Chapter 31: Don’t learn to refuse unreasonable requests from others
It was already past midnight when she got home. After strolling around for the whole morning, she felt a little tired. Xu Heye was too lazy to cook, so she simply cut some bacon that her mother Dong Taohua brought her, mixed it with broad beans and rice, and cooked a pot of bacon and broad bean rice.
The broad bean rice that just came on the market in May is fragrant and tender, and is the perfect match for cooking bacon rice.
Half an hour later, the bacon rice was cooked. Xu Heye took the pot and replaced it with an aluminum basin. She blanched some cleaned water spinach and added a little salt without adding any oil.
Bacon rice is salty and delicious, but eating it alone can be a bit greasy. Pairing it with some boiled water spinach can just help to relieve the greasiness.
The two sisters each held a large bowl filled with bacon rice. The bacon was red, the broad beans were green, and the white rice was shiny and oily. It looked so tempting.
Take a bite of the bacon rice and then a bite of the fresh and tender water spinach. There are only two words to describe it: delicious!
After dinner, Xu Heye was about to wash the dishes, but Kong Xiaoyue snatched it away.
"He Ye, you cooked the meal, I'll wash the dishes. Didn't you say that good friends should reciprocate and give to each other?"
Washing two bowls and two small pots wouldn't take much effort, so Xu Heye didn't stop him.
After Kong Xiaoyue finished washing the dishes, Xu Heye put everything back in the cupboard and took out her first-grade math textbook. She had already gone through the entire Chinese textbook three times, memorized all the ancient poems and classical Chinese texts, and mastered the pinyin and vocabulary.
Now I need to review the math again to fill in the gaps.
Seeing Xu Heye start studying, Kong Xiaoyue also took out her Walkman and started playing the English tape from the first semester of the first year of junior high school.
But she had never learned English, so she couldn't understand it just by listening to the tape.
Seeing her confused look, Xu Heye took out the English textbook that her cousin had lent her, "Kong Xiaoyue, this is the English textbook my cousin lent me. It's from the first semester of the first year of junior high school. You can listen to the tape while comparing it with the textbook, and try to read along while listening." The more you read, the better your sense of language and listening skills will be.
"Okay, Xu Heye, thank you." Kong Xiaoyue took the book, compared it with the listening tape, and started learning from the English alphabet.
"If you don't understand something, you can ask me."
"Yeah." Kong Xiaoyue read a chapter following the tape and felt tired. She looked up and saw Xu Heye still looking at the math book attentively, holding a pen and paper in her hand, calculating something from time to time.
Seeing Xu Heye so focused, Kong Xiaoyue felt embarrassed to be distracted and continued to focus on studying.
The two studied together until around five in the afternoon, and Kong Xiaoyue was ready to go back.
Before leaving, Kong Xiaoyue was a little confused: "Xu Heye, can I leave my Walkman and the tapes I bought with you?"
"Why?" Xu Heye was puzzled.
"I'm living at my uncle's house now, and my cousins always stare at me whenever I buy something." Kong Xiaoyue pouted. "I actually had a Walkman before. It was a tenth birthday present from my dad. After I started living at my uncle's house, my cousin saw it and borrowed it to listen to music. Since then, I've never seen that Walkman again!"
"If I take these back now, I'm afraid he'll target me again."
Xu Heye: “…”
She was a little embarrassed: "But I can't keep it for you. Walkman is not cheap. If you lose it, I can't compensate you."
Kong Xiaoyue waved her hand and said generously: "You don't have to pay for it."
"Even if it's lost, you don't have to pay for it."
Xu Heye still refused: "Kong Xiaoyue, this is not a question of compensation, but a question of my ability. I can't take the responsibility of keeping your Walkman for you. So I can't do this."
Kong Xiaoyue was stunned.
"But, but aren't we friends? Why can't you help me?"
Xu Heye nodded: "Yes, we are friends. But because of this, I can't help you do things that I can't do myself."
"If I help you keep your Walkman and it ends up being lost, should I compensate you or not?
If you don't compensate me, if you don't let me compensate you, I'll feel uneasy because it was my fault that the item was lost. What about you? Do you think the Walkman wasn't actually lost, but I just hid it?
If you ask me to compensate you, I will be unwilling to do so. I will think that I was clearly helping you out of kindness, but in the end I got myself into trouble and had to pay a large sum of money, which added such a huge burden to myself.
So you see, in the end, we'll both have a knot in our hearts." This is a bitter lesson Xu Heye learned in her previous life after guaranteeing a friend, who eventually ran away and she was forced to pay back a large sum of money.
Kong Xiaoyue's mouth moved slightly, and after a long while she said, "But I find it hard to refuse."
"And aren't you afraid that if you reject me, you won't even be able to be friends anymore?"
Xu Heye shrugged. "If we can't be friends just because I rejected an unreasonable request, then it only means that this friendship itself is no longer necessary."
She then looked at Kong Xiaoyue: "Will you stop being friends with me just because I rejected you?"
Kong Xiaoyue shook her head: "Of course not."
She looked at Xu Heye and thought that the girl in front of her was so beautiful.
A girl who knows how to say no is so cool! It was because she couldn't say no that her cousin "borrowed" her old Walkman.
So Kong Xiaoyue was not angry at all because of Xu Heye's rejection.
"He Ye, I also want to learn from you and learn to say no to all unreasonable requests." This is the English she just learned in self-study today.
Kong Xiaoyue secretly decided that if her cousin wanted to borrow her Walkman next time, she would refuse. She didn't want her newly bought Walkman to be "borrowed" by someone else again.
"Come on." Xu Heye clenched his fist and made an encouraging gesture.
"I will." Kong Xiaoyue felt full of courage.
After the two little girls talked it out, Kong Xiaoyue decided to take her newly bought Walkman home.
"Bye, Xu Heye, I'll come to see you tomorrow." Kong Xiaoyue got on the bus, sat by the window, and waved vigorously at Xu Heye.
"Bye-Bye."
Forty minutes later, Kong Xiaoyue returned to her uncle's house.
Before entering, she subconsciously hid her Walkman. It seemed as if her courage was slowly fading as the bus approached her uncle's house.
Having been weak for over a decade, it was impossible for her to become brave in just one afternoon. As long as she hid the Walkman so her cousins couldn't see it, they wouldn't ask to borrow it, and she wouldn't have to say "no."
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