further away
The days after reconciling with Cheng Zhou slipped away like water through Hu Tong's fingers.
The flowing water was icy cold, but the surrounding air was stiflingly hot.
Hu Tong washed his face, turned off the tap, and stared at the golden beams of light outside the wooden door, feeling only irritable and restless.
She graduated from Heqing Elementary School with excellent grades (both perfect scores) and is now a prospective junior high school student. However, the summer vacation that Hu Tong had been looking forward to for the transition from elementary to junior high school was not as exciting as she had imagined.
Her mother is very busy with work. Her father, formerly a freelance writer, was recently hired by a company in a neighboring city to run... a public WeChat account?
Hu Tong felt that her father's new job would definitely not last long. Who would like to read public accounts? Anyway, Hu Tong didn't like it. She would rather read a book or play Angry Birds on her phone than spend that time reading public accounts.
Hu Tong and Cheng Zhou went to the countryside together to keep Grandma Cheng company and help her pass the time. Unlike his previous brief visits to the Cheng family, Hu Tong did not have a pleasant time here and felt quite resentful.
The incessant chirping of cicadas, the mold growing in the corners of the walls due to dampness, the clothes that were often soaked with sweat, and the meager entertainment options were not the reasons that annoyed Hu Tong.
The source of her anger was one person, Old Lady Cheng.
Grandma Cheng was equally loving and generous to both children, but she was incredibly stingy with herself!
Every corner of the room was stuffed with plastic bags, and the walls were piled with all sorts of secondhand items that would never be used in eight hundred lifetimes. On the table were leftovers that had been eaten one day at a time and were starting to smell slightly sour...
Hu Tong tried to persuade her, complained, and even made a scene, but Old Lady Cheng always listened with a smile, never taking her words to heart. She continued to pick up trash and eat leftovers as usual. Hu Tong felt that the old lady did not respect her.
One morning, Grandma Cheng found a blackened banana that Hu Tong had thrown away in the kitchen trash can. She broke off the blackened part of the banana, went to the living room, and ate it in front of her two children who were watching TV. Finally, she happily announced, "It's not bad, it's very sweet."
Hu Tong immediately understood what had happened. She jumped off the sofa, her eyes red with anger.
"I'm not going to care about you anymore, Grandma Cheng!" Hu Tong said, then rushed upstairs, slamming the door shut and leaving the Cheng family grandmother and granddaughter behind.
Grandma Cheng glanced at her grandson somewhat guiltily, then gave him an almost ingratiating smile. "It's not broken, it's not broken. It would be a waste to throw it away."
Then, she took out a few crumpled banknotes from her bag and asked Cheng Zhou to buy ice cream for Hu Tong.
Cheng Zhou nodded gently, took the money, and walked out. He stopped at the door, turned back, and said, "Grandma, please don't eat anything that should be thrown away anymore. Your health is the most precious thing."
"Okay, okay." Grandma Cheng agreed quickly and happily, but Cheng Zhou knew that these words were just her grandchildren's concern to her, not a set of rules that needed to be followed.
He didn't say anything more and strode out.
From then on, Cheng Zhou started waking up even earlier, to an unbelievable degree.
Grandma Cheng doesn't sleep much, and Hu Tong likes to get up early. When the two of them got up, the sky was still a pale blue, and Cheng Zhou was already sitting at the table with the bowls and chopsticks set out.
Three bowls of thin porridge, with fluffy white rice grains surrounding several pieces of soft, cooked pumpkin. Next to Hu Tong's special bowl sat a boiled egg; she loved boiled eggs. In the center of the round table was a bowl of pickled vegetables: bright red radishes, slender cowpeas, and pale yellow ginger—just looking at it made one's mouth water.
"Little Zhou is such a good boy," Grandma Cheng smiled, her eyes crinkling, and slowly walked toward the kitchen. "You all eat first, there's some left over from yesterday..."
Hu Tong clicked her tongue helplessly, quickly peeled the egg, and stuffed it into her mouth. She wasn't going to say anything more; after all, Grandma Cheng's own grandson was still calmly sitting on the stool!
After a series of clattering sounds as if something was being rummaged through, Grandma Cheng's voice, tinged with a mixture of doubt and surprise, came from the kitchen, "Xiao Zhou, where did the leftovers in the fridge go?"
