Chapter 8

Zhou Fanjun stayed in the countryside for more than ten days before his father sent someone to collect him.

I had no idea how that obviously expensive car had crossed all those hills to reach the village.

Before leaving, Zhou Fanjun paced around our courtyard as though he badly needed to pee.

I looked at him suspiciously. “You can go find a place and pee. Nobody’s watching.”

“Who needs to pee? Honestly, you—” Furious, he huffed, “Forget it.”

He ran to the car, took two bags from inside, and handed them to me.

I accepted them and looked inside. “What’s this?”

“One is for you. Stop wearing that odidos outdoor jacket every day… The other is for your grandmother. I’m going. See you at school.”

Without looking back, he climbed into the car.

I pulled out the item in the first bag. It was a new outdoor jacket, clearly from an expensive brand. The other bag had been wrapped securely. I opened it and found a wallet.

It was brand-new, its oiled leather gleaming, and it smelled like money.

“Ooh!” I went inside, took the wallet to Gran, and shouted, “Gran, Young Zhou left. This is for you.”

Gran was sewing insoles for my shoes. She looked up in surprise. “When did he leave? Why didn’t he say goodbye?”

“Just now. He ate so many meals at our house, he was too embarrassed to face you.”

I pushed the wallet into her hands. As expected, she examined it carefully for ages, then put it away like a treasure, saying she would save it for later. All the while she grumbled, “Why’d that child leave without telling me? I could’ve steamed some buns for him to take.”

In truth, I knew why he had not said goodbye.

As the car drove away, I saw him secretly wiping his eyes.

Heh. Weak man. No wonder the pig rammed him.

When school started again, my time grew even tighter.

Yao Yao called me her idol, Yin Hengyu called me his teacher, and Zhou Fanjun constantly brought me spicy gluten strips in exchange for a few of Gran’s steamed buns.

The three of them were tormenting me to death.

After I lost my temper several times, the three of them took charge of my schedule and sorted everything out.

Yao Yao became my best friend. She accompanied me to the restroom and ate with me, and she often recommended pretty, affordable dresses.

Yin Hengyu became my private tutor. With the school’s top genius teaching me, my grades improved by leaps and bounds.

But I still could not teach him to bark. That truly came down to talent, much to my regret.

I did not know what Zhou Fanjun said to his fangirls, but no one came looking for trouble again. He took credit for that and sometimes found excuses to freeload at my house.

At home, he acted like a perfectly normal, well-mannered person. Once, when Gran had a heart attack, he even used his connections to find her a specialist.

Life in the city seemed rather good after all. It was a vast place, but I had a home here, and I had friends.

The day before the national college entrance exam, the four of us sat downstairs from my apartment eating spicy gluten strips, laughing and chatting about everything and nothing. The comments, absent for so long, floated before my eyes once more.

[Is it ending? I can’t bear to say goodbye.]

[Why did the entire plot go off the rails? The warm school-life scenes later on were nice, but I came to watch the male and female leads love and hate each other while the vicious supporting girl got humiliated… Why isn’t this vicious supporting girl vicious at all?]

[Heh. If you don’t like the country channel, I have nothing to say to you.]

[If you don’t have strange tastes and don’t like Yu Taozi, then you and I don’t piss in the same pot.]

[Wait, has no one noticed? This story was revised. In the first version, Yu Taozi wasn’t found and adopted by her grandmother. Her biological parents raised her, treated her terribly, and turned her into a complete freak.]

[Huh? That was changed too? Then everything makes sense.]

I stopped sucking on my spicy snack. Staring at the words before me, my mind crashed.

Found and brought home?

Gran had found me and brought me home?

I was not their biological child?

Countless chaotic images appeared before my eyes. Long-sealed memories stirred awake, and at last, I understood why I had cried so much when I was little.

Because I was not their own child, I had been afraid of the unfamiliar grandmother in front of me and terrified of the strange house. I cried and cried until I developed a high fever, until it seemed I would damage my mind.

Seeing me cry until I looked dazed and slow, my adoptive parents tried to persuade Gran. “She’s a little fool. How can we raise her? Mom, the child is pitiful, but it’s not like we can’t have one of our own…”

Gran sighed. “If we throw her back, who’ll want her? She’s a human life, no matter what. Besides, I don’t think she’s foolish. She’s a good child.”

When my adoptive parents moved to the city, she raised me alone. She took me along when she fed the pigs and when she worked the fields. Whenever I cried, she went to the village shop, bought cookies to comfort me, and asked, “Taste good?”

Eating the cookies, I forgot to cry. I grinned at her and held out the packet. “Tastes good, Gran. You have some too.”

Gran smiled with delight and rubbed my head hard. “Who says our girl is foolish? You’re so clever, and you already know how to care about people. Taozi, study hard when you grow up and get into a good university, all right?”

I did not know what going to university meant, but I obeyed everything she said. With a sweet cookie between my teeth, I nodded.

…

“Hey! Taozi, what’s wrong?”

Yao Yao’s anxious voice pulled me from the memory. She took out a tissue and wiped my face. Only then did I realize tears covered my cheeks.

“Oh, nothing. Nothing. The spicy snack caught in my throat.” I hurriedly wiped away the tears, waved a hand, and said, “I’m really fine.”

The three of them surrounded me and watched for ages. Only after deciding I was all right did they relax.

Zhou Fanjun said, “Stop eating those. I’m hungry. What time is dinner?”

I stood, dusted off my backside, and said, “Come on. Let’s go upstairs and eat.”

We went up together. A huge table of food had already been laid out at home. My parents would not let Gran work, but she had insisted on steaming a giant pot of buns because she said we loved them.

Before dinner, the ever-eloquent Zhou Fanjun raised his cup and, with great ceremony, thanked my family for its warm hospitality on behalf of the freeloading trio.

My parents exchanged a few polite words with him, and we picked up our chopsticks. After we swept through the food like a storm, the freeloading trio left. My parents and little sister said they did not want to disturb my studying, so the three of them went out for a walk.

My thoughts were in turmoil, and I could not absorb a word of my books. After pretending to read for a while, I went into Gran’s room, squatted beside her bed, and said, “Gran.”

She smiled at me. “What is it?”

I smiled back. “Nothing. I’m happy.”

“What are you happy about?”

“I think I’m very lucky.”

I rose early the next morning for the exam. Before entering the testing center, I looked back at Gran. Her back was slightly stooped, and my father and mother supported her as she stood beneath a shady tree, watching me.

I suddenly remembered how she had secretly told me that morning that she had finally saved enough to buy me an Apple computer.

I took a deep breath and shouted, “Gran! I’m going in! I’m off to take my exam!”

Whether she heard clearly or not, she nodded over and over, gesturing for me to go inside.

I smiled, waved, and strode into the testing center.

I, Yu Taozi, a simple country girl, wanted only to study hard and get into a good university!

The End.