Chapter 03 Escape Plan
Gu Yunsu has a timeline, which she calls the "180-Day Escape Plan."
Before talking about this plan, perhaps we should first talk about Gu Yunsu.
Gu Yunsu, female, 28 years old, is a graduate student of the Chinese Department of a 211 university. She has worked in several unknown marketing and film and television companies. Half a year ago, she quit her job and prepared to challenge herself again at the age of 28 and pursue her dream: to be a full-time writer.
Although she also knows that in the domestic environment, this goal is nothing but a fool's dream for a layman like her, but everyone has to be willful for once in their life. Since "today" will always be the youngest day of her life, if not now, when will she try?
The only problem was that after working for so many years, she hadn't saved any money.
Gu Yunsu is an honest man. If he says he has no savings, then he has no savings.
I can only blame myself for being "spendthrifty" and not having the awareness of saving money. With a salary of 15,000 yuan a month, I want to pay attention to the quality of life, live well and eat well. An apartment for living alone costs 7,000 yuan. Apart from the necessary expenses such as water, electricity, and food, I also have to go out with friends for dinner and participate in cultural and entertainment activities from time to time. Clothes, shoes, bags, and cosmetics, which one does not cost money for an urban beauty? This does not include the money I threw into the gym on impulse!
Nowadays, the concept of early consumption is being promoted everywhere. Gu Yunsu is not a top buyer, and she can't resist the deception of major e-commerce platforms and has bought countless useless things in installments. After resigning, she disabled the orange software on her own, but she still has to pay more than a thousand bills on the 9th of every month. And such a life... She flipped through the bills and thought bitterly that such a life would continue for another eight months.
Not to mention the monthly social security payment after resignation...
Ah, it’s so hard being young!
It’s hard to have no money!
Faced with reality, even the pure-hearted pursuit of dreams had to give up. After much deliberation, Gu Yunsu decided to lower her noble head and return to her mother's home where she lived alone, to temporarily support her parents.
It's ugly, really ugly. At the age of 28, he didn't bring honor to his family or return home with wealth. Instead, he was in debt and had to hide under the protection of his mother. No matter how shameless Gu Yunsu was, he still felt ashamed.
But if that were all, she could still comfort herself with "dream", a glittering core word that is as addictive as a MLM keyword: It doesn't matter, these are all trials that must be endured in the process of realizing her ideals.
The problem is that she and Wu Limei don't get along very well.
Gu Yunsu was born in a single-parent family. After her parents divorced when she was 10 years old, she lived with her mother until she went to college. Wu Limei was a very responsible parent. She took care of Gu Yunsu in a meticulous and comprehensive manner. No matter how poor you are, you can't deprive your child. She tried her best to satisfy Gu Yunsu, both materially and spiritually. She also advocated encouragement and teaching, and rarely beat or scolded her daughter.
By all standards, she is a good mother.
But the real problem is that their personalities are not very harmonious. They are neither similar nor complementary. And Gu Yunsu didn't know when she found that her world views were gradually diverging from her mother's.
Wu Limei is a typical little woman. Although she is a strong mother, she has achieved rapid growth in life after her divorce. From a naive girl who only knows love, she suddenly understands the importance of daily necessities. However, she is essentially gentle, sweet, a little willful and naive. She always longs to return to traditional family life, and even lives to the age of seventy, she still yearns for love.
But Gu Yunsu's motto is: Rely on mountains and they will fall; rely on people and they will run away; it is best to rely on yourself.
Love is nothing in front of bread. What is a man? He is a burger during the weight loss period, a game before the final exam, a huge roadblock to her road to success, poisonous, and I have never seen such a species that delays things.
You can say she is stupid and prejudiced, but this is the experience she has gained through her own experience in the world of love for 10 years, and it is her truth.
Everyone lives with prejudice, but she doesn't care.
Gu Yunsu believes that the biggest difference between her and Wu Limei is that Wu Limei is a love-minded person, while she is not.
In Xiao Gu's opinion, the biggest problem with love brain is not that they can't see anything else but love and want to devote themselves completely to it, but that they don't repent.
As the saying goes, every failure makes you wiser. The reason why humans are advanced animals is that we have wisdom and the ability to learn, which helps us to seek benefits and avoid harm, and not capsize in the ditch a second time.
What does it mean that one never learns a lesson? It means that the person is weak, stupid, or even regressing.
Gu Yunsu has witnessed her mother and her father getting along and quarreling, quarreling and getting along since she was a child. After the two broke up, Wu Limei has been dating non-stop, breaking up and getting back together with men. Gu Yunsu watched from the sidelines and really couldn't give Wu Limei a high evaluation. She felt that Wu Limei had accomplished nothing in her life because she was ruined by love, or more precisely, by Wu Limei herself.