"It's lost." Cheng Zhou said without changing his expression, pushing the bowl of kimchi towards Hu Tong.
Hu Tong gave him a thumbs up, grinned maliciously, and buried his head in his porridge, slurping it down loudly. Seeing this, Cheng Zhou's lips curled up almost imperceptibly, tinged with pride.
"Oh dear, how could you throw it away? It's full of oil!" Grandma Cheng rushed out anxiously, squatted down in front of the trash can, and started rummaging through it. "It was in the refrigerator, how could it not be edible!"
Hu Tong, unable to bear it any longer, put down his chopsticks. "Grandma Cheng!"
"What a waste..." Grandma Cheng was stunned by the roar, stopped what she was doing and muttered to herself, her eyes still lingering on the direction of the trash can.
Cheng Zhou added, "It's not here. Besides, I threw the leftovers away with other garbage, not in a separate plastic bag."
Grandma Cheng was utterly desperate, saying that she owed Cheng Zhou something in her past life.
From then on, Hu Tong also joined Cheng Zhou's expedition team.
Cheng Zhou said, "Grandma doesn't sleep much and often can't sleep all night, but she always sleeps the best around five or six in the morning. Also, Grandma is in charge of all the trash cans within a 300-meter radius, so we have to go a little further."
So the two of them got up before dawn and tiptoed to the kitchen to collect the leftovers. From the refrigerator to the locked wooden cabinet, Cheng Zhou could always find where Grandma Cheng hid the leftovers. Hu Tong laughed and said he had a dog's nose.
"Then you have a dog's voice." Cheng Zhou would always retort like this in a low voice, and then Hu Tong would pinch him before he would purse his lips and go to wash the rice and chop the vegetables. Hu Tong always felt that he was strangely happy to be pinched.
She yawned, put the leftovers she found into a plastic bag, tied it, and then extravagantly put another plastic bag over it.
At this moment, Cheng Zhou also started cooking breakfast. The two of them hurriedly grabbed their bags and rushed to the garbage collection point two kilometers away, then hurriedly ran back.
Grandma Cheng was both amused and exasperated by the two little ones' antics, but seeing their complexions improving day by day, she suppressed her heartache and let them be. To prevent them from getting up too early and falling because they couldn't see the road clearly, she would hide in her bedroom every day playing a puzzle game on her phone until 8:30 before getting up.
After a summer vacation, Grandma Cheng was dragged by Hu Jiale, who had returned to her hometown to pick up her child, to get a new pair of glasses. Her old friends all laughed at her, saying, "You've been a village school teacher your whole life and never looked like a scholar. Now you're all dressed up in your old age."
"Pah! This is a gift from my second daughter. What do you know?" Old Mrs. Cheng retorted with a laugh.
It was also said that Hu Tong followed Cheng Zhou for a few days, got lazy, and suddenly became a timekeeping coach while holding his phone.
She stood on high ground, watching the boy with jet-black hair and snow-white skin running around. He hadn't shown any signs of getting tanned even after a whole hot summer. Feeling envious, she would always say to Cheng Zhou, "You ran slower today than yesterday!"
When Cheng Zhou asked how much slower it was, she turned off her phone and said it was out of battery.
Cheng Zhou didn't dare touch Hu Tong's phone with the hand that had just picked up the trash bag. He simply said "Oh" calmly and then went home with her.
However, this collaboration did not improve Hu Tong's impression of Cheng Zhou much. At first, she was willing to cooperate only because she found it novel. Once the novelty wore off, she began to feel stifled again.
That's what makes her different from Cheng Zhou.
Faced with Old Master Cheng's excessive frugality, Hu Tong liked to shout and stomp his feet, "No! Not allowed! Absolutely not!"
When it was Cheng Zhou's turn, the advice was: get up a little earlier, move a little lighter, and run a little further.
There are ways to deal with it, regardless of their value. Hu Tong ranked her and Cheng Zhou's approaches in her mind, placing hers above Cheng Zhou's because Cheng Zhou's approach was only a temporary solution. Once they went back to school, Grandma Cheng would definitely continue eating leftovers. They had to make Grandma Cheng realize that this approach was wrong.
But how could her fundamental solution be effective? Hu Tong didn't know; all she knew was that she was now a junior high school student, a grade higher than elementary school students.
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