Asking my brother for help
That night, Jian Jianan never told Shan Jiqing what was written in the letter she had hidden.
Jian Jianan has made up his mind to keep this matter a secret and not tell anyone. It would be best to keep it to himself so that he wouldn't have to worry about being discovered.
However, no matter how hard Jianan tried to conceal the truth, she was not the powerful woman she would become in the future, and she did not know how to better conceal herself.
As a result, she dreamed about things at night and couldn't sleep well. Her deep worry was reflected on her face. Her mother Su Qinxuan was the first to notice that something was wrong with her daughter.
After the winter vacation, Jian Jiabei will go to the second grade of junior high school, while Jian Jianan will go to the first grade of junior high school with his brother.
Fortunately, when they were choosing a school, they chose the Hydrangea Primary and Junior High School which were connected together, so the brother and sister would not have to be separated.
It has been more than a week since the start of school, and Jian Jianan has been attending junior high school for some time. Although she always smiles in front of her family every day, she can hide it from others but not from her mother who cares about her the most.
Su Qinxuan always felt that her daughter was worried, but she could not figure out what her daughter was worried about. Why could a teenage girl like her be so worried?
Could it be some national or family affair?
Out of a mother's concern for her daughter, she found Jian Jiabei and had a heart-to-heart talk with her daughter.
"Beibei! Come here for a moment."
On the weekend, Jian Jianan made an appointment with his friends to go out and play, and Jian Jiabei also made an appointment with someone to play basketball. They had already changed their clothes and were walking outside in a hurry when they were suddenly stopped by Su Qinxuan, who said that there was something they wanted to discuss.
Huh? What happened?
Jian Jiabei was completely confused and bewildered.
Su Qixuan: "Have you noticed any changes in your sister recently?"
Jian Jiabei was bewildered: "What changes? No, I didn't notice any changes in her. She still has one nose and two eyes, and can eat and run."
Jian Jianan had just been promoted to junior high school and lived in the same teaching building as Jian Jiabei. He had no place to put his loving brotherly heart. Every day he thought that she might not be used to junior high school, so he ran towards Jian Jianan's classroom all day long. He didn't feel relieved until he saw his sister sitting in her seat safely.
But he didn't see anything wrong.
After hearing her son's answer, Su Qinxuan didn't press him any further. Instead, she seemed to be thinking about something and told her son, "Okay, Mom knows. During this time, you should pay more attention to your sister. If she behaves abnormally, remember to tell Mom right away!"
Jian Jiabei agreed immediately.
He was not a careful person to begin with, and was quite rough. He was happy that Jian Jianan was not injured, but after listening to his mother's words, Jian Jiabei paid more attention to his sister's every move than usual.
Sure enough, after observing for a few days, he discovered that his sister was different from before.
Jian Jianan, this little money-grubber, has never once offered any ideas on expanding the business territory since the start of school!
Moreover, she even stopped her favorite job of inspecting the canteen!
When Jian Jiabei thought of this, he took a breath and said, "Hiss!"
So scary!
So terrible!
Something must have happened to my sister!
Thinking of this, Jian Jiabei couldn't sit still anymore and decided to keep a close eye on Jian Jianan, this troublesome little guy, for some time to come to find out what was going on!
Jian Jianan thought he had kept the secret well, but he didn't expect that his brother was also hiding something in his heart.
The brother and sister walked side by side on the way home from school with ulterior motives, chatting from time to time. Both of them were extremely alert and under great nervousness, they gave some incorrect answers. To Dan Jiqing, who didn't understand what was going on, it was like a conversation between a deaf and a dumb person.
Jian Jiabei racked his brains to find out the news: "Sister, look at how beautiful this flower is. Winter is over, can spring be far behind? It is because flowers never hide anything and bloom wholeheartedly that they are so beautiful."
Jian Jianan said absentmindedly, "You're right, brother. But I heard there's a plant that only grows well in the south, fresh and juicy. But in unsuitable places, like the north, it becomes sour and astringent, and can't grow well at all. It turns from a juicy and plump fruit into an inedible waste. What do you think, brother?"
