"Shen Qingqing! Who was it that made me take her to the market today last night?! I called her so many times and she didn't hear me, did she?!"
As soon as it was light, Li Xunli walked into the room of Shen Qingqing and her sister, yanked off the blanket covering Shen Qingqing, and let out a loud shout.
The two sisters, Shen Qingqing and Shen Yangyang, who were sound asleep, were startled awake. They struggled to open their eyes and saw Li Xunli standing by the bed.
"mom……"
"Mother……"
The two sisters called out in muffled voices, one after the other.
"Are you still going to the market?" Li Xunli's anger subsided considerably after hearing these two shouts.
Shen Qingqing finally remembered what she had asked Li Xunli for last night: to go to the market to learn how to buy vegetables. Her little face scrunched up in a frown, then she stretched out her arms wide, gave a big yawn, and then flipped herself out of bed with a somersault: "I want to go! I want to go!"
Shen Yangyang was still young and couldn't resist the sleepiness. After calling out "Mommy", she fell into a deep sleep again.
After washing up, Shen Qing felt refreshed and went out with Li Xunli.
The market was narrow, so it was easier to walk in. When they reached the intersection, Li Xunli ordered some things from a regular stall, saying she would pay when she returned. She then locked her bicycle next to the stall and led Shen Qingqing into the market.
When they woke Shen Qingqing, it was just dawn, but by the time they got to the market, it was already quite bright.
In the market, men and women mingled together, and even a small person like Shen Qingqing had to squeeze through the gaps by turning sideways.
Li Xunli held one of her hands tightly, afraid that she would get lost in the crowd at the market.
After squeezing into the circle of elderly men and women selling their wares at roadside stalls, several alleys lead into the actual vegetable market inside.
Shen Qingqing hadn't been to the market for almost twenty years in her previous life. Coming back, seeing the stall selling eels at the alley entrance, a sense of familiarity instantly returned.
Seeing that she was staring at the eel stall without moving, Li Xunli assumed she wanted to eat some, so she led her over and asked, "Boss, how much are these eels?"
"Ten yuan a pound!" The eel vendor pinned down an eel, slapped it with his large knife, and the eel, which had been wriggling, immediately went silent. Then the vendor swiftly cut it into small pieces and put it into a plastic bag.
Shen Qingqing smiled slightly as she looked at the technique, which was exactly the same as she remembered.
Li Xunli bent down to pick out eels from the large basin next to her.
"Boss, these two..."
Just as Li Xunli picked out two, a voice from the side drowned out her outburst, and someone grabbed the very two that Li Xunli had chosen.
"Boss! I'll take both of these! Slice them thinly!"
Li Xunli was startled by the other person's arrogant act of catching the eel with his bare hands. Following the other person's action of taking out money, she realized that the other person was someone she knew from the same village.
After paying, while the owner prepared the eel, the customer finally noticed Li Xunli standing next to him. "Hey? Xunli?"
Li Xunli smiled politely: "Sister Yuzhu."
While the eels were catching fish, Li Yuzhu chatted with Li Xunli: "Xunli, has anyone come to buy your family's porcelain kiln?"
Li Xunli glanced at Shen Qingqing, who was staring intently at the boss killing the eel, and nodded when she heard Li Yuzhu's words, "Yes."
"How much did your family give?" Li Yuzhu immediately became interested.
Li Xunli wasn't close enough to Li Yuzhu to discuss such matters in a crowded and gossipy place like the vegetable market, so she simply said vaguely, "Not much."
Unexpectedly, this ambiguous attitude seemed to have pierced Li Yuzhu's lungs. Her expression suddenly turned sour, and she leaned closer to Li Xunli and asked, "Is your family unwilling to sign?"
Before Li Xunli could figure out where her conjecture came from, she heard the man say the next sentence: "It's just a broken porcelain kiln, so be it, what's there to be unwilling about?"
"Don't be silly! The big company told me that if even one person in the porcelain kiln sale doesn't sign, then nobody gets the money. I didn't even know who wasn't going to sell, but I understood immediately from your attitude..."
Li Yuzhu kept talking.
Li Xunli, mindful that Li Yuzhu was from the same village and they would see each other often, suppressed her temper and said, "Sister Yuzhu, I can't make decisions about our family's affairs on my own. Whether or not to sell the porcelain kiln is not something I can decide. My parents haven't passed away yet."
Li Yuzhu paused abruptly in her rambling, then said nonchalantly, "Oh dear, why are you so angry! Why are you saying such unlucky things when you're perfectly fine, old lady! I'm only doing this for your family's good. Even if the porcelain kiln is sold, you'll still get a share from your married daughter!"
Shen Qingqing finally snapped out of her daze watching the eel vendor efficiently kill the fish. As she watched him pack the two eels into a bag, she looked up at Li Yuzhu and said, "Aunt Yuzhu, if your family doesn't have money, why would you buy such expensive eels?"
Upon hearing this, Li Yuzhu's expression immediately darkened. "How dare you talk like that, kid?"
Shen Qingqing innocently pointed to the eel that the eel vendor had already packed: "To be honest, if you weren't short of money, why would you keep worrying about whether our family would sell the porcelain kiln, afraid that your own family wouldn't get paid?"
Then suddenly he said, "Could it be that you borrowed money to buy such expensive eels and are afraid you won't be able to pay it back, so you're in such a hurry to urge our family to sell our porcelain kiln like you?"
Shen Qingqing's words made no sense, but she was a child under ten years old, what sense could she possibly understand?
Saying these words out of the blue made those around him laugh.
Li Yuzhu had no idea who the people around her were laughing at, but now that she had been stabbed by Shen Qingqing, she assumed that everyone was laughing at her.
"It's not Xunli, how did you raise your child? How can a child interrupt adults? What kind of behavior is that! If a child is so rude and ill-mannered at such a young age, what will they be like when they grow up? Will any family want to marry into that family?"
“Aunt Yuzhu, I didn’t interrupt. You finished speaking, and my mom didn’t respond, so I spoke up. I didn’t let you speak and no one responded. Isn’t that polite?”
"As for whether I'll have a husband who would be interested in me when I grow up, I don't know, but I certainly won't be asking around in the market like you are. We polite people don't do things like that."
Shen Qingqing spoke very seriously, without any other expression, but upon closer inspection, her eyes were practically spitting fire.
"I'm sorry, Sister Yuzhu, my child is young and doesn't know any better. He doesn't know what he should or shouldn't say. I'll teach him properly when I get back. Please don't take it personally with a child." After Shen Qingqing finished speaking, Li Xunli pulled her behind her to protect her.
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