Lu Cheng remained noncommittal, neither happy nor upset.
If he couldn’t marry the woman he loved, then to him, marrying any other woman made no difference.
But just thinking about marrying the ordinary-looking Sun Xiaoxiao, Shen Wei’s bright and vivid face suddenly flashed through his mind again.
In the end, it still wasn’t quite right.
Aunt Wang entered the kitchen and was almost overwhelmed by the strong smell of Chinese medicine.
“Sister Wang is here, come sit and rest,” Lu’s mother said, quickly giving up her seat. “Is it the Sun family pushing you?”
Aunt Wang shot her a glare. “Pushing? You still have the nerve to say that?”
“Let me ask you does your son already have a partner?”
Lu’s mother’s smile faded when she realized things weren’t going as she expected. “Sister Wang, why would you ask that? If my son already had a partner, would I still ask you to introduce someone?”
“Hmph,” Aunt Wang snorted and glared at Lu Cheng. “That girl from the Sun family saw it herself. She said your Lu Cheng was tangled up with a girl in a green dress. Her mother gave me a scolding I’ve never heard in my life.”
Just thinking of Sun Xiaoxiao’s mother made Aunt Wang uneasy again. She had been cursed at for half an hour straight, every sentence laced with vulgarities so crude she couldn’t even repeat them.
Lu’s mother immediately understood what was going on.
It had to be that Liu Qingqing.
She had already made things clear, yet the girl still clung to her son. Was she that desperate?
Now look at the result not only had she ruined the match with the Shen family girl, she had also messed up the Sun family one.
“Sister Wang, please listen to me. The boy is young and didn’t understand things. He did have a relationship before, but they’ve already broken up. Now he just wants to find an honest, capable girl to live a proper life with.”
Aunt Wang pushed her away. “I can’t take this job anymore. Find someone else.”
With that, she ignored Lu’s mother’s attempts to keep her and turned to leave.
“ACheng… you and Qingqing…” Lu’s mother sighed. “Seeing you two like this breaks my heart. If you really can’t let her go, then just marry her.”
Otherwise, at this rate, Liu Qingqing might ruin her son so badly he would end up unmarried for life.
“No!” Lu Cheng said firmly. “I can’t let her suffer with me.”
It didn’t matter if he suffered he deserved it. But Qingqing couldn’t endure his family’s hardships.
He turned off the stove fire and said, “I’m going out.”
He needed to personally explain things to Sun Xiaoxiao.
At the gate, Sun Xiaoxiao was picking vegetables in the garden when she saw Lu Cheng walking over.
Without a word, he began helping her pick beans.
Sun Xiaoxiao immediately refused coldly. “I don’t need your help. I can do it myself.”
Lu Cheng stepped closer. “I came today to explain. The girl you saw last time is someone I grew up with. I only see her as a younger sister.”
“I really want to build a family with you. Xiaoxiao… are you willing?”
Sun Xiaoxiao shook her head. “Sorry, I’m not willing. Please leave.”
Her mother might be crude, but she wasn’t wrong about one thing there are plenty of men in the world. No need to insist on one who already had someone in his heart.
“Did someone say something to you?” Lu Cheng suddenly thought of Shen Wei, whom they had seen at the state-run restaurant. Could Shen Wei have said something bad about him?
The more he thought about it, the more possible it seemed.
Sun Xiaoxiao shook her head again. “Don’t ask anymore. Just go. Don’t come again.”
If her mother showed up, things wouldn’t be so easy to resolve.
But Lu Cheng still refused to give up and followed her all the way to the gate of her courtyard.
“Xiaoxiao, who is this?” Sun’s mother asked, looking at Lu Cheng.
“He’s the blind date you asked Aunt Wang to introduce to me.”
Lu Cheng put on what he believed was a polite smile. “Hello, Auntie, I am ”
Before he could finish greeting her, the next second he saw Sun’s mother suddenly reveal a fierce expression and raise a large broom, swinging it straight at him.
“You shameless rotten thing! Are your father or mother about to die so you’re rushing to bring bad luck and drag someone’s daughter down with you?!”
“How many things do you even have down there that you think you can handle two at once? Not enough? Don’t you still have your mother at home?”
“If you dare harass my daughter, I’ll dig your eyes out! You’ve got eyes but don’t use them properly today I’ll poke both those holes blind!”
Lu Cheng had never seen anything like this in his life. He nearly fled from the Sun household.
It was terrifying. He had never heard anyone curse so viciously.
This Sun Xiaoxiao could not be married. Anyone who ended up with such a mother-in-law would lose a layer of skin even if they didn’t die.
On the way home, he felt extremely disheartened. Why was it so hard to find an honest woman to marry?
……
On the other side, seeing that Shen Wei’s bun stall was doing well every day at the market, within just a few days others also started pushing tricycles to sell buns like hers.
“How annoying!” Li Na said angrily when she saw it. “They’re selling the same pork and chive egg buns as you! Isn’t this obviously trying to steal your business?”
“Business belongs to everyone. There’s no such thing as stealing,” Shen Wei said calmly. She had already encountered this kind of thing in her past life. “No one can take what belongs to me.”
“Then how are you going to deal with it?” Li Na still felt frustrated.
“There’s no need to deal with it at all.” Shen Wei skillfully finished wrapping a bun. “If her buns taste better than mine, then she deserves good business. If they don’t, people will realize it after a few days.”
Since Shen Wei had been selling there for nearly a week, some regular customers came straight to her.
While some passersby who wanted to try something new inevitably went to the stall next door.
Sister Wu came by to buy buns and said confidently, “Shen Wei, don’t worry. I just walked past her stall and checked the smell isn’t even as good as yours!”
Shen Wei couldn’t help but smile. “Really? Maybe Sister Wu, you naturally carry a floral scent yourself, so my stall is just benefiting from you.”
Sister Wu burst into laughter.
After paying for the buns, she said, “I’m off now, going to buy a chicken. I’m making huadiao chicken for my husband at noon.”
“Bye-bye.”
Li Na rested her chin in her hands, watching Sister Wu leave. “Sometimes I really envy her.”
“Envy her what?” Shen Wei asked.
“Don’t you think she’s very elegant? I wish I could be that elegant when I reach her age.”
Shen Wei couldn’t help but laugh. “With your firecracker temper, that might be difficult.”
Li Na immediately rolled her eyes. “Hmph. No matter how fiery my temper is, my heart is definitely elegant.”
Although someone else had started selling buns too, Shen Wei still sold out completely.
She thought that once she saved a bit more money, she could open a proper bun shop.
With a shop, she wouldn’t need to push things back and forth anymore, and business wouldn’t be affected by the weather.
Nearby, a chubby woman frowned in confusion. She had seen how well Shen Wei’s business was doing, so she also started selling buns from a tricycle like her.
After all, how hard could it be? Every woman knew how to make buns.
But why was her business not as good as Shen Wei’s?
That was strange.