“Are you sure you want to take on two jobs?” Zhao Peng asked, confirming Yun Zhen’s plan.
Yun Zhen’s eyes were filled with anticipation for the future.
She smiled and replied, “Brother Zhao, sorting vegetables and doing odd jobs at the restaurant are both very easy for me.
I’m confident I can handle them.”
Zhao Peng hummed in acknowledgment.
“It’s fine if you can’t keep it up.
You’re still young.
It wouldn’t be too late to start working after you come of age.”
Yun Zhen nodded.
“Brother Zhao, can I go to Sister-in-law Liu’s place to work now?”
She wanted to earn her wages as soon as possible so she could buy grain for her parents and Xiaobao.
Knowing she was a diligent girl, Zhao Peng checked the time.
“Just about.
It’ll be four o’clock in two minutes.
Since you’ve made up your mind, go ahead and start work.
Do you still remember the way back to the dorm?”
Yun Zhen had taken an electric tricycle with Sister Huang once, and then ridden in Brother Zhao’s black Beetle-like car.
Her workplace wasn’t far from her living quarters.
She had a good memory and had long since committed the route to mind.
“I know how to get back.
Brother Zhao, if you have nothing else to do, are you heading back first?”
Zhao Peng had other duties.
“I still have to take the newcomers to sign up for their skills classes and find their teachers, so I won’t accompany you.
Work hard, and head back to the dorm early after you get off at six.
If you can’t find your way, you can use your communicator to contact the agency’s staff.”
Yun Zhen was genuinely grateful.
“Brother Zhao, thanks to you I found work today.
I’m sorry for all the trouble.”
“It’s my job, so don’t mention it.
I’ll be off,” Zhao Peng said, waving his hand.
With that, he took his leave.
Yun Zhen crossed the street, entered the vegetable market, and found Sister-in-law Liu.
“Sister-in-law Liu, I’m here for work.”
As it was getting close to quitting time, people were already arriving to buy groceries for dinner.
Sister-in-law Liu was busy tending to her customers.
“Yun Zhen, you’re here.
These are the vegetables that need sorting.
Go through them and pick out the rotten and wilted leaves, then throw them in the trash bin later.
If there’s anything you don’t understand, let Li Mei teach you.”
Besides Sister-in-law Liu herself, there was another vegetable sorter at the stall.
Her name was Li Mei, and she was in her twenties.
“Sister Li,” Yun Zhen greeted her as she approached.
Li Mei was naturally chatty, outgoing, and loved to smile.
Having heard from Sister-in-law Liu that Yun Zhen was an orphan from a charity organization, she was very friendly toward her.
“Why call me Sister Li?
I’m not that much older than you.
I’m twenty-two, and you’re seventeen, so just use my name.
I’m Li Mei; you can just call me Meimei from now on.”
She seemed very easy to get along with.
Yun Zhen and Li Mei quickly became acquainted, chatting happily as they sorted the vegetables.
Yun Zhen had crafted a backstory for herself as an orphan who grew up wandering the streets.
With the help of her benefactor, Sister Huang, she had been taken in by the kindhearted Sister Zhang.
Her story sounded heartbreaking, and it matched almost perfectly with what Li Mei had already heard from Sister-in-law Liu.
Li Mei’s life, on the other hand, was much more fortunate.
“My husband drives an excavator at the construction site next door, making ten or twenty thousand a month.
I stay home to look after our child, but I get bored out of my mind when the kid goes to school.
So, I do a little work here with Sister-in-law Liu to earn some pocket money.
If there’s anything you don’t understand later on, just ask.
I can teach you.”
Li Mei went on to explain that her family had not only built a three-story house in their hometown but also paid in full for an apartment in the city, and bought another apartment in the city where they currently worked—a mortgage they were about to finish paying off.
On top of that, her parents-in-law grew fruit trees back home, bringing in over a hundred thousand a year.
From Li Mei’s description, Yun Zhen gathered that only highly capable people could earn over ten thousand a month.
Hearing that Li Mei’s husband actually handed over all his monthly earnings to her, Yun Zhen was both shocked and envious.
She admired Li Mei a bit.
In Yun Zhen’s original world, someone with houses, land, an orchard, and a high income could afford to buy servants to wait on them hand and foot.
Yet here she was, still coming out to work.
Li Mei was a kindhearted woman.
She gave Yun Zhen specific instructions on how to sort the vegetables—place the good ones in a pile, and toss the bad ones into a torn bag to be thrown away.
“We’re throwing away such good vegetables?”
