The next morning, Su Yun slept until she naturally woke up. By the time she opened her eyes, it was already broad daylight—the early summer sun had long since risen high in the sky.
Glancing at the system’s clock, it was June 1st, 8:23 a.m.
Su Yun rubbed her eyes and sat up. After a quick wash, she casually tied her hair into a low ponytail and headed out.
The older educated youth had long since gone to work in the fields. Now that summer had just begun, the midday sun was quite intense, and staying out in it all day was unbearable. So they all started work around 5 a.m., allowing for a longer break at noon.
Mornings were tight on time, so the educated youth site usually only made cornbread buns for everyone to take to the fields and eat there.
Su Yun went to the kitchen to check. Their buns had been left for them in the steamer. She counted—there should be two per person.
Today, they hadn’t used only flour. Each person’s fine grain ration was only ten catties, and using pure flour wouldn’t last until the end of the month.
So they’d mixed the flour with chopped wild vegetables. The buns looked greenish and unappetizing.
Su Yun forced them down with some cold boiled water she’d filled in her canteen last night. Just then, the yard gate was pushed open and several educated youth walked in.
Su Yun turned around and looked—wow! Apart from her and Tao Anning, everyone else had apparently gotten up early and had even been out and come back already.
She’d thought the educated youth site was so quiet because everyone was still exhausted from the days of travel, but it turned out they just weren’t home—she and Tao Anning were the only ones still sleeping in.
“Where did you all go?” Su Yun asked.
“We went to buy backpack baskets. Going to the county town today to buy things—without a basket, it’d be hard to carry everything. You were still asleep, so we didn’t want to disturb you,” Li Jianguo said, scratching his head with an apologetic smile.
“Su Yun, you should go buy one too! I’ll show you where—see that house with the osmanthus tree by the door?”
Liu Huan pulled Su Yun outside and pointed at a house not far away.
“We’ll need backpack baskets for gathering firewood too. It’s more convenient to have your own. That family also makes bamboo-woven boxes and hand-baskets. Since we just got here and don’t have anything to trade, we can secretly pay with cash.”
Liu Huan said the last sentence in a very low whisper, right next to Su Yun’s ear.
“Alright, I’ll go back to my room to grab something and head over.”
Su Yun went back, slung her cloth bag over her shoulder, and walked out alone. She didn’t plan to wake Tao Yining—when she woke up, someone else would tell her.
Besides, she wanted to buy a couple extra baskets to store odds and ends in her system storage. It wouldn’t be convenient if someone else was with her.
Stepping into the yard, she saw a pregnant young woman sitting on the threshold of the main hall, her big belly out as she sorted vegetables.
“You’re one of the educated youth, right? Here to look at backpack baskets? They’re all in that room—go ahead and pick whatever you like,” the woman called out.
Su Yun nodded and stepped into the room she’d pointed to. Inside were all kinds of bamboo-woven goods, all looking sturdy and durable.
The book had mentioned that a few families in the brigade were skilled at bamboo weaving. In their spare time, they’d make many baskets and backpacks to take to the big market fair, held once every three months, to trade for supplies. This household was likely one of them.
Su Yun browsed and picked out, besides a backpack basket and a hand-basket for everyday use, three bamboo boxes—roughly the size of modern clothing storage bins, though without lids.
She showed them to the woman, and together they came to 2 yuan for everything.
The three bamboo boxes could be stacked. Su Yun stacked them inside her backpack basket, slung the basket on her back, picked up the hand-basket, and headed back.
Once outside, she looked around. Everyone was working in the fields, and she didn’t see anyone else on the road. So she directly stowed the bamboo boxes from the basket into her storage grid.
She returned to the educated youth site carrying only the backpack basket and hand-basket.
Su Yun hadn’t bought a large-sized backpack basket—it would be too heavy to carry when full and would get in the way. She’d chosen a medium one, just big enough for her needs.
Back at the site, she saw Li Jianguo and Gu Beihai sitting in the yard, gnawing on cornbread buns, while Liu Huan and An Qin were chatting nearby.
“Hey, you’re back! We were just discussing—we’ll head to the county town in a little while. We won’t come back at noon, we’ll eat at the state-run restaurant,” Liu Huan said, waving Su Yun over to join them.
“How are we getting there? Walking?” Su Yun didn’t think the brigade would specially arrange a tractor for just a few of them.
“There’s a family in the brigade that raises a donkey. They can take us in their cart. Normally it’s 0.1 yuan per person, but since it’s only a few of us going to the county today, Comrade Li just asked and it’ll be 0.2 yuan each,” An Qin added.
“That works—I was afraid we’d have to walk!”
Su Yun breathed a sigh of relief. As long as they didn’t have to walk, that was fine. The county town was about 12 kilometers away—walking would take over two hours, and five hours round-trip.
The brigade’s tractor was quite old and ran slowly—it had taken forty minutes yesterday.
Today, taking the donkey cart, they’d probably arrive in just over an hour.
“Then I’ll go call Comrade Tao. You all hurry back and get ready,” Liu Huan said, heading toward the back yard.
Su Yun also returned to her room and bolted the door.
She took out the yellow dress and a pair of new cloth shoes from her wooden chest and changed into them.
