Although Shen Yingying looked down on Xie Fangzhu for acting this way, she quickly got over it.
Considering all the outrageous things the original owner of this body had done, even if Xie Fangzhu locked her up at home, nobody would say he was wrong.
But he hadn’t. He had only asked people to keep an eye on her indirectly, which was already giving her plenty of face.
So she reluctantly decided to treat Chen Qingqing as someone sent over to keep her company.
But very soon, her “reluctance” turned into genuine appreciation.
Chen Qingqing was shy, quiet, and had a limp in one leg, but she was extremely hardworking and warmhearted.
When she saw Shen Yingying cleaning the original owner’s messy room, she rolled up her sleeves and helped without a word.
The original owner hated cleaning and also had hoarding tendencies. She couldn’t bear to throw anything away and piled everything inside the room.
Judging by the state of the place, Shen Yingying would’ve needed at least an entire day to clean it herself. But with Chen Qingqing’s efficient help, they finished everything in one morning.
The trash they cleared out formed a small mound outside the door. There was everything imaginable in it.
Food scraps, household junk… and they even swept up half a dustpan full of mouse droppings.
Shen Yingying was stunned. In all her life, she had never seen that much mouse poop before.
At first, she had only thought the room was dirty and messy, but she hadn’t imagined it was this bad.
Thinking about how she had actually slept half the night in that room yesterday, she suddenly wondered whether, besides the snake, there might also have been rats climbing onto the bed to sleep beside her.
The thought made her stomach churn.
Without hesitation, she rushed back into the room, opened the wardrobe, and stuffed all the clothes she wore regularly into the cabinet next door in Xie Fangzhu’s room.
Even though the room had been cleaned, she was psychologically traumatized now and absolutely couldn’t sleep there anymore.
After stuffing the clothes away, the original owner’s wardrobe was still packed full.
But what remained inside wasn’t clothing—it was stacks of brand-new fabric.
The original owner’s third brother, Shen Jiacai, was getting married in three months.
The bride-to-be was the daughter of the neighboring production brigade’s captain, and she was very pretty.
The bride price her family demanded was absurdly high. Besides the “Three Turns and One Sound” that city brides usually required for marriage, they also wanted a television set.
The Shen family survived all year solely on the work points they earned from labor. There was no way they could afford such an expensive dowry.
So they set their sights on the original owner and expected her to prepare all the bride-price money for her third brother.
The original owner was the textbook definition of a brother-obsessed younger sister. She didn’t think anything was wrong with it at all and believed helping her brother get a wife was naturally her responsibility.
The reason she had still remembered to scam 500 yuan from Xie Fangzhu before eloping…
…was also to help her third brother scrape together money for the marriage gifts. She had even planned to mail the money home after arriving in S City.
The wardrobe was stuffed full of fabric, thick and thin alike.
The original owner had spent all the fabric coupons the mine issued to Xie Fangzhu for the entire year, and even bought additional coupons on the black market to gather this much material.
There was enough for seven outfits for all four seasons: five sets for the bride and two for the groom.
The original owner knew how to use a sewing machine and make clothes, so she had also been responsible for sewing the wedding outfits.
Before transmigrating into this novel, Shen Yingying had been a fashion designer working at her adoptive parents’ company. Making clothes was child’s play to her.
But…
She slammed the wardrobe shut.
She was not the brother-worshipping original owner. Whether Shen Jiacai could get married had absolutely nothing to do with her.
Instead of wasting energy on that, she’d rather make a few outfits for herself.
As for the rest of the bride price, they could forget about it.
…
That day, Xie Fangzhu came up from the mine earlier than usual. It wasn’t even five o’clock yet.
Han Wei followed closely behind him, thinking that his buddy sure was eager to get off work today.
Usually, Xie Fangzhu would linger underground another ten or twenty minutes before coming up, but today he left the moment his shift ended.
After coming up from the pit, the two headed to the lamp room to return their mining lamps.
The lamp room had four service windows, each responsible for different number tags.
Both Xie Fangzhu and Han Wei belonged to Window No. 1, which was staffed by the same female worker who loved dawdling.
