“Dad, Mom.”
After paying the taxi fare, Bai Ling immediately dragged Yan Chu home. This home was, of course, Yan Chu’s.
As for Bai Ling, if Yan Chu had not proposed to buy this jade hairpin, she might not have thought about this idea. After all, the hairpin was beautiful, but she could not eat it. She was a very modest girl.
Moreover, the Yan family now needed this money even more. So even in the face of a huge sum of 180,00 yuan, Bai Ling was not interested.
But she did not expect that when she was going to find Aunt Yan and Uncle Yan, her parents, who should have been watching at the supermarket, were also at Yan’s house.
“Why is Lingling’s face so red? Is it hot? Auntie will pour you a glass of iced pickled plum juice.”
The four adults were still talking just now. But when they saw the children coming in, they stopped talking.
“You child, also too much. You don’t buy a cold drink for Lingling when you go out on a hot day. You are not sensible.”
From Jin Xiujuan’s point of view, Bai Ling was her future daughter-in-law. She should take care of her son no matter how painful he was. He had no eyesight at all. What should he do if she got snatched by other boys?
When she came out of the kitchen with pickled plum juice, she did not forget to scold her son. The most precious son in the past suddenly turned into scum in front of the future daughter-in-law.
Yan Chu, who got glared at again, felt completely innocent when he went out today without looking at the Chinese divination almanac.
“Thank you, Auntie.”
Bai Ling pushed Yan Chu to close the doors and windows, then put the money bag on the table.
On the way, she was highly strung and exuberant. Her mouth was parched, and her tongue scorched. She drained the cup of the pickled plum juice Jin Xiujuan handed over in one gulp, opened her schoolbag, and took out the thick eighteen hundred yuan banknotes from the bag.
“What’s going on? Where did you get the money? Hurry up and call the police to give it back.”
The adults in their family were shocked and anxiously spoke when they saw Bai Ling handing out so much money.
Of course, they did not think that the children earned this money. They only thought they picked it up somewhere when they went out. This money was not a small amount. If people had pressing needs, such as money for curing diseases and saving lives, it should be urgent to find it.
“Not picked up.”
Bai Ling shook her head and described in detail what happened in the antique street. In the middle, she changed the fact that Yan Chu bought the jade hairpin for her to his mother, Jin Xiujuan. She stressed that Yan Chu paid for it. Bai Ling told the truth about everything else.
Although she kindly made it clear that the money belonged to Yan Chu, the people present were not stupid. They did not need to think about who Yan Chu paid for the jade hairpin.
Jin Xiujuan was in the selling breakfast business. For the sake of hygiene, she cut her long hair into short hair. Yan Chu had a brain pit if he bought a jade hairpin for his short-haired mother. Could it be that he still planned to buy a jade hairpin? It was nonsense to buy it for her and wait for his mother to grow her hair one day before wearing it.
“Lingling, don’t hide it from Auntie. Yan Chu bought this jade hairpin for you, right?” Jin Xiujuan directly exposed Bai Ling’s lie.
Now she was quite beautiful in her heart. In the past, she always felt that her son was not very enlightened, relying on the friendship of growing up together. Now that her son knew how to buy Bai Ling some small jewelry to make her happy, Jin Xiujuan could not help but relax.
“Even if it’s for Lingling, it was paid by Yan Chu. If it’s indeed worth 20 yuan, our Lingling would not be ashamed of keeping it. But it was 180,000 yuan. If we truly kept it, what kind of people would we be?”
Jiang Yahong said that 180,000 yuan was really not a small number. In recent years, various small supermarkets opened, and their business had not been good. They relied on the care of the neighbors nearby, and the gross profit was more than 100,000 yuan a year.
It felt like the family had no burden, and there were two more houses. The Bai family was a bit extravagant in spending money. One year, they would save 20,000 to 30,000 yuan, but the Bai family also had no lofty ideals. They thought it was pretty good to live such a comfortable life.
That 180,000 yuan might make ordinary people greedy, but Jiang Yahong felt that the friendship between two families and a person’s conscience were more valuable than 180,000 yuan.
“If it weren’t for Lingling’s cleverness and guessed that this jade hairpin might be worth a lot of money. In the hearts of all of us, this jade hairpin is not worth 20 yuan. Who knew that it could sell for 180,000 yuan? Besides, Yan Chu bought it for Lingling, it belongs to Lingling, and the money should not belong to us no matter what.”
Both adults had their own reasons, and both felt that the other party was the owner of the money.
Bai Ling and Yan Chu, who brought money, were treated as air instead, and those adults who felt that children could not listen to such things rushed to Yan Chu’s room.
The area of the old public housing was not spacious, around 60 square meters in size. Yan Chu’s room had the best orientation in the house. It was also the largest one and served as a study.
