277: Chapter 75: If It Doesn’t Work, Cook the Raw Rice into Cooked Rice 277: Chapter 75: If It Doesn’t Work, Cook the Raw Rice into Cooked Rice “Yikes—!
It’s over, it’s over, it’s all over!”
Matuan hid behind the curtain and after just one glance, couldn’t help but sigh: “When did big brother meet this young girl, she looks just like she stepped out of a painting.
This is the end for Little Gourd, she’s completely out of the picture!”
His brother Youbing kicked him in the hollow of his knee: “Can you speak like a normal person?
What’s wrong with being good-looking, how is our Gourd any worse than her?
Do you really see big brother as the type who’d abandon loyalty for beauty?”
The two brothers exchanged glances, then turned their heads to look at Little Gourd.
Little Gourd had a vacant look in her eyes, her lips were a bright red, and her face was powdered white, looking like a female ghost.
“Go wash your face first.”
Youtiao held Little Gourd’s shoulders, feeling the stiffness of the girl’s body, and couldn’t help but sigh inwardly.
Turning back to Chen Yan, he complained: “What on earth did you put on her?”
“Why are you blaming me now?”
Chen Yan, with her arms crossed and eyebrows raised, replied: “She insisted on grabbing my lipstick paper, I couldn’t even stop her.
Do you know how much one sheet of lipstick paper costs?
Normally, you just press it onto your lips gently, but she had to rub it back and forth on her mouth, ruining my entire sheet!”
“What brand is it, I’ll reimburse you for it.”
Youtiao frowned and said: “She’s already out of her mind now, don’t agitate her…”
“I’m not crazy!
I’m perfectly clear-headed!”
Little Gourd, having wiped her face and hurried back, declared righteously: “I’ve figured it out, there’s no way a woman of that caliber would ever take a fancy to big brother!”
Matuan opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but was pulled back by Youbing covering his mouth.
“What’s the problem, isn’t it normal for big brother at his age to want to find a wife?”
Little Gourd grabbed a cloth and vigorously wiped her face, then leaned over the windowsill and narrowed her eyes at the woman walking shoulder to shoulder with Wang Yunxiao downstairs: “Big brother has never been swayed by beauty.
The only reason he’s interested in this woman is because she’s rich!
Brother Youtiao…
you agree, don’t you?”
Youtiao nodded and smiled, saying, “Right!”
Chen Yan stood to the side, looking at her with a pitying gaze usually reserved for the mentally challenged.
This kid had indeed gone mad.
Little Gourd turned away and started to bite her fingernails.
“There’s something fishy about this woman, I bet she’s got issues…
Brother Youtiao, what do you think?”
“Right!”
“But you can’t say she’s an unknown.”
Loach, quick-witted, added from the side: “Didn’t we hear before about how Jiang Yinyin’s parents sold her off, but the family who bought her treated her quite well?
Seeing Jiang Yinyin following behind her, she must be the eldest daughter of that family.
At least that indicates…
her character might be okay?”
Little Gourd began to gnaw at her knuckles.
“Stop talking about that nonsense.”
Guozi gave him a glare, then turned to look at Little Gourd with a cold voice: “What do you think, Gourd?
There’s no one else here, say whatever’s on your mind.
If you say that you’ve set your heart on big brother and won’t marry anyone but him, then tonight I’ll get big brother drunk and throw him on the bed.
You two spend a night together, and everything will be settled.”
“If you don’t have that idea, then it’s not up to you to worry about whom big brother goes out with.
Stop making such a fuss with all that crying, arguing and threatening to hang yourself.
Isn’t that annoying?”
“Just because she’s Eldest Miss Li, do you think you are one too?
A couple of days with your belly full and suddenly you don’t remember your own name?
What, are you expecting big brother to slowly develop feelings for you?
Have you forgotten how we used to scramble for leftovers on the streets with everyone else?
It’s as simple as ‘first come first served’, isn’t it?”
“Shut your mouth!”
Little Gourd gritted her teeth and, lifting a chair, threw it at Guozi’s head.
Guozi caught the chair leg with his hand, set it down gently, and stared at Little Gourd before asking, “I’m not joking with you.
Are you in or not?
If you are, I’ll go buy the wine right now.”
“I’m not doing it!”
…
“This is the girls’ dormitory.
The conditions are just like this.”
Wang Yunxiao couldn’t, in good conscience, say that the school’s accommodation was bad, especially when he knew that out there were countless people living in adobe houses.
Chen Yan’s family wasn’t considered poor, yet she preferred to stay in the dorm rather than going home, where she would have to squeeze onto a clay bed with her parents.
But in front of Eldest Miss Li, it was really hard to sing praises of the place.
It wasn’t just about staying in a dormitory, even entering the teaching building seemed like it might dirty the hem of her skirt.
“It’s quite alright, I think the conditions are not bad.”
In Li Mumu’s memory, at this time Safo could be considered the Federation’s best in terms of urban appearance and cleanliness, without a rival.
This was because there really were urban management workers sweeping the streets so you couldn’t see technical workers and urban roamers around.
As a child, when she and Wendy took a train to Xinxiang on the East Coast, they were nearly suffocated by the smell of chemicals the moment they got off.
That forsaken place was already permeated with pollution from heavy industries, and yet masses of European immigrants continued to flood in from the docks, with forty or fifty people cramming into a tiny twenty-square-meter rent-controlled apartment — one could only imagine the conditions.
Add to that the local specialty of cheap and delicious seafood, with locals loving raw oysters, leading to frequent cases of cholera and typhoid in both winter and summer, and the completely legal yet overused addictive drugs…
Of course, you would never see any of these in Hollywood movies or immigration agency advertisements.
Things were a bit better in Safo.
For example, there were two kinds of boarding schools — initially all of them were transformed from church schools, and their main purpose was not really to facilitate parents having more children, but rather to indoctrinate the kids.
There were schools especially for the elite aristocracy; those conditions need not be mentioned, if you spent enough money, even the dormitories could be renovated to the standard of five-star hotels.
Then there were boarding schools for the common people; there wasn’t much need to say anything there either.
It was normal for good-looking girls or boys in class to suddenly disappear, or for several skeletons to be dug out from the basement, or for students to suffer from anal fistula and blood in urine due to the high study pressure…
The environment Li Mumu personally saw in the residential buildings of the suburbs of Safo City was no different from cesspools.
Therefore, after seeing the accommodation at Qinghe Middle School, she genuinely thought it was good.
It was indeed quite Spartan, but it was clean and orderly.
“I will make a donation later to buy some new bedding for everyone,” she said.
Li Mumu noticed that the beds in the student dormitory were all padded with straw mattresses; not the kind of straw mats you sleep on in the summer, but thick quilts stuffed with straw to keep warm in the winter.
There was no heating in the school.
It wasn’t a matter of high technology, but rather that they couldn’t afford to burn so much coal.
Other people’s children might go home during winter break, but the children taken in by the school didn’t know how they would survive the winter.
Wang Yunxiao chuckled and said, “If you donate money, the principal would only use it to subsidize the cafeteria and definitely wouldn’t get new bedding.”