Chapter 11 Fishing: After two days, Yan Xue and I will get married and we are short of food.
A few minutes later, Yan Xue was pulled by Liu Chuncai and took the lead.
Liu Weiguo and Qi Fang lagged behind slightly. One had just taken a shower and trimmed his hair and beard, and indeed looked much more energetic with his thick eyebrows and big eyes, while the other was as cold and silent as ever.
"My brother is also very handsome, am I right?" Liu Chuncai whispered to Yan Xue in a self-righteous tone.
Being looked at with expectation by her, Yan Xue turned her head back and looked at her carefully. "Yes, she is very pretty. She looks like Aunt Liu."
She spoke even more quietly, but Liu Weiguo, who was very outgoing, immediately replied, "I actually look like my uncle."
At that time, Qi Fang raised his eyes and glanced at him, which instantly reminded Yan Xue of the man's somewhat subtle expression when he mentioned Liu Weiguo in the guesthouse.
Yan Xue didn't have the good habit of explaining things to others, so she turned back and asked Liu Chuncai, "Can you still fish in winter?"
"Of course," Liu Chuncai said, "but you have to know how to find a spot and make bait. Not everyone can fish."
The girl had obviously chosen a project that would highlight her brother's strengths. "There are few people in the entire forest farm who are better at this than my brother. If you don't believe me, ask Brother Qi Fang; he's seen it before."
Really, Yan Xue wanted to turn around and ask, "Really?" to see Qi Fang's expression.
But before she could make a move, Liu Weiguo said, "That's because you're greedy and too embarrassed to say it, so you're deliberately using Qi Fang as a pretext."
As they were talking, they were almost at the riverside. From a distance, they could see several ice holes carved out by water.
Liu Weiguo did not go straight to the main branch, but took a detour, selected the downstream branch, and started digging in a place where the water was slow.
"In winter, the water is low on oxygen. Once you make a hole in it, the fish will come to the surface to breathe, and you'll definitely catch one."
The ice was a bit thick, so he and Qi Fang used iron sticks to chisel at it together. Liu Chuncai even tried it, but then let go helplessly. It took them a long time to chisel out a small hole.
Liu Weiguo put the bait on his homemade fishing rod and soon after he put it down, he hooked a giant carp that was over a foot long.
"This must be about one kilogram, right?" Yan Xue estimated.
She knew this kind of fish, a kind of Yalu River fish, a carnivorous fish. Because of its delicious meat, it has always been very expensive. The common ones weigh only about six or seven taels.
Liu Weiguo said, "It only weighs a jin (approximately 100 grams). If you want to talk about big fish, it's still a carp. Every year, we catch 20 to 30 jin (approximately 100 grams) of fish in the Yalu River. Their bodies are as thick as waists, and their scales are as big as small mirrors. We can only cut them into pieces and sell them, and we may not even sell them all. In the end, they all go to the unit. Our forest farm has bought some of them before."
As he spoke, Aohua threw the fishing rod onto the ice, continued to put the bait on, and handed it directly to Yan Xue, "You try it too."
"Why don't you ask me to try?" Liu Chuncai was dissatisfied.
Liu Weiguo didn't even look up. "Do you have the patience to do that? Every time you fish for a while, you pick up the hook to check, and if there's any fish, it's gone."
Liu Chuncai was even more unhappy when she heard this. She wanted to argue a few more times, but she kept silent after thinking about something. She just encouraged Yan Xue, "Sister Yan Xue, you try it now."
Yan Xue didn't hesitate, squatted down, took the fishing rod, and asked Liu Weiguo: "How do I do it?"
In order to hold it steadily, she even took off her gloves, and her white and slender fingers were tucked into her sleeves, holding the fishing rod motionlessly, as if she didn't feel the cold.
Because of this concentration, she was able to sense the movement of the fishing rod and throw up a fish that was more than one hand long at the right time.
Liu Chuncai identified it and said, "It's a crucian carp!" The sound she made was even more excited than when her brother caught the arowana just now.
