01 New Home
The rain has been falling for more than half a month.
During these days without a shred of sunlight, Yang Xiao's clothes were always damp. This was partly because the umbrella she'd picked up had a broken rib, and if she hadn't leaned over to hide in the intact half, her face and hair would have gotten wet. It was also partly because her jeans were too big, never fitting her body and always swaying. They were cool in the summer, but when it rained, they would get wet all over her legs, mixed with mud.
Yang Xiao's few memories of her father were of a skinny, dark-skinned old man squatting by the firewood, turning her damp clothes over and drying them. She could only watch him, naked, hiding behind the curtains, because this was the only set of clothes she could wear outside in the summer.
As for her mother, Yang Xiao had only heard about her from the noisy kids in town. They said that Yang Xiaoer's mother couldn't make ends meet and ran away.
Therefore, Yang Xiao was always extremely grateful that this memory was missing from her mind, otherwise her clever mouth, which was famous in the town, would have turned into a stupid piece of wood that could only sob when watching her mother leave.
She is such a person who cares a lot about her reputation. She wears tattered clothes but cannot stand people saying that she is not good at talking. After all, apart from her sharp tongue, Yang Xiao feels that she has nothing else left.
A little girl with a good tongue.
This was also Zhou Qi’s first impression of Yang Xiao.
At that time, Zhou Qi was still a well-known West China Medical student in the town. When the neighbors talked about going to school and the college entrance examination, they would always say that the boy from the Zhou family was really promising and that Zhou Daye had a good son.
Once a person is surrounded by a halo for a long time, perhaps their physique will become more and more upright. So Yang Xiao's first impression of Zhou Qi was: a nosy person.
She and Cai Xiaopang were arguing fiercely when Zhou Qi pulled her away. The first thing he asked was, "Are you Yang Xiaoer?" Yang Xiao was annoyed and shook him off forcefully, staring at him and answering word by word, "My name is Yang Xiao, not Yang Xiaoer."
Zhou Qi nodded, "Okay, come home with me, my dad wants us to eat."
Yang Xiao immediately realized that this was Uncle Zhou’s good son, Zhou Qi.
So her expression softened a little, but she still turned her head and walked towards Zhou's house with her hands behind her back.
Zhou Qi looked at the little yellow-haired girl's back, who was pretending to be mature and angry, smiled, and followed her step by step.
"Why are you arguing with Cai Xiaopang?" Zhou Qi was really curious. Cai Xiaopang was the youngest son of the Cai family's fruit stall in the town. He would often take out some lychees and grapes from his pocket to bribe children of the same age, and he seemed to have a good relationship with people.
Yang Xiao looked up at him, then angrily lowered her head and kicked the stone in front of her shoe away. She said, "He never gave me fruit before, but today he gave me some. He gave me a rotten lychee and told me to just eat the rotten one."
Zhou Qi didn't know how to respond without hurting the pride of the little girl who had just started junior high school, so he changed the subject, "Won't my dad buy you some fruit? I'll go back and tell him."
Yang Xiao shook her head. "Uncle Zhou treats me very well. I don't want to eat lychees, I just don't want to be bullied."
Zhou Qi felt a little uncomfortable after hearing this. He looked at the skinny little girl in front of him and said, "I'll take you to buy lychees after dinner."
The corners of Yang Xiao's mouth suddenly lifted up, but her eyebrows dropped again. "No, I don't like lychees."
Zhou Qi looked at Yang Xiao's twisted expression and flicked her eyebrows for some unknown reason. Seeing her immediately staring at him with wide eyes, he waved his hand: "My dad has agreed to take you home. Can he go bankrupt with just a few lychees?"
Yang Xiao was very happy now. She touched her eyebrow that was flicked and walked back happily with Zhou Qi.
As soon as Yang Xiao stepped over the wooden threshold, Zhou Daye hurriedly shoved a plate full of food in his hand toward Zhou Qi, asking him to help him place it on the stone table under the yellow orchid tree in the yard. He then pulled Yang Xiao over and asked, "I... heard... that you had a fight with someone... again? You didn't... get bullied, did you?"
Zhou Daye, whose full name is Zhou Yigang, lives up to his nickname. He speaks with a big tongue and slowly, and talking to people can really drive them crazy.
Yang Xiao, however, was not annoyed at all. She gently patted Zhou Daye's shoulder and said, "Uncle Zhou, how could anyone bully me? I can scold him to tears!"
