“You should stay home and get plenty of rest. I’ve already asked the school for leave on your behalf. Once you’ve recovered, you can go back to school.”
“School?”
Right. According to the memories she’d inherited, the original Zhou Yuwei was only eighteen years old and in her final year of high school.
Her family had always doted on her. But ever since her older sister returned from the countryside, all the good food and nice clothes had gone to her first.
That was why Zhou Yuwei had suddenly become resentful and started throwing tantrums over everything.
She really had been immature.
Zhou Kun glanced at his watch before turning to his wife.
“I’ve got to head to the factory. Don’t go to work at the cafeteria today. Stay home and take care of her.”
“Alright.” Lin Hongmei nodded.
Back then, hospitals weren’t like they were in later years, where patients had to finish several IV drips before being discharged.
As long as the fever had broken, they could go home.
After paying the hospital bill, Lin Hongmei said, “Come on, let’s go home. I’ll make you some minced meat millet porridge.”
She gently stroked Zhou Yuwei’s head.
“Yuwei, can you stop holding a grudge against your older sister? She hasn’t had an easy life. She spent years working in the countryside and suffered a lot. Your father and I only wanted to make it up to her. It’s all because your dad and I aren’t capable enough—we don’t earn much money, so all of you children have had to suffer.”
“I know, Mom.”
After all, she wasn’t really eighteen. Mentally, she was already in her thirties.
There was no way she’d compete with her sister for their parents’ affection.
Still, feeling the warmth of Lin Hongmei’s hand made something stir inside her.
This was a kind of familial warmth she had never experienced before.
Her own parents had divorced when she was very young.
She had been raised by her grandmother.
She could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen her parents growing up, let alone say she had any real relationship with them.
Later, they seemed to have forgotten she even existed. Each remarried and had new children.
Only her grandmother had treasured her.
“Mom… you smell so nice.”
Zhou Yuwei wrapped her arms around Lin Hongmei’s waist and spoke softly.
It smelled just like her grandmother.
She remembered that her grandmother had loved using this same scent of laundry soap.
“Silly child. I’m not wearing any perfume. How could I smell nice?”
They walked down the hutong that felt both familiar and unfamiliar.
“You head home first. I’m going to the factory to get your medical expenses reimbursed. I’ll be right back afterward and make you something delicious.”
Zhou Yuwei nodded.
“You’ll be alright getting home by yourself?”
People were always weak after running a high fever.
Her youngest daughter was already so thin, with hardly any flesh on her bones, and her face was still frighteningly pale.
“I’ll be fine. Look.”
Zhou Yuwei bounced lightly on the spot.
For some reason, she really felt as though she had become seventeen or eighteen again.
Perhaps it was because she’d finally seen genuine concern in someone’s eyes after so many years.
“No, no! Don’t jump around. Hurry home and lie down.”
This child…
After one fever, she’d become much livelier.
Zhou Yuwei walked into the small courtyard she remembered and entered the bedroom she shared with her older sister.
The room wasn’t large.
Two beds filled most of the space, separated by a cloth curtain.
A study desk stood beside them, making the already cramped room feel even smaller.
No one was inside.
Zhou Yulan had probably gone to the neighborhood committee to ask about job assignments.
But these days, where were there enough jobs for returned educated youths?
Everywhere was full of unemployed young people, and the government simply didn’t have enough positions to assign everyone.
Instead, it was encouraging people to become self-employed.
The problem was that, in those days, being self-employed carried a poor reputation.
Very few people were willing to do it.
Zhou Yuwei sat down at the desk and flipped through several textbooks.
“So I really am a high school student.”
She picked up the mirror nearby.
Looking into it, she found herself staring at an exceptionally beautiful face.
Large eyes.
A high, elegant nose.
Every feature was attractive.
She was the sort of beauty who left people stunned at first glance.
Unfortunately, she was still recovering from her illness, so her complexion was pale.
She was also very young, with an unmistakable innocence still lingering in her features.
And she was extremely skinny, with barely any flesh on her face.
Looking at herself, Zhou Yuwei smiled.
“Oh? I even have dimples.”
Now that was an unexpected bonus.
She hadn’t been unattractive in her previous life.
She’d been above average, at least.
But now…
She had become a genuine beauty.
Does this count as a consolation prize?
“Lin Hongmei! Get out here!”
A shrill voice suddenly rang out from outside.
