Li Jumei: "Your eldest brother works at the town's grain and oil store, and your fourth brother starts school today, in the first year of junior high at the town's middle school."
Song Lan: "Does your older brother come home every day after get off work, or...?"
Li Jumei: "I come back once a week."
"You too, little brother?"
Song Lan asked again.
"Um."
Li Jumei nodded: "Although it's only five or six kilometers from our village to the town, the road isn't easy to travel. Your dad and I didn't let your eldest brother and fourth son go out early and come back late every day."
"That's good, after all, nothing is more important than safety."
As Song Lan was speaking, she heard Song Qinghui's cheerful voice: "These shoes fit me perfectly." After jumping a couple of times on the ground, Song Qinghui said, "Lanlan, thank you, your second brother. When I make money, whatever you want, I'll buy it for you!"
"You? All you do all day is wander around. Where are you going to make money?"
Rolling her eyes at Song Qinghui, Li Jumei looked at Song Sanhe and said, "Your daughter bought you these shoes, hurry up and try them on to see if they fit."
Song Sanhe glanced at the shoe size and said, "It's my size." The implication was that there was no need to try them on.
"This is a fountain pen I bought for my younger brother."
The fountain pen is a brand name product; I bought it at the supply and marketing cooperative for three yuan and fifty cents.
Song Qinghui, a connoisseur of quality, remarked, "Xiao Si is hardly suited to such a fine pen. Buying him a pen that costs seven or eight cents would be enough to make him happy for half a day."
"A good fountain pen lasts a long time."
Song Lan smiled, then took out a can of malted milk powder, a packet of white sugar, and a packet of pastries from her bag, and casually took out two oil paper packets from her mesh bag.
"This oil paper contains an old hen and a wild rabbit, which were already cleaned when I came. And these peaches are also what I bought for my family."
"How can you spend so much money? We have everything we need. Don't do this again!"
Li Jumei's words seemed to be scolding Song Lan, but weren't they also a reflection of her heartache for her daughter?
"It didn't cost much."
Song Lan smiled slightly and said, "My job has changed. I came to Hongxing Machinery Factory here a couple of days ago to report for duty. I will come back to the village to visit you and Dad often in the future."
"You've been transferred to work at the Red Star Machinery Factory? What happened?"
Everyone knows the capital is a good place, so how come her daughter...
With her smile fading, Song Lan turned her gaze to Song Sanhe, Li Jumei, and Song Qinghui: "Dad, Mom, Second Brother, please sit down. I have something I'd like to say to you."
She sat down on a nearby bamboo chair.
After Song Sanhe sat down, she said, "On the day that Song Jiaojiao was brought to the capital by my adoptive mother's niece to meet her relatives, she said a lot in front of my adoptive parents. She mentioned that she had been mistreated by you in the countryside. She said that she had been working for the family since she could walk, and she was always hungry. In short, in her mouth, all our family members were evil people."
I admit I was terrified after hearing that, and I resisted seeing you all and going back to the countryside. But Song Jiaojiao kept telling my adoptive parents not to send me back to the countryside, saying she didn't want to see me suffer and be tormented like she did in the countryside..."
Facing Li Jumei and the other two, Song Lan briefly and truthfully recounted what had happened since Song Jiaojiao came to the capital to reunite with her family. At the end, she said, "I know you all still have some feelings for Song Jiaojiao."
But I still hope that our family can avoid her. It's not that I'm maliciously speculating about people's hearts, but I have reason to suspect, and even say frankly, that the reason I almost got into trouble and subsequently gained a bad reputation throughout the steel plant's employee residential area was definitely caused by Song Jiaojiao.
I am part of our family. The reason Song Jiaojiao treated me that way was simply because she resented me for living in the city for many years in her place. Given this past incident and her nature, there's no guarantee she won't do something bad to our family in the future.
As for my adoptive parents' demands for me to divorce and remarry, I have refused them firmly more than once. I know very well that they are not doing it for my own good, nor are they concerned about me, but rather they want to use me to gain benefits for themselves.
Otherwise, they wouldn't have ruined my reputation again, forcing me to submit and marry the mentally unstable son of the deputy factory director.
Li Jumei and her husband, along with Song Qinghui, looked extremely grim, their eyes blazing with fury.
"I was originally supposed to be transferred to work at the machinery factory's staff hospital, but when I was going through the onboarding process, the hospital leaders told me that there was no position for me at the moment, and that I had been temporarily transferred to the factory's security department. I suspect that there is something I don't know about this."
However, I don't think there's anything wrong with working in the security department; at least the salary is eight yuan more than what I earned as a nurse. Based on that, I won't investigate further for now.
At this point, Song Lan smiled and said, "I'm telling you all this not because I want you two to worry, but because I feel that you are my parents, my family, and I should let you know the real me."
Of course, I also believe the Qin family will get better, I believe my father-in-law will be able to return to his post one day, and I believe Qin Yanzheng will wake up... Today I went back to the village partly to familiarize myself with our family home and visit my parents, brothers, and younger brother. Also, I plan to go into the mountains to collect some medicinal herbs, and tomorrow morning I'll go to the farm to visit my father-in-law.”
Seeing the smile in Song Lan's eyes, Li Jumei felt so sorry for her that she burst into tears: "You've suffered too much!" Her father-in-law had an accident, her mother-in-law passed away, her husband was in a coma, and she had two younger sisters-in-law and two younger brothers-in-law to take care of. How could she live like this?
Before Song Lan could respond, Li Jumei continued, "And what about your adoptive parents? How could they treat you like that?! They're so heartless!"
Song Sanhe then spoke up: "The day your adoptive parents met us, Song Jiaojiao had no connection with this family anymore. You don't need to worry that your mother and I will be soft-hearted towards her and fall into her trap one day."
“Sister, Dad is right. That ingrate Song Jiaojiao is no longer a member of this family, she's not my sister, Song Qinghui’s sister. I wouldn’t even bother to give her a second glance!”
He never expected that his sister had already gotten married, and even more unexpectedly, his brother-in-law, whom he had never met, was now lying in bed in a deep sleep. Just thinking about it made Song Qinghui realize that his sister's life was miserable.
"Why don't you take these liberation shoes back and return them? Your second brother has shoes to wear, so please don't waste any more money!"
Hearing Song Qinghui say this, Song Sanhe and Li Jumei nodded repeatedly. Li Jumei said, "Lanlan, we are really happy that you recognize me and your father. Listen to your mother, we will return everything you brought today, even if we lose some money."
Song Lan laughed and said, "You can keep the things without worry, I have plenty of money."
"But you're going to support your brother-in-law and sister-in-law. There's an old saying that a half-grown boy can eat his father out of house and home. How can you support them on your salary alone?"
Li Jumei expressed her concerns.
Song Lan: "My brother-in-law and sister-in-law's grain and oil rations, as well as mine, have all been transferred to the machinery factory. I work in the security department and can earn fifty yuan and eight mao a month, which is more than ten yuan more than the monthly salary of an ordinary worker. It's enough for me and the others to live on."
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