Wet
The woman brought up the remaining two bowls and said, "The chili peppers and kimchi are over there, go get them yourself." She pointed to the kimchi table in front of the food pick-up area and went back.
"Hello." Zhou Qianling called her and when she turned around, he raised his phone and said with a smile, "It's out of battery. Can I borrow a charger?"
The woman glanced at her phone, went into the kitchen, and pulled out a power bank for her. "Here's yours," she said, pausing and explaining in uncharacteristic Mandarin, "I use an Android, and the power bank has all the data cables you need."
Zhou Qianling curved his brows and thanked her gently.
"No need." The woman still didn't smile. Seeing that there were no customers, she sat aside and played Candy Crush.
After being given a cold shoulder, Zhou Qianling took a picture of his face on the black screen of his mobile phone: oval face, peach blossom eyes, high nose bridge... Objectively speaking, he looked good.
Even if the other person is not a lesbian, she should have some pure affection for me.
Zhou Qianling couldn't remember when she realized she was lesbian, but by the time she realized it, she had already become a lesbian. But even though she was lesbian, she had never been attracted to any girl.
So she once wondered if she was actually asexual.
The sound of "unbelievable" that kept ringing in her ears seemed to be affecting her thoughts. Zhou Qianling looked over there again. The person's profile was very perfect, with curly and curled eyelashes. The strands of hair by her ears were blown onto her small nose, and she gently hooked them back behind her ears with her little finger.
It's like a picture of a beautiful woman enjoying a peaceful life.
Zhou Qianling suddenly had some destructive thoughts. She really wanted to... wet the painting.
The woman seemed to sense something, glanced sideways, and then turned back to her phone in confusion, no longer paying attention to the diners' gaze.
The meal was eaten very slowly because of Zhou Qianling.
After slurping the noodles, the third aunt drank up the soup. In the blink of an eye, she saw her niece chewing the noodles slowly and not even eating half of the noodles. She didn't know if it was because her taste was not to her or it was just a habit of city people.
"Is Xiaoling not used to it?"
"Hmm?" Zhou Qianling came back to his senses and said, "No, it smells very good."
Seeing his mother dozing off against the wall, Zhou Qianling didn't delay any longer. He finished his meal in a few bites and drank half a bowl of soup before rushing to pay before his aunt.
I wanted to talk to the shop owner, but seeing her concentrating on completing the task, Zhou Qianling could only scan the code silently. The internet speed was very slow, and it took a while to load before I finally heard the payment was received.
She made small talk: "21, right?"
The other party didn't even look up, "Yeah."
After standing there for a few seconds, the usually smooth sailing person felt a little frustrated, and finally left at her aunt's beckoning. She didn't look back, so she didn't know that the woman glanced at her back after the plastic door curtain closed.
As the cold wind blew outside, Zhou Fang's sleepiness disappeared. She gathered her cashmere shawl around her shoulders and asked casually, "Is that Wu Baizi's daughter? She looks different."
"Yes, I still remember her red face when she was little. Her mother even joked that she should be named Monkey Butt."
Recalling the events of 10 or 20 years ago, the two women in their 50s burst into laughter. "Ah, in the blink of an eye, the little girl is almost turning into an old girl."
Hearing this, Zhou Qianling asked casually, "Is she a local? Is she single?"
In rural areas, women start looking for a husband when they are as early as 17 or 18 years old, and as late as 24 or 25 years old.
"No, this girl has very high standards. I don't know what kind of person she likes. But she has a store to run a business, so Wu Baizi and his wife don't dare to rush her."
Zhou Qianling didn't ask any more questions, but the very fact of her asking had already brought trouble upon herself. Third Aunt sized her up and asked, "Xiaoling, are you single too? It's time to find one. My cousins..."
Zhou Fang glanced at her frowning daughter and interrupted her third sister: "She is still young, there is no need to rush. Besides, she is at the age to work hard, so we will wait and see."
--
At four in the morning, Zhou Qianling woke up from the cold. She poked the bottle under the covers with her foot and found it was cold. This place had no heating or air conditioning, so in winter, she poured boiling water into the IV bottle, wrapped it in a handkerchief, and put it under the covers to keep her feet warm. It was warm, but it cooled quickly.
I curled up into a ball, closed my eyes for ten minutes, and found that I couldn't fall asleep.
Zhou Qianling took out his mobile phone to kill time. He opened the video software out of habit, but it said there was no network. He then opened the game he usually played, but the loading progress stopped at 0%. Zhou Qianling sighed.
How do people here live?
It's so boring.
She opened and exited various software programs aimlessly, and finally stopped at the WeChat interface.
Looking through the payment records, the most recent one was paid to the merchant "Mei Lai Clay Pot Lamb Noodles". The avatar is a lotus flower. If you only look at WeChat, you might think it is an elderly aunt.
Is your surname Wu?
Zhou Qianling looked through it but couldn't find the place to add friends, so he had to give up.
After tossing and turning in bed for two hours, she got dressed, opened the door to the living room, walked through the main room, and came to the living room on the other side. She saw that her aunt had already gotten up and was lighting a fire.
Most of the tiled houses in rural Qianzhou are symmetrical with two households, connected by a main hall and a back room. Each household consists of a living room and bedroom on the first floor, and a loft on the second floor for storing grain and sundries.
Zhou Fang didn't have a house in her hometown, so she lived with her younger sister and brother. Zhou Qianling was assigned to live with her aunt.