Shan Jiqing: “…”
What on earth are you talking about!
Why are there so many encrypted chats that I can’t understand?
It's only been one night, and already everything is incomprehensible to me. What on earth is going on?
The three of them walked for a while in silence, and when they reached a crossroads and were about to part ways, Shan Jiqing turned around and said goodbye to the two of them. As he passed by Jian Jianan, he pretended to say something casually, "I think a single chopstick can be easily broken, but when gathered together into a ball, it's much stronger. There's strength in numbers, and sometimes when you can't make up your mind, it's best to ask for help from those around you. What do you think?"
Jian Jianan's eyes lit up. Shan Jiqing's words immediately gave her some clues in the fog. She nodded heavily, "I understand!"
Shan Jiqing: I know you have something on your mind. I am very reliable and smart. You can tell me and I promise to find a solution for you.
Jian Jianan: I was indeed hesitant about whether to tell my brother, but you are right, there is strength in numbers. I have decided to tell my brother this afternoon and we will work together to find a solution!
Then she and Shan Jiqing laughed together, everything was said without words, and they both thought they understood what the other meant.
When the brother and sister returned home, Jian Jiannan looked around and confirmed that his parents were not at home. After that, he said to his brother with a serious expression, "Brother, don't leave yet. I have something to show you."
"Ah? Okay." Jian Jiabei didn't understand why, but he still agreed.
After getting his brother's assurance, Jian Jianan ran back to his room and found a piece of paper from the tiny gap between the three layers of quilts and the bed board. Then he quickly returned to his brother and handed it to him solemnly.
"Brother, look."
Jian Jiabei took it. He didn't take it seriously at first, but his expression became more and more serious the more he looked at it.
The piece of paper handed over by the sister was actually a letter. The sender's address on the letter was a place that both the brother and sister were very familiar with, and it was also an address that frightened them.
No wonder my sister reacted so strongly!
In the past, Jian Jiabei could read this short letter at a glance, but now it takes him a lot of time and he can't finish it in one go.
Jian Jiabei looked at it for a while, then put it down with a bang. After calming down, he picked it up again to look at it. He was so angry that his chest heaved several times. This repeated several times before Jian Jiabei finished watching.
He was so upset after reading it that he fell into a chair and slammed the letter on the table a few minutes later.
"This is too much! This is really too much!"
Jian Jiabei said hatefully.
Jian Jianan nodded. It was rare for him to share the same hatred with his brother.
"You're right, it's really too bullying!"
Jian Jianan echoed for a moment, then continued, "I was also home alone at the time, and the postman came to deliver a letter. Mom and Dad were busy at the restaurant, and you were playing basketball outside. Plus, I'd received a similar letter by myself before, so I opened it and read it."
Looking back now, Jian Jianan was really glad that she opened the letter and read it at that time, otherwise she would have been in trouble!
You don’t know until you see it, and you’ll be shocked when you see it!
Jian Jianan couldn't believe his eyes at the time. What on earth were those people in his hometown thinking? How could they have the courage and guts to think that his family, who had escaped, could be called back?
Dream on!
Jian Jiabei couldn't hide his excitement, "You did a good job! Nannan, you were right to demolish it. If you hadn't seen it in advance, I wouldn't have known about it. This matter needs to be prepared in advance, otherwise it would be bad if you were caught off guard."
Jian Jianan couldn't hide his worry: "But brother, what should we do next?"
Jian Jiabei was stunned: "What do we do? Didn't we stop it?"
Jian Jianan was so anxious that he almost used his hands and feet to gesture: "Brother! Think about it! Are those people back home the kind of people who give up so easily? Luckily, I intercepted the first letter, but what about the second and third letters? Will they be as lucky as this time?"
"If even one letter slips through the net, even if it doesn't take many, just one, and Mom and Dad see it, then all our hard work will be gone in an instant, right?"
Jian Jianan shuddered with fear just thinking about that scene.
Jian Jianan's face was solemn. "You're right. I didn't think carefully enough. We need to stop them all. Not a single one can slip through the net."