Closing her textbook, Zhou Yuwei stood up.
Before she even reached the door, she saw a fierce-looking old woman storm into the courtyard with another woman in tow.
The old woman’s neck was stretched stiffly forward, looking every bit like a fighting rooster strutting through the yard.
“Hey, you little money-losing brat! Where’s your mother?”
The one speaking wasn’t the old woman, but the woman beside her.
She wore a red floral-padded jacket with two braided pigtails and was already craning her neck around the room, looking everywhere.
Zhang Lihua was searching for anything valuable she could conveniently take home.
Hmph.
Her in-laws had always favored the second son.
They’d let Zhou Kun become a factory worker, while she and her husband, the eldest son, had remained back in the countryside, spending every day scratching out a living in the fields.
Although the household responsibility system had now been introduced, if you didn’t work the land, you still couldn’t survive.
Life remained just as hard.
The truth, however, wasn’t that Zhou Kun had been favored at all.
He had earned everything himself.
When he was only eight or nine years old, he had apprenticed under a master carpenter.
That was why he had eventually been hired by the furniture factory.
Back in those days, apprentices endured hardships far beyond what most people could imagine.
“I’m talking to you! Are you deaf or blind?”
Zhou Yuwei looked at her calmly.
“You’re the one calling yourself a ‘money-losing brat.’ Why should I answer you?”
“You little bitch! You dare talk back to me?”
Zhang Lihua immediately slapped her across the face.
She was used to hitting her own daughter that way.
Calling her names and slapping her had become second nature.
Her movements were swift and practiced.
Her own daughter never dared fight back.
But Zhou Yuwei wasn’t about to let that happen.
She slapped Zhang Lihua right back.
“You dare hit your grandaunt? You think your grandaunt is made of paper and easy to bully?”
Her hands didn’t stop moving.
She unleashed one move after another.
The entire exchange left Old Madam Zhou completely dumbfounded.
Has this little brat gone insane today?
Since when did she dare fight back?
When women fought, they usually just pulled each other’s hair.
But President Zhou was different.
She’d actually learned self-defense.
She knew exactly where to hit to make it hurt the most while leaving no visible injuries.
At that moment, the neighbors in the courtyard all came over to see what was happening.
“What’s going on?”
Grandma Xu arrived with several other residents.
“Oh, let me guess,” said Granny Zhang. “That old woman has come to strip another cabbage.”
Everyone in the courtyard knew exactly what she meant.
Every time Zhou Kun’s relatives from the countryside came to visit, nothing good ever happened.
They treated Zhou Kun like a giant cabbage, stripping leaf after leaf off him whenever they got the chance.
“Well, Zhou Kun’s just too honest.”
“He really is. Come on, let’s have a look. Didn’t the Zhou family’s younger daughter just get back from the hospital? If we’re too late and she faints again, that’ll be terrible.”
In everyone’s eyes, the Zhou family had always been easy targets.
They endured everything in silence and rarely argued back.
For such a commotion to break out today, they must have been pushed too far.
But when the crowd reached the Zhou family’s doorway and lifted the curtain…
They all froze.
Something wasn’t right.
Since when had the Zhou family’s younger daughter become this formidable?
Seeing so many neighbors gathered outside, Old Madam Zhou immediately slapped her thigh and wailed dramatically.
“Oh, what a miserable life I have! My son comes to the city to enjoy the good life and forgets all about his old parents back in the countryside! Now even this little brat doesn’t respect me anymore—she even hit me! I can’t go on living!”
Zhou Yuwei laughed.
“Nana, I was just thinking I don’t want to live anymore either. How about the two of us die together? We can keep each other company on the way.”
A shrew, huh?
If you can’t beat one…
You might as well become one.
If they were going to make a scene…
Then she’d make it an even bigger one.
Who was afraid of whom?
Why would a turtle be afraid of an old thief?
“What’s going on here?”
Lin Hongmei had just returned from the factory after getting the hospital expenses reimbursed when she found a crowd gathered outside her home.
The moment she stepped through the doorway, she heard her daughter saying she wanted to die together with the old lady.
“Hongmei, you’re back. Your mother-in-law is here making trouble again,” one of the neighbors quickly told her.
“Lin Hongmei! You’re finally back!”
Old Madam Zhou was furious the moment she saw her.
“Just look at the daughter you’ve raised! Such an unfilial wretch! She actually told this old woman to go die!”