A hat was immediately slapped on her, and the young woman’s face paled slightly as she repeated, “I’m sorry, Comrade, but that isn’t in accordance with the regulations.”
“Are you deaf? I said I want to sleep here! The berth is empty anyway, so it’s just going to waste. Do you believe I’ll file a complaint against you?”
The middle-aged woman’s voice was extremely loud, especially when she raised her voice and hollered. It was practically like having a loudspeaker pressed right against one’s ear.
Su Yuanyuan had a headache. She sat up and glanced at the woman arguing with the conductor.
“Could you please go somewhere else if you want to argue?”
She had just been about to fall asleep, but the moment the middle-aged woman started shouting, most of her drowsiness disappeared.
Besides, the conductor was right. The woman had been making an unreasonable fuss this whole time. Was she really not going to let anyone sleep?
The middle-aged woman was already feeling frustrated, and the moment Su Yuanyuan spoke, it was as if she had walked straight into the woman’s line of fire.
Finally finding somewhere to vent her anger, the woman immediately turned her frustration toward Su Yuanyuan.
“Just because you can afford a sleeper berth, you think you’re so great? Looking down on us poor people, are you? The people hate people like you the most—people who act all high and mighty and look down their noses at others! I know what you’re trying to do. You just want to drive me away, right? Well, I refuse to leave!”
She kept throwing the word “the people” around and putting labels on others. If someone misunderstood words like these, it could cause serious trouble.
Su Yuanyuan had merely wanted the woman to quiet down or go somewhere else to argue. Passengers bought sleeper tickets because they needed to rest. She had paid for her ticket, so why couldn’t she at least sleep in peace?
Instead, the woman immediately turned the accusation around on her.
Su Yuanyuan was stunned. How could someone be this unreasonable?
This wasn’t her own home. It was a train. You sat where the ticket said you were supposed to sit—that was the rule.
Besides, the conductor had already hinted that since the berths were temporarily unoccupied, if the woman was tired, she could come over and rest after the conductor left. That way, the conductor wouldn’t be put in a difficult position, and the woman wouldn’t be inconvenienced either.
There was no point reasoning with someone who deliberately made trouble. The more you said, the more accusations they could throw at you.
Su Yuanyuan couldn’t be bothered to waste any more words. She looked at the conductor.
“Comrade Conductor, she’s disturbing my rest. If she refuses to quiet down, please have the security officer remove her for disturbing public order.”
This was the first time she had taken the children on a long trip, and she didn’t want their first experience to leave them with a bad impression.
The woman wasn’t genuinely trying to resolve anything. She was simply making trouble. Say a few words to this kind of person, and she’d immediately turn hostile.
Su Yuanyuan had encountered people like this before. Everything was fine as long as you accommodated them. But the moment something didn’t go their way, they would assume you were deliberately making things difficult for them and blame every problem on you.
The conductor was professionally trained and immediately apologized to Su Yuanyuan.
“I’m sorry for disturbing your rest. Please give me a little time. I’ll talk things through with this comrade.”
The woman hadn’t done anything excessive yet, so the conductor couldn’t forcibly remove her. She was caught in an awkward and anxious situation.
Su Yuanyuan glanced at the young woman, who looked to be in her early twenties. She didn’t want to make things difficult for her either, so she nodded and lay back down.
“Comrade, sitting according to your assigned seat is our regulation. Since this is the starting station, there aren’t many passengers in the sleeper carriages yet. If you want to sleep in this carriage, you’ll need to upgrade your ticket. Also, according to the regulations for civilized train travel, passengers aren’t allowed to make loud noises.”
The conductor was clever. She could tell the woman wasn’t going to understand what she was saying, so she didn’t dare mention that the woman could temporarily rest in the sleeper berth when the conductor wasn’t around. If something happened, she would be held responsible.
“What do you mean by making loud noises? I’m discussing the matter with you! How am I being uncivilized?”
The woman plopped herself down on a sleeper berth, looking very much like she was saying, I’m not leaving. What are you going to do about it?
The conductor was speechless for a moment, clearly helpless, but she patiently explained again.
“Comrade, according to the regulations for civilized train travel, if you continue making loud noises, I’ll notify the security office. Someone will come and escort you off the train.”
The conductor worriedly glanced toward Su Yuanyuan.
“Hey! Young lady, why are you so sharp-tongued? You still want to drive me away? I paid for my ticket!”
The conductor: “…”
Su Yuanyuan laughed. Propping her head up with one hand, she watched the woman who simply refused to back down.
“Looks like there’s no need to trouble yourselves. Just call the security officer over and have her removed. At the next stop, hand her over to the police station. If she keeps disturbing public safety and order, the simplest solution would be to ban her from taking trains in the future.”
“Who asked you to speak? You think you’re so great just because you’ve got some money!”
