When Su Yun first woke up, she’d thought her starter pack would be doing laundry, cooking, working the fields, and looking after some precious little brother.
She wasn’t entirely wrong. The original owner really did do laundry and cook every day, and was about to be sent to the countryside to work in the fields.
She was only missing the “precious little brother” from that doomsday scenario.
Su Yun pinched her own lips. What a jinx!
The original family had six members in total: father Su Hankui, mother Liu Haixia, and the four children they’d had together—two sons and two daughters.
The original owner was the third child, just 16 years old.
Her eldest brother, Su Qingyue, was 21 and had been serving in the military for nearly four years.
Her second sister, Su Yu, was 19 and currently worked as a temporary worker at a textile mill.
Her little brother, Su Qingming, was only 14 and had just graduated from middle school.
A while back, the local subdistrict office’s “Send-Down Youth” division had come knocking—each family had to send one child to the countryside, and in this household, only the original owner qualified.
The eldest brother was already in the military. The little brother wasn’t old enough yet. The second sister had spent money a couple of years ago to buy a temporary job position.
The only one eligible to be sent down was the 16-year-old original owner, who had just graduated from high school. At school, she’d often heard classmates discussing the “send-down” situation.
Their older siblings who had already gone to the countryside wrote back with complaints, saying farm work was brutally hard and unbearable.
A neighbor’s sister nearby had also been sent down, and she’d gotten sick in the countryside. With a shortage of medicine, the hospital far away, and the roads in poor condition, by the time she got to the hospital, she was already gone.
When the news came back, the original owner could hear the girl’s mother wailing from their own home.
The original owner was terrified. She didn’t want to go to the countryside, but she had no choice. She’d been secretly worrying herself sick over it the past few days, when a classmate’s offhand remark gave her an idea.
That classmate’s cousin had accidentally broken his leg half a month before he was supposed to be sent down. When the Send-Down Youth Office found out, they deferred him for six months and allowed him to go with the next batch.
The original owner wanted a deferral too—even if not six months, two or three would do.
She figured maybe she could find a job in that time.
Really, if she’d been old enough, she’d have found someone to marry in a hurry. In recent years, plenty of people had dodged the send-down program that way.
Now, finding a job was her only way out. As long as she had a job, even if each family still had to send one person down, it wouldn’t necessarily have to be her.
Not to mention her little brother—if he’d been old enough, he’d actually have wanted to go. He’d wanted to leave this family since he was small and had tried running away from home several times as a kid, though he’d never succeeded.
And her second sister was only a temporary worker. If she had a formal position, the one sent down this time might have been her.
But the original owner couldn’t bring herself to break her own leg, and she was afraid she’d mess it up and end up permanently disabled. So she came up with the idea of bathing in cold water.
That way, she’d get sick enough that she couldn’t recover quickly and would have to stay home to recover.
Then she’d go plead with the Send-Down Youth Office for a deferral—even one month would give her time to think of something.
Unfortunately, the original owner had a decent constitution, and it was the middle of a hot summer. Even the kids who splashed around in the river all day didn’t catch colds. After two days of cold-water baths, she didn’t even have a runny nose.
But she didn’t give up. At night, she secretly kept a basin of water by her bed, constantly wetting her scalp and hair. She’d hang her head over the edge of the bed at night so she wouldn’t soak the mattress and get caught by her family.
After a whole night of this torture, she finally got what she wanted. The next morning, she started running a fever. But afraid her illness wouldn’t be severe enough to achieve her goal, she didn’t even take the fever-reduction pills her second sister had bought specifically for her, and kept pushing through.
After two days of fever, she figured it was about enough and planned to have her second sister call the Send-Down Youth Office that evening to discuss whether they could grant her some leeway.
But by then, she really was sick enough—and promptly keeled over and died on the spot.
Su Yun rubbed her chin. The original owner was something else—she’d managed to do herself in. Now the lie had become reality.
Still, the original owner was only 16—not yet a mature age. In modern times, she’d have been a rebellious high school freshman.
And in this era, most parents didn’t communicate much with their children. Kids were used to figuring things out on their own. Given her fear, her actions were actually understandable.
After a moment of reflection, Su Yun decided to head inside and take a look.
The brick-and-tile house before her had been rebuilt by Su Hankui a few years ago. Since the foundation was small, it could only be built as a narrow rectangle—square and boxy.
Upon entering, there was a large main hall. Near the entrance stood a dining table and benches. Against the inner wall, a tall cabinet held commonly used odds and ends—needles, thread, and various miscellaneous items. A portrait of Chairman Mao hung on the wall as well.