The views of naive people are always colder and more ignorant. Due to the lack of kindness, the world they see is narrower. Trying to seek the truth in such a world is not possible.
In short, starting from this difference in outlook on life, the mother and daughter have a huge gap in their views in all aspects. Especially since Gu Yunsu went to school and work in many different cities, she has absorbed more diverse perspectives, which is even more "incomparable" with Wu Limei, who has never changed from the beginning to the end. The two of them have to stop talking in their daily interactions in order to maintain the harmony of their family relationship.
Gu Yunsu returned to his mother's home and spent a few months in a daze. He realized that he could not go on like this, so he began to plan for the future.
Let’s not talk about the distant future, but we have to think clearly about the next few months.
She knew that Wu Limei would not ask her for money. If she stayed at home and ate and drank for free every day, the 6,000 yuan balance in her Alipay account would be enough to support her for three months. So the golden period was the first three months. After that, she would either have to borrow money from friends or go out to work. The worst case scenario was that she would have to ask Wu Limei for money, and she could still barely get by for three or four months.
If she wrote 3,000 words a day, that would be 90,000 words in 30 days, or 180,000 words in two months, which would be just enough to complete a relatively refined novel. If she continued at this pace, she could write three novels in six months.
Three novels!
At least it can help her gain some popularity and lay a foundation, right?
She knew that online articles nowadays were often hundreds of thousands of words long, and her 180,000 words were nothing in the eyes of professional writers. But she had also considered that she was a newcomer and didn't know anything about this profession. Instead of spending the past six months on a novel with an unknown effect, she wanted to try different themes and spread the risk. After all, experts have said that you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket.
It would be best to get it done within 180 days, she told herself when she was thinking about the plan. She wanted to make the deadline tighter so that there would be time for recovery later.
But within a few months, this "nice to have" turned into a "must."
Because Wu Limei was married, she and Li Jianxiong got married after knowing each other for only four months.
Gu Yunsu Wufuck said that although she didn't care at all who Wu Limei married, wasn't this speed too fast?
She wasn't given any time to react.
What was she thinking at that time? Oh, a sentence floated in her mind: It's so dry that I'm dying of drought, and so rainy that I'm dying of water.
Gu Yunsu had just broken up with her boyfriend and completely lost the possibility of getting married this year. Wu Limei was about to get married for the second time in her life.
Besides, she thought of something more important: would the plan come to an end, would she have to give up her ideals, go out and find a job again, and live a mediocre life?
It's all for no money.
She was troubled by this for several days.
But in the end, the kind-hearted Li Jianxiong suggested this: he had already taken a fancy to a second-hand two-bedroom house with a not-so-small attic. It was a little distance from the city center, so the price was also acceptable. He could sell his current house and buy this one, so that Gu Yunsu could move in with him, and it would not have much impact on his daily life.
Gu Yunsu agreed without hesitation.
How can a beggar be picky about food?
After hearing her decision, all her friends gave her a thumbs up and said, "You are awesome."
Gu Yunsu rolled his eyes and said: What if it doesn't work? You guys who earn your own living and have enough food and drink, how can you understand the pain of me who is dependent on my parents?
In fact, it was generally acceptable. After moving in, I found that the attic not only had a bedroom, but also a toilet. The most embarrassing half of eating, drinking, defecating and urinating were satisfied. There was really nothing more I could ask for.
Li Jianxiong worked during the day, and Li Yan, as a senior high school repeater, had to get up early and go to school late. During the day, it was almost the same as when he lived with Wu Limei. In the evening, everyone had dinner together, and then Gu Yunsu would hide in the attic and never come down again. The chances to meet each other were few and far between.
It is a bit strange to live with two strange adult men, but the older one has a specific "wolf-like" target; the younger one is even more withdrawn than Gu Yunsu. For the time being, no worrying scandals have happened.
But there are indeed some unpleasant aspects, mainly because of different living habits.
For example, if Gu Yunsu and Wu Limei were obsessed with cleanliness, then the father and son would be more casual, walking all over the floor in slippers, leaving footprints all over the house; or whenever Li Jianxiong cooked, the kitchen would always be a mess, to the point where you'd think it had been bombed; or some mornings, when the father and son didn't have enough toilets, Li Jianxiong would secretly use the toilet in the attic, making so much noise that she couldn't sleep...
Generally speaking, although a family of four is the standard model for a reorganized family, even the youngest one is already an adult, and everyone is pursuing independence. They are more like roommates than family members.
In order to please his "eldest daughter" Gu Yunsu, Li Jianxiong would secretly give her some pocket money from time to time. For the latter, this was simply the most irresistible remarriage benefit of Wu Limei.
Gu Yunsu had nothing to be dissatisfied with.
If Wu Limei hadn’t suddenly announced this explosive news.
Gu Yunsu couldn't accept it.