The brother and sister met each other's eyes, and a dull, silent, serious and tense atmosphere surrounded them. Seeing how they looked like they were facing a great enemy, you would have thought that the two of them were deciding some matter of life and death at home!
Jian Jianan was the first to speak up, breaking the silent atmosphere. "We need to think carefully about how to hide this letter from Mom and Dad."
Jian Jiabei quickly followed up, "Letters from the post office are all delivered by the postman here. Although we have a good relationship with the young man, if we rashly go to him and ask him to give it to us privately without going through my parents, it will definitely arouse suspicion. If it gets out in the open, my parents will know too. This trick won't work."
Jian Jianan: "You still have to do what I did before and hide the letters as soon as you receive them from your hometown. This is the best way!"
Jian Jiabei agreed: "You are right, let's do it this way!" He made the decision.
Su Qinxuan and Jian Yangping had no idea what kind of agreement the two half-grown children had secretly reached. They only knew that from one day on, Jian Jiabei seemed to have become a different person. He no longer went out to play like a bird out of a cage, but instead sat at home and became a stay-at-home.
Sometimes when Su Qinxuan and Jian Yangping went home to get something, they could see the two children's heads put together, whispering to each other.
"What are you two doing?" But he couldn't ask the question, and the two children could only shake their heads in tacit agreement.
Just as Jian Jianan expected, the group of people in his hometown just refused to give up. But it was normal when you think about it. How could they not be anxious when their cash cow was gone?
I won't let you get what you want, Jian Jianan swears.
Every once in a while, letters with the same address would float towards them from the island, but they were all collected by the brother and sister and put away where they would not be discovered by adults.
Jian Jianan and his brother reached an agreement that there must be someone at home at all times. They couldn't control the children when they were at school, but they could rush home as soon as they got out of school because their parents would not be back until the evening anyway.
Perhaps it was God's blessing that the brother and sister continued to act like this for more than half a month without being discovered.
The number of letters under Jian Jianan's bed kept increasing, and later there was even no space left to hold them, so he requisitioned his brother's bed board.
Under the warm light of a night light, the brother and sister huddled their furry heads together, pointing and talking as they read the contents of the letter.
"Brother, look, there are more exclamation marks! They must be very angry!" Jian Jianan happily pointed out his discovery to his brother.
"Ha!" Jian Jiabei sneered, "Being angry is good, I'm just afraid they won't be angry. The angrier they are, the happier I am!"
The enemy's pain is our happiness, and the brother and sister put this saying into practice very well.
But accidents happen, and finally one day, when the family was having breakfast, the truth was revealed.
"Here's your telegram! No one came to pick it up, so I delivered it to you." Early in the morning, a post office worker rode a bicycle and shouted outside the Jane family's building.
Bang.
This was the sound of the chopsticks in the hands of Jian Jianan and his brother Jian Jiabei falling at the same time.
They looked at each other and closed their eyes in pain.
Damn it, how could I forget this!
"Comrade! Is this Comrade Jian Yangping? Here is a telegram for you that needs your signature."
"Okay!"
Jian Yangping didn't even have time to eat breakfast. He immediately stood up, signed for the telegram, and took it back.
In this era, communication technology was not yet developed. There was no technology like the mobile phones of later generations that could connect to the ends of the earth with just a click. Writing letters was often people's first choice.
Sending a telegram is the only option when letters cannot arrive.
Sending a telegram is both troublesome and expensive. First of all, from the moment you decide to send a telegram, you have to pay for every word in the text, three cents per word, and every punctuation mark is included.
Therefore, every sentence must be carefully considered, and the most urgent things must be said with the fewest words, without any nonsense.
But now, Jian Jianan took a peek at the telegram placed in front of his mother. It was not densely packed, but there were still quite a few words. It seemed that the group of people in his hometown had really spent a lot of money on this matter!
Jian Jianan's heart was beating like a drum, worried that what was written in the telegram would shake his parents' minds, and then the whole family would have to move back to their hometown. However, he had to pretend to be completely unaware and looked at his parents curiously, wanting to know what was in the telegram.