Zhou Daye finally felt relieved and pulled Yang Xiao towards Zhou Qi. The three of them sat around the stone table.
Yang Xiao took the chopsticks and bowl Zhou Qi handed over, leaned in to sniff the food on the stone table, and suddenly her appetite was whetted. She smiled and gave Zhou Daye a thumbs-up: "Smells so good! Uncle Zhou's cooking is the best!"
Zhou Daye also smiled and picked up the largest piece of fried pork tenderloin for her. He said slowly, "I asked... Zhou Qi to look for you today. He's on vacation... and he's back. You two haven't met... I was worried... he wouldn't be able to find you..."
Zhou Qi had just gotten off the train and hadn't eaten anything yet, so he was starving. He ate a few mouthfuls of rice before saying, "When I found her, she was arguing fiercely with Fatty Cai."
Yang Xiao glared at Zhou Qi while holding her bowl, but Zhou Qi remained unmoved. He took two more bites of his rice and continued, "Dad, don't you know how sharp her tongue is? Who can bully Yang Xiaoer? Her tongue is like a machine gun."
Zhou Daye laughed heartily, but then pretended to be angry and patted Zhou Qi: "Stop teasing the waiter... and eat."
At this moment, Yang Xiao was weighing whether to turn against Zhou Qi or pretend to be magnanimous and trick him into eating lychees later. Her eyes were rolling around.
Zhou Qi felt a little funny. His father must have picked up a smart guy.
A few months ago, Yang Xiao was still the waiter of the Yang family.
She and Yang Quezi, her biological father, lived in a bungalow on the edge of town.
Although Yang Quezi had difficulty walking, his hands and eyes were very nimble. He did some sewing and mending work to make a living and support Yang Xiao's studies.
After Yang Xiao entered junior high school, life became even tighter for her and her father. The junior high school in the town required students to attend morning and evening self-study classes and pay extra tuition fees.
Yang Xiao was bright and had good grades, so she wanted to skip the morning and evening self-study classes to save money. However, Yang Quezi was not happy about this, fearing that Yang Xiao would miss out on precious study time. So he began sewing insoles day and night, selling them as soon as they were finished, even limping to the nearby village to sell them.
It never rains but it pours.
Yang Quezi was electrocuted to death by a leaky electric wire hanging from a village ditch on his way to sell insoles.
That day, Yang Xiaoyue ranked first in the exam and received the certificate on the podium.
The homeroom teacher took her away after receiving a phone call. She had forgotten how she got from school to the field where Yang Quezi lay. She only knew that a large crowd had gathered, a cordon had been set up, and that people in white coats carrying shiny silver boxes were tossing Yang Quezi around. Then someone told her, "Your father has been electrocuted," and handed her a stack of insoles.
Yang Xiao wrote about this scene in her Chinese composition for her next monthly exam. She wrote, "My father's name wasn't Yang Quezi, but Yang Guoqiang. He was a man of integrity. He never gave up on me, never gave up on his desire to live. He had deft hands, and with them he sewed insoles and embroidered cross-stitches for money. He used them to lift me to the place he longed for. He had never been to school, but he revered knowledge. He never let me sit on my schoolbag, never allowed me to do homework at the dinner table, and even beat me for greasy spots on my homework. That day, as he lay dying on the ground, I sat on my patched and mended schoolbag in front of him. This time, he didn't scold me. It was as if he had left this world."
Yang Xiao got a very high score for her composition, and she became the first in this monthly exam again.
Because she knew, as Yang Guoqiang said, that crying wouldn't solve any problems. She also read in a book that pain is the foundation of creation, so she turned around and wrote down her pain on the test paper, letting this pain help her get to where she wanted to go.
But perhaps these pains were not enough to make her fly away. Without a father or mother, no relatives were willing to raise Yang Xiao, and the town wanted to send her to an orphanage.
A few days before going to the welfare home, Zhou Daye came and negotiated with the people in the town to bring Yang Xiao back home.
For a time, rumors spread in the town. Some said that Yang Xiao was going to be Zhou Daye's child bride, some said that Zhou Daye raised Yang Xiao just to get compensation to the Yang family, and some said that Zhou Daye wanted both the money and the person.
But Yang Xiao knew that Uncle Zhou was really good to her. Like Yang Guoqiang, he was afraid that she would be bullied, sick and hungry, and even more afraid that she would get married without having read many books.
As for why Zhou Daye adopted Yang Xiao, Yang Xiao didn't care.
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