The little girl knew the fillings she made were rich in oil, meat, and ingredients, so she didn’t dare give them to others casually.
She packed more than ten for Lin Guanghui and wrapped another package for him to bring to Jiang Tao.
In this era, very few families were willing to cook food like this. If she gave them away too openly, it would look like blatant showing off.
Lin Guanghui returned home and directly handed his own package to his mother.
The buns were still warm, and the fragrance seeping through the oil paper made everyone lose the will to work properly.
After asking where they came from, the old lady simply divided them up.
Weren’t they all craving them?
Then they should eat first.
After eating, they would have strength to work.
It wasn’t the first or second time their family owed Educated Youth Tang anyway.
No need to worry.
As people said, when debts piled up, one stopped worrying about them.
There would always be chances to repay her in the future.
Lin Guanghui’s stomach was already stuffed, so naturally he didn’t fight them for the food.
But smelling the fragrance still made his mouth water uncontrollably.
This was torture.
Adults could endure it for a while, but children couldn’t.
From the moment Lin Guanghui entered, the children had been staring eagerly.
The old lady also felt sorry for them.
“Come, eat. This is from Sister Tang Tang. When you have something good in the future, remember Sister Tang Tang too. If Sister needs anything, you must all move quickly. Do you hear me?”
“Mm, mm, mm!”
The little ones nodded messily.
The moment their grandmother spoke, they grabbed a bun and started biting.
It was all meat.
Such delicious meat.
It smelled amazing.
After that, none of them lifted their heads again.
The adults were no exception.
There was no trace of their usual composure.
For a while, only the sound of chewing could be heard.
The five-month-old baby on the heated brick bed also crawled over while babbling “ah, ah.”
The old lady quickly stopped the child, tore off a tiny piece of oily bun skin, and fed it to him.
The little baby used his four small white teeth to chew and swallow, then began babbling “ah, ah” again for more.
The child’s mother, the second daughter-in-law, simply broke off a small piece without filling and let the baby gnaw on it.
There were only a dozen or so buns, about two per person.
They were finished in no time.
The adults were still unsatisfied, while the children had full bellies and continued licking their fingers reluctantly.
The baby didn’t understand.
After finishing, he still hadn’t had enough and kept calling out.
Was he not even allowed to complain after not eating his fill?
Lin Guanghui quickly left.
He should return to town.
If he didn’t leave now, not a single one of Jiang Tao’s buns would survive.
About a month later, Lin Guanghui once again rushed over energetically to Jiang Tao’s house and blocked his door.
The family of three was preparing to eat dinner.
After doing several deals with the little girl and solving such a huge problem, not only had Jiang Tao’s own factory given him rewards, but other brother factories had also sent things over.
So recently, the food at Jiang Tao’s house was much better than before.
On the table was a basin of stewed cabbage and potatoes with a few slices of meat, and the oil content was also slightly better than before.
The staple food was corn pancakes.
Jiang Tao’s wife had separately steamed egg custard for the old lady.
Lin Guanghui didn’t stand on ceremony.
After entering the house, he directly placed the oil paper package on the dining table.
“Adding a dish for you. Have Sister-in-law heat it up.”
Then he found a chair and sat down.
Jiang Tao grinned cheekily.
“Our leader is still the best. You always think of me when there’s something good to eat.”
The two of them were already very familiar, so no one was polite.
Jiang Tao directly asked his wife to take it out and heat it.
Only two or three minutes later, the neighbors on both sides were already leaning over the wall and shouting.
“Taozi, what delicious food are you two secretly making? The smell is too fragrant. It’s drifting all the way to our house!”
“Yeah, Taozi, what are you cooking?”
Jiang Tao, who was also smelling the fragrance with a confused expression, quickly answered:
“What delicious food? You all know how little money we make. My comrade came to visit and brought two meat buns from the state-owned restaurant for my mother. My wife is just heating them up.”
Everyone knew that the buns from the state-owned restaurant were delicious, though none of them had been willing to buy any to try.
Hearing him say they were for the old lady, everyone retreated.
“Seriously, Leader, what delicious food did you bring? Why does it smell so good?”
Lin Guanghui answered expressionlessly:
“Buns.”
“No, Leader, wasn’t that just something I made up?”
Just as he said that, Jiang Tao’s wife carried in a small basket of…
Buns.
“They really are buns…”
Jiang Tao’s wife had already called the old lady and the child to eat.
Jiang Tao sniffed, still looking confused.
“No, Leader, where did you buy buns this fragrant? Even the state-owned restaurant’s buns don’t smell this good. They’re far worse!”
As someone who considered himself a foodie, Jiang Tao couldn’t accept the idea that there might be delicious food in town he didn’t know about.
“These weren’t bought. Your little sister made them.”
There was no need to explain who “little sister” was.
The important point was:
Little sister made them.
Made them.
Made them.
The little girl knew nothing about the problems caused by the buns, nor did she care.
She was currently conflicted.
Why?
Because after Lin Guanghui left, she received a letter.
The strangest part was that this letter was written to her by Tang Jinyu, the younger brother brought by her stepmother.
In the original owner’s memories, this younger brother had always been almost invisible.
He was three years younger than the original owner and had always been caught between her and the stepmother.
Although he had changed his surname to Tang, with that stepmother present, the two siblings had barely spoken peacefully a few times.
Why would a thirteen-year-old boy write to her?
Was it her father’s idea?
Or her stepmother’s?
The little girl opened the letter, and two tickets floated down with the paper.
