“Gah~”
“Be a little gentler, Store Manager~”
“You’re really hurting me~”
Inside a hot pot restaurant that was not very large,
Muyang said with a frown,
while Suchunsun looked at Muyang somewhat embarrassedly and gently applied burn ointment to him.
“Xiaoyang, don’t keep saying things that make people misunderstand! If someone else heard you, they might think we were doing something improper, you know?”
“And stop moving around. It might hurt a little from here on~”
Muyang’s brows were tightly knitted from the pain, but he stopped saying those blush-inducing things.
Muyang had not originally been from this world.
Because he had wished to spend his next life doing nothing but lying around, a device designed specifically for reincarnation into another world had sent him here.
This world was an extremely rare matriarchal world with far more women than men. The ratio of men to women had already reached the terrifying level of one to three, and it was still continuing to rise.
Moreover, women in this world generally had better physical fitness than ordinary men. It seemed that some special muscle-growth gene in males had been restricted.
This had also resulted in the current shortage of men.
Because they had less muscle mass, men generally had very poor physical constitutions and weak resistance to illness. As a result, boys were especially likely to die young.
The Alliance had previously made efforts to address the situation, such as allocating funds to improve the meal standards for boys, arranging regular medical examinations for all males, and introducing laws that favored men more strongly.
But these measures had not improved men’s physical constitutions. Instead, they had raised this generation of men into a group of giant infants.
Because they had been coddled from childhood, they still acted superior after entering society, behaving as though everyone else ought to give way to them. This had made women nowadays extremely wary of men.
Although women still longed for love, they were unwilling to gamble their lives and fortunes on it.
And he, Muyang,
was only nineteen years old and depended on his two younger sisters for survival, just as they depended on him.
However, his grades had been poor in his previous life, and even after transmigrating, they were still poor.
It was no surprise that he had failed to reach the undergraduate cutoff in the national college entrance examination.
His two younger sisters, on the other hand, had exceptionally good grades. (The younger sisters and Muyang are not related by blood! And they are both adults! They’re already nineteen! Dear reviewer, please don’t ban me!)
So Muyang wanted even more to earn money and support his two younger sisters through university.
After all, no matter how one looked at it, he was still their older brother.
Moreover, although Muyang had grown up in this world,
he was still cheerful and warmhearted, and not particularly affected or pretentious.
He hated those men who were constantly shouting about wanting freedom.
Those men only cared about their own interests, causing ordinary men like him to be disliked by association.
Fortunately, through his steady work, Muyang had earned a fairly decent-paying job.
He made seven thousand yuan a month working as a server at the hot pot restaurant.
It was already early August, and Muyang had only twenty thousand yuan on hand.
His two younger sisters would be starting school in September. Their tuition alone would cost more than ten thousand yuan, and that did not include miscellaneous fees, textbooks, new shoes, and new clothes.
Muyang rested his scalded hand on Store Manager Suchunsun’s hand and let her apply the medicine,
while calculating everything in his head. He feared the money would be nowhere near enough.
Sigh.
Muyang let out a sigh.
Hearing it, Suchunsun raised her head in puzzlement and looked at this boy who was clearly young, yet exceptionally strong-willed.
“What’s wrong, Xiaoyang? Was the workload too heavy today?”
she asked nervously.
Over the past month, Suchunsun’s impression of Muyang could only be described as extremely good.
She had never met a boy so strong-willed, hardworking, and reliable.
Especially one who was so handsome. She had never seen such a beautiful man come out to work before.
Even after scalding his hand with oil, he had not cried. He had continued working until closing time before coming to seek her help.
The worry on Muyang’s face did not lessen, but he did not want to tell the store manager about his family affairs. He was afraid she would think he was trying to gain sympathy.
After all, it had been difficult enough to obtain this job. If he left the store manager with a bad impression, his sisters’ tuition would be in trouble afterward.
“No, I’m just a little tired. I’ll be fine after resting at home for one night. Store Manager, when can I get my wages from last month?”
Muyang was somewhat nervous. In his previous life, asking for one’s wages had been incredibly difficult. Companies would delay payment for several months without a second thought, and any company that paid on time was considered a top-tier employer.
Seeing his expression, Suchunsun immediately understood.
So Xiaoyang was afraid that she would not pay him. He was a little too shy to ask, which was why he looked so conflicted.
“I told you before—it’s the last day of every month. Let me check the date.”
Suchunsun thought for a moment, but could not remember what day it was.
