"It has nothing to do with me!" the auntie quickly said. "No matter what, it's none of my business!"
Song Erzhuang grew impatient. "Yinhua, why are you asking these questions? Afeng's family isn't well-off. If you marry into the family, you two will work hard together. When your mother and I got married, we had nothing either, but we still managed to raise all four of you sisters to adulthood!"
Qiao Guilan chimed in, "Your dad is right, our family even has a college graduate!"
The man's aunt looked on with envy and kept praising him for raising a college student.
We chatted for a while, and apart from standing up and saying hello at the beginning, the man didn't say a word after that and just kept yawning.
His cousin next to him secretly nudged his arm and winked at him, telling him to concentrate and stop yawning.
Song Yinhua looked at her cousin, "You must be Guo Rui, Qiu Xue's high school classmate!"
"Hello, big sister, I'm Guo Rui."
"Ha~!" Ah Feng next to me couldn't help but yawn again.
“Your cousin seems really sleepy.” Song Yinhua caught a fleeting hint of guilt in Guo Rui’s expression. “He looks more and more like he’s having a marijuana binge…”
Snap!
Ah Feng accidentally knocked over his water glass, which shattered on the ground.
Song Erzhuang said loudly, "How could that be? In this poor, remote place, who smokes marijuana? The young man is probably just sleepy."
Qiao Guilan squatted down to pick up the broken pieces on the ground and also scolded Song Yinhua a couple of times.
"What? Smoking marijuana? You're such a whimsical kid."
While scolding him, Qiao Guilan apologized to the man, cleaned up the broken pieces, and took them out.
Just then, Qiao Guilan's voice came from outside, "Hey, who are you? What are you doing here? This is my home..."
The people inside turned their heads in unison and saw several heavily made-up women rush in; their attire clearly indicated they weren't respectable people.
"Who are you? Get out!" Qiao Guilan chased after them, afraid that the man would misunderstand her family's behavior, and explained to them, "We don't know them, we don't know who they are..."
"I'm Afeng's girlfriend!" One of the women threw herself into Afeng's arms as he kept yawning. "Afeng, why did you sneak off to this blind date without telling me? Am I not good enough?"
Another woman rushed over, shouting, "I'm Ah Feng's girlfriend, get away from me!"
The third woman rushed over, shouting, "Get away from me! I'm Ah Feng's girlfriend, and I'm pregnant with his child!"
Several women started arguing in public.
Ah Feng covered his mouth and kept yawning.
One of the women quickly took a package out of her bag. "Ah Feng, I have this!"
Guo Rui, Guo's cousin, quickly chased the women away, but his older cousin couldn't stand it anymore. He grabbed the package handed to him by one of the flamboyant women and started smoking it in front of everyone.
Song Erzhuang and Qiao Guilan were both honest, simple country folk who had never seen anything like this before.
They both stood there dumbfounded.
Song Yinhua asked Guo Rui, "You're Qiu Xue's classmate, and you introduce someone like this—who smokes marijuana, has questionable private life, and has a bunch of troubles in his family—to your classmate's older sister? Can't you find anyone else to mess with?"
Guo Rui looked extremely embarrassed and angrily pushed his cousin away, saying, "I'm not going to care about your affairs anymore. You can fend for yourself!"
-
The village store.
Qiao Guilan was on the phone, comforting the third daughter on the other end.
"It's okay, don't take it to heart. Mom knows you didn't mean it."
"Mom, if I had known that my classmate's cousin was a drug addict, a womanizer, had parents in poor health, and a bunch of younger siblings to support, and just wanted someone to share the burden, I definitely wouldn't have introduced such a person to my older sister..."
"Qiuxue, don't cry. Your older sister isn't blaming you. We know you meant well. If you need anything in the provincial capital, just tell Mom. Remember to eat on time while you're there alone. It's getting chilly in the mornings and evenings now, so remember to wear more clothes and don't catch a cold."
Qiao Guilan's heart was filled with concern and reluctance to part with the third daughter.
However, at this time she did not know that the third daughter, to whom she had devoted all her energy, even burning her son's college admission notice, just to save money to send her to university in the provincial capital, was not related to her by blood at all.
She had been raising the granddaughter of the old man Tang who had framed her entire family.
After agreeing on a time to call the third girl again, Qiao Guilan reluctantly hung up the phone, paid the bill, and took the food to the health center.
At the health center, Qiao Guilan told her son, Song Baogen, about the matter, and her words were all aimed at exonerating the third daughter.
I truly believe that the third daughter was betrayed by her classmate.
Song Baogen remembered his girlfriend telling him that her high school classmate's cousin was a drug addict, and many classmates knew about it.
This high school classmate initially targeted female classmates, trying to scam several of them without success. Eventually, the story spread among the female classmates.
How could Qiuxue not know?
Song Baogen couldn't understand what was wrong with Qiu Xue!
I went to the provincial capital to study for a few days, and even my own family members were cheated.
Her university tuition was equivalent to her older sister's salary.
Song Baogen began to have a problem with Song Qiuxue.
Qiao Guilan didn't see through her son's thoughts. She kept praising Qiu Xue for being so promising and kind. She cried so hard on the phone because Qiu Xue almost ruined her older sister's life by introducing her to a potential partner.
-
Song Yinhua cut down many arm-thick tree branches from the back mountain to surround the courtyard of the new house.
She's busy every day at the new house, trying to make the courtyard look like the one she envisions.
As evening approached, Song Yinhua realized that all the branches she had cut that day were used up, so she went into her spatial dimension to wash her hands and check on the little black dog's condition.
After feeding it spring water mixed with goat milk for a few days, the little black dog has opened its eyes and can eat on its own.
As soon as the little black dog saw Song Yinhua, it wagged its tail happily and rubbed against her legs.
Song Yinhua picked a fruit from a tree, ate it while playing with the little black dog for a while, and then went home.
During the night, someone cut down many tree branches as thick as an arm on the back mountain and transported them to the new house in cartloads. When Song Yinhua came over early the next morning, she saw many cut tree branches in the yard.
There are no other houses around, and it's quite a distance from the village. Who helped her cut so many branches around the yard?
When Song Yinhua returned home after a busy day, she would find the cut branches in the yard when she came back the next morning.
Furthermore, the tree branches surrounding the yard were reinforced.
Song Yinhua became increasingly curious: who had helped her?
The father did not go out at night, and Baogen recuperated at the health center.
Song Yinhua thought for a long time, but still couldn't figure out who it was.
It was late at night again when a tall, slender figure appeared in the new house, holding a ruler to measure the dimensions of the courtyard gate.
I shone a flashlight into my notebook to record the dimensions of the courtyard gate.
Then the dark figure went to the back mountain to cut down materials to make wooden doors and pushed them back on a cart.
The night was too dark.
The tall figure nearly tripped over a stone outside the gate as he pushed the cart into the yard.
A beam of firelight illuminated the small patch of ground beneath our feet.
The shadowy figure subconsciously looked up and saw Song Yinhua standing beside him, holding a torch.
"It's you?"
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