Chapter 126 Dream Fulfilled "Oh my god, Yongliang, did you see that? You got into college..."
Early in the morning, while the rest of the Chen family was still asleep, Chen Yongliang carefully got up, opened the door, and found that the snow in the yard was already almost half a foot thick.
He put on the thick hat his wife had knitted by hand, took the wooden rake he had found in the storeroom, and went to sweep the snow in the yard.
The north wind howled, and the heavy snow continued to fall, like letters from distant relatives.
Chen Yongliang stared at the poplar trees in the distance for a while, then sighed and rubbed his hands together.
"Knock knock—"
Someone was knocking on the door at this hour. He opened the gate in confusion, "Who is it?"
"There are two letters from the city post office addressed to Chen Yongliang and Lin Huijun."
The postal worker outside was tall and strong, wearing a thick military green overcoat, wrapped up tightly, with only his narrow eyes showing.
Chen Yongliang nodded his thanks: "That's me."
"Okay, let's sign it quickly, I'm in a hurry to go to the next one."
As they spoke, the man had already gotten back onto his motorcycle, gesturing to Chen Yongliang to sign for it quickly.
"Okay, the roads are slippery from the snow, so please be careful on the road," Chen Yongliang reminded him worriedly.
"Uncle Chen, I'm really going now."
The tall man always seemed to be in a hurry whenever he came to deliver the newspaper to Chen Yongliang, without even having time to drink a sip of water before entering the house.
After calling twice, Chen Yongliang had no choice but to give up. However, sometimes he would slip two roujiamo (Chinese hamburgers) into the tall man's small green bag.
Even after receiving the two letters, signing them, and closing the door, Chen Yongliang still couldn't figure out who had sent them the letters.
He and his wife had no other relatives or friends in their hometown.
Chen Yongliang pushed open the door to the main room, casually placed the unopened letters on the table, and went back to the courtyard to clear the snow.
"Yongliang?"
Lin Huijun opened her eyes groggily and found that her husband was no longer on the kang (a heated brick bed).
"I just went to shovel snow. What would you like for breakfast? I'll make it."
Chen Yongliang had just returned home when he heard his wife's voice and opened the door, bringing in a chilly blast of air.
"It's just the two of us at home, so we can just grab whatever we want to eat."
Lin Huijun put on her cotton-padded coat, looked at the snow on her husband, and complained, "Why do you care about the snow in the yard? Let it fall."
"I was afraid of bothering you." Chen Yongliang, with his gentle demeanor, wasn't in a hurry even after his wife scolded him. He slowly brushed the snowflakes off his indigo cotton-padded coat and hung it on the coat rack by the door.
"Oh, by the way, the postman delivered two letters this morning, one for me and one for you."
Lin Huijun moved to the edge of the kang (a heated brick bed) to put on her shoes, asking as she did so, "Who sent it?"
Chen Yongliang walked over and bent down to put on his wife's shoes. "I haven't taken them off yet. I'm saving them for you to see together."
As he swept the snow, he had a vague premonition and guessed what might be in the envelope.
But while he was looking forward to it, he was also a little flustered and scared, and dared not open it.
Lin Huijun put on her clothes and shoes. The snow was still falling outside the window, but the wind had subsided a bit.
She walked up the steps from the doorway to the main room, where the boiler was already quite warm. She had to take off her coat as soon as she entered.
Chen Yongliang took a pair of silver scissors from the drawer under the coffee table and handed them to his wife.
Lin Huijun also sat down on the sofa, cut open one of the envelopes along the dotted line, and found a handwritten admission notice inside.
The letter, written in neat and elegant regular script, reads: "Congratulations to Chen Yongliang on your admission to the Chinese Department of Umu City University. Please bring this admission notice and your personal identification to the university on March 1st for registration."
"Oh my god, Yongliang, did you see that? You passed the exam!" Lin Huijun looked at her husband beside her with tears in her eyes.
Chen Yongliang was also very excited. He clenched his fists tightly and pressed them to his lips, and his eyes reddened.
Great! He can finally go to college!
In his joy, he didn't forget to urge his wife to quickly open the other envelope.
With trembling hands, Lin Huijun awkwardly cut open the second envelope, which indeed contained her own admission notice.
Almost identical words, except the name and major have changed to Lin Huijun, majoring in fashion design.
The middle-aged couple lovingly stroked their respective acceptance letters, examining them for a long time before carefully putting them back into the envelopes.
Unable to suppress her complex emotions any longer, Lin Huijun burst into tears in her husband's arms.
That year, encouraged by her children, she and her husband put down their hoes and picked up their books again after many years.
Countless days and nights, she doubted herself, wondering if she could pass the exam.
This year-long anxiety and unease finally settled down at this moment.
And her husband, not being able to go to university is his lifelong regret, and for so many years, she has never dared to bring it up.
Chen Yongliang also hugged his wife tightly, his calloused hands stroking her back. "It's all in the past. With Huijun by my side, I have no regrets in this life."
Just as the two were calming down, Chen Mian and Ji Yu returned with a leg of lamb and two large skewers of pork, as if they had guessed in advance that their parents had good news today.
"Dad, Mom, come out and meet me! There's still a lot of stuff in the trunk."
Chen Mian stood at the gate of the courtyard, holding a leg of lamb in one hand and calling for people.
She was wearing a red down jacket today, with a rabbit fur trim around the brim of her hat. It was a new outfit that Ji Yu had asked a friend to bring back for her.
"She's here—" Upon hearing her daughter's voice, Lin Huijun quickly got up from the sofa, wiped away the tears from the corners of her eyes, put on her cotton-padded coat, and went out.