I was so excited that the news inevitably spread a little far. Immediately, a drake's voice, in its puberty, rang out on the shore, "What's there for the crucian carp to be happy about? It's unsophisticated."
They were a few boys about Liu Chuncai's age. Liu Chuncai glared back at them, "I love it! What's it to you?"
Several people laughed. Even though they saw Liu Weiguo and Qi Fang were there, they were not afraid. They smiled and raised their ice skates. "What's so fun about fishing? You might as well go ice skating with us."
"Ice skating is boring. I just like fishing!" Liu Chuncai glared at the other party again, turned around and faced them with her back.
No matter what the people behind her said, she refused to turn around, let alone respond. After they walked away, she raised her head and glanced over there.
Yan Xue was close to her and could clearly see envy in her eyes, as well as a hint of sadness that was hard to hide.
During these days at the forest farm, it seems that I have never seen her skate on the river, and the other children of the Liu family don't go either. It is obvious that the simplest ice skates can be made with wood and No. 8 iron wire.
It was quiet for a moment by the ice hole. Liu Weiguo was about to change the subject, "Look, this time I'll catch you a big one." Qi Fang, who had been silent the whole time, finally spoke up, "Can we go fishing again in a couple of days?"
"What's wrong? You want to eat?" Liu Weiguo was a little surprised. Qi Fang has never been a person who likes to eat.
Then he heard Qi Fang say casually, "Yan Xue and I are getting married in two days, and we're short of food."
“Bang!”
The fishing rod in Liu Weiguo's hand fell.
"Fishing rod, fishing rod!" Liu Chuncai subconsciously reminded him, but only realized it belatedly after she finished shouting, "What? You're marrying Sister Yan Xue?"
It was chaos and turmoil, absolute chaos and turmoil.
Although Liu Weiguo quickly snatched back the fishing rod, the small box of bait was knocked over and spilled into the water, benefiting the stupid fish.
So there was no need to fish for the fish, and no one cared whether it was skating or not. Liu Weiguo collected his things and directly pulled Qi Fang aside for interrogation.
Liu Chuncai was hit even harder. Her promising sister-in-law was snatched away. When she got home, she kept complaining, "Isn't she a relative's sister? Why is she getting married again?"
Liu Daniu's wife had noticed it a long time ago. "A sister wouldn't come all the way to stay with her brother for so long, unless she wanted to find a partner here. But if they were really that close to each other that she would come here to find a partner just for him, Xiao Qi should have mentioned it before. Have you ever seen him mention it?"
"Then why didn't he say it earlier?" Liu Chuncai pouted, obviously still very unhappy.
After Liu Weiguo came back from the river, he also stretched out his limbs and lay on the warm bed at home. "Yes, I asked his sister if she had a boyfriend, and he told me no."
"You haven't even started yet, and you're already shouting about it. What if it doesn't work out?"
Liu Daniu's wife was sitting next to him winding the thread. Upon hearing this, she rolled her eyes at her son and said, "Besides, he really doesn't have a partner. If it works out, we can get married directly. If not, we can go home."
"That's not what the guy said. He said his fiancé doesn't count as a partner."
Liu Weiguo snorted, and immediately his mother rolled her eyes at him again. "What's the matter with you doing this? Are you attracted to Xiao Yan?"
"Didn't I think she was really his sister?"
Liu Weiguo had barely finished speaking when his father, who had just finished cleaning the fish, kicked him. "Look at you, you're obsessed with a pretty girl."
"You don't miss me? You don't miss me carrying water for my grandma's house for two years..."
"You little brat is getting bolder!"
When Liu Daniu's voice changed, Liu Weiguo got up and ran.
"You're already making a fuss after just coming down the mountain, and you're not a big deal." Liu Daniu's wife threw the wound thread into the sewing basket and stuffed the large spool into the cabinet. She looked up at the solar calendar on the wall and said, "It's only a few days before the New Year. We should go back to work on the eighth day of the first lunar month. Why choose this time? We're so tight on time."