After Su Qinxuan finished reading it, Jian Yangping took it over.
When both of them finished reading, the table was silent. Jian Jianan and his brother Jian Jiabei blinked their eyes, waiting for their reactions.
Who would have thought that Su Qinxuan didn't comment on the telegram. Instead, he raised his head and asked the two children out of the blue, "Is this what you've been hiding from me and Dad for all these days?"
Jian Jianan wanted to deny it, but she forgot that her brother had never been a patient person. Under Su Qinxuan's stern gaze, he immediately confessed everything.
"Yes, yes, my sister and I both received some letters from our hometown, but we hid them all and they weren't discovered."
"Dad! Mom! What on earth is written in this telegram?"
Jian Jiabei was extremely anxious. In fact, he thought that the content of the telegram should be roughly the same as that of the letter. It was just some words asking for money and people, coaxing them to go home.
But thinking about their family's previous situation, Jian Jianan suddenly became very worried. After being coaxed like this, his parents went back again.
Su Qinxuan ignored him and tapped her fingers on the table. "Where's the letter? Where is the letter? Let me see the letter first."
Jian Jiabei wanted to say something else, but the clever Jian Jianan had already foreseen from his mother's actions that she was about to get angry. Knowing that something was wrong, he ran away immediately, quickly ran into his own room and his brother's room, found the hidden letter and handed it to his mother.
This incredibly smooth set of movements was met with an angry glare from Jian Jiabei towards his sister.
Jian Jiabei: Traitor! Our brother-sister alliance is broken, broken!
Jian Jianan: Stupid, didn't you see Mom's expression? What good will it do us if we make her angry? Besides, judging by Mom and Dad's actions and expressions, I don't think this matter is that simple! Trust me!
The conversation between the brother and sister lasted only a fleeting moment, but it could not escape the sharp eyes of their parents. Su Qinxuan took the letter with a half-smile, glanced at it, and handed it to her husband, "Old Jane, take a look."
Jian Yangping took it, glanced at it for only a second, and then sneered, "Tsk! It's all the same old stuff, nothing new. I'm tired of it. Don't be fooled by the number of words here, don't they all mean the same thing? Money for the two elders, money for my second brother and his wife's children, and money for my younger brothers' jobs. Money, money, money, it all comes down to one word: 'money.'"
Jian Jianan understood the elegant meaning of the music and immediately responded, "Is it the same as before?"
Jian Yangping covered his face with his hands and sighed deeply: "Yes, just like before——"
Jian Jianan continued to ask: "They are still the same as before, so what about us? Do we have to be the same as before?"
Jian Jianan hinted at something. If the people in his hometown were still the same as before, then now they wrote to him, "Mom and Dad, after a year, we have been through so many things with each other. Can you be coaxed back easily?"
Should I go back and continue to work like a slave, for their whole family to lie on me and suck my blood?
Jian Jiabei became anxious. "You can't! Dad! Mom! Have you forgotten what happened last year? We were forced to come north in a hurry. It can be said that we went through untold hardships and fought a desperate battle to get to where we are today."
"Think about it, if it were in the past, would we dare to open a restaurant in our hometown? Wouldn't we be bankrupted by them on the first day of opening?"
Jian Jianan immediately agreed with his brother, "Yes, yes, my cousins often bully us! They always scold me and my brother, and then beat us. Grandpa and grandma are very partial and always say that we should give in to them, but I am the youngest, why are they not giving in to me now?"
Speaking of this, Jian Jianan had a lot to say, and she had a lot of grievances to complain about. Although Hainan Island had beautiful scenery, climate, and delicious food, with that group of people there, she definitely wouldn't want to go back.
Upon hearing his daughter say this, Su Qinxuan, who was originally planning to tease her, immediately tried to comfort her.
"No, no, your father and I are not fools. We can still tell the difference between happy and miserable, good and bad people."
Su Qinxuan was very emotional. Even during the most difficult time, when they were setting up a stall at the train station, their family never thought of giving up. If they really quit and went back to their hometown, they would be like a sheep walking into a tiger's mouth, with no way out!
