Chapter 2
The Tong family had three daughters and one son: the eldest, Tong Wan; the second, Tong Yufei; and Tong Yufei, a younger sister and brother. Sister Tong Ru died of meningitis at the age of three, while brother Tong Yi was the fourth child. Tong Yi's mother suffered a dystocia and heavy hemorrhage during childbirth, having longed for a son, but passed away before she could even see him. As the youngest son, the only son in the Tong family for five generations, Tong Yi inherited the family lineage and the privilege of running the family from birth. He had the privilege of having everything he wanted, from the moment he was born. As he grew older, he smashed windows in neighbors' houses, burned corn stalks, got into fights, and incited poor students to boycott classes... He was constantly causing trouble, a complete bully.
Since his father took Tong Yi's affairs too seriously and made a fuss about them dozens of times, Tong Yufei didn't take his second uncle's words to heart. Good news doesn't travel far, but bad news travels far and wide. If Tong Yi caused a bigger disaster than before, there would be news at all. Maybe Tong Yi had been idle for five or six years after graduating from junior high school, and now he was old enough to get married, so his father wanted to make a big fuss to put pressure on him and find ways to make him mend his ways.
She didn't return to the village until the next Sunday.
Tongjia Village, Wanjiang Town, is more than 30 kilometers away from the city center. More than half of the road is bumpy dirt road. There is only one round-trip minibus with a section-based fee of three yuan and fifty cents a day, which is exactly the opposite of her itinerary. If she wants to return on the same day, she can only ride a bicycle, which takes two and a half hours. If she can't ride it all the way in one breath and takes a break, the time will be added up. In order to go and return early, she is fully armed with a hat, scarf, mask and gloves, and sets off before dawn with dry food and a water bottle.
The city's tarmac was a mixture of asphalt and sand, sticky in the summer and brittle in the winter. The twelfth lunar month was a blizzard, the northwest wind whistling like a bellows, overwhelming the rider. It had rained the previous night, and the road was slippery. Tong Yufei rode cautiously, but was still startled by a motorcycle that suddenly appeared at the entrance of an alley. With no time to dodge, she swerved and slammed into a nearby stone pier, toppling over with her bike. Fortunately, she had good balance and managed to find her feet, so she only landed hard on her butt instead of slamming her head against the ground, which would have caused more damage.
The "flesh-wrapped iron" that hit her was unharmed, relying on the large body and the long legs of the driver, Qiao Zhuocheng, to glide steadily to a stop. Qiao Zhuocheng had a Cui Jian-style two-parted medium-length hair, which was slightly inconsistent with his fair and pretty face. Seeing her ridiculous rollover and stupid sitting there, he couldn't help but smile before sympathy slipped out of his mouth: "Girl, are you doing acrobatics?"
Mo Daoyan, who was sitting behind him, patted his friend on the shoulder and stopped Qiao Zhuocheng's inappropriate jokes.
Qiao Zhuocheng immediately said seriously: "Miss, are you hurt?"
Mo Daoyan got out of the car first, walked quickly to Tong Yufei, and extended his hand: "Do you need to be taken to the hospital?"
If Tong Yufei looked up at that moment, she would see a slender hand with neatly manicured nails. The owner of the hand wore a black, mid-length, stand-up collar trench coat, the lower half of his face hidden behind the collar, and his narrow, long, and splendid eyes seemed familiar. The lingering fear in her heart far outweighed the pain in her body. The only energy she had left was enough to focus on the mess: the country eggs, peanut oil, and sugar she had bought with the food coupons she had saved for months. The mess was broken into pieces, scattered all over, and it was a terrible sight.
She staggered to her feet, trying to warn them to be careful. Luckily, it was her who was hit. If they had hit an elderly man or woman, the consequences would have been disastrous. "You're riding too fast. This road..."
Mo Daoyan stretched his arm across her waist to prevent her from falling and complicating the situation, and asked directly: "How much do you want?"
Tong Yufei dodged away, avoiding suspicion: "Money..."
Mo Daoyan picked up the fallen bicycle, straightened the front of the bike, and returned it to her: "How much are these damaged items worth?"
These two people are ridiculous. They hit someone, but one of them was heartless and laughed at her making a fool of herself. The other one seemed to care about her, but his tone was full of urgency. No one admitted their mistake or apologized to her, as if it can be ignored just because she was not injured enough to be hospitalized or disabled?
Tong Yufei kicked the kickstand away in dissatisfaction, propped up the car and inspected it. The front wheel had a patch of paint peeling off, but everything else was working fine. He swallowed his words, wiping his eyelids and saying coldly, "Two grown men, in their attempt to reincarnate, can't even get a pair of eyes together, let alone a mouth?"
