Chapter 10
Chapter 10
My dad collected a little over a hundred thousand yuan in wedding gift money, then asked my grandparents how much they had spent on the banquet.
At first, my grandparents hemmed and hawed, but when they saw that my dad was truly angry, they finally told him.
My dad reimbursed them for the banquet. Then, without keeping a single cent of the rest, he gave it all to Gu Yunzhi.
He said the rule where we came from was that the red envelopes from the bride’s side went to the groom, and the red envelopes from the groom’s side went to the bride.
Gu Yunzhi had followed his father around since he was little and had always been the sucker footing the bill.
He had never seen such a huge stack of red envelopes before. That night, when we were supposed to be sleeping, he sat on the bed opening and counting them, absolutely delighted.
I coaxed him, “Be good. Your wife will save it for you and give it back when you grow up.”
Gu Yunzhi gave me a look. “Can I still grow? Don’t try to fool me. You just want to take my red envelopes and buy those snap pops for yourself.”
Oh. He had found me out.
I said, “Then you have to admit, snap pops really are fun!”
I had thought that with acting as superb as ours, there was no way anyone would ever find out.
Unexpectedly, during New Year’s visits, a distant cousin of Gu Yunzhi’s brought home a girlfriend who had studied overseas. I heard she worked at a big company in Beijing and made three hundred thousand yuan a year.
His distant relatives bragged about her nonstop, and even used her to put us down.
They said to Gu Yunzhi, “Look at that. You studied overseas, and so did she. That girl is so young and already makes three hundred thousand a year. Now look at you.”
That distant cousin also teased me.
“Cousin-in-law, my girlfriend has a master’s in finance from USC. What about you?”
For whatever reason, my Third Aunt blurted out, “Oh, our Xuanxuan graduated from that Wudaokou Vocational and Technical College, I think.”
The moment she said that, everyone who didn’t understand burst out laughing. Gu Yunzhi’s cousin, however, did not laugh.
Meanwhile, his overseas-returnee girlfriend was yanking at him like mad, then lowered her head apologetically to Gu Yunzhi and me with an awkward look.
“President Shen… President Gu, I’m so sorry…”
I looked at the young woman. She really was outstanding, and she was an employee at our company. No wonder she recognized Gu Yunzhi and me.
I went over, threw an arm around her shoulders, and said with a smile, “Oh! Zhao Xue? What a coincidence!”
“All these years later, and you’re still so mischievous.”
Then I explained to everyone, “We were high school classmates. Back then, everyone in our class called each other that.”
“Right, President Zhao?”
I was Zhao Xue’s boss. Did Zhao Xue dare not play along?
She followed my lead and joked, “That’s right. I’m President Zhao, you’re President Shen, he’s President Gu, and my boyfriend is President Li…”
Gu Yunzhi’s distant cousin tried to argue, but Zhao Xue glared at him and lowered her voice. “I can also simply not have a boyfriend.”
His cousin instantly shut his mouth and joined in on the joke with us.
After the New Year holiday, our whole family left my dad’s hometown.
Because my fight with my eldest aunt had made things pretty awkward, we had a good reason not to go back for New Year’s anymore.
Whenever there was a holiday, I always had Gu Yunzhi step in and send my grandparents some money.
Later, I heard that the child in my cousin’s girlfriend’s belly wasn’t his, but my eldest aunt had still given her family two hundred thousand yuan as a betrothal gift. My cousin went to demand the money back, the two of them got into a fight, and he ended up causing her to miscarry.
The two families even took each other to court, and the whole thing became the talk of every village for miles around.
As for Gu Yunzhi and me…
Ever since we “left the well and our hometown,” our hometown hasn’t had a well anymore.
(The End)