Yan Xue sat at the desk with a notebook in her hand, and she also felt that time was a bit tight.
It was really inconvenient to talk in the guesthouse, so Qi Fang went back and saw that most people had gone home for the New Year, so he took Yan Xue to the dormitory.
The conditions here are much better than those on the mountain. There are not only kangs, but also desks and benches. A collection of leaders' quotations is respectfully placed on the table for everyone to study.
Yan Xue was a man of action and organization. After she came in and took off her scarf and gloves, she began to think, "With only thirteen or fourteen days left, the Chinese New Year definitely won't work. Which of the remaining days do you think would be suitable?"
"If I can rent a house, it will be the 28th of the twelfth lunar month." Qi Fang bent down and looked for something in the cabinet.
Yan Xue glanced at the calendar. "February 14th."
"not good?"
It’s not that it’s bad, but the date is too coincidental, the famous Valentine’s Day.
But in this era, no one would know about it, let alone live it. Yan Xue wrote it down in her notebook, "I just feel a little rushed, with less than five days left."
After she said that, Qi Fang didn't ask any more questions. He took out a wooden box one foot square, put it on the kang and opened it. "I'll go find a house."
"Then I won't worry about it." Yan Xue crossed out this item. "It's definitely too late to make the furniture now, so let's put it aside for now. The important thing is to make the luggage and clothes."
As soon as he finished speaking, a stack of paper tickets fell beside him. "Cloth tickets."
A few more, "Cotton Tickets."
Then there were industrial tickets, and finally a small stack of money, which at a glance amounted to about three or four hundred yuan.
Yan Xue was surprised. "You haven't spent a penny in these years?"
Young single men usually don't know how to live. How did he save so much money? Doesn't he even make clothes?
Qi Fang didn't say anything, locked the box and put it back in the cabinet.
Yan Xue didn't ask any more questions: "Then let's go to town tomorrow and buy the things we need first."
"I'm afraid not tomorrow."
"Aren't you on vacation?" Yan Xue looked up in surprise.
The light outside the window gradually dimmed. The man had his back to the light. At first glance, it was unclear whether he was silent because of the question. "The forest farm arranged for me to go up the mountain to check on the hangar. I have to ask them to arrange someone else. They may not be able to arrange it tomorrow."
So he had so little confidence in himself that he subconsciously thought she would regret the engagement after seeing him?
Yan Xue looked at him doubtfully for a moment, and seeing that he kept looking down, she looked away as well. "Then I'll go by myself. If you still have time, go look for a house."
She thought she had to buy a lot of things, so she even went to Liu's house to borrow a sled.
It’s not the big one, but the small one about half a meter wide, which is just big enough for one person to sit on and can only carry about one or two hundred pounds of things.
When I went there, I didn't see Liu Chuncai, but Liu Weiguo seemed to be fine. He even helped Liu Daniu's wife move out her two bags of pine nuts.
Liu Daniu's wife probably didn't know Qi Fang was going to see the hangar, and thought they were going together. Otherwise, if she heard Yan Xue was going to town, she might have offered to go with her.
Going to the town was both time-consuming and expensive, and the two really didn't want to trouble each other, so they didn't explain. Qi Fang dragged the things back first and then put them on the train the next morning.
"If you can't move it, ask the flight attendant for help." The man put the things away and whispered a word.
Yan Xue still remembered how she was forcibly taken away by the train. She waved at him and said, "I know. Get off quickly, or you'll be stuck down later."
Does this mean you really don't care whether there is someone with you or not?
Qi Fang glanced at her, turned around and got out of the car.
Yan Xue still remembers that there were many thieves on the train in those days. Except for the 40 cents for buying tickets, the rest were stuffed into the pockets sewn inside the clothes, and they only paid attention to the sleds and pine nuts.
The car just started to shake and the last person got in and placed the backpack on the seat opposite her.
Yan Xue just glanced at him casually, but she didn't expect the other party to look at her as well. Their eyes met, and Yan Xue's eyes narrowed immediately.
Hey, old acquaintance!
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say... an old enemy...
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