanted to walk up and down the road with his home as the center, looking at the flowers, grass, fields and mountains.

She had barely walked five meters along the road when she met villagers gathered on the roadside.

They were chatting and immediately called her when they saw her.

One of the neighbors praised her from a distance: "Lin Jiu, you are amazing. You actually managed to get into No. 4 Middle School."

Lin Jiu had no choice but to wave his hands and said modestly: "Luck, it's all luck."

She really didn't expect that her mother, who was usually taciturn at home, would spread the news that she had been admitted to No. 4 Middle School so quickly!

She wants to keep a low profile.

There are other children in the village who are in the same grade as her.

She didn't want to be the child of someone else's family, which would only attract hatred.

Afterwards, they asked a lot of questions:

"How many points did you get on the test?"

"When did you get the call?"

"When will the acceptance letter arrive?"

"When does school start?"

After answering according to the specific situation, Lin Jiu went home and stayed in his room.

During the summer vacation, she seldom goes out.

I basically stayed in bed, sweating profusely while reading the limited-time free novels in the bookstore.

Once she was in high school, she no longer had the chance to watch it.

At home, the mobile phone is an entertainment tool; at school, the mobile phone is just a tool for contacting Yang Bing.

She always knew the difference.

After a long period of leisurely life, Lin Jiu felt that he had fallen in love with summer vacation.

Before that.

She really...really, really, really hates summer vacation.

At the age of eight, Yang Bing started farming at home.

There are two rice crops: early rice that matures in the summer and late rice that matures in the autumn.

There are four or five acres of land at home, and Yang Bing can't handle it all by himself, so he needs Lin Jiu to help in the fields.

At the beginning, Lin Jiu was unhappy from the bottom of his heart.

The sun was too strong and I was sweating profusely. I bent over and went into the fields, feeling dirty and exhausted.

One day during summer vacation.

Before Yang Bing left, he opened the bedroom door and said to Lin Jiu, who was taking a nap on the bed, "Wait a minute, let's go to the fields to plant rice."

Lin Jiu responded, turned over, and pretended to be asleep while turning on the fan.

Not long after, Yang Bing returned home angrily.

She called Lin Jiu down from the bed and shouted, "Didn't I tell you to go plant rice? Why are you dawdling here pretending to sleep?"

Lin Jiu lowered his head, pursed his lips and listened without saying a word.

Yang Bing looked at her seriously, "You're still crying, can you understand a little bit?"

Lin Jiu covered her mouth and suppressed her tears quietly, looking at Yang Bing's expressionless face, her nose sniffling.

After being scolded, Lin Jiu followed Yang Bing and went down to the field obediently.

Later, every summer, she no longer dared to be lazy. She would consciously follow the teachers and work hard.

She is afraid of heat and always wears short shirts and long pants when going to the fields.

It is common to be bitten by leeches and have your arms scratched by rice leaves.

so......

She hates summer vacation.

Before the high school entrance exam, someone wanted to contract the village's paddy fields to grow rice. The money wasn't much, but it was much more profitable than growing it by themselves.

Yang Bing signed a contract with that man.

At this point, Lin Jiu sighed in his heart, finally having a relaxing summer vacation.

......

After receiving the admission letter.

Lin Jiu is particularly curious about high school life.

She often sat on a small stool at the doorstep, looking towards the other side of the mountain, trying to see the buildings in the Qingshan District.

However, nothing can be seen.

On the other side of the mountain, there is only a mountain, and the mountain is covered with trees.

Sometimes, she would stare at the village road, which was barely a two-lane road, feeling depressed.

There is a road in the village, but it is not very convenient to go to No. 4 Middle School or the city.

Her home is in Guangming Village, which is under the jurisdiction of Gaoping Town, which is located under Qingshan District and on the edge of the area.

It was a lot of trouble to get from her home to Qingshan District.

There are two ways:

The first way is to walk for fifteen minutes, or take an electric scooter, to the nearest Zhoukou Village to take a bus.

The population there is large and dense, equivalent to a small community, with streets, hospitals, pharmacies, etc., and buses passing by and stopping.

There are usually four buses. Two in the morning, two hours apart, and two in the afternoon, half an hour apart.

It usually takes 40 minutes to get to the city center by bus. If you want to go somewhere else, you can take the public bus.

The second option is to miss the bus.

You need to take a motorcycle taxi, which takes fifteen minutes to get to the city's main street, and then wait for the bus at the intersection to go to the city center.

The more troublesome thing is that no one drives motorcycle taxis anymore. People think it's unsafe, so taxi drivers are seeing less business and are turning to other means of making a living. Furthermore, waiting for a car at an intersection takes a long time; you can't always get one just by showing up.

Lin Jiu knew that for many people, the village she lived in was already very convenient.

However, compared to people in the city, her life here is very inconvenient.

Happiness comes from comparison.

This summer.

Lin Jiudi stood up for the umpteenth time, looking at the rice fields not far away and the mountains further away.

She didn't know what kind of life she would live in the future.

But at this moment she was very clear that she didn't want to live a life facing the earth and back to the sky.

She must pass the exam in the future.

Go to farther and better places and see different scenery.