After Shen Meng and the others finished eating, they got up and walked around while chatting. Suddenly, they heard a commotion coming from not far away.
A few children were fighting over some wild berries, and it looked like they were about to start throwing punches.
Shen Meng frowned and was just about to go over and stop them when a figure suddenly flashed past her. In the blink of an eye, the person was already in the middle of the children.
It was Luo Tiantian.
With just a few words, she managed to calm the children down. She even divided the wild berries among them again, leaving every child completely satisfied with the arrangement.
Shen Yinxing walked over and smiled as she patted Luo Tiantian on the head, her eyes full of pride.
Watching this scene, Shen Meng found herself liking Luo Tiantian a little more.
The four children took the wild berries they had gotten and brought them straight to Shen Meng.
Shen Meng froze.
When had she become so popular with children?
“Sister Xiaomeng, I didn’t bring anything good today. I found some raspberries while I was chopping firewood earlier. I’ll give you all the ones I managed to get. Please don’t hit me!”
A small, skinny boy held up a handful of bright red wild berries with a miserable expression.
Two other boys and a girl followed his example, holding their berries high and surrounding Shen Meng.
Shen Meng seemed to understand.
The original owner must have been a little tyrant outside the family. She had never been some helpless, delicate girl.
By modern standards, she was basically a bully who waited outside school to extort money from her classmates.
Shen Meng looked at Bai Jinxin.
Bai Jinxin gave her an awkward smile.
That smile confirmed Shen Meng’s suspicion.
Shen Meng accepted all the wild berries from the children’s hands and gathered them in the front of her clothes. Then she said, “I’ve accepted all the wild berries you’ve offered me, so that makes me your leader now. From now on, I’ll have your backs! When we go home, put all the firewood you’ve chopped onto my family’s donkey cart. I’ll haul it right to your door!”
The children cheered at once.
“Boss!”
The moment Shen Meng accepted the wild berries, she had already decided to ask Bai Jinxin about these children’s families and, depending on the circumstances, make up for the bad things her former self had done to them.
“Since I’m your boss, I’ll reward each of you with a wild berry. We share our blessings and stand together through hardship!”
Shen Meng picked out four of the larger berries and popped one into each child’s mouth. Then she waved her hand.
“All right, scatter. Go on, scatter!”
The children cheered and ran off in all directions, the gloom that had covered their faces disappearing in an instant.
“We share our blessings and stand together through hardship!”
Listening to their voices gradually fading into the distance, Shen Meng actually began to feel like a real gang leader.
She recognized these bright red little berries, each about the size of a cherry. If she wasn’t mistaken, they were the same wild raspberries that had grown everywhere around her hometown in her original world.
She didn’t know their scientific name. These little berries usually ripened around May or June, though sometimes they appeared as early as March or April. They tasted sweet and sour, and her grandfather had once told her they also had medicinal properties, such as nourishing the liver and kidneys and reducing inflammation and detoxifying the body.
Yet in this world, they had already borne fruit in the cold, chilly weather of early spring.
“I didn’t expect the raspberries to have fruit this time of year.”
Chang Guangying walked over curiously to take a look.
“Have one.”
Shen Meng spread open the front of her clothes, where she had gathered the wild berries. Chang Guangying picked one up and tossed it into her mouth.
“Mmm, it’s pretty sweet.”
“Take a few more and let Huiqiao have some too.”
As she spoke, Shen Meng picked out several more berries and placed them in Chang Guangying’s hand.
Chang Guangying didn’t refuse. She turned around, pulled her daughter Liu Huiqiao over, and handed all the little berries to her.
“Mom, we’ll split them half and half.”
Liu Huiqiao counted the berries in her hand. There were four in total, so she took two and tried to put them back into Chang Guangying’s hand.
Chang Guangying only took one.
“Mom already had one just now. You’re still little, Huiqiao. You should eat more so you can grow taller.”
“Mom’s tall, so you should be the one eating more.”
Liu Huiqiao took the berry Chang Guangying had tried to return to her and immediately popped it into her mother’s mouth.
Chang Guangying pinched Liu Huiqiao’s little cheek and praised her with a smile.
“My big girl is such a good daughter. Even with a few little wild berries, you still know to save an extra one for your mother.”
Watching the scene, Shen Meng couldn’t help sighing inwardly.