Yun Zhen held a cabbage the size of a child’s head.
It was a bit small, its outer leaves were slightly dry, and there were a few rotten spots.
Li Mei had told her to toss it into the bad pile.
“This cabbage doesn’t seem bad at all.” Yun Zhen inspected it from every angle, unable to see what was wrong with it.
She couldn’t help but marvel at how truly bizarre this world was!
In the dead of winter, there was actually a wide variety of fresh vegetables.
Most of them were as tender as if they had just sprouted in the spring.
Only a small fraction had dry leaves, and those with rotten leaves were even rarer.
“This cabbage has too many dry leaves.
It looks unappealing and won’t sell,” Li Mei explained.
Yun Zhen was utterly speechless.
Such a good vegetable wouldn’t sell?
In Taoyuan Village, having a mouthful of tender vegetable leaves during the winter felt just as luxurious as eating meat.
Seeing her reluctant expression, Li Mei joked, “If you can’t bear to throw it away, why don’t you take it home?”
“Can I?” Yun Zhen’s eyes instantly lit up.
Having finished tending to her customers, Sister-in-law Liu came over to help them sort.
“Feel free to take whatever is still edible.
I used to tell Li Mei to take them, but she stopped taking them after just two times.”
Li Mei laughed.
“My husband’s biological aunt lives right next door to us, and her family also sells vegetables.
She always brings vegetables over when she’s free.
If I bring these home on top of that, we won’t be able to finish them, and they’ll just go bad.”
Hearing this, Yun Zhen set the cabbage aside, her hands nimbly picking off the dry and rotten leaves.
“It’s a pity to throw away such good food.”
These were fresh vegetables.
She hadn’t expected to reap such a bountiful harvest on her very first day of work.
“Here’s a bag.
Put them all in here.” Sister-in-law Liu handed her a green plastic bag.
She and Li Mei helped stuff all the edible, sorted vegetables into it.
Two hours quickly passed, and the day’s sorting was complete.
Yun Zhen and Li Mei threw the completely inedible, rotten scraps into the trash bin.
“You can both get off work now.
Come back tomorrow.”
Li Mei stretched lazily.
“The work isn’t tiring, but sitting around just makes you stiff.” She turned to Yun Zhen.
“My daughter’s out of school, so I’m going to pick her up.
You should head home early too.”
Yun Zhen didn’t feel tired at all.
She glanced at the bulging bag, her heart overflowing with happiness.
The heavens had truly been kind to her!
She received sixty yuan from Sister-in-law Liu for her work.
Looking at the long, rectangular paper bills in her hand, she wondered how much rice and flour they could buy.
“Sister-in-law Liu, thank you for the vegetables.
I’ll be leaving now.” Although the bag was swollen and round, Yun Zhen was strong.
It didn’t feel heavy to her at all, and she carried it away with ease.
Sister-in-law Liu smiled.
“You’re too polite, child.” They were just a few loose vegetable leaves, after all.
Yun Zhen was in no rush to return to the dorm.
Lugging her woven plastic bag, she strolled around the vegetable market.
She soon arrived at the grain and oil section, taking in the dazzling variety of rice and flour bags.
Several rice sacks at the stall were open, revealing the pristine white grains inside.
She thought, “What beautiful, refined white rice!” She felt as if she could smell the fragrance of the rice wafting through the air.
A slip of paper stood upright on the bags, displaying the prices, but she couldn’t quite understand what was written on them.
Since this was refined rice, she figured it had to be very expensive.
Noticing her, the stall owner took the initiative to ask, “Looking to buy some rice, miss?”
“Shopkeeper, how much is the brown rice?” Yun Zhen clutched her paper bills and gathered her courage to ask.
“I have both expensive and cheap brown rice here.
The expensive ones are twelve to eighteen yuan a catty, and the cheaper ones are four to eight yuan a catty.
If you buy a lot, I can give you a discount.”
The cheapest brown rice was four yuan?
She had sixty yuan in her hand.
Didn’t that mean she could buy fifteen catties?
Her family had three adults.
Xiaobao didn’t eat much, so if they were frugal, it could last them five or six days.
Her father had once told her that during peaceful years, the normal price of grain was sixty cents a catty, but during famine years, the price would soar to over one hundred and twenty cents a catty.
If four yuan was roughly equivalent to four cents back home…
she had hit the jackpot!
Grain that would normally cost sixty cents, or even a hundred and twenty cents a catty, she could buy for just four cents a catty here.
She was practically bursting with excitement.
Yun Zhen immediately spoke up to make her purchase, “I want…”