Mo Daoyan was stunned: "I'm sorry."
Tong Yufei was still angry and ignored him.
Mo Daoyan raised his voice and said clearly, "It's our fault. Please forgive us."
Tong Yufei then whispered, "Pay a hundred dollars."
Mo Daoyan touched his empty pockets and remembered that the exchanged RMB limit had been used up, so he signaled Qiao Zhuocheng to pay for it. Although Qiao Zhuocheng was driving the car, Qiao Zhuocheng got up early to pick him up at the train station. The car accident was caused by him, and he would return the full amount after getting the remittance.
Qiao Zhuocheng said nothing. They were close friends, and wouldn't argue over such a small sum. He had the money, but he didn't want to give it, at least not directly. He'd seen many women, but this was the first one who didn't treat him like a human being. He rode a Japanese Suzuki that cost him twenty thousand yuan, and his clothes were all imported. Although he wasn't as handsome as Pan An, he was always praised and looked up to everywhere he went. His childhood friend, Mo Daoyan, had once been an unparalleled academic master and was now a well-educated overseas returnee. Two such outstanding people were smiling here, but she treated them like nothing, less than the layer of dirt on a broken eggshell.
If it were just an ordinary stranger, he would just ignore it, and walk on the same side of the road, neither of them harming the other. But at the moment when the two cars collided, assumptions were meaningless, and he would just deal with the matter at hand. He would not tolerate anyone pretending to be noble, especially someone who was stepping on Mo Daoyan. "You've been abroad for many years and don't understand the market. Brother, I'm a businessman, and I'll know my strengths and weaknesses after a test."
He gave Mo Daoyan a look that said "I will never cause trouble, but I can't be a sucker", strode towards Tong Yufei, and asked how the price was set. Tong Yufei took out two pieces of red toilet paper from the dry food bag hanging on the handle, wiped the mud spots on the car seat, and carefully counted the price of eggs, a few yuan for a bag of sugar, and more than ten yuan for a bucket of peanut oil, accurate to two decimal places. The total was forty-four yuan and thirty-eight cents. The remaining fifty or so was for full attendance. It would take time to buy everything again. She would not be able to make it back in time and would be late for work tomorrow morning. If he needed supporting materials from the unit, she would issue them and send them to him later.
"So you're getting less, not including the deduction for being late?"
Qiao Zhuocheng was displeased. "Full attendance payment is bullshit, isn't it?" She didn't live on the moon, otherwise he would have supported her for the rest of his life. This was a necessary shortcut, and if she could take it, so could he. They hadn't expected anyone to pass by so early. Honking the horn late was his fault, so he took it. Wasn't she completely blameless? If they put themselves in each other's shoes, he was the one riding the bike. The things wouldn't have been destroyed in vain.
Tong Yufei disagreed with Qiao Zhuocheng's illogical substitution. Did one have to be a marathon runner to avoid being hit while walking on the street? And what if she wasn't riding a bicycle, but a car or a tank? Would they just consider themselves unlucky? Traffic accident determinations focus on the cause, not the driver's skill. This long-haired young man not only looked uncouth but also spoke illogically. Was he mentally ill? She muttered this inwardly, not out loud. After all, the goal wasn't to argue; it was to simply secure compensation.
Her silence and the look on her face that looked like an idiot infuriated Qiao Zhuocheng. "I can give you the money, but there's one condition. I'll compensate you with the money, but I don't want the oil. Pick up the eggs and sugar and put them in my car. My dog eats scrambled eggs with sugar."
Not to mention Qiao Zhuocheng's unfriendly ridicule, none of the eggs in the bag were spared. The egg white and yolk mixed with sugar and oil were like a yellow and white mucous monster with countless whiskers and horns, tightly attached to the ground. If it could be picked up, the definition of "spilt water cannot be collected" would be rewritten.
Tong Yufei was silent for a while, and Qiao Zhuocheng vividly demonstrated the concrete expression of "feeling proud": "Picking eggs is difficult, try something easier. Take off your hat and mask and smile at me. If you smile well, I'll give you more money."
If you ask Tong Yufei's friends or colleagues, they'll all agree she's a kind, cheerful woman with a smile that's as refreshing as spring breeze. But she's not really that fond of laughter. It seems like everyone's laughter and happiness have limits. Hers was used up before childhood, and after that, her smiles were few and far between. Because she didn't like to laugh, Tong Yi even called her a "sour-faced woman." She learned to laugh again after marrying into the Mo family. Her smiles were often fake, but even the high-ranking Old Lady Mo had never demanded a smile from her in such a domineering way. She fell, smashing her gift to pieces, and yet that person demanded a smile from her, paying her for it. Was she selling her smiles?