There were a lot of books on his bookshelf, many of which were comic strips and martial arts (wuxia) novels bought from the second-hand book market. Father Yan and Mother Yan thought these were also books, and they had never stopped Yan Chu’s hobby. They did not pay much attention to their son’s behavior of renting at bookshops often.
The Bai family’s parents could become close friends with the Yan family’s parents. In some ways, their brain circuit was the same. When most parents regarded the youth pain literature and talking about Hong Kong and Taiwan as great scourges, they did not care.
At every parents’ meeting, the teacher would warn parents to pay attention to their children’s hobbies in this regard. After all, reading too many love novels could easily cause the harmful effect of puppy love. But this was what parents on both sides did not care about most. When their children were still in their wombs, they had already thought about marrying them. The teacher’s advice was not painful. As long as they did not indulge in these novels to the extent that it affected their learning, the four adults did not care.
They were both men. Bai Jiandong and Yan Zhonghua also liked Yan Chu’s cabinet of martial arts (wuxia) novels. They often come here to find books to read when bored. They could be regarded as two public bookcases.
Yan Chu also placed many of Bai Ling’s novels here. Sometimes one afternoon, they each occupied a chair to do their summer homework and spent the rest of their time reading novels.
Obviously, the influence of 180,000 yuan on Bai Ling was not small. When entering Yan Chu’s room, Bai Ling’s first act was to take out her favorite novel and start to calm down.
“Cough, cough.”
Yan Chu glanced at Bai Ling and then took out a dozen textbooks he had just bought from the bookstore.
“Study hard, improve every day.”
Bai Ling stared wide-eyed at the serious childhood sweetheart holding the textbook. Did he know that it was easy to lose his childhood sweetheart by doing*24doing*from 干 [gàn] that can mean as to do or to f*ck (vulgar) so?
“This question should…”
They both had average math scores, while the other courses had their own partial subjects. Both of them studied sciences. Bai Ling was good at English and Chinese but poor at Chemistry and Physics. Yan Chu was good at Chemistry and Physics but poor at English.
The textbooks he bought were all targeted, including several math workbooks. The answers behind all had detailed problem-solving steps. They solved the math problems together and then taught each other the subjects they were good at. Bai Ling thought she was worried about making trouble for herself after doing homework during winter vacation. Gradually, she suddenly felt that reading was not such a nuisance.
“I thought you would keep that jade hairpin.”
After proofreading a math problem, Yan Chu asked suddenly.
Didn’t girls really care about things like tokens of love? He honestly did not expect that Bai Ling would sell it without hesitation.
“Are you stupid?”
Bai Ling poked Yan Chu’s chest with a pen: “That’s 180,000 yuan. If your parents really plan to open a deli, this is the starting fund. Besides, you gave me a lot of things before. Like the blue hairpin, and…”
She counted with her fingers to give examples one by one. Then, with her hands on her hips, she asked Yan Chu viciously, “Or are you not going to give me any small gifts in the future?”
The jade hairpin given by Yan Chu must be significant in Bai Ling’s heart, but there were priorities. If they were millionaires now, she would not sell it no matter how much the jade hairpin was worth. But weren’t they currently lacking money?
The jade hairpin is just a symbol. As long as she remembered that Yan Chu once gave her such a treasure, it was enough.
After starting to work on the topic, Bai Ling took off the contact lenses she was not used to wearing very much and replaced them with her bulky black-rimmed glasses. Even if she wanted to look vicious, she was silly, naive, and cute in the eyes of others.
“When you were in the antique street, you said I was your boyfriend. Of course, a boyfriend will continue to give gifts to his girlfriend.” Yan Chu smiled and spoke, looking at the little girl with bulging cheeks and wide eyes.
“That’s about the same.”
Bai Ling’s flame got suddenly suppressed, and her voice was not much louder than a buzzing mosquito. If he did not listen carefully, he really did not know what she said.
However, her answer also acknowledged the fact that the two were dating. Before today, the two had been childhood sweethearts but had not yet broken through that phase.
Bai Ling looked down at the exercise book, the words on it were densely packed, and suddenly she could not read them all.
“Tomorrow…”
When Yan Chu opened his mouth, Bai Ling’s eyes suddenly lit up.
What did boyfriends and girlfriends who have just established a relationship do?
Watching a movie? Going to the zoo? Or going to an amusement park?
Bai Ling’s heart beat fast. She thought about how she would agree to Yan Chu’s invitation in a reserved and appropriate way. At this time, she was calm on the surface but happy in her heart.
“Come to my house tomorrow to do exercises. I bought many books today, enough for us to do for a long time.”
Yan Chu held up a thick stack of unopened exercise books and showed his big white teeth to Bai Ling.
“Bang—”
Bai Ling, who was full of expectation, bit her lip and placed the book in front of her on Yan Chu.
He was indeed going to lose his childhood sweetheart like this. No, it was the childhood sweetheart who got upgraded to a girlfriend.
