"Mom, I'm back! I'm freezing to death."
"Why are you yelling so loud, you little bastard? You scared me and put too much soy sauce in it! I'll blame you if the food turns out too salty!"
Lu Qin put down the shopping bag in her hand and sorted out the things inside, while listening to her mother's nagging, feeling a warm feeling in her heart.
How nice! She smelled the aroma of sauce spreading in the air, and her heart felt a little sour.
It’s great that her mother is still alive and she can still eat the meals she cooks.
After covering the pot, Liang Shuyu walked out of the kitchen and was a little surprised to see his daughter taking out the things she had bought one by one.
"Xiao Qin, why did you buy so much food? Even the two of us can't finish it all. You really are such a spendthrift. You've only been getting your salary for a year and you're already so proud of it?"
Lu Qin smiled and took out a bunch of garlic heads to show her mother as if they were treasures. "Mom! You don't know how good these garlic heads are. We haven't bought this stuff in a long time. You can make a whole garlic vermicelli dish for me later."
"Greedy cat!" Liang Shuyu glared at his daughter in anger. "It's warm in the inner room. I turned on the air conditioner. Let's go in and set up the small dining table. We'll eat soon!"
"Okay!"
…
At the dinner table.
Lu Qin ate two large bowls of rice with minced meat and eggplant with too much soy sauce. Still feeling it was not enough, she wanted to get a third bowl, but she saw that the rice cooker was empty.
Then I remembered that there were usually only two of us eating at home, and my mother would not cook a lot of rice at one time.
Lu Qin had no choice but to put down the bowl and pour a bowl of seaweed soup and drink it slowly.
Liang Shuyu felt that something was wrong with his daughter, so he asked, "Didn't you say you wanted to lose weight? Why do you have such a good appetite today?"
Lu Qin shook her head, remembering that at this time in her previous life, she was trying to lose weight by dieting. She secretly sighed that she really didn't know how to appreciate the blessings she had.
You have to know that just one year later, even if you wanted to eat to your heart's content, there was nowhere to eat.
"Mom, the prices of vegetables out there have gone up like crazy! The cabbage I bought today was only 35 yuan a pound."
"Why is the price going up again? The other day I heard Aunt Zhang next door say it was around ten yuan a pound. I was thinking I wouldn't be able to afford cabbage this winter."
"Who knows? Meat's over a hundred bucks a piece! I spent a month's salary on groceries today!"
"So much! It's great for girls to save some of their wages to buy some clothes and accessories. You're not young anymore, so don't give the family money every day. It's not like Mom doesn't have money to buy groceries."
Lu Qin sighed.
She didn't want to do that either. Her family was relatively well-off. Since her father died suddenly in an accident seven years ago, her mother sold all the family company assets to raise her and send her to school. She lived on the annual rent of 90,000 yuan from the three storefronts.
I just graduated this year and was admitted to a public institution in my hometown. It has little work and is close to home, so it's quite respectable.
Although the salary is not as high as that in big cities, the prices in his hometown are low after all, so Lu Qin and his mother live a very comfortable life.
It’s just that prices have been rising since the beginning of this year, and now in October, they are so expensive.
In addition, the weather is abnormal now. It is only October in their southern region and the temperature is already below zero.
Even ordinary people could sense that something was wrong.
But in her previous life, Lu Qin was still an ignorant girl, busy with dating and losing weight, and didn’t care about so many things at all.
By the time the situation became more serious and I realized it, it was too late.
There was no food to be found on the ground, all the money had turned to waste paper, and the mother and daughter were powerless. In this chaotic era, it was difficult for them to move forward.
Thinking of how his mother had gone out into the wilderness in the middle of the night to look for all sorts of food in an attempt to exchange for medicine in order to buy some antipyretics for him when he had a high fever, and how she had accidentally fallen off a cliff and died, Lu Qin's nose felt a pang of sadness.
"mom--"
"What's the matter?"
Lu Qin rubbed her eyes and said, "Many of my colleagues have resigned. I also submitted my resignation report today. The Finance Department paid me my salary, so I bought those things."
"Huh? Why did you quit your job without saying anything? That job is so good, leisurely and respectable. Where can you find such a job?"
"Mom, listen to me. Don't you think something's wrong out there? At the beginning of the year, they said the abnormal weather had caused a decrease in vegetable and grain production across the country, so vegetable prices were high. It's already October, and there's still no sign of easing."
"My salary isn't enough to buy much these days. It's better than the rice and flour distributed during the Mid-Autumn Festival."
Lu Qin works in a public institution, and as usual they give out some things during the holidays. I thought prices would skyrocket this year, but in the end they still gave out a ten-pound bag of rice and a ten-liter bucket of peanut oil as usual.
But I heard from my colleagues that there will be no bonus at the end of this year.
But at this moment, Lu Qin would rather give these things to her because she knew that in a short time, these grains and oils would be extremely expensive.
"Well, that's true. I work so hard but my monthly salary is still not enough for food. I really don't know what's going on these days." Liang Shuyu nodded in agreement.
Lu Qin continued, "It's not a spur-of-the-moment idea. I just heard that the situation in various places is not good. Many people are moving to the countryside. They can't afford to buy vegetables, so they have to grow their own."
"Oh, you didn't know that Aunt Xu, who was playing cards with me earlier, also told me that she wanted to go back to the countryside to plow up her vegetable patch and start growing vegetables."
"So, Mom, what's the point of me being in this class? Several people in our company have quit! There's not much work left anyway."
"So what are your plans? How about we go to grandma's house? Your grandma's old house can be lived in after some renovations. You can find a job in town, and Mom is free, so it would be nice to start a vegetable garden."
Lu Qin's mother was also an only child, but her grandparents passed away early, leaving behind only an old house and a residential plot.
Lu Qin thought of the dilapidated old house and shook her head, thinking that it might not be able to withstand the heavy snow.
But we can't stay here any longer.
In a few days, heavy snow will come, the temperature will drop even lower, and prices will rise rapidly. At that time, my uncle's family will find an excuse to ask Grandma Lu Qin to come over.
In fact, she also knew that it was because of the shortage of supplies. Her uncle's family did not want to have more people to feed at home, so they wanted Lu Qin and her daughter to take care of the elderly.
But Lu Qin's grandmother disliked Liang Shuyu and Lu Qin, and after her son's unexpected death, she felt Liang Shuyu had failed to take good care of her son. So, she acted tyrannically in her family, even demanding two bowls of rice for a single meal, despite their limited food reserves. Later, his eldest uncle's family even moved in, claiming the apartment was also his brother's property.
Unable to drive them away, Lu Qin could only watch helplessly as her home was taken over. Eventually, she and her mother ended up living on the streets. It was during this time that she fell ill, and her mother died.
Lu Qin looked at the house she had lived in for over ten years. Now she had the title deed, but her uncle hadn't come to visit. She secretly made up her mind: "Move! Let's move to Rongcheng!"
…
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