“Eat. We’ve already had breakfast. We had rice porridge too.”
Seeing the expression on Zhao Jinyuan’s face, Jinyi thought that perhaps she still felt uncomfortable around them, so she added:
“We still have work to finish. We’ll go work first. Eat your porridge before it gets cold. We’ll be off.”
Zhao Jinyuan hurriedly stood up.
“I’ll go work with you too.”
“You can work, but finish your porridge first and then come. We’re leaving.”
The three girls walked out.
Only then did Zhao Jinyuan carefully pick up the bowl of porridge and bring it to her nose.
It smells so good!
When was the last time she had eaten rice porridge?
It seemed to have been during the New Year celebrations the previous year.
And even then, it hadn’t been nearly this thick.
Could she really eat rice porridge every day here?
If that were true, she was willing to work hard every single day.
She would get up before dawn and not go to bed until after dark.
Before she knew it, she had finished the entire bowl.
The bowl was so clean that it looked as though it had just been washed.
In reality, she had cleaned it by licking it.
It was the bowl Zhao Baihui normally used, so it was larger and held considerably more food.
Jinyi had deliberately prepared a larger portion because she was afraid Jinyuan would still be hungry.
Jinyuan’s little belly was already slightly bulging.
Her stomach was full.
But her mouth wasn’t.
She even thought, without considering her own limits, that she could probably eat two more servings if they were given to her.
Even if I burst, I have to finish the porridge before I die.
It’s just too delicious.
“Big Sister! Sir is back! I’ll go open the door.”
The door to the room opened, and Zhao Baihui walked in carrying a cloth bag.
Jinyuan hurriedly stood up.
When she realized that she had licked the bowl completely clean, she became so embarrassed that her face turned bright red.
Fortunately, she had just taken a bath.
Otherwise, with all the dirt covering her before, it probably wouldn’t even have been possible to tell whether she was blushing or not.
“See? This is much better when it’s clean. You’ll feel comfortable, and other people will feel better looking at you too.”
Zhao Baihui placed the bag on the table.
“Come here, all of you. I’m in a good mood today, so I bought you some gifts.”
He opened the bag.
Inside was a roll of coarse cloth and some sewing supplies.
“This cloth cost three hundred and eighty copper coins. Jinyi, do you think it’ll be enough to make each of you a new set of clothes?”
“I haven’t had much spare money these past few days. Once I have a little more, I’ll buy you some patterned fabric to make clothes with.”
Jinyi had never imagined that Zhao Baihui would buy them cloth.
For a moment, she was both surprised and happy, but at the same time, her heart ached.
When she heard what he said afterward, she quickly wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes and tried to dissuade him.
“Sir, there’s no need to buy more. This is enough. Really, it’s enough.”
Jinyi had never dared to hope that she would one day have new clothes.
In ordinary peasant families, several years could pass without a child receiving a single new garment.
Peasant life was simply too difficult, so everyone instinctively learned to carefully manage every coin and every grain of food.
Children grew quickly.
A new garment could barely last them a few years.
And that was speaking of boys.
Girls had it even worse.
They could wear clothes passed down from their older brothers or their younger siblings.
In a poor family, who would care whether a piece of clothing had belonged to a boy or a girl?
Most daughters from ordinary families could only wear their first new set of clothes when they got married.
And even then, not all of them were lucky enough to have that.
The families of these four girls had been particularly poor.
If they hadn’t been sold, they probably would have ended up among those women who couldn’t even afford to wear new clothes on their wedding day.
So how could they not be deeply moved when Zhao Baihui bought them cloth to make new clothes?
“It’s just a little cloth. You don’t need to cry over it. Jinyi, tell me the truth. Is it enough or not?”
Jinyi quickly did the calculations and replied:
“I think so. It should be enough to make four sets.”
“If it ‘should be enough,’ then that means it isn’t enough, right?”
Zhao Baihui nodded.
“All right. Tomorrow I’ll buy another hundred copper coins’ worth of cloth. Don’t make the clothes too tight. Imagine making them and then finding out they don’t fit. Wouldn’t that be awkward?”
