As soon as he left, Li Yingying, who had been crying her eyes out, perked right up again. Stretching her long neck toward Li Ruolan, she said, “Where did you find this boyfriend of yours? Why is he so fierce? You don’t know, but he almost made an old lady cry just now.”
Li Yingying was badmouthing Deng Minghao.
Before anyone else could speak, Guo Xiaoya spoke up, looking at Li Yingying with a mocking face: “It was her seat. She can give it up if she wants to, and not if she doesn’t. What business is it of yours?
You tried to flirt with him, got rejected, and flew into a rage out of humiliation. You didn’t dare say anything to his face, but now that he’s gone, you’re badmouthing him behind his back. Not only are you ugly, you’re malicious too.”
Li Yingying hadn’t expected Guo Xiaoya to berate her to her face, and she froze completely.
Li Ruolan hadn’t expected it either. This Guo Xiaoya seemed quite righteous and quick to denounce evil. She just wondered why, in the book, she ended up being written as such a villain. Perhaps by that point, she had been blinded by jealousy.
Li Ruolan opened the lunch box she had brought with her, revealing the plump, full dumplings inside. She picked one up with her chopsticks, popped it into her mouth, then looked at Li Yingying, whose eyes were glued to the box, and said flatly, “Oh, so? What does that have to do with me? He wasn’t hitting me.”
Then she smiled gratefully at Guo Xiaoya and paid Li Yingying no more attention.
Li Yingying’s eyes had turned green with envy, staring fixedly at the dumplings in Li Ruolan’s lunch box. She had rarely eaten dumplings in her whole life. They smelled so good!
The others also glanced over a couple of times, then each took out the food they had brought and started eating.
Liu Kunming had meat patties. Zheng Fanghua and Zhou Shengnan ate the best—they had braised pork packed from the state-run restaurant.
As soon as they pulled out their lunch boxes, the aroma wafted far and wide, drawing the eyes of the entire train car.
Qin Wan also took out the dumplings she had made and lowered her head to eat.
Li Yingying looked at this person, then that one, swallowing her saliva again and again. Finally, with reddened eyes, she pulled out a cornbread bun and gnawed on it.
Soon, Deng Minghao returned and also took out a box of dumplings to eat.
Two or three hours later, Liu Kunming, Zheng Fanghua, Zhou Shengnan, and Qin Wan each took a trip to the restroom, paying Deng Minghao with White Rabbit creamy candies to watch their seats.
These four seemed pretty decent so far, so Deng Minghao agreed.
Li Ruolan stayed in her seat and was given four candies—creamy and delicious.
Soon, Xu Tao’s group also started taking turns going to the restroom, watching each other’s seats in turn. But when it was Li Yingying’s turn, no one was very willing to help.
In the end, a male educated youth did help Li Yingying. But once she came back, she clung to him, and the young man looked utterly miserable. The second time, he refused to help.
Li Yingying’s seat was taken by an old man in his sixties. When she came back, she stared at the male educated youth with an accusatory look, but he completely ignored her, pretending she didn’t exist.
At ten o’clock in the morning on the third day, the train officially arrived in the Northeast.
After getting off the train, they heard someone calling for the educated youths. Deng Minghao shouldered the luggage for the two of them and led Li Ruolan over.
There were quite a lot of educated youths heading to Qianjin Village in Ping’an Town—about thirty of them. The town had sent two tractors to pick them up.
Qianjin Village was a large village with several production brigades, so it had been assigned a large number of educated youth.
Looking at the tractor, then at the muddy dirt road, Li Ruolan’s face showed clear refusal. He had ridden a tractor before, as a child.
Back then he was small and only found it fun, but anyone who had ridden one knew that on this kind of dirt road, the most unbearable thing was the numb, aching backside.
Deng Minghao was the first to climb onto the vehicle, placed their luggage at the front, and quickly pulled Li Ruolan up to sit on it.
To keep up appearances, although their luggage was bundled into big, bulky packages, it was all filled with cotton quilts and padded clothes, so it was actually quite comfortable to sit on.
Even so, by the time they reached Ping’an Town, Li Ruolan still had an aching back and sore waist, feeling as if she’d been jolted to pieces.
From the town to Qianjin Village there was still some distance to go, but this time they weren’t so lucky—there was no vehicle, so they had to walk.
The brigade leader of each brigade had led an ox cart here to wait. Li Ruolan and the others went straight to the leader of Shengli Brigade to register, then loaded their luggage onto the ox cart.
While they hadn’t set off yet, Li Ruolan quickly stretched a bit, then went to the toilet with Qin Wan and Zhou Shengnan. After coming back, she drank a few sips of spiritual spring water, and only then did she feel relaxed all over, the pain in her body easing.
Deng Minghao also drank a few sips.
As for the others, they weren’t so fortunate. Hearing that there was no ride, their faces all turned green.
Li Yingying especially almost burst into tears.
In total, eleven people had been assigned to Shengli Brigade this time. Besides the male and female leads, the female supporting character, and this husband-and-wife pair, there were also Zhou Shengnan, Zheng Fanghua, Liu Kunming, plus two others who had ridden in a different carriage—Shen Yi and Ji Hongjun.
Li Ruolan glanced at the two men and noticed they were tall and sturdy, with straight backs—not like ordinary people, but more like soldiers.
As if sensing Li Ruolan’s gaze, both of them looked over at her.
Li Ruolan smiled at them and withdrew her gaze.
“Was that nice to look at?” Deng Minghao’s tone was sour.
Li Ruolan: “…”
“What’s wrong with you? I was just looking because those two looked like soldiers. What kind of vinegar are you eating?” Li Ruolan looked amusedly at Deng Minghao, who was radiating jealousy.
“Even soldiers are off-limits. You can only look at me.” Deng Minghao waved his hand imperiously, and while no one was paying attention, he gave Li Ruolan’s waist a quick squeeze before letting go just as fast.
Li Ruolan nodded. “Yes, yes, yes, whatever you say.”
Once everyone had arrived and the luggage was loaded, Brigade Leader Wang Dayou drove the ox cart off at a leisurely pace, with the eight of them following.
Deng Minghao walked beside Wang Dayou, pulled out a cigarette and offered it to him, even taking out matches to light it for him. He lit one for himself as well, earning an eye-roll from Li Ruolan.
Li Ruolan didn’t like the smell of smoke. Although Deng Minghao smoked, he wasn’t addicted, so she didn’t really mind.
“Brigade Leader, we’re new here. How are things in the brigade? Could you tell us about it?” Deng Minghao asked.
The leader chuckled, took a puff of his cigarette, and said, “Don’t worry. Our brigade has been named an Advanced Production Brigade for the past two years. Every year at year’s end, we get meat distributed. As long as you work hard, you won’t go hungry.”
The Northeast doesn’t have much of anything else, but it has plenty of land, so the grain exchanged for work points is quite generous—at the very least, more than in other places.
Here, six or seven work points a day was enough to feed yourself, and if you earned full work points, you’d not only receive grain at the end of the year but also a bit of money.
Deng Minghao nodded with a smile and offered a few words of praise.
“Then what about our living arrangements? There are eleven of us—can each person get a room?”
The brigade leader shook his head. “The educated youth station only has six rooms. There were only four at first—we rushed to build two more to prepare for your arrival. That way, one room houses the men and one houses the women.”