Having slept so much in the afternoon, Lu Jiaxin was still wide awake come evening. The room felt a bit stuffy, so she took a mosquito coil and a palm-leaf fan and went outside, finding Lu Jiajie sitting under the jujube tree.
Jiaxin lit the mosquito coil and set it under a stone stool before sitting down. “Fifth Brother, I slept too much at noon, that’s why I’m still up. You have work tomorrow, why aren’t you asleep yet?”
Lu Jiajie said with a smile, “I can’t sleep either. Jiaxin, this courtyard of yours is really nice, cool, and you can even see the stars.”
In fact, it wasn’t that he couldn’t sleep, it was that Jiaxin’s words earlier had his mind in a tangle. His in-laws’ house was fifty square meters, divided into three rooms, and he and his wife had their own room, by most people’s standards, that was already quite good living conditions. But that house turned into a steamer come summer, and since he personally ran hot and sweated easily, summers were especially hard for him to bear.
Before, it had just been difficult conditions, but recently, after some incidents, his in-laws’ attitude had changed dramatically. Lately he dreamed of nothing but getting his own housing allotment, but with units in such short supply and his own seniority so low, his turn wouldn’t come anytime soon.
Jiaxin didn’t bring up the topic of business again, some things were better left unsaid once the point was made. In this early period of reform and opening-up, plenty of people still looked down on self-employed individual entrepreneurs, which was why the people going into business were mostly returned educated youths and young people without formal jobs. If she pushed too hard and Lu Jiajie impulsively quit his job to start a business, his sister-in-law and her family would surely resent her for it. And if the business failed and left him in debt, it wouldn’t just strain their relationship, it would leave Fifth Brother with even less standing at the Ma family home.
Lu Jiajie didn’t bring up business either, instead asking Lu Jiaxin why she hadn’t reported the kidnapping to the police after losing her memory. “Third Uncle has an old army buddy who works at the procuratorate there, if you’d reported it at the time, you’d have been home long ago.”
Jiaxin had already worked out her answer for this. “Before Xue Mao saved me, he’d saved another girl named Xiaocui too, she’s a year older than me. Her family lived in a village outside the ancient capital, and for a hefty bride price, her parents wanted to marry her off to a widower over forty who worked at the meat processing plant. That widower liked to beat his wives, rumor had it his previous wife had actually been beaten to death. Xiaocui didn’t want to end up dead, so she ran away.”
Through their brief interactions, Jiaxin had found this girl calculating and obsessed with money, and hadn’t taken to her much. Still, when the girl left, Xue Mao had said he’d handed the stall business over to her, and Jiaxin hadn’t objected. She had no interest in befriending someone like that, but a woman needed some cunning and self-interest to get by in this world.
Women of this land, after being conditioned for thousands of years, had come to genuinely believe they should sacrifice everything for family and children. Fortunately, the younger generation was gradually waking up, and girls were slowly starting to prioritize themselves.
Lu Jiajie filled in his own theory. “Were you afraid you too had run away from a forced marriage, and worried that if you went back you’d be married off to some widower?”
Jiaxin nodded. “It’s a good thing I didn’t go back, actually. Otherwise, coming back with amnesia, Ding Jing and Zhao Siyi would have thought up some other way to harm me.”
At the mention of these two, Lu Jiajie’s face filled with disgust. “Jiaxin, those two vicious women, from now on, don’t go back to the housing complex or have any contact with them. If anything comes up, come to me or Big Brother.”
Jiaxin felt the original owner had actually been quite fortunate, a worthless biological father, but two cousins who doted on her and would stand up for her whenever needed. She said, “Fifth Brother, Ding Jing and Zhao Siyi nearly cost me my life, this can’t just be swept under the rug.”
Worried she might do something rash, Lu Jiajie said quickly, “Jiaxin, Zhao Siyi has poor character, and there’s no way the Fan family will ever let her marry in. But if you’re still upset, once she starts school again I’ll have someone spread the word about what she did throughout her class. With a reputation like that, teachers and students alike will keep their distance from her.”
A girl who could even steal her own stepsister’s fiancé, what wouldn’t she be capable of? No one would dare get close to someone willing to stab you in the back at any moment.
Jiaxin thought this plan too weak. “Fifth Brother, if she’s already bold enough to seduce her stepsister’s fiancé, do you really think she’s afraid of a little gossip? And she’s a master at playing the victim, she could easily claim I’m just jealous she got into university and slandering her out of spite. I can hardly run to her university and explain the whole thing to everyone one by one.”
Seeing Lu Jiajie about to argue further, she waved her hand. “Fifth Brother, don’t worry, I won’t do anything illegal. They’re simply not worth it.”
The two siblings chatted for over half an hour before Lu Jiajie, growing sleepy, started yawning. “Jiaxin, it’s late, let’s go get some sleep.”
He shared a room with Xue Mao, and the bed was too small for both of them. It happened that Xue Mao had taken down the doors from the three rooms of the entrance hall to wash them, so he simply used one of the doors as a makeshift bed board.
Back in her room, Jiaxin still couldn’t sleep. She took out a notebook and wrote down every major event she could remember and when it would happen. As the saying goes, even a dull pen beats a sharp memory, with so much time passing, some things might slip her mind, and putting it down on paper made things secure.
To keep anyone from figuring out what she’d written, she used symbols that only she could decipher. She’d been born in the nineties, though, so she knew relatively little about the events of the eighties, but she remembered the major happenings of the following two decades or so quite clearly.
Once she’d written down everything she could remember, Jiaxin checked her watch and saw it was past ten. She yawned and climbed into bed. Since arriving here, her daily routine had become far more regular, before, she’d always gone to bed after midnight, but now she was in bed before nine every night.
Sleeping early meant waking early, and the next day Lu Jiaxin was up by six. After washing up, she went out to buy breakfast. Knowing Lu Jiajie liked fried dough sticks, she bought steamed buns and fried dough sticks. Xue Mao had already made congee, so there was no need to buy that separately.
When she got back with the food, Lu Jiajie still wasn’t up, and since he had to get to work, Jiaxin had Xue Mao go wake him.
After washing up, Lu Jiajie saw the fried dough sticks on the table, took one, and said with a smile after a bite, “Jiaxin, moving into a new house, by custom you should host a few tables and invite people over to celebrate.”
Jiaxin knew this so-called housewarming feast was really just meant to warm up the new place, and said with a smile, “No need to invite outsiders. Just you and Big Brother’s families coming over for a meal will do.”
“All right.”
After breakfast, Lu Jiajie headed to work, while Lu Jiaxin took Xue Mao out to buy clothes. She didn’t go to the department store, too expensive there, and headed to Xiushui Street instead.
When Xue Mao got there, he found the entire street lined with stalls selling all sorts of goods, clothes, shoes, socks, embroidered items, shoe soles, and even a food stall.
Watching the steady stream of customers at the food stall, Xue Mao said, somewhat excited, “Sister Xin, there are so many people here, if we set up a food stall here, we’d definitely make a lot more than before.”
He was hoping to get the stall up and running soon, so there’d be a steady income each day. He’d gone hungry so often in the past, uncertain of his next meal, that being idle now made him anxious.
Jiaxin had no objection to Xue Mao running a food stall, but she wasn’t going to let him do it here, the cost-benefit ratio was too poor. “This is too far from our house. If we set up here, we’d have to rent a place nearby too.”
The moment he heard about renting a place, Xue Mao gave up on the idea. Rent wasn’t cheap, and since his sister wouldn’t be coming out here with him, running it alone left him feeling uneasy.