The woman shouted as she rolled up her sleeves and moved toward Su Yuanyuan, clearly intending to pick a fight.
The conductor’s expression darkened as she pulled the woman back.
“Comrade, please conduct yourself appropriately! This passenger is right. If you continue making trouble, we will have no choice but to send you to the police station according to the law. Afterward, you may be prohibited from taking trains.”
“Oh, really? So all of you have teamed up to bully me because I’m a farmer from the countryside?”
The woman shook off the conductor’s hand and glared at both Su Yuanyuan and the conductor, the flesh on her face trembling with anger.
She was furious, but she was also afraid of being banned from taking trains in the future.
That wouldn’t do.
Her son and daughter-in-law were both working in the city now, and they rarely had time to return home more than a few times a year. If she couldn’t take the train, wouldn’t that mean she couldn’t visit her son and daughter-in-law regularly?
The woman snorted, snatched her ticket back from the conductor, and stormed away, swinging her arms angrily.
Her seat was only two carriages away from the sleeper car, so she quickly found her place.
The hard-seat carriage was packed with people. There were passengers with seats as well as standing passengers. Many people were traveling to visit relatives, carrying chickens, ducks, geese, rice, flour, cooking oil, and all sorts of other things. The entire carriage was packed shoulder to shoulder.
When the woman had traveled to the city to visit her son and daughter-in-law before, she had always been reluctant to spend money on a sleeper berth and bought a hard-seat ticket instead.
She hadn’t thought much of it before.
But today, she suddenly found herself uncomfortable all over.
After the woman left, the conductor also went to inspect the next carriage.
The train slowly began moving.
After quite some time, Lu Mingzhu opened her eyes and looked outside. Seeing that the woman didn’t seem to be coming back, she finally dared to speak.
“Mommy, that auntie was so scary.”
Lu Mingzhu was tucked beneath the blanket with only her little head sticking out as she whispered to Su Yuanyuan.
“You silly girl. Mommy just said she was tired and wanted to sleep. Let’s wait until Mommy wakes up before we talk to her.”
Lu Siyuan pulled his little sister back and closed his eyes, intending to sleep for a while too.
Su Yuanyuan had originally planned to sleep, but after that whole commotion, she was completely wide awake.
There was no one else in the sleeper carriage at the moment besides the three of them. An idea suddenly occurred to Su Yuanyuan, and she quickly sat up and took some food out of her dimensional space. She mixed it with the food she had bought outside the station earlier, making sure they had enough to eat for the next few days.
“Forget sleeping! It’s almost noon anyway. Let’s eat first!”
The two children had been eating properly for the past couple of days, and their stomachs had more or less recovered. They could finally start having a moderate amount of meat.
Su Yuanyuan took out two boxed meals of braised pork—one for herself and one for the two children.
It wasn’t that Su Yuanyuan was stingy. The children had small appetites, and eating too much could upset their stomachs. It was enough for them to fill their bellies and satisfy their craving.
Su Yuanyuan took out the aluminum lunchbox she had taken from the Lu family and transferred the braised pork into it, putting the original container back into the dimensional space.
This braised pork was a local specialty Su Yuanyuan had packed up during one of her previous trips.
Because she had a dimensional space, meat wouldn’t spoil inside it, so she had packed a large amount and planned to slowly eat it over time.
The braised pork was savory, fragrant, tender, and incredibly appetizing with rice.
“So this is braised pork! So that’s what it tastes like! It’s so delicious!”
The two little ones were very well-behaved. Even without Su Yuanyuan specifically telling them not to fight over the food, they didn’t. They took turns—one bite for him, one bite for her.
The moment they tasted the braised pork, both children’s eyes lit up.
They had never eaten meat this delicious before. More accurately, they rarely had the chance to eat meat at all.
Previously, when they went to the village chief’s house to play, they had seen the family making braised pork. It had looked incredibly delicious.
But Mommy had told them that they weren’t allowed to eat at other people’s houses, especially their meat dishes. So at the time, Lu Siyuan had suppressed his craving, said they should go home, and ran away.
Now that they finally had braised pork to eat, the siblings savored every bite carefully.
Su Yuanyuan had been eating happily, but when she heard what the children said, she raised her head and saw their mouths covered in oil.
She smiled and said that once they reached Jingbei, they would buy a portion for Daddy to try too.
Su Yuanyuan suddenly felt a pang of sadness and couldn’t bring herself to speak.
Judging by the money Lu Zheng’an sent home every month, the two children should have had very good living conditions.
Yet they were already three years old, and this was the first time they had learned what braised pork tasted like.
Before this, they hadn’t even had a bite of decent meat, let alone a good set of clothes.
Su Yuanyuan took another bite of meat and silently cursed the entire Lu family for being absolutely heartless.