No wonder Bai Jinxin, Shen Yinxing, and Chang Guangying got along so well. They all had the same kind of personality.
Along with her envy, Shen Meng also felt a faint bitterness in her heart.
She counted the berries. There were twenty-one left. Including the five she had given Chang Guangying earlier, there had been twenty-six in total.
There were six people among them. Four berries each would leave two remaining.
“Come on, everyone, have a taste.”
“I’m not eating something that was stolen!”
Luo Tiantian, who had been gentle and affectionate with the children earlier, looking every bit like a caring big sister, suddenly frowned and glared at Shen Meng.
She looked like a completely different person.
The atmosphere became awkward.
Shen Meng had no idea how to defuse the situation, so she secretly glanced at Bai Jinxin.
Bai Jinxin was just about to speak when Shen Yinxing beat her to it.
“Tiantian, how can you talk to Xiaomeng like that? Xiaomeng meant well. She was only sharing her wild berries with us.”
“But those berries came from bullying those children into giving them to her!” Luo Tiantian’s eyes were clear and honest as she argued her point. “She used to beat those children until they were scared of her!”
“With one look at their faces, anyone could tell they were afraid to say no to her.”
“She only knows how to bully those families who moved here from somewhere else. Yet in her own home, she doesn’t even dare say a word. She’s practically being bullied to death by her own family.”
“Given the situation in her family, what could a little girl like her possibly do?”
Shen Yinxing didn’t scold Luo Tiantian. Instead, she patiently explained.
“Her family has always valued profit over affection. At their core, that’s just how they are. Whoever benefits the family’s future gets treated well. Once they’ve squeezed everything they can out of someone and that person is no longer useful, they cast them aside.”
“But… I thought Granduncle treated Grandma and our family very well. How could he mistreat his own granddaughter?”
Luo Tiantian’s eyes were filled with genuine confusion.
Shen Meng thought to herself, Forget a granddaughter. Even my own biological mother treated me terribly.
“That’s because your grandmother was beautiful and clever. She found herself a good marriage.”
Shen Yinxing lowered her voice mysteriously.
“She found her own husband? Like me and my childhood sweetheart?” Chang Guangying asked. “Or like you, when a fairy suddenly dropped out of the sky and landed right in your lap?”
By then, everyone was eager to hear the gossip and had completely forgotten the awkwardness from earlier.
Shen Meng took advantage of the opportunity to divide up the berries. She gave everyone four. She also made up the five berries Chang Guangying’s family hadn’t gotten enough of, then wrapped the final two in a handkerchief and put them away.
“Neither!” Shen Yinxing said in a lowered voice. “Let me tell you the whole story.”
Everyone gathered together, eating the wild berries as they listened to the gossip.
“The Shen family of Shenjiazhuang isn’t the same Shen as my mother, Shen Chun, or as Jinxin’s father-in-law, Shen Mancang. It’s the Shen from my father, Shen Qingxiang.”
“My mother told me that when she was little, there was a severe drought in her hometown. Her parents—my maternal grandparents—took their eight children and fled the famine. They insisted on heading toward the coast, but both of them fell ill and died along the way.”
“At that time, Jinxin’s father-in-law was only twenty-five or twenty-six, my mother was around nineteen or twenty, and the youngest sister was barely two or three years old. From then on, the eldest brother became the head of the family, and every major and minor decision involving his younger brothers and sisters was up to my eldest uncle.”
“I don’t know whether losing their parents had affected him or whether he’d simply lost his mind, but my eldest uncle was determined to fulfill their parents’ dying wish and see the sea. So, they kept walking until they reached Shenjiazhuang.”
“They did see the sea, but figuring out how to survive became the problem. Their family had been farmers for generations, working the land with their backs to the sky and their faces to the earth. They knew how to farm, but they didn’t know how to fish.”
“It was the old village head of Shenjiazhuang—Tiantian’s grandfather—who was kind enough to let them stay in an abandoned, dilapidated house in the village. He also let my eldest uncle and the others work on his fishing boat.”
“When my mother went aboard to clean the fishing boat, she fell in love with my father at first sight.”
“Love at first sight?”
Chang Guangying was delighted by the gossip.
But Shen Meng merely snorted inwardly.
Why does everyone else’s love at first sight lead to a happy ending, while mine ended with me dying so miserably?!
Heaven really has it in for me!