Chapter 16 Record of Moving to the City in the 90s. 16

Su Huandan had made an agreement with her family to call every day and let them know she was safe.

Her family didn’t care about the phone bill.

So, in the eyes of her dormmates, Su Huandan had become the good little girl.

Well, if that was how her family arranged things, then that was how she’d do them.

To make a call, she had to go to the little shop by the school’s back gate.

It wasn’t very close to the girls’ dormitory, but it was quite close to the boys’ dormitory.

So Yu Zexiu had added one more task to his daily routine. Whenever Su Huandan came to make a call, he would go with her.

Su Huandan didn’t find him annoying either. How should she put it?

Back when she was in middle school in her hometown, Zhang Jun had circled around her every day just like Yu Zexiu did now, but a lot of Zhang Jun’s behavior had irritated her.

Zhang Jun wasn’t nearly as good with words as Yu Zexiu. Yu Zexiu was the kind of person with a glib tongue, witty and humorous, the sort who didn’t seem like he came from an ordinary family. Don’t be fooled by his looks. There was an air of nobility about him.

When you spent time with Yu Zexiu, it was very easy to overlook his appearance.

Su Huandan had never met a man like Yu Zexiu before.

In her short life from her previous life, there had only been three men she had much contact with. First was her father, Su Dakui, a rural man whose whole heart was set on working hard so his wife and children could live well.

Then there were her two brothers-in-law from her previous life.

Her eldest sister’s husband had been an employee at the Construction Bank, shrewd and calculating. He was always the one taking advantage of others, and if he ever suffered the slightest loss, all hell would break loose and he and her eldest sister would start making trouble.

Her second sister’s husband was from Yuanyi Village. He had opened a self-service supermarket by relying on the Film and Television City, and in every way he was far more open-handed than the eldest brother-in-law. But he disliked her second sister getting involved in her natal family’s affairs. He was the typical sort who believed that once a wife was married into the family, she should no longer have any financial ties with her own family.

After that, the one she felt most familiar with was Sun Jianbin, the man her eldest sister was supposed to marry in this life. He was an honest, decent man, not very talkative, but steady and seasoned in the way he handled things.

But in her previous life, he had been targeted by the older female cousin from her youngest uncle’s family. She got him drunk, ended up in bed with him, and in the end drove Sun Jianbin away.

At the time, her eldest sister and Sun Jianbin were already engaged. They were just short of getting the marriage certificate and holding the wedding banquet.

It wasn’t that her eldest sister was impossible to marry, but that cousin of Old Ninth’s refused to take responsibility, so in the end he could only leave.

In her previous life, this was also the incident that completely severed ties with the Jiang Family.

In her previous life, a lot of people said Sun Jianbin was a bastard. They said he’d slept with her and then run off, shirking responsibility.

But as far as Su Huandan was concerned, why should Sun Jianbin marry that kind of trash and ruin the rest of his life?

If she had been Sun Jianbin, she wouldn’t have wanted her either.

In this life, Yu Zexiu had become the fifth man she was familiar with across both her lives.

Yu Zexiu might be a little chubby, but his skin was fair, and fair skin covered a multitude of flaws¹.

Yu Zexiu might have buck teeth, but teeth could be corrected. Once they were fixed, that face of his would absolutely stun everyone.

And on top of that, he had a height of over six feet, similar to Su Dakui.

If he fixed his teeth, worked out a little, and turned the fat on his body into muscle…

As Su Huandan imagined what Yu Zexiu would look like after getting into shape, she felt her heartbeat speed up a little.

That was what it felt like to be moved.

Then Su Huandan stared at Yu Zexiu, sizing him up from top to bottom, until his face turned red.

“W-what’s wrong? You don’t want to go? Then don’t go. Why are you looking at me like that? It’s kind of scary. I don’t mean anything bad by it. I just want to take you to see the Forbidden City. I really don’t have any bad intentions.” Yu Zexiu thought to himself that the campus beauty was way too hard to pursue.

