Chapter 3: Her parents are dead, who wrote her a letter?
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Only then did Shi Xiao Ai react. She quickly calmed down her expression and said, “It’s okay.”
Then she grabbed the steamed bun, put it on the table, stood up, and said, “Don’t eat it yet. I’ll go see if there is anything else.” She said and walked towards the door. The kitchen house was near the door. As soon as Shi Xiao-ai walked in, she could no longer hide the disappointment in her eyes.
The house was small. Apart from a stove and a small bench under the bellows, there needed to be a place to stand. Shi Xiao ai didn’t even see the standard feature of the kitchen in those period dramas—the large vat for food or water.
“Where is all the food in this house?” she couldn’t help but murmur in a low voice.
Then her eyes fell on a row of nails hammered into the wall opposite the stove. Several coarse cloth bags were hanging on the nail. In addition, there were a bunch of garlic and a small bunch of dried chili peppers.
Shi Xiao Ai opened the bag and took a look. Sure enough, there were two bags of coarse grains, one bag of yellow, and one bag of gray flour. She had no idea what they were for. Soon, her eyes were attracted to another bag because she found more than a dozen eggs in that bag! Shi Xiao Ai felt happy. This feeling was even more comfortable than receiving dividends from the company at the end of the year.
Without thinking, she took out three eggs from the bag, but her joy disappeared when she saw the bottomless oil bowl on the stove and the only condiment, coarse salt.
“Mom, what are you going to do?”
“Mom, why did you take our eggs? They need to be exchanged with cloth!” When Shi Xiao Ai was looking at the stove, unable to do anything, the two cubs ran over each other.
Seeing the eggs in her hand, Ming Xi forgot what she had done and already heard fear from her mother. She ran over to grab them, but Shi Xiao Ai quickly dodged them with her quick eyes and hands.
“It’s the Chinese New Year, and our family’s life has improved. Xiao Rui, go and help me light the fire.”
Shi Xiao Ai now understands that her cheap daughter has an authoritarian personality, so she stops talking, ignores her, and turns around to give orders to her son. Mingxi was confused when she heard that her mother wanted to give them scrambled eggs. Her eyes were fixed on the three eggs, but she finally didn’t move forward.
Looking at the little girl’s big black and white eyes, Shi Xiao Ai couldn’t help but feel soft. She sighed silently, cracked the eggs into a large bowl, poured in an equal amount of warm water, added a little salt, and started stirring.
The little oil at the bottom of the bowl was not enough to scramble the eggs, and making steamed eggs was a waste of firewood and took too long, so she had no choice but to make a scrambled egg.
Xiao Ai often made these scrambled eggs, but that was because she was working out and needed to control her calories. At that time, she never imagined that she would have to choose this cooking method one day because there was no oil.
At this time, the chickens are not fed with artificial feed. Although the eggs are small, they are full of flavor. The aroma is still mouth-watering even if there is no oil, even if it is served in a coarse porcelain bowl.
With this bowl of scrambled eggs, the multigrain pancakes no longer seem so hard to swallow. Though their body was starving, Xiao Ai couldn’t swallow it after eating less than half of the pancake.
Seeing that the two children were eating happily, she divided the remaining eggs and pancakes between them. She took the black one with boiled water, tore off a piece, and put it in her mouth.
“Vomit.”
The bitter and sour taste made her almost vomit.
“Mom.” Mingrui put down the chopsticks in his hand and looked at her worriedly.
“It’s okay, it got stuck.” Shi Xiao Ai hurriedly chewed a few times, then quietly spit out the contents in her mouth while the child was not paying attention.
But with the bit left in her mouth, she still felt a burning pain in her throat as she swallowed unconsciously as if her throat had been scratched by something.
Tears almost fell.
Though the tears didn’t fall, Shi Xiao Ai was already crying in her heart.
She couldn’t stand it after only half a day like this. How would she survive it in the future? When she thought she could never go back and only live here, Shi Xiao was filled with despair. Seeing that his mother was in a bad mood, Mingrui thought it was an incident that had happened before. He clenched his fists angrily, put the rice bowl into the kitchen without saying a word, and wiped the table clean with a rag. Shi Xiao Ai didn’t help at all.
When Xiao Ai was lamenting how considerate her son was, there was a sudden knock on the door, and then someone shouted from outside, “Mingrui, open the door! Is your mother at home?” Shi Xiao Ai quickly stood up and walked towards the door.
When she walked out, Mingrui had already opened the courtyard door, and an older man with white hair who looked to be in his sixties or seventies came in from the outside. The older man wore a blue cloth coat that had been washed white. It looked old, but it had four pockets. No need to ask; he was a village cadre. Seing the old man, Mingrui greeted him politely: “Grandpa village chief, come in and let’s talk inside, and I’ll pour you some water.”
After saying that, he ran towards the kitchen house again.
“No, I’m not thirsty.” It was obvious that the older man really liked Mingrui, and he looked at his back and smiled until his eyes narrowed. “Village chief, sit inside the house.” Shi Xiao Ai would definitely not step back now, and she quickly stepped forward to greet him. The older man seemed to have just seen her now. He looked at her carefully, up and down, with highly complicated eyes. Shi Xiao Ai was a little embarrassed by the way he stared. She couldn’t help but touch her face with her hands, put on a smile, and asked, “Uncle, why are you looking at me like that? Is there something wrong?”
The village chief nodded, took out an envelope from his pocket, and handed it over, saying, “You have a registered letter for you, and it has been sent to the brigade. Daming was back in the village today, so I returned it to you.”
Letter?
Shi Xiao Ai didn’t see this detail in the plot summary, so she couldn’t help but be curious. If she was not mistaken, the parents of the original owner had passed away, and there were no relatives in the city. Otherwise, she would not have missed the last train or returned to the town until 1980.
Who would write to her?
Shi Xiao Ai glanced at the village chief and saw he had no intention of leaving, so she could only tear open the envelope before him.
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