"Be careful, the ground is slippery after the snowfall, don't fall," she told her daughter.
Chen Mian pulled her mother to the trunk of the jeep to pick out things, saying casually, "I'm fine, you hurry up and pick, we still need to deliver the rest to Ji Yu's house."
Ji Yu also got out of the car and helped his mother-in-law carry her things.
Behind Ji Yu's back, Lin Huijun winked at her daughter, "You silly child, you don't even tell your in-laws to choose the good things first."
Ji Yu unloaded a box of canned goods from the car. "Mom, it's okay. These are all New Year's gifts from my company. We also bought some more at the department store. There's enough to go around."
"What a great company! They give out so many things for the New Year," Lin Huijun praised with a smile.
“You don’t need to worry. With my dad’s rank, his workplace will only give him more. He can’t even finish all the food every year,” Ji Yu explained.
"I'll get some more from home and take them to my grandparents tonight."
Lin Huijun declined apologetically, saying, "No need, no need. Grandma Mianmian doesn't need to send any more; it's already enough."
“How can that be? There are only a few of us in the family. We were hoping to spend the New Year with you and Grandma’s family this year. How can we go empty-handed?”
Ji Yu's words were so beautifully spoken that Lin Huijun had no choice but to accept them after much refusal.
"Are you having lunch at home? Your dad and I will make it."
“Okay, why don’t we make more and send a few portions to Ji Yu’s parents? That way they won’t have to cook.” Chen Mian suggested, looking at the mountain of ingredients piled up in the main room.
Lin Huijun: "Sure, you guys sit down and rest for a while. Your dad and I will go and stew the lamb leg."
It was hot inside, so Chen Mian took off her down jacket, revealing a light-colored sweater and jeans underneath.
She pulled Ji Yu to sit on the sofa, glancing at the two opened envelopes out of the corner of her eye, and asked curiously, "Mom, what's on the coffee table? Who wrote you letters?"
Since his brother was transferred back to the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps in Wumu City, no one in their family has used the old-fashioned method of writing letters to keep in touch.
Lin Huijun blushed and answered somewhat shyly, "These are the admission notices for both your father and me."
"Really?!" Chen Mian jumped up from the sofa excitedly. "Such a big happy event and you didn't even call to tell us!"
"Then I'll have to take a good look at them." She carefully opened the envelope and took out the two admission notices.
Ji Yu, who was standing next to him, couldn't help but lean over to examine it closely.
Lin Huijun rubbed her hands together. "It was just delivered this morning, I haven't had a chance to tell you yet."
She tidied up the gifts on the ground a little. "I'm going to cook now. You two can look at them yourselves."
In the kitchen, Chen Yongliang had already washed the lamb leg and pork with warm water, preparing to stew a lamb soup and make braised pork.
Lin Huijun opened the refrigerator and glanced at the ingredients inside, then looked at the few cabbages and pumpkins piled up in the corner.
"Make a few more light stir-fried vegetables. Xiaoyue is still in her postpartum period and shouldn't eat too much oily food."
When Yu Xiaoyue was discharged from the hospital, Lin Huijun wanted her to come to the Chen family to recuperate after childbirth, so that there would be two more people to take care of her and the baby.
Yu Xiaoyue didn't want to trouble her in-laws and insisted on returning to her own home. Lin Huijun could only occasionally stew some soup and make some novel pastries to send over to visit her.
She quickly washed a few small pumpkins, cut off the tops with a knife, scooped out the pulp and seeds, poured in beaten eggs, and put them in a steamer to make a pumpkin custard.
Then tear the cabbage into irregular pieces, stir-fry it with garlic cloves and pork slices until softened, add the pre-soaked glass noodles, and simmer over low heat.
In another pot, mutton soup was simmering. Chen Yongliang had kneaded the dough and then pulled out a frying pan from under the table, placing it on the stove to make pancakes later.
The pork belly with alternating layers of fat and lean meat, along with potato chunks, are already stewing in the pressure cooker.
In the main room, taking advantage of his wife's good mood, Ji Yu hesitated for a moment before finally saying, "Mianmian, can I get an advance of two thousand yuan?"
"Are you planning to buy anything big? Or are you short on allowance at the end of the year?"
Since Ji Yu handed over his salary card and bankbook, Chen Mian has been giving him 200 yuan as pocket money at the beginning of each month.
Ji Yu rarely spent money recklessly; she saved most of it to buy gifts for Chen Mianmian.
“I… Kalikiz asked me for money.” Ji Yu stammered, scratching his head. “He was fired from the police station for making a mistake a while ago, and now he spends all his time drinking in taverns.”
“He came to the bureau yesterday to borrow money, saying he wanted to start a small business.”
Chen Mian was very suspicious of Kalikiz's behavior: "Are you sure he won't keep using this money to drink?"
“I’m not sure, but we were brothers after all, so I’ll help him one last time,” Ji Yu said.
When he first returned from military service, it was Kalikiz who showed him around and took him out for meals and drinks.
Later, for some unknown reason, Kali began to become increasingly unruly.
“Okay, I’ve approved the money, but be prepared that you might not get it back,” Chen Mian said.
These days, when lending money to someone, no matter how good your relationship is, you should be prepared to get nothing in return.
If you lend money out and can't get it back, you might as well give it away.
-----------------------
Author's Note: I almost forgot to mention again. I wonder how many people will see this author's note. This time it's really going to be the finale. There will be about ten more chapters of the main text before it ends.
Perhaps someone would like to request a side story? You can request a side story for the main plot or a single character. To be honest, no one comments on my posts, so if you write down what kind of side story you'd like to see in the comments section, I'll write it down if I can.
If no one comes after all this, then I'm really out of ideas.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