His childhood friend had said that as long as he revealed his family background, there wasn’t any woman he couldn’t get.

But he didn’t want to do that. It was the first time he’d liked someone, and he didn’t want the girl he liked to agree to date him because she valued his family circumstances.

The girls in the residential compound² all called him Bucktooth and Fatty behind his back, but to his face they still acted like lovestruck maidens, trying to curry favor with him.

He had seen too many women like that. It made him want to throw up.

Su Huandan was different. His heart had started racing the first moment he saw her, as if a cool beam of moonlight had shone straight into his heart.

Su Huandan came back to herself. Every time she thought about her past and present lives, she tended to drift off. Just now, Yu Zexiu seemed to have said he wanted to take her somewhere on Sunday?

She had gone there in her previous life. During her final surgery, she had wandered around for two hours and then come out before even finishing the whole place, because her physical condition hadn’t allowed it.

“Then let’s go. I was thinking about something else just now and didn’t catch what you said. Oh right, I heard old Beijing-style luzhu³ is also a real delicacy. Do you know where to get a good one?” Su Huandan agreed to go to the Forbidden City, and Yu Zexiu’s face turned red again, this time from excitement.

“I do, I do. If you like it, I’ll bring you some tomorrow. It’s from a century-old famous shop. The flavor is the most authentic there, rich and deep. I eat it myself every now and then too, just not too often. It’s really greasy. All this fat on me came from eating it.” This was the first time Yu Zexiu had ever met a girl who wanted to eat luzhu.

How should he put it?

With a dish like luzhu, the people who like it really love it, while the people who don’t like it won’t touch it no matter how good it smells.

Luzhu is made by cooking baked wheat cakes together with braised pig intestines and pig lungs. To put it plainly, you’re eating pig head meat and assorted offal. A lot of people feel like throwing up just looking at those things, let alone eating them.

Su Huandan thought to herself that luzhu was delicious. She just happened to enjoy eating organ meats.

After settling on Sunday’s trip to the Forbidden City, Yu Zexiu walked Su Huandan back to her dormitory and then returned to his own.

He also lived in an eight-person dorm. His roommates came from all over the country, and at the moment their relationships were only so-so. They still weren’t familiar enough to be called brothers.

The moment Yu Zexiu walked into the dorm, he was teased. “Old Yu, what were you talking to the campus beauty about again? Teach us too, will you? We’re not going to cut in on you, but we can totally use your experience pursuing the campus beauty to chase other girls.”

Yu Zexiu smiled but didn’t answer. Only after washing up and lying down on his bed did he speak. “People are different. I’m afraid my experience won’t work for you guys.”

It cost money, after all.

Every day he had to come up with ideas and find tasty things to buy for Su Huandan. Without some family wealth, could anyone really afford to pursue her?

The others burst out laughing at once, and the matter was brushed aside just like that.

As soon as Su Huandan got back to the dorm, she was teased too.

One of the girls said, “Other than his bad teeth, Yu Zexiu is actually pretty outstanding. You should think about it. Stop stringing him along all the time, that’s really not good. I’ve been hearing people gossip about you these past few days.”

That made Ma Mei frown first.

Ma Mei was the dorm leader, and also a year older than the others. She specialized in Russian, was a warm-hearted girl, and really had the air of an older sister.

Right after that, Zhang Meijuan shot back, “What is there to gossip about? Yu Zexiu is willing to spend whatever he spends, and Huandan hasn’t been taking advantage of him for nothing. Last week, Sister Ma Mei and I went with Huandan to buy Yu Zexiu a watch. It cost more than two hundred yuan. We know that ourselves. As long as our conscience is clear, why should we care what anyone else says?”

The rest of them fell completely silent, because they hadn’t known that Su Huandan had given Yu Zexiu a watch. Zhang Meijuan and Ma Mei had been the ones who went with her to buy it, and they had gone along when she gave it to him.

Translator’s Notes