Lu Jiaxin knew the full address of the apartment, but she wasn’t familiar with the capital and had no idea exactly where it was. Fortunately, Lu Jiaguang and Lu Jiajie knew the area well, and the two of them rode their bicycles carrying her and Xue Mao over.
Liao Xiangmei had matters to attend to at home, so once she’d confirmed the address, she headed back.
Sitting on the back of the bicycle, Lu Jiaxin gazed curiously at the streets on either side. The capital right now looked nothing like it would forty years later. Tall, lush trees lined the roads, the buildings were low and worn, and electrical wires crisscrossed overhead along the streets. All of it bore the unmistakable stamp of the era.
Along the way, Lu Jiaxin didn’t see a single car, everyone was riding bicycles or walking. She felt a small pang of regret, if only she had a camera to capture this moment, since these photos would become especially precious forty years from now.
Passing by an elementary school, Lu Jiaxin let out a small exclamation at the name on the sign, Guangming Elementary. This school would later become one of the capital’s top elementary schools, famous nationwide. Parents desperate not to let their children fall behind would go to extraordinary lengths to get them enrolled there.
Lu Jiaxin asked, “Big Brother, my apartment isn’t far from here, is it?”
“Not far, just around the corner.”
Just as Lu Jiaguang had said, after riding another two or three minutes and turning into an alley, they soon found the house by its address.
Looking at the clean outer wall and the bright, well-kept gate, Lu Jiaguang looked puzzled. “Jiaxin, is this really it? Are you sure you didn’t remember wrong?”
The place didn’t look like it had been vacant for long at all.
“This is the exact address my mother told me, there’s no way it’s wrong.”
Lu Jiajie said with a smile, “Jiaxin, use the key to open the door. If it works, that’ll prove you’ve got the right place.”
Sure enough, the original owner had remembered the address correctly. The door opened easily, but the moment it swung open, her eyes went wide.
What greeted her was a courtyard, roughly thirty-some square meters, with a path running down the middle. On the left were two garden plots planted with vegetables, lush and green and pleasing to look at, on the right stood a jujube tree, with a stone table and stone stools set beneath it.
Lu Jiaguang was equally stunned by the courtyard. Lu Jiaxin had said it was a small house, and he’d assumed it meant just a couple of rooms, he never imagined it would be an entire siheyuan courtyard compound.
Seeing how spotlessly clean the ground was, Lu Jiaguang said, “Jiaxin, did Third Aunt hire someone to come clean this courtyard regularly?”
Lu Jiaxin said she didn’t know. “Mom never mentioned it to me. But this courtyard was bought with Mrs. Xie’s help, maybe she’s the one who hired someone to clean it.”
Lu Jiaguang frowned. “Are you sure this house was bought with Mrs. Xie’s help?”
Their third aunt had lost her life saving the Xie family’s only child, and yet after her death, they’d never once shown their faces again. He’d always thought the Xie family cold and ungrateful, and had felt it deeply unfair to his aunt. But seeing this now, perhaps there was more to the story than he knew.
Realizing he’d misunderstood the Xie family, Lu Jiaxin explained, “Big Brother, before Mom passed, she told me that if I ever ran into trouble I couldn’t solve on my own, or a matter of life and death, I could go to the Xie family for help, but that in ordinary times, we shouldn’t keep in contact with them.”
The original owner had been too young to understand at the time, but Lu Jiaxin grasped her mother’s deep wisdom in this. Old Master Xie had already had his reputation restored back then and was on the rise, if the two families kept in frequent contact, it would ultimately be Lu Hongjun and the Lu family who benefited most.
A debt of gratitude only shrinks the more it’s drawn on. If the Lu family kept leaning on that favor, the Xie family might well stop helping when the original owner truly needed it later on. But by keeping their distance in ordinary times, the moment the original owner ran into real trouble, so long as it wasn’t something as serious as breaking the law, the Xie family would surely step in to help.
Lu Jiaguang was startled for a moment before understanding dawned. Their third aunt had exhausted every ounce of care for her daughter’s sake, what a shame she’d left this world so soon, or Jiaxin would never have had to suffer through all this.
The compound had three rooms in the main hall, two each in the east and west wing rooms, three in the entrance hall facing the gate, one small side room on each end, plus a woodshed and a kitchen. A siheyuan compound like this would be worth well over a hundred million in later decades.
Xue Mao walked through it all with her, secretly clicking his tongue in astonishment. Even the old landlords of the past probably hadn’t lived in houses this grand, though that was a dangerous thing to even think, let alone say aloud, so he kept it strictly to himself.
Lu Jiajie clapped Lu Jiaxin on the shoulder, saying enviously, “Little sister, congratulations, owning a house this big at such a young age.”
He’d been at the factory seven years now and still hadn’t been allotted housing, a family of four still crammed into his father-in-law’s place. In years past, his sister-in-law and her husband would occasionally make snide remarks, but since his father-in-law and mother-in-law had sided with him and his family, he hadn’t taken it to heart. Lately, though, their attitude had shifted, and living there had become unbearable. Sigh, when would he ever get to own his own place like Jiaxin?
Having been through more in life, Lu Jiaguang offered a warning to Lu Jiaxin. “Housing is tight for everyone right now, and with a place this big, people are bound to have their eye on it. Jiaxin, if anyone asks to borrow a room or rent from you, don’t agree to it. If it’s hard to refuse outright, just push the blame onto me.”
There was no way Lu Jiaxin would ever agree to that. If relatives or friends came to stay and then never left, what then? As for renting it out, she could make good money doing almost any kind of business these days, she wasn’t hurting for rental income.
Lu Jiajie thought a step further. “Big Brother, things are so chaotic out there right now. With a place this big, what if someone with bad intentions sets their sights on it…”
Lu Jiaxin felt this was easy enough to handle. “We’ll set up some traps along the base of the walls. If anyone dares climb over, they can go straight to prison.”
She wasn’t actually too worried about being bothered by local thugs, since being so close to the elementary school meant public safety here wasn’t likely to be an issue.
Lu Jiaguang thought this was a good idea and said he’d ask around once he got back.
Lu Jiaxin said, “Big Brother, once we clean the place up a bit, we can move right in. Do you think we could bring over the furniture and bedding from my room today?”
Only the main hall had furniture in it so far, the other rooms were all empty. She had a place to sleep, but Xue Mao didn’t.
She then explained her urgency. “I’ve told everyone about what Ding Jing and Zhao Siyi did, by now the whole housing complex knows. Ding Jing hates me down to the bone. If we wait until tomorrow, there might be nothing left to take.”
Thinking of Lu Hongjun’s attitude, Lu Jiaguang agreed it was better to act sooner rather than later. “I’ll go back and see if I can borrow a truck. If I can, I’ll get everything over here this afternoon.”
Lu Jiajie said with a smile, “Big Brother, I took the whole day off, leave this to me.”
As just an ordinary worker at the shoe factory, unlike Lu Jiaguang who had leadership responsibilities, taking time off was easy for him. Of course, the bigger reason was that he felt there was no future for him at the factory anyway, so he’d been slacking off there regardless.
“Thank you both, Big Brother, Fifth Brother.”
Lu Jiaguang felt a pang in his heart hearing this. “Silly girl, what’s there to thank us for? I’m your brother, looking after you is only natural.”
Lu Jiajie clapped her on the shoulder too, saying with a smile, “Don’t say that anymore. We’re family, saying thank you makes it sound like we’re strangers.”
The two brothers soon left to help move her things over, leaving Lu Jiaxin and Xue Mao behind to clean up the place.