When girls go shopping, they have to dress up pretty!
The cloth shoes were black, with a one-centimeter-thick white plastic sole, square-toed with buckles—very pretty, and they didn’t look out of place with the dress at all.
They were also comfortable to walk in, though Su Yun didn’t have any socks and was wearing them barefoot.
She undid her ponytail and braided her hair into two pigtails, pulling them slightly loose and tugging a few strands of baby hair over her forehead.
With the female lead around, she didn’t want to braid a fishtail and raise suspicion—better to just go with the flow.
Now dressed in her pretty clothes, Su Yun looked completely renewed. Her cute, youthful face now had an added touch of charm and loveliness.
She took out the biscuit tin from her storage grid, then took out the cash and grain coupons and placed them in two separate storage slots.
Su Yun realized it was more convenient to keep money in its own slot. From now on, as long as she had enough space, she’d keep cash in a separate slot, and the less frequently used ration tickets could stay in the biscuit tin.
Her storage grid currently held 40 yuan and 30 catties of grain coupons, plus she had another 11 yuan in her cloth bag.
She slung on her canteen and cloth bag, left her door slightly ajar, and headed to the front yard.
The others were all ready too. True to being people who surrounded the male and female leads, Su Yun took one look around and saw nothing but handsome faces and beautiful women!
In fact, all the educated youth—male and female—were fairly good-looking, each with their own distinctive features. Even the plainest among them was delicate-featured and certainly not ugly.
Their clothes were also relatively nice, a stark contrast to the patched garments worn by the villagers.
Today, the girls had all dressed up carefully. After all, it was only on rare trips to the county town that they’d have the chance to wear nice clothes. On regular workdays, farm labor was too exhausting and would ruin good outfits.
Liu Huan wore a plaid dress, An Qin a pink floral-print dacron shirt, and the female lead Tao Yining was still in the same white shirt and black long skirt from yesterday. All of them wore black leather shoes.
The two male educated youth also looked clean and sharp. Gu Beihai wore a military-green short-sleeved shirt and long pants, while Li Jianjun sported a blue-and-white sailor-stripe shirt with dark blue trousers. Both had crew cuts.
At the time, people admired soldiers, and most men wore crew cuts. If they went a few months without a haircut and their hair grew out, it would turn into various styles of side-parted pompadours.
“Wow! That outfit is gorgeous! With that little face of yours, I’d want to date you myself—too bad I’m not a guy!”
Liu Huan quickly pinched Su Yun’s cheek when she wasn’t paying attention and teased her.
The others also looked over, with a hint of surprise and amazement in their eyes. Truly, clothes make the man!
Yesterday, she’d just looked like a young girl who hadn’t grown up yet. Who knew that with a bit of dressing up, she’d turn out this pretty?
Gu Beihai’s gaze, like everyone else’s, also fell on her.
Dark hair, fair skin, delicate brows like distant mountains, almond eyes sparkling like rippling clear water—she looked exquisite and sweet, like a playful, lively little elf.
And she was still young and hadn’t fully matured yet. In another two years, who knew how stunning she’d become.
“Don’t you look just as pretty? Wait till the aunties and grannies in the brigade see you tomorrow—who knows how many of them will want to take you home as a daughter-in-law!” Su Yun raised an eyebrow and fired back.
“Alright, alright, you two, let’s go!” An Qin grabbed one in each hand and pulled them along.
They walked together to the village entrance, stopping for two minutes along the way so Tao Yining could buy a backpack basket.
Uncle Wang, who raised the donkey, was already waiting there with the cart. Once they all climbed on, he flicked the whip and the donkey broke into a trot.
The dirt road wasn’t very smooth, so the ride was a bit bumpy. They all wore their backpack baskets on their backs and gripped the wooden railings of the cart with both hands, chatting the whole way so the journey didn’t feel dull.
Throughout the ride, only Tao Yining kept her head down and didn’t say much. Su Yun, having read the plot, knew she was busy figuring out how to get to the black market and exchange items from her portable supermarket for things she could actually use now.
Speaking of the female lead’s portable supermarket—it was actually the small grocery store her family ran at the entrance of their residential complex. It was mostly stocked with snacks, drinks, and condiments.
Only two counters had some fruit on display, but not much—she wanted to keep those for herself, so naturally she wouldn’t trade them away.
The counter near the entrance had cigarettes and alcohol, but they all had visible brand labels, and the cigarette filters had text on them too, so those couldn’t be taken out either.
The supermarket didn’t carry clothes, shoes, or socks, which was why the female lead had snatched a new set of clothes and shoes from her stepsister earlier.
The daily necessities section only had toothpaste, toothbrushes, laundry detergent, and the like—even the soap she used had to have its label scraped off first.
There wasn’t much in the whole supermarket that she could take out to trade. In the book, she ended up opening a dozen boxes of cheap biscuits, picking up a few empty wine bottles from the scrapyard, decanting the white liquor from the counter into them, and trading them at the black market for what she needed.
Su Yun would love to trade with her—just thinking about the spicy sticks and cola in her supermarket made her mouth water!
But she could only dream. The female lead wouldn’t be bringing those things out anyway.