"Why did you all come over here? It's cold outside, don't stick your heads out!"
Lin Zhongyuan dropped his schoolbag, jumped onto the carriage, stuffed his younger sister into his arms, and gave her a good squeeze.
“Be good, don’t make your sister cry. We’re just worried about you. It’s your first day of school, and we’re afraid you won’t fit in. Your sister is worried that you’ll cry outside and get bullied, so she insisted on coming along, and we couldn’t stop her,” Liu Junlan said from the side.
"I won't cry!" Lin Zhongyuan said with a smile, joking with Lin Wanyue. "I'm here to study, not to play around, so I'm not afraid of fitting in or not."
"Really? But I just saw..." Liu Junlan mischievously exposed his grandson's words.
The grandmother and granddaughter both saw it from the window. When Lin Zhongyuan came out, he was expressionless. So many classmates were chatting and laughing, but no one spoke to him.
How can you call that being sociable?
It's not surprising that he hasn't even recognized all his classmates' names since it's only his first day of school.
"Ahem..." Lin Zhongyuan quickly interrupted his grandmother, "Grandma, don't think such things. There's really no such thing. Besides, I can be considered His Majesty's favorite now. Even if they don't like me, what can they do?"
Lin Zhongyuan said this with a disdainful smile on his face.
Seeing that this child was shrewd and probably even more calculating than herself, Liu Junlan simply patted his shoulder and said, "Alright, alright, as long as you're doing well there and don't get bullied, your sister will be at ease."
"Oh?" Lin Zhongyuan touched Lin Wanyue's nose with his nose again and asked with a smile, "Wanwan, are you afraid that others will bully your brother? Your brother is such a big man now, they wouldn't dare to bully him."
Lin Wanyue felt there was something wrong with this reasoning.
If the world were truly ruled by size or fists, then the one who could become emperor would definitely not be the frail and sickly Qi Yuan.
She clung to her brother's arm and said, "No, that's not true!"
"Why not?" Lin Zhongyuan asked with a smile, staring at his sister's face.
Lin Wanyue counted on her fingers for him: "I'm still little, but I'm already a princess, and no one dares to bully me! The other day, Qi Yuan even had people bow to me, and they were all so much taller than me! I also received a lot of gifts, and I'll share them with my brother when we get back."
"My Wanwan is so generous." Lin Zhongyuan still had a smile on his face, but he already had some thoughts in his mind.
After arriving in the capital, he realized more and more that many people lived by power, not by reason.
He had spent so many years in the countryside, and had only been in the county town for a little over a year. He was like a completely different person from the children of these high-ranking officials.
They studied together, but no one paid any attention to him, and even when they left school, no one walked with him.
That's why he went to the students who were much older than him.
However, they didn't dare to openly bully him.
Because nowadays, all the powerful and wealthy families in the capital know that the Lin family are favorites of the emperor. If anyone bullies them and the emperor finds out, they don't know what will happen to them.
...
After returning home, Liu Junlan led the children to have some snacks first.
Now their family has servants, but all the young maids and servants were sent back, at the discretion of Liu Junlan and Xue Fu.
Only the steward Wang Youcai remained, along with several honest and dutiful old women and their husbands.
The women helped with cleaning and cooking, while the men stayed behind to guard the door. If the family business succeeded in the future, they would be the best helpers.
Lin Weiming and Wang Youcai didn't return from outside until dinner time.
Both of them were exhausted.
Lin Weiming took a big gulp of rice wine and said, "The people here like strong liquor, but we really can't get used to it. They call it 'burning knife.' Taking a sip really feels like swallowing a knife that's churning in your stomach, burning your tongue. Our homemade rice wine is much better."
“Every place has its own customs. It’s cold in the north, so how can you withstand the cold if you don’t drink strong liquor? Where did you go today? Did you find any shops that suit your taste?” Liu Junlan asked.
The children in the family didn't understand any of the business stuff; they were only focused on picking out the best food.
They've become picky eaters. The food at home is much better than it was in the countryside, but they don't seem to enjoy it as much anymore.
Lin Zheyun was the only one who ate with great enjoyment; he was able to finish everything that his younger siblings couldn't finish.
An old woman helping out at the kitchen was astonished to see him eating leftovers. She thought this was hardly the behavior of a young master from the capital and offered him some advice.
However, the Lin family didn't care about that at all. They had farmed the land themselves and knew how precious food was. They believed that eating everything clean was the best way to eat.
The other servants also learned that this was a rather stingy family.
After drinking, Lin Weiming brought up the matter of looking for a shop with Wang Youcai again, "Of course! I've been running around all day looking for a suitable shop, but Mother, you don't know, this capital city is so much bigger than our county town. Our county town used to only have North Street and South Street, but now there are dozens of streets here. It's so big, and they sell all kinds of things. Goods from all over the country are transported here."
When he talked about these things, the rest of the Lin family could only nod in agreement.
"Oh dear, Father!" Lin Zihan, being an impatient man, asked anxiously after hearing his father talk about many things outside, "So, have you found a shop yet?"
"Why are you in such a hurry? I was just saying, I was thinking that since we still have some money, we could rent a nice place. I reckon we can't afford to buy one." As soon as he finished speaking, his wife, Lin Weiming, tapped him with the tip of his chopsticks.
"But you have no idea, the rent here is so high that we can't even afford to rent, let alone buy it. Even a small shop on the most bustling Jinbao Street costs more than two hundred taels of silver a year! You tell me, even if we sold gold, we probably couldn't earn that much money."
"What should we do?" Liu Junlan frowned.
Xuefu said, "The price is so high? Why don't we go outside the city and see if the price is cheaper there?"
"No, no, no!" Lin Weiming quickly waved his hand, showing no displeasure whatsoever. Instead, he couldn't stop laughing. "Luckily, I brought Wang Youcai with me today. That's how I found out that many places on that street belong to our Regent. He said that the Regent had given the order that if we took a fancy to a shop, he would give us the land deed directly as a gift to our daughter!"
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