"Girl, you need to be more careful! That madman's eyes are looking at you strangely!"
That day, Zixi was hanging out the sheets to dry in the yard when Aunt Zhang grabbed her wrist.
She leaned closer mysteriously: "I heard that his father back then..."
“Aunt Zhang, Comrade Ji helped me fetch water and chop firewood, so I’m giving him some gifts in return. Isn’t this what educated youth should do?”
Zi Xi calmly withdrew her hand and unfolded the bed sheet.
Of course she knew about those rumors.
Ji Yanchen's father, unable to bear the humiliation during the movement, ended his life with the hemp rope that had bound countless people.
Ji Yanchen, who was only fourteen years old at the time, was found clinging tightly to his father's body for three days and three nights.
All they knew was that Ji Yanchen was insane; they didn't know what had happened on that stormy night.
Zi Xi was delirious from illness, and her forehead was so hot it could be used to bake a pancake.
In a daze, she heard the courtyard gate being pounded with a deafening roar, mixed with the sound of wind and snow howling.
"Lin...Lin, the educated youth!"
His voice was hoarse and urgent, completely unlike the usually silent Ji Yanchen.
She forced herself to get up and went to open the door without even putting on her cotton-padded coat.
The wind and snow rushed in instantly, making her stumble.
At the doorway, Ji Yanchen stood there like a snowman, his eyebrows and eyelashes covered in frost, but he was tightly clutching a bundle in his arms.
"Medicine! I bought medicine from the clinic!"
He stammered as he spoke, his lips turning purple from the cold.
This was the first time he had spoken a complete sentence since they met.
The bundle contained neatly stacked fever reducers, anti-inflammatory pills, and a small packet of brown sugar.
At the very bottom was a crumpled prescription slip with instructions for taking the medicine written on it in crooked handwriting, clearly written in newly learned characters.
Having endured hardship in this small world, being suddenly shown such care brought tears to Zi Xi's eyes.
She tried to pull him inside to warm up, but Ji Yanchen recoiled as if he'd been burned, nearly falling into the snowdrift.
He shook his head frantically, shoved the medicine into her arms, turned and rushed into the snowstorm, his tattered cotton shoes leaving a trail of deep footprints in the snow.
Zi Xi stood at the door, watching the figure gradually disappear into the snow.
When Ji Yanchen turned around, his eyes were as clear as the cleanest spring water in a mountain stream, without a trace of the madness the villagers described.
The next morning, there was a bundle of freshly chopped firewood in front of her door, with a rough porcelain bowl on top, and traces of boiled herbs still remaining at the bottom of the bowl.
Zi Xi washed the bowl clean, filled it with the millet porridge she had cooked, and placed it on Ji Yanchen's doorstep. This time, she drew a heart in the snow.
Through the crack in the door, a pair of eyes watched everything from the shadows until her figure disappeared into the morning mist, then a trembling hand reached out and carried the bowl inside.
*
The black market in the county town in early winter is hidden in a narrow alley behind the old cotton mill.
The morning mist, like a crumpled gray cloth, enveloped the shadowy figures of people in the alley.
As dawn broke, Li Xiaorou, wrapped in a worn blue cotton-padded jacket, squatted in front of her stall, tapping absently on the glass bottle of clam oil. Her fingernails still held traces of blue ink she had gotten while mending her younger brother's clothes the night before.
"Comrade, how much is this face cream?"
She deliberately dragged out her words, but her eyes darted towards the depths of the alley, where several furtive figures were scalping grain coupons.
Since her rebirth, she has been looking for opportunities to stockpile supplies so that she can make her first pot of gold before the reform and opening up.
The stall owner was an old woman with a face full of wrinkles. She squinted and held up three fingers: "Three catties of national grain coupons, or one yuan and twenty cents."
Too expensive.
Li Xiaorou inwardly scoffed.
At this time in her previous life, she was gradually getting closer to Ji Yanchen, all for the gold that was rumored to be hidden in the Ji family.
But now?
The first thing she did after being reborn was to avoid that madman.
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