Suddenly, an idea occurred to him.
“Or you could each make one sleeve shorter and leave one arm exposed. Then you could pretend to be monks.”
The girls burst out laughing.
Jinwen had already imagined the scene and replied between giggles:
“Even if we did that, we’d be nuns.”
“You have ambitions like that too? Very well. When the time comes, I’ll shave all your heads myself.”
“No…!”
The girls immediately covered their heads with their hands, as though a great villain had really appeared with the intention of shaving them bald.
Zhao Baihui couldn’t help laughing.
“Now you won’t have to worry about running out of things to do, right? So stop working that land. We’ll be moving away from here very soon.”
The girls took the cloth and happily began discussing what they would do with it.
Zhao Baihui didn’t know how to sew and had no interest in learning, so he returned to his room.
Once he was alone, he began calculating.
Now that Jinyi and the others had passed their trial periods, once Jinyuan passed hers in a few days, they would receive a subsidy of fifty yuan per day.
That was equivalent to five hundred copper coins.
Two days would be enough to make one unit of silver.
At present, he spent only around thirty or forty copper coins a day, so his expenses weren’t particularly high either.
In that case, he could finally put his plan into action.
Find a suitable place.
Buy several li of land.
Build a house.
Then hire people to clear the land and cultivate it.
And simply develop quietly without attracting attention.
“System, help me find a place with good conditions for building a village.”
[Selecting a suitable location for building a village within a radius of one hundred li requires 100 yuan. Would you like to confirm?]
“Forget it. I don’t have enough money right now. I’ll wait a few days.”
That afternoon, Jinyi finished preparing the meal and called Zhao Baihui to come eat.
On the table was a wooden tray holding more than ten coarse-grain flatbreads, a dish of stir-fried vegetables, a bowl of soup, and a small plate of pickled vegetables.
Seeing all of this, Zhao Jinyuan was completely stunned.
Those coarse-grain flatbreads don’t even have wild vegetables or herbs mixed into them.
And there’s actually a considerable amount of oil in the stir-fried vegetables and the soup.
Is this how a landlord’s family eats?
This meal must cost more than ten copper coins!
What she hadn’t expected was that when Sir sat down at the table, his face was full of displeasure.
Frowning, he asked:
“Jinyi, are we out of rice? Why has the quality of the food dropped so much? And why don’t the vegetables have even a single strip of meat?”
Zhao Jinyuan was so frightened that she didn’t even dare breathe loudly.
Jinyi also became nervous and quickly stood up to explain herself.
“Sir, you bought Jinyuan today, and then you bought so much cloth, so I… I’m sorry, Sir. There are still eggs at home. I’ll fry a couple for you.”
Seeing the fear on the girls’ faces, Zhao Baihui silently reproached himself for speaking that way.
He immediately softened his tone.
“Fry several. We’ll all eat them.”
He paused before adding:
“I’ve already told you that I have money. You don’t need to worry about these things. You’re such a meddlesome little housekeeper.”
After a while, Jinyi came out with several fried eggs.
She placed two in Zhao Baihui’s bowl and one in each of the others’ bowls.
She hadn’t prepared one for herself.
Zhao Baihui sighed.
This girl feels guilty.
So he took one of his own eggs and placed it in Jinyi’s bowl.
“Don’t say anything. Eat.”
Jinyi obeyed and sat back down.
She lowered her head so the others wouldn’t see her reddened eyes.
An egg cost around three copper coins.
Five eggs cost fifteen.
Zhao Jinyuan simply couldn’t believe that she could one day eat a meal like this too.
Her first day in Sir’s household had been like a dream from beginning to end.
After dinner, she followed her three sisters to the western room and continued sewing the clothes.
When it grew dark, there was an oil lamp in the house, but no one lit it.
They went to bed early.
The large communal bed was spacious enough for all four girls to sleep comfortably.
Wrapped in an old but thick and warm blanket, little Zhao Jinyuan felt the fear and insecurity filling her heart gradually disappear.
For the first time since she had been sold, she felt safe.
If this is a dream…
then I hope I never wake up.