The depression accumulated in the heart is like packaged fuel, which can ignite a raging fire with just a timely fuse. Tong Yu is not a college graduate, but a genuine college student. She is honest but not vulgar. Swearing is not her strong point, but there are many people who are good at swearing in Tongjia Village, and her sister Tong Wan is the best among the best. Hasn't she eaten pork, but seen pigs run?
"You stinky rascal, you love to see people laugh so much, have your ancestors sold out all their laughter?"
She spat and blasted out a basket of extremely insulting words, all the words she could and couldn't say. Those insulting words were like bullets, shooting Qiao Zhuocheng into a sieve on the spot. When some of the vicious words implicated the women in the family, he woke up as if from a dream.
Qiao Zhuocheng grabbed Tong Yufei by the collar and admonished: "Everyone is responsible for their own actions, and the consequences will not affect their families. If you keep swearing and throwing a tantrum, I will break my rule of not hitting women."
It is impossible to reason with an irrational person, especially since he was unreasonable first. Tong Yufei simply thought he was talking nonsense and scratched him murderously. Qiao Zhuocheng could not avoid it and got two scratches on her right cheek. When she was about to be disfigured, someone came and grabbed her hand, blocking her aside, and at the same time punched Qiao Zhuocheng on the head, making his head buzz.
Mo Daoyan came back. He lowered his eyes and said to Tong Yufei, "You can't win in a fight, so save your energy and hurry on."
During a break in Tong Yufei's argument with Qiao Zhuocheng, Mo Daoyan took a wad of cash from Qiao Zhuocheng's waist bag on his motorcycle and went to a nearby store. Although he'd been abroad for a few years, he had access to various channels to understand domestic developments. He knew that some shops were no longer restricted to accepting food stamps and were now accepting cash transactions privately. So he knocked on a street-side shop. The lack of pedestrians at that time emboldened the small shopkeeper. He sold him soybean oil, rock sugar, two bags of bear biscuits, a bag of egg cakes, and a can of milk powder. It was a little different from Tong Yufei's previous order, barely enough to give away and would save time, if she truly didn't want to lose her full attendance.
The owner also gave her two floral cloth bags, one for the oil and the rest into the second bag. Mo Daoyan tied them on both sides of the back seat of Tong Yufei's bicycle. After doing this, he took out twelve big unity notes from his pocket and handed them to her. Although the things might not be to her liking, he still paid for it. The extra twenty yuan was for medical expenses as her right hand was cut.
Tong Yufei was stunned for a moment, only took the money for the eggs, and did not leave immediately. He squatted in front of the mucous membrane monster, took out a plaid handkerchief from his coat pocket, spread it on his hand, scooped a handful of it, stood up and walked straight through the two people, and smeared the egg liquid on the seat of the motorcycle. The motorcycle immediately became dirty like the tissue fluid from an inflamed sore.
Qiao Zhuocheng watched Tong Yufei disappear into the alleyway on his bicycle, furious: "Brother, my reputation is ruined. I was provoked to my face by a little girl."
"You got what you asked someone to do."
"I have to go pray to the Buddha, because I'm in bad luck."
"Put aside your wantonness. If you continue to act so brazenly, bad luck will plague you to death."
"Let's be honest. Whether or not I see the light is another matter. I want to see the true face of the person who deserves these eyes. I wonder how shocking it is. Who would have thought..."
Qiao Zhuocheng sighed indignantly.
"You've already compensated her for her things, why give her an extra hundred? Are you being gentle with her? Dr. Mo, there's a difference between you and me. You're a family man, and your loyalty and courage should only be reserved for your wife."
Mo Daoyan remained silent and pushed his motorcycle towards the store to borrow water and a rag to clean the seat. Qiao Zhuocheng suddenly felt guilty. He was bringing up something irrelevant. Mo Daoyan was forced to sacrifice his freedom to pursue his studies under pressure. The completely different growing environment and educational background would inevitably alienate him from his wife. Not only did he fail to empathize with her, he also made fun of her. Damn it!
Qiao Zhuocheng immediately corrected his mistake: "I just flatter myself. You are a magnanimous person, so don't take it to heart."
Mo Daoyan said expressionlessly, "I have an appointment with Teacher Chen for morning tea. It would be rude to be late."
The initial problem could be solved with a hundred yuan, but who could have guessed that Qiao Zhuocheng would show up mid-sentence and be so determined to create this variable? Right or wrong isn't important; timing is what matters. In other words, when it comes to insignificant people and things, less is better. His usual approach can be summed up in four words: save trouble.
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