She picked them up and looked.
They were two sugar coupons.
Was he afraid she wouldn’t have sugar to eat?
She roughly scanned the letter and confirmed that the boy had written it himself, without any instructions from the adults.
In the letter, Tang Jinyu said he knew his mother didn’t like his older sister, and he also knew his older sister didn’t like his mother.
He couldn’t change other people’s thoughts.
But he would treat Tang Tang as his older sister.
These were sugar coupons he had asked his mother for and secretly mailed to his sister so she could buy some candy for New Year.
At least this boy still had some conscience.
He probably spent quite a bit of effort getting these two sugar coupons.
After all, her stepmother might love her son, but she definitely wouldn’t let him handle something this important.
These two coupons had either been tricked out of his mother’s hands by Tang Jinyu, or he had exchanged for them using pocket money.
The soft-hearted little girl became conflicted again.
Should she reply to him?
Sigh.
So troublesome.
In the end, she still wrote a reply.
She kept the sugar coupons.
She sent him several national grain coupons and ten yuan, along with a few simple reminders.
Their relationship had never been particularly deep, but this child having such a heart was rare.
She accepted his goodwill.
When Tang Jinyu received the reply, New Year was almost here.
It just so happened that the family of three was home.
His biological father Tang Jun and stepmother Yan Yulian—no, Yan Jinyu’s stepfather and biological mother—were discussing what New Year goods to buy.
Tang Jun was a formal worker in the factory with a monthly salary of thirty-two yuan. The holiday benefits were decent.
For New Year, he had received three jin of pork, five liang of oil, and two jin of tofu.
The couple was discussing whether to buy some fine grain so they could have a proper meal for New Year.
When they heard there was a letter for their son, both found it strange.
Their son’s classmates and friends all lived nearby, and he had never had correspondence before.
Yan Yulian grew curious.
“Son, who sent the letter?”
Then they saw their son stare at the two of them for a long while before lightly saying:
“Sister.”
The boy looked at his mother, then at Tang Jun.
“Tang Tang. My sister. My sister wrote me a letter.”
He didn’t mention that he had written to his sister first.
He knew they didn’t care.
The name they had deliberately avoided mentioning caused the entire room to fall silent once again.
Tang Jinyu ignored them and returned to his own room to carefully read his sister’s reply.
The money and coupons sent with the letter were placed on the table by Tang Jinyu.
The couple found themselves somewhat unable to speak.
They were only ordinary townspeople. In the end, they were not particularly vicious people.
Both of them blushed.
After New Year, they gradually mailed Tang Tang some things several times.
Although not much, Tang Tang accepted the thought behind it.
After all, she was not the original owner and did not care that deeply.
Soon, New Year arrived.
Early in the morning, Tang Tang brought New Year gifts to the few families she was close to and the educated youth station.
She refused their invitations to stay.
After returning home, she directly locked the gate, closed the door, and entered her space.
No matter how carefree a person was, this day was different.
It was a day that made people miss home.
Especially when everywhere was filled with the joy of reunion.
A sense of loneliness surged toward her from all directions.
Tang Tang only felt cold all over and tightly curled herself into a silkworm cocoon.
Like someone drowning who had just touched air, she gasped for breath.
She wanted to cry, but no tears came.
After a long while, she still couldn’t recover.
Helpless, she simply put on a cotton coat and left the space.
She didn’t even use the front gate.
She jumped over the back wall and ran straight toward the mountains.
She had suddenly arrived in this era, without close parents or siblings, completely alone.
In the little girl’s heart were grievances, confusion, nameless anger, loneliness, avoidance, and desolation.
She ran directly into the deep mountains.
Every household was at home celebrating New Year.
The little girl no longer needed to worry about anything.
Who cared?
Collect, collect, collect.
Just collect.
Feeling that it still wasn’t satisfying enough, whenever she saw wild animals, she simply went to catch them herself, rolling around in the snowy ground.
Only after exhausting all her monstrous strength did the little girl lean weakly against a tree, empty her mind, and recall everything that had happened since she crossed over.
The people who appeared most often in her memories were Jiang Tao and Lin Guanghui.
Her impressions of the villagers were very vague.
Aside from the village chief’s family and the neighbor’s family, she could barely remember what anyone else looked like.
Thinking back, from the first time she met those two and was forced to sell clothes, Jiang Tao had worked hard to secure benefits for her.
Then there was the basket of things she gave him, the forty-eight quotas and milk powder she gave to the village chief.
Hadn’t those also contained some intention to test them?
The little girl had no sense of belonging or security in this unfamiliar place.
When she first arrived in this world, she was like a newborn baby.
Everything was unfamiliar and new.
She had once reached out to touch it.
Some treated her coldly, like Tang Jun and Yan Yulian.
Some were warm, like the village chief’s family.
And there were the two people she had been carefully approaching all along.
They carried the warmth she had always wanted to get close to.
She knew she had been too cautious, too tense, too concerned about relatives who were never truly close.
She herself wondered:
Where had that casual, free-spirited, and spontaneous Tang Tang gone?
Tang Tang realized that what she wanted wasn’t actually this idyllic life of working at sunrise and resting at sunset.
She had simply been hurt and disappointed.
That was why she subconsciously avoided everything related to her previous life.
Medicinal herbs.
Martial arts.
Her coldness.
And her secrets.
The secrets of her previous and present lives…
…
She let out a gentle breath.
She thought:
It was time to be herself again.
Tang Tang had not realized that her secret had also followed her here.