Unable to gain any advantage from Yang Wanqiu, Cai Xiaoyu was extremely depressed. Her dissatisfaction and anger caused her to lose her temper and abandon her pretense of sisterly affection.
He turned around and abandoned Yang Wanqiu, leaving the clinic without looking back, not even bothering with superficial pleasantries.
After a long day of gathering firewood on the mountain and going to the clinic, Cai Xiaoyu hadn't had a drop of water and was starving.
When she returned to the educated youth compound, a rich, spicy, and savory aroma wafted towards her, which was an irresistible temptation for Cai Xiaoyu, who came from Sichuan Province. At that moment, her stomach also started to rumble.
Stepping into her own room, which was a bit too big for her, and looking at the cold stove inside, Cai Xiaoyu could no longer hold back her grievances, which surged into her heart like a tide.
Tears instantly blurred my vision. Ignoring them, I plopped down on the kang (a heated brick bed) and let the tears flow freely.
At that moment, she felt as if the whole world had abandoned her. Loneliness and helplessness enveloped her, and she had nowhere to express her bitterness.
Speaking of her petty thieving and opportunistic personality, it's really a result of her family environment!
Cai Xiaoyu's family situation is very difficult. They have many children, and her father has a leg disability. He can only make a living by working a temporary job at a match factory with the help of the local neighborhood committee.
Her mother was a wife her father bought from a remote mountain village. In her mother's eyes, her father was the head of the household, so everything in the family revolved around him, not even the children.
To be honest, Cai Xiaoyu's father was also selfish. He felt that the family depended on him alone, so the best food and drink in the family should be given to him. Only if he ate well could the family be better supported.
In addition, with many children in the family, her father's temporary job at the match factory didn't pay much, only a dozen yuan a month, which he had to support the whole family.
In such families, to fill their stomachs, one had to be clever and secretly hide a cornbread or some pickled vegetables. This was a common occurrence for the siblings.
After all, there was a fixed amount of food at every meal in the family. Except for the father, the amount of food that everyone could eat was strictly allocated by the mother.
The meager amount of food was far from enough to satisfy their hunger, and in such an environment, the brothers and sisters gradually developed some bad habits.
These habits were not their own choice, but rather forced upon them by the helplessness and poverty of life.
They longed to eat more, to live a life where they had enough to eat and wear. Behind every petty theft lay the fear of hunger and the yearning for a better life.
Cai Xiaoyu's laziness was also caused by her family environment.
At home, even the eldest and second eldest sisters, who did the most work, could not escape being beaten and scolded, and she and her younger sister, who did not do any work, would suffer the same treatment.
No matter what she did, it was wrong, which made Cai Xiaoyu develop a habit of being lazy and shirking responsibility from a young age.
After being sent to the countryside, she knew in her heart that she would have to rely on herself for everything, but those habits she had formed since childhood were really hard to change in a short time.
She tried to change, but whenever fatigue and difficulties struck, those deep-rooted habits would unconsciously take over.
She would slack off while working in the fields, avoiding the heavy farm work; she would find excuses to escape when others were working hard, and she would habitually shirk her responsibilities when others were striving for a more comfortable life.
In fact, Cai Xiaoyu was filled with contradictions and pain. She knew that she was wrong and longed to change.
She admired others' diligence and hard work, and hated her own laziness. She often thought about it alone at night, blamed herself for her mistakes, and made up her mind to correct them.
However, like the Siberian jay, when the sun shines on her the next day, those vows and determinations are swallowed up by habitual laziness.
She was trapped in a vicious cycle, and her anxiety and helplessness grew day by day.
She also hopes to break free from this predicament and become a hardworking person.
Every time she slacked off, she felt guilty and remorseful, but habits formed over more than ten years cannot be changed overnight.
Despite realizing the inappropriateness of her behavior, Cai Xiaoyu was still filled with resentment towards Cao Qing.
Because in her heart she always believed that if Cao Qing really couldn't stand her habits, he could just tell her frankly.
Especially since everyone was a sent-down youth who went to the countryside together, even if she wanted to move out, why couldn't they tell her in advance so that she could be prepared?
It was precisely because Cao Qing moved away without any warning that she ended up in such a miserable situation.
Now she has to keep collecting firewood on the mountain every day, but even so, it is still not enough to get through the winter.
She doesn't even dare to light a fire now, only lighting one at night when it's coldest. She can only cover herself with the already thin quilt, and the cold seeps into her body, making her start to question the meaning of life.
What's even more frightening is that it's only the end of November, and according to the old educated youth, it's not even the coldest time yet.
Thinking of this, Cai Xiaoyu couldn't help but feel fear. She wondered if she could survive the winter with only her thin cotton clothes and quilt, and the meager amount of firewood in the woodshed.
The most critical issue was the food supply, because from the beginning they had been planning to steal a little from Cao Qing every now and then, even though they knew that their meager food supply wouldn't be enough to support her until the next distribution of grain.
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