Gu Dashan stared at her for a long while before finally squeezing out a sentence: ”Girl, how’d you know how much grain that plot could yield in a year?”
“I calculated it.” Mai Sui picked up a bite of pickled cabbage with her chopsticks.
She’d run a restaurant in her past life—cost accounting was the most basic skill. Did she really need to think about a little math like this?
Liu Guifang’s eyes reddened, but this time it wasn’t from feeling wronged—it was from being moved. Her lips trembled for a long while before she could speak: ”Sui’er, you… eat your food. Eat more.”
“Reason with reasonable people. For unreasonable ones, you have to use unreasonable methods.” Mai Sui’s tone softened. “Mom, eat.”
Wang Cuijuan and Li Ming’e exchanged a glance, both their faces saying the same thing: this sister-in-law was not to be messed with.
Wang Cuijuan gave a dry laugh or two: ”Big Sister-in-law is really something, standing up for our family on her very first day.”
Mai Sui glanced at her and smiled. “You’re too kind, Second Sister-in-law. Next time Aunt Zhang comes, you can stand up for the family yourself. I could tell you’re quite the talker—it’s just that at the critical moment, your mouth is like the waistband of cotton-padded pants: loose or tight, not up to you.”
The smile on Wang Cuijuan’s face froze instantly.
Mai Sui served herself some pickled cabbage stewed with vermicelli, took a couple of bites, and suddenly felt a gaze land on her face.
She turned her head.
Gu Qingye was looking at her.
Not with that cold, appraising stare from before, nor with that deliberate avoidance from earlier—he was simply looking at her, gaze direct and unhidden, as if he were getting to know her all over again.
Mai Sui was still chewing her vermicelli and mumbled, “What are you looking at?”
Gu Qingye withdrew his gaze. He drained the remaining water in his bowl in one gulp, set the bowl on the table, and said one sentence.
His voice was very low, so low that only she could hear it.
“You don’t have to pay back that bag of corn.”
She didn’t have to pay it back?
She looked down at the pickled cabbage in her bowl and kept eating.
Gu Qingye glanced at Mai Sui’s profile again. When she’d been doing the math just now, her tone had been as casual as everyday chatter, but the numbers had come pouring out one after another. Aunt Zhang had been deflated in just three sentences in front of her.
This woman was completely different from what he’d imagined.
After the meal, Mai Sui rolled up her sleeves to wash the dishes, but Liu Guifang snatched them away. “First day of marriage—we don’t do that in this family. Go back to your room and rest.”
Mai Sui still scrubbed the pot, washed the dishes, and wiped the stovetop spotless. Just as she finished, she felt someone tugging at her pant leg.
She looked down. It was the little girl, looking up at her with eyes like a small animal’s—bright and timid.
“Your name is Xiaoya?” Mai Sui asked.
Xiaoya nodded vigorously, then reached out and pressed something into Mai Sui’s palm.
A piece of candy wrapped in cellophane, the wrapper all crumpled—clearly something she’d been saving for a long time, unable to bear eating it.
“Sister-in-law,” Xiaoya’s voice was thin and tender, like a newly hatched chick. “For you to eat.”
Mai Sui crouched down to be at eye level with Xiaoya. She unwrapped the candy and split it in half, tucking the other half into Xiaoya’s mouth. Xiaoya held the candy in her mouth, her eyes curving into little crescent moons.
“Is it good?”
“Sweet!” Xiaoya nodded hard, then suddenly leaned close to her ear and lowered her voice. “Sister-in-law, be careful. Second Sister-in-law and Third Sister-in-law are studying you.”
Mai Sui’s heart skipped a beat. “Studying what?”
“Second Sister-in-law says they’re checking whether you have money, and Third Sister-in-law says Big Brother’s allowance can’t be managed by you from now on.”
Mai Sui popped the other half of the candy into her own mouth. Orange-flavored, and sweet indeed. She patted Xiaoya’s head and smiled. One candy for an Intelligence Station—that was a good deal.
“Xiaoya, from now on, whatever happens in the family, you tell your sister-in-law, okay?”
Xiaoya’s eyes lit up, like a little traitor who’d found her organization: “Okay! Sister-in-law, will you give me candy?”
“I will.”
“Then I’ll tell you everything!”
Mai Sui went back to the east room. The Gu family was poor, but they’d still fixed this room up nicely—red paper double-happiness characters pasted on the wall, a new enamel basin, a new mirror. Everything had that vintage feel.
Mai Sui walked over and looked at herself in the mirror. The face’s features weren’t striking, but they grew on you the more you looked—an oval face, willow-leaf eyebrows, fair skin, so innocent-looking that people would assume she was easy to push around at first glance.
This face looked a lot like her own from her past life.
A newly made red quilt was spread on the kang, and the kang was heated nice and warm. Mai Sui was folding clothes when she heard movement in the courtyard. She went to the window and looked out.
Under the moonlight, Gu Qingye was chopping firewood.
It was the twelfth month in the north, the cold wind howling, but he seemed oblivious to the cold, like some big fool. Each swing of the axe split the wood cleanly in two. Bend down, pick up the wood, stack it, set another piece, chop again. His movements were fast and fierce, like he was fighting with someone.