To the left of the main hall were two doors: the one nearer the entrance led to Su Hankui and Liu Haixia’s room, and the one further in was Su Qingyue and Su Qingming’s room.
To the right were also two doors. The one closer to the entrance, opposite the parents’ bedroom, was Su Yun and Su Yu’s room. The innermost room on the right was the kitchen, which had a back door leading to the rear yard.
Both the front and back yards were enclosed by walls about 1.8 meters tall, with shards of broken glass and smashed bottle fragments embedded on top—courtesy of Su Hankui—making it look much more secure than other households.
Attached to the front yard beside the main house, a supplementary structure had been built later out of rammed earth and divided into two sections: a smaller one used as a washroom and a larger one used as a woodshed, storing firewood and coal briquettes.
Su’s mother was fond of cleanliness. Since there happened to be a quarry nearby, she had Su Hankui bring back some discarded stone slabs that others didn’t want, and they pieced them together to cover the floors inside the house and in the washroom.
For the leftover, uneven pieces, they laid a small stone path across the front yard, leading from the house to the gate. Though not very attractive, at least it kept muddy feet from tracking dirt into the house on rainy days.
Su Yun walked into the bedroom and looked around. There was a wooden plank bed inside.
The two sisters had slept together since childhood. After Su Yu started earning a wage, she bought some coarse fabric and hung a curtain down the middle to separate the space, giving each of them a little privacy.
By the window stood a long table with two drawers underneath—one for each sister.
Opening the original owner’s drawer, she found only hair ties and books inside. Toiletries and face cream sat on top of the table.
This region was in central China, not as cold as the north. Though it snowed in winter, there were no heated brick beds—most people slept on raised wooden beds.
Still, from the original owner’s memories, winters here were quite cold. At night, they’d layer their cotton-padded jackets on top of the blankets for extra warmth and sleep in their sweaters and long johns.
After a quick glance around, Su Yun lay down on the bed. Though her fever had broken, her body was still weak and limp, with hardly any strength.
She’d rest for a while and think about how to use the system.
Su Yun summoned the system interface. At the top, it displayed the date, time, and weather: May 23, 1974, 3:50 PM, clear skies.
Not bad—without a phone and unable to afford a watch, this would let her tell the time!
In the center of the page was a large [Check-In] button, but Su Yun didn’t rush to press it.
In the lower left corner was a counter showing the number of check-ins remaining—currently 1.
In the lower right corner was a backpack icon. Su Yun quickly tapped it—she’d played games and read novels before, so she knew this had to be a storage space!
Sure enough, it opened to reveal two rows of slots, five per row, for a total of ten.
The first slot contained a gift box—a big red box with a purple bow tied around it, looking rather tacky.
It was labeled “Newbie Gift Pack.” Su Yun opened it without hesitation.
After a flash of cheap, five-cent-quality fireworks animation, three items appeared before her eyes:
[Check-In Count +5]
[Storage Slots +2]
[Constitution-Improving Pill +1]
Three seconds later, the animation faded. The storage slots had indeed increased by two, and the gift box in the first slot had vanished, replaced by a small pill.
Su Yun immediately took it out and swallowed it. Heaven knew how miserable she felt right now—her body ached all over, she was short of breath, and she could barely function.
She returned to the main interface and saw that the counter in the lower left had changed from 1 to 6—her remaining check-in attempts.
She had six chances. Wasting one wouldn’t hurt, and she was too lazy to go outside anyway. Su Yun tapped the check-in button.
A moment later, the system notification chimed:
[Check-in successful! Location: Su Yun and Su Yu’s Bedroom]
[Congratulations, Host! You have received: 1 box of Clam Oil (hand cream).]
Su Yun opened her backpack, took out the clam oil, and examined it closely. Then she crawled to the other side of the bed, reached out, and picked up Su Yu’s clam oil from the table to compare.
The two looked identical in size and shape—even the fine patterns on the clam shells were the same, as if they’d been copied and pasted.
The only difference was that the system-reward clam oil had its lid sealed and was completely full, while Su Yu’s was already more than half used.
Could it be that wherever you check in, you duplicate something that already exists at that location? Su Yun guessed that might be the case.
Whether it was because of the little pill she’d taken or not, her body already felt much better—not as heavy and sluggish as before.
She tucked her questions away for now, planning to experiment a few more times over the next couple of days.
For now, she needed to familiarize herself with the memories. Soon, Su Hankui, Liu Haixia, and Su Yu would be coming home from work, and Su Yun still didn’t know how to interact with them.