What's more, the situation has improved now, life is getting better, and their family actually owns a restaurant. There are crowds of people every day, and even the smallest daily turnover is equivalent to someone else's monthly salary. In this case, only a fool would go back and continue to let those people suck their blood!
Su Qinxuan expressed his feelings to the two children, which in return made the two children burst into laughter. Then the three of them turned around and stared at Jian Yangping like sunflowers.
Jian Yangping was originally immersed in his own tragic world, but when he raised his eyes, he met six pairs of eyes with different expressions, waiting for him to express his opinions!
He quickly wiped his face and said with a wry smile: "Then I definitely won't go back!"
He opened the letters hidden by the children one by one and placed them on the table. He also put the telegram at the end and ran his fingers over them one by one.
"Look, the first letter was written by my second brother himself. After all, he's the only one in our family who went to a technical secondary school. He's the most educated, has the best handwriting, and, correspondingly, is the most thoughtful."
Jian Jianan looked at his father strangely. It seemed that this year's self-employed life had a great impact on him. If it were in the past, Jian Yangping would definitely not say bad things about his family.
But now, he was judging his second brother so calmly.
Jian Yangping's second brother wrote: "A letter is like seeing you in person. We were very worried when you left, and you didn't even bother to come back to see us during the Spring Festival. This made the two elders at home even more heartbroken. If you have time, please come home and visit our parents! They are getting old and they really hope to see you..."
He never mentions money, but every word costs money.
Jian Jianan: "Second Uncle is saying that our family is unfilial. We left our hometown without telling them in advance. We can't even find them. The responsibility of supporting the elderly has fallen on them. He is condemning us!"
Jian Yangping picked up the next letter. "This one must have been written by my younger sister. She's quite impatient. Seeing that we haven't replied for a long time, she must be very angry. But she's not well educated and she's reluctant to pay someone to write for her. Look, the handwriting is a mess. Even someone like me who only has a junior high school education can't write as well!"
Jian Yangping shook his head. At that time, the family was poor and his parents could not afford to send all the children to school. As the eldest brother, he had no choice but to take the lead in dropping out of school and let his younger siblings go. As a result, except for his second younger brother, the other children did not focus on studying. Now that he thinks about it, he might as well go to school himself!
Jian Jianan read her aunt's letter, which was full of accusations. She was not as cunning as her second uncle, so her thoughts were definitely the most direct.
"Brother and sister-in-law, when are you coming back? You haven't been away for a year, have you become wild? What eldest brother would abandon his elderly parents and younger siblings and take his wife and children to such a faraway place?"
"Also, let me tell you, is Shenzhen really such a great place? Even if you're successful for a while, it won't last forever. I think you should pack up your things and go home early. That way, you can keep the money you earned, right?"
"Sister-in-law, I know you're watching. Can you persuade Brother to stop going astray?"
Next came the letter from Jian Jianan's uncle: "Brother..."
Grandpa Jian and Grandma Jian have four children in total. Jian Yangping is the oldest one. He has two younger brothers and a younger sister. Looking at the situation, the whole family has joined forces and written letters to persuade them to go back!
Jian Yangping shook his head and then picked up the last telegram, which was also the content that the two children were most concerned about. Perhaps because they had sent so many letters before without any good results, the group of people in their hometown gave up. This time, it was the grandparents, that is, Jian Yangping's parents, who came forward to write it personally.
"Big Brother and Big Sister, have you grown too independent? If you don't listen to your younger siblings, will you still listen to me and your dad?"
"I tell you, parents should not travel far away. If you don't come back this month, you will never come back. Our mother-son relationship ends here!"
He even resorted to the threat of severing ties!
Jian Jianan looked at Jian Yangping, waiting for his decision.
He just sneered, "Do my parents think I'm still the same obedient eldest son who always did what they said?"
"I'm all grown up, why are they still so naive?"
He emphasized the three words "most obedient".
Jian Jianan was confused: "Do we still need to find a place to put these things?"
Jian Yangping: "No, just find a place anywhere. The dining table is not stable, so you can use it as a cushion for the corners."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