My aunt was stirring the fire, and when she heard the sound, she turned around and asked politely, "Why don't you sleep a little longer? Are you not used to it?"
"I went to bed early yesterday, so I woke up early today." After Zhou Qianling said this, she poured water to wash her face and combed her hair. She didn't treat her aunt as an elder. After all, her aunt was two or three years younger than her.
Zhou Fang had six siblings: four younger sisters and a youngest. In those days, without family planning, people kept having children until they had a son. Zhou Qianling still remembers Zhou Fang's expression when she returned home after the college entrance exam and discovered she had a two-year-old brother.
"Isn't my uncle coming back for the New Year this year?"
"The construction site is short of workers during the Spring Festival, the wages are high, and the fares are expensive before the Spring Festival. He will come back after the Spring Festival."
Zhou Qianling nodded. She had gone home long ago after the New Year. The bed she was sleeping in was still her two cousins'. If her uncle came back, there would definitely not be enough beds.
"What do you want to eat today? I'll go pick some from the fields. There's still some frozen cabbage and..."
Zhou Qianling was applying lipstick in front of the mirror. After hearing this, she paused and said, "I... am going to eat mutton noodles." After that, she wrapped her scarf around her neck and went out, leaving her aunt with a puzzled look on her face.
It didn't snow today, but it was still very cold. Zhou Qianling forgot to bring gloves, so he could only blow on his hands to warm them, then rubbed them and put them into his woolen coat.
You have to keep your hands well covered in winter. She still remembers that the last time she came here, she didn't bring anything back but her hands were covered with frostbite.
When they met some villagers on the road, the children were shy, wanting to look but not daring to. The elders were much bolder, staring at her with their backs hunched and their hands behind their backs. Finally, unable to contain their curiosity, they asked, "Where are you from, little one?" After Zhou Qianling said her mother's name, the elders would mutter to themselves, "Zhou Fang? Which Zhou Fang? Oh... ah, Zhou Fang."
Zhou Qianling responded with a smile, and suddenly felt that this place felt a bit like a paradise.
The town is divided into different villages, and the villages are divided into different villages. It took Zhou Qianling more than ten minutes to walk from Zhoujiazhai to Chenjiazhai, and he even slipped on the way, so when he saw the mutton noodle shop that had not yet opened, he couldn't help but frown.
--
Wu Meilai got up early in the morning, cleaned the house, cooked pig food, and prepared lunch for her family. Seeing that it was still early, she went to the field to chop a basket of cabbage before packing up and going to Laowa Village.
The name of Laowa Village is not as nice as Yuxianwan, but that village is crowded and lively, and much richer than other villages, so people from several surrounding villages usually like to go there to buy things. Over time, Laowa Village gradually formed a small market, which is why Wu Meilai chose to open a store there.
However, the village is still not as good as the town, and not many people are willing to spend money to eat in restaurants, so she usually opens the store at eleven or twelve o'clock in the afternoon. Even so, most of the time she opens the store and people just sit in it.
She thought today would be no different, but she saw yesterday's customer had found a stool from somewhere, was sitting in front of the store with his legs crossed, playing with his cell phone, and didn't care about his long brown coat spread on the ground.
The way she crossed her legs was just like her, dignified and elegant like a TV star, completely different from those second-rate people.
"Um... move aside." Wu Mei always felt inexplicably nervous when talking to her. She thought it was probably because the people in this city were too fashionable.
The person playing with his phone stopped and looked up.
Wu Meilai didn't look at her face, but let her eyes follow the tips of her hair, from the phone screen to her round and neat fingernails, brushing across her bony wrists, and finally to her chest.
Zhou Qianling raised his hand and pulled all his hair back over his shoulders, then said with a smile, "Boss, I've been waiting for you for four and a half hours."
Wu Mei came to look at her, but still didn't meet her eyes. "Sorry, I usually open at noon."
"Is that so... Then do you have any customer base or something? If I want to eat noodles in the future, I will ask you in the group first." Zhou Qianling called up the QR code scan app, his eyes filled with the purest desire for food.
Wu Meilai looked at the scanning lines going back and forth on the screen and felt a faint sense of pleasure, a sense of satisfaction that came from having her labor recognized.
She unlocked her phone, clicked on her QR code and handed it to her: "I don't have a group, but if you want to eat, you can ask me directly."
After running the shop for several years, she rarely adds people except for a few regular customers. After all, those who ask her for her WeChat account are all messy hooligans.
Wu Meilai labeled all men who asked for her contact information as hooligans. In her opinion, decent people wouldn't be so frivolous.
After graduating from junior high school, she worked for a while at Hu Jian. With her first month's salary, she bought a secondhand smartphone for over 300 yuan. Unaware at the time, she added her boss's friend, □□. That same night, he called her his wife and asked for nude photos, which made her feel sick. She didn't know how to use it at the time and didn't know you could block or delete messages, so she just avoided clicking on the penguin. Later, she tinkered with her phone and figured out the uninstall function, and the first thing she did was uninstall □□.
Wife... After Wu Mei understood the meaning of "marriage", she secretly decided that she would never get married when she grew up. This idea became more and more firm as she grew older.
Whenever classmates or coworkers discussed their preferences for boys, she remained unmoved. She'd assumed the girls had collectively fabricated lies about "liking"—like humans imagining gods. It wasn't until she saw a coworker beaming with happiness while in love that she finally believed the feeling of "liking" truly existed.
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