She simply took out her phone and checked.
“Oh! It’s already August second. I forgot!”
Suchunsun slapped her forehead and looked at Muyang awkwardly.
She had forgotten the payday and had already owed him two days’ wages.
She hurriedly apologized.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I really forgot. Wait a moment—I’ll transfer it now.”
As she spoke, she opened her mobile banking app and transferred a full 7,200 yuan to Muyang’s bank account.
Muyang checked his phone. When he saw that there were two hundred extra yuan, he immediately pointed it out.
Suchunsun, however, said solemnly that it was compensation.
“I forgot to pay you on time. This is my apology. Use it to buy yourself something if you want. And your work attitude is excellent, so consider it a reward as well. You must keep up the good work in the future!”
Seeing the determination in Suchunsun’s eyes, Muyang simply accepted it.
Even so, he stood up gratefully and bowed deeply to Muyang.
“Thank you very much, Suchunsun. I’ll work hard!”
Suchunsun glanced at him and instinctively looked away, suddenly unsure where she should look.
Today, Xiaoyang was wearing a loose long shirt and long trousers, but the shirt was especially roomy.
When Muyang bowed like that, his fair neck and even the collarbones beneath it were faintly revealed.
In this matriarchal world, the vast majority of men dressed very conservatively. A man’s body was considered an absolute private matter.
Touching his hand just now, as well as seeing part of Muyang’s collarbone at this moment, both counted as violations of personal boundaries.
But the perfectly proportioned, delicate boniness still made Suchunsun’s heart race. She simply could not control her eyes.
After spending a month with him, Suchunsun understood that this was a peerlessly wonderful treasure of a boy, and that she absolutely could not let him slip away.
Not only were his figure and appearance both exceptional,
but his personality was also exceptionally rare—cheerful and generous, without quibbling over every little thing.
He was practically the ideal boyfriend—no, husband.
She herself was also troubled by her figure.
In this matriarchal world, women handled matters outside the home and were responsible for earning money and supporting the family, so strength was highly admired.
Her full figure might have captivated countless men in Muyang’s original world,
but in this world, it was considered a severely abnormal body type.
Yet from beginning to end, Muyang had never shown even the slightest disgust toward her. He would even sneak a few glances from time to time. This gave her tremendous confidence and made her impression of Muyang even better.
Suchunsun swallowed and savored the warm sensation of Muyang’s palm against hers when she had applied the medicine just moments ago.
I love it! I love it! I want to marry him so badly!
Muyang was just about to leave when Suchunsun immediately called out to him.
“Xiaoyang, I still have some ingredients left here. You haven’t eaten dinner yet, have you? Take them all home. I’d just throw them away after my shift anyway, so you might as well have them.”
Muyang paused, then immediately turned around. Free ingredients were not something one refused. Although they had been sitting there for a day, they had remained in the freezer the entire time, so they were perfectly clean and safe.
When he opened the freezer in the back kitchen, there was still a fist-sized piece of beef, more than half a bag of hot pot meatballs, several crab sticks, and a large bag of bean sprouts and lotus root slices.
Muyang did not show the slightest bit of disdain. If he bought all of this at the market, it would cost at least a hundred yuan.
Since he could get it for free, there was no reason not to.
Besides, because they were saving money, his two younger sisters had not eaten anything good in a long time. They had been eating nothing but clear soups and plain food every day, and Muyang felt that he truly owed his sisters an apology.
As for why his two younger sisters, who were already adults, did not get jobs—
that was because this world had an utterly ridiculous provision in its laws.
No establishment was allowed to hire summer workers under the age of twenty, even with a guardian’s consent.
They had to protect the children’s beautiful childhood.
After carrying the large bag of food out of the restaurant, he saw his two younger sisters waiting outside for him.
The two of them came to pick him up every night, because the streets outside were not very safe at night. After all, with such a high ratio of women to men, there were always some repressed drunkards looking for trouble.
With his two younger sisters there, he had nothing to fear.
The second sister, Liu Shuning, was 177 centimeters tall. She had a very gentle personality, and her figure was the standard type for a young girl, full of youthful vitality.
The third sister, Liu Xiaoxiao, looked as though she had suffered from malnutrition during development. She was only 153 centimeters tall and was a perfect anime-style loli.
Muyang seriously suspected that all her nutrition had gone into that astonishing figure of hers, which was why she was so short.
As for Muyang,
he was about as tall as his third sister, standing at only 1.5 meters. He was a perfectly standard little pretty boy.