That woman’s older sister, Zhou Ronghua, also worked in the lamp room and was the lamp-room team leader’s mistress.
The team leader had connections with the coal mine’s disciplinary committee, so complaints from workers always ended up back in his hands, where he decided whether to punish or protect people.
Naturally, he protected his mistress’s younger sister.
So the two sisters acted arrogantly in the lamp room. They worked slowly, and how fast they collected lamps depended entirely on their mood.
If they were in a good mood, they worked faster. If not, they slowed to a crawl.
Today she was obviously in a bad mood. Her movements were practically in slow motion. The neighboring windows had already processed three or four workers while she had only handled one.
The miners lined up at Window No. 1 were furious but didn’t dare complain.
With that woman’s personality, if anyone dared say she was slow, she’d show them what “even slower” really meant.
Xie Fangzhu stood second in line. By the time the neighboring windows had finished three people, the lamp ahead of him still hadn’t been processed.
He was irritated beyond belief.
Although he had asked Jiaozai and Chen Qingqing to watch Shen Yingying…
…one was a child and the other an overly honest girl. Who knew whether they could actually keep an eye on her?
If she ran away, would he even be able to catch her?
His eyes darkened, and he frowned impatiently before snapping at the window:
“Are you trying to polish flowers out of it or what? Hurry up! If your hands are this useless, why are you even working at the window?!”
Han Wei: “!!!”
Usually, his buddy was only fierce toward him. With other people, Xie Fangzhu was normally very easygoing.
No matter how slow the lamp clerks were, everyone else might get angry, but Xie Fangzhu never would.
So what was wrong with him today? Possessed? Did he eat explosives?
The miners behind Han Wei felt their hearts turn cold.
What was wrong with Fangzhu today? Why provoke that woman?
Now they were screwed. With her personality, she’d definitely become even slower.
Sure enough, the female worker at Window No. 1 exploded in anger and sneered sarcastically:
“So what if I’m slow? I’ll be even slower in a minute! What, you gonna hit me?”
But she was immediately met with a cold retort:
“You think I wouldn’t dare?”
The woman’s heart skipped a beat, and she looked toward the speaker.
His face was covered in coal dust, with only his eyes visible, but that imposing height made her recognize him instantly.
It was Xie Fangzhu.
His eyes were dark and frighteningly gloomy.
The woman suddenly recalled what he had done in the cafeteria that morning, as well as the legendary fight he’d once had against people from a neighboring village years ago.
Though he was usually easygoing, when he truly got angry, it felt like there was nothing he wouldn’t do.
She was the type who bullied the weak and feared the strong, so her expression changed immediately, and her speed more than doubled.
After taking Xie Fangzhu’s lamp, she didn’t even carefully inspect it anymore. She gave it a quick glance, handed back his tag, and said with a forced smile:
“My hands were too slow. Sorry about that!”
Han Wei: “???”
The miners behind him: “!!!”
Xie Fangzhu didn’t even spare her a glance. He took the tag and walked out.
After that incident, the woman at Window No. 1 sped up considerably, and the entire queue moved much faster.
By the time Han Wei returned his lamp, Xie Fangzhu had already left the lamp room, and he hurried after him.
He kept wondering what was wrong with his friend today. Why was he in such a rush? Had something happened?
Before he could ask, he noticed the miners ahead staring excitedly toward the row of poplar trees not far from the lamp room.
Some of them were staring so hard they practically forgot how to walk.
Han Wei knew they were looking at the women standing under the trees.
Those women were all newly married wives who wished they could stick to their husbands all day long.
So before their husbands even came up from the mine, they were already waiting eagerly beneath the trees.
The mining area had far more men than women, making women something of a rarity there.
Whether married or unmarried, men couldn’t help sneaking extra glances at them.
But today’s reaction seemed way too exaggerated. Had some especially beautiful young wife shown up?
Han Wei subconsciously looked over too.
The moment he spotted one of the figures beneath the poplar trees, his eyes nearly popped out.
He jabbed Xie Fangzhu repeatedly with his elbow.
“Bro, bro! Look! It—it’s sister-in-law!”