Mai Sui watched for a while, then pushed the door open and went out.
“Chopping firewood this late?”
Gu Qingye’s axe paused. He didn’t turn around. “Mm.”
“Couldn’t you chop during the day?”
“It’s quieter at night.”
Mai Sui leaned against the doorframe, wrapped tightly in her padded jacket. She watched him chop two more pieces, then suddenly smiled: “It’s not that it’s quieter at night. It’s that something’s eating at you.”
The axe froze in midair.
Gu Qingye turned to look at her. The moonlight fell on his face, his brows knitted, his lips pressed into a line. The expression wasn’t anger—it was something held back.
“Something’s eating at you because your mother tricked you into coming back.”
He said nothing, which was as good as admitting it.
“Or is it because your mother married you to a wife you didn’t want?”
Gu Qingye’s grip on the axe tightened. He lowered his head, planted the axe into the ground, and said in a muffled voice, “It’s not at you.”
Mai Sui was about to speak when Gu Qingye suddenly continued, his voice lower than before: “It’s at the situation. You shouldn’t have been treated this way.”
Mai Sui froze for a moment and said nothing. She turned to go back inside, but before she could step through the door, his voice came from behind her.
“You don’t want this marriage either.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.
Mai Sui turned back and looked at him. “Right.”
Gu Qingye gave a small nod, his expression unchanged. “Then we think alike.”
He set down the axe, went into the room, poured himself a bowl of water, and drank. “You don’t want to marry, I don’t want to be married, but things are what they are now.”
He walked up to her. The lamplight fell on his rugged features. He was nearly a head and a half taller than her, standing before her like a wall.
But there was nothing oppressive in what he said.
“This bowl of water is the line between us.” His voice was deep. “You’re on that side, I’m on this side. From now on, we each live our own lives. I won’t touch you. When I go back to the army, if you want to leave, you can leave. No one will stop you.”
With that, he set the bowl of water down in the middle of the kang.
Mai Sui looked up at him. “You’re letting me go?”
“It’s not letting you go.” He paused, as if choosing his words carefully. “It’s not tying you down.”
“What’s the difference?”
Gu Qingye was silent for two seconds, then looked away. “Telling you to leave—that was me driving you out. Not tying you down, that’s…”
He stopped again.
Mai Sui didn’t rush him. She waited for him to finish.
“It’s leaving the door open for you,” he said at last.
She suddenly smiled a little. “And what if I don’t want to leave?”
Gu Qingye visibly froze for a moment. He lowered his head and started buttoning his army coat, fumbled twice without getting it done—the button had gone into the wrong hole—then undid it and started over.
“That’s your business,” he said, his tone still just as stiff.
But he buttoned it wrong again.
Mai Sui watched him wrestle with the buttons, couldn’t help herself, and walked over to undo the misplaced button and fasten it into the right hole.
Gu Qingye went completely rigid.
Her hand brushed his collar and withdrew—less than three seconds in all—but Gu Qingye stood there as if frozen in place, not moving for a long while.
Mai Sui looked up at him. “Are you afraid of me?”
Gu Qingye’s Adam’s apple bobbed once. “No.”
“Then why are you so tense?” Mai Sui patted his chest—hard as a wall, like patting a brick wall. “Relax. I’m not going to hit you.”
Gu Qingye took a step back.
The army coat was on, the buttons were right, but he seemed to have no idea where to put his hands.
Mai Sui looked at the bowl of water, then at him.
“That’s it?”
Gu Qingye blinked. “What?”
“What a coincidence,” Mai Sui said, letting her hair down and combing through it with her fingers. “I was sold here too. A hundred and twenty yuan bride price—my parents took it to put toward my little sister’s dowry. From start to finish, nobody ever asked whether I was willing.”
Gu Qingye’s brow furrowed even deeper, as if trying to figure out whether she was lying.
Mai Sui let him look, openly, her gaze so candid there wasn’t a trace of guilt in it. She bent down without ceremony, took off her shoes, and sat cross-legged on the kang. “You be your soldier, I’ll live my life. We won’t interfere with each other. But I have a few rules.”
Gu Qingye was taken aback. “Go ahead.”
“First: inside this house, you have the final say; outside, I do. When you’re home, we’re husband and wife—we act the part in front of others, no letting anyone see through us. When you’re away, I hold this household up, and nobody gets to bully your parents.”
Mai Sui held up one finger, then a second. “Second: don’t meddle in what I do. I’m going to earn money—however much or little is mine, and none of your concern.”
“Third…” She held up a third finger and looked Gu Qingye in the eye. “Between the two of us, it’s strictly a partnership in living—nothing more. If you ever meet someone you like, tell me anytime. I won’t stand in your way.”
After Mai Sui finished her three rules, Gu Qingye was silent a moment, then asked in return, “You’re not afraid I’ll refuse?”
Mai Sui shot back, “The bowl’s already been set out—why would I be afraid you’d refuse?”
Gu Qingye said nothing more. He reached out his hand. “It’s a deal.”
Mai Sui looked down at his hand. It was so big, the knuckles distinct, thick calluses at the base of the thumb—just looking at it, you could tell he could crush a stone with one grip.
She reached out her hand too.
Her fingers, slender and pale, rested in his palm, and he gave them a gentle squeeze.
Rough, dry, startlingly hot.
Gu Qingye let go almost instantly and turned away to move the bedding. Mai Sui drew her hand back, her fingertips curling slightly. From that one brief clasp, his warmth lingered in her palm for two extra seconds before it faded.
He moved his bedding to the foot of the kang, folding his army greatcoat into a pillow, while Mai Sui spread her quilt at the head. Between them sat that bowl of water.
Gu Qingye reached over and pulled the light cord. With a click, the room fell into darkness.
Mai Sui lay on the kang, glancing at the bowl of water in the middle, then at the man whose broad back was like a wall, and began taking stock of her situation.
In her past life, she had spent six years scrimping and saving to open her own shop, only for her ex-boyfriend to run off with every cent. From that moment on, she understood one truth: relying on a man was worse than relying on your own skills.
Her parents had died early. At fifteen she went out to work as a waitress, starting in the kitchen washing vegetables and gutting fish. At twenty she became a chef, at twenty-five she opened a restaurant with a partner, and by twenty-eight she was running a high-end restaurant. She had endured every hardship and met every kind of person—cheated by partners, sabotaged by rivals.
Her greatest talent in her past life was turning a terrible hand into a winning one. This life’s hand was a bit rotten, but at least it was a hand—she had a roof over her head.
In the darkness she could see nothing, only hear the kang crackling as it burned and the north wind howling outside.
Mai Sui closed her eyes and started turning over plans for tomorrow. She had told off Aunt Zhang today—that matter was surely not over.
With a new bride in the house, Wang Cuijuan and Li Ming’e were bound to stir up trouble again. And there was the Mai family to consider—the hundred and twenty yuan bride price couldn’t just be let go that easily. Before her sister Mai Li married into the county magistrate’s family, she’d probably come to squeeze something more out of her.
But she wasn’t afraid.
She, Mai Sui, had come here to turn her life around, not to suffer grievances.
Just as she was thinking this, a faint sound suddenly reached her ears.
Rustle, rustle.
Mai Sui opened her eyes. The room was too dark to see anything, but she could hear it perfectly clearly…
“Squeak… I’m so hungry my stomach’s stuck to my spine. Why aren’t those two big lumps out there asleep yet?”
“Hang in there a bit longer. There’s still a mixed-grain bun on the stove. Once they’re dead asleep, we’ll drag it back to the burrow—enough for the two of us to gnaw on half the night.”
“That bun’s so dry it hurts my teeth! Nothing like that chunk of pork cracklings the second one’s woman hid last year… What a shame—we didn’t even get a whiff before she hauled it all back to her mother’s house.”
“All you think about is food! Just talking about this makes me furious. That barred Plymouth Rock hen—so plump! We were just waiting for it to finish laying so we could at least get a taste of meat, and what happened? The second one’s family took the whole thing in one pot—not so much as a feather left for us!”
“The second one’s family is nothing—the third one’s is the truly ruthless one! That pile of big cabbages in the cellar—all we had to get through winter was a few tough outer leaves to nibble on, and what did she do? In the middle of the night she hitched up the cart and hauled off half of them, then swept up every rotten leaf that had fallen on the ground. In my three winters of life, I’ve never seen Two-legged Beasts so good at hoarding.”
“Sigh, when it comes down to it, this nest of Two-legged Beasts is even better at hiding food than we are. How are we supposed to survive this winter?”
“What’s the rush? That new woman—I just snuck out and took a peek. She smells different from the others.”
“How different? Isn’t she just two legs and one mouth like the rest?”
“No, no, no. She has a smell of stove fire about her, like… like Old Sun who runs that restaurant in town. My nose tells me that if we stick with her, we might just scrape up some greasy pickings.”
“Oh, give it a rest! Every last one of the Two-legged Beasts is a iron rooster—not a feather to spare. Look at the second and third ones in this house—they guard against us like we’re thieves. They’d lock up a mouse dropping if they could.”
“That’s true… But the way that new woman looks at people is creepy, like that big yellow cat at the village entrance. Her eyes are so sharp my heart pounds.”
“Ptui, ptui, don’t mention cats! Hurry up and sleep. We need to rest up—later tonight we’ve got to search the third one’s room and see if we can dig out that half sack of corn grits she hid.”
“Her hiding spots for food are even harder to find than our burrow…”
“We have to find them anyway! These days, the Two-legged Beasts are stealing our food. If we’re not clever, we’ll really starve to death in this nest of iron roosters.”
The voices gradually faded into soft snoring.
Mai Sui opened her eyes in the darkness, the corners of her mouth slowly curling up.
A reed-flower chicken, Chinese cabbage, half a sack of corn grits.
No wonder the Gu family was dirt poor. She still hadn’t figured out how she’d come to understand what animals were saying, but if it could really be put to use, this poor family might have a chance to turn things around.
As for that man?
Tough-tongued but soft-hearted. He was probably hiding under his blanket right now, ears burning red.