Chapter 16: The Poor and Generous Fool
The inevitable will always come, hiding at the ends of the earth won’t help.
Jiang Xiaoyuan paced around her room like a donkey grinding a millstone, but she couldn’t come up with a single solution. What she was most afraid of wasn’t actually facing a group of unfamiliar “relatives and friends,” but rather, what if her parents in this timeline were the same as her parents in the original timeline?
How should she face people who were exactly the same but completely different?
The “remote control” phone beeped like it was urging her to hurry up. Qi Lian sent a message asking, “When should I come pick you up?”
So annoying! Is there anyone so pushy? This way of urging is like soliciting.
Jiang Xiaoyuan shouted at her phone, “What’s the rush? I’m not going!”
Of course, the phone obediently didn’t voice any objections. Jiang Xiaoyuan stood there silently for a moment, sighed, then, like a lunatic, tilted her head up towards the empty ceiling and muttered to herself, “What should I do?”
The ceiling hadn’t developed the ability to chat yet, so it just silently held up its weathered, yellowed face and looked kindly at her.
Jiang Xiaoyuan closed her eyes and exhaled silently.
Well, besides facing it, what else could she do?
But before facing it bravely, she still wanted to delay it for a while. She texted Qi Lian back, “I’ll go to the hospital first to see Sister Zhang. Give me the address, and I’ll go there by myself tonight.”
Finally, there was no more sound from Qi Lian’s side.
Jiang Xiaoyuan breathed a sigh of relief, left the house, and headed to the hospital. She was a little afraid of Qi Lian, and that fear was turning into a bit of dependency — he seemed to know too much, and his way of handling things was quietly assertive.
The weather was getting colder. Some people on the street had already put on thin cotton jackets, but Jiang Xiaoyuan was still in her summer clothes. She pretended not to mind the cold, hurried to the bus stop, and as soon as she arrived, a rapid bus pulled in. Jiang Xiaoyuan glanced at the bus stop sign and saw that this one was also heading to the hospital. She raised her feet and was about to get on.
A middle-aged couple was standing beside her. The man intending to get on the bus after her, but was stopped by the woman who pulled him back, saying, “Can’t you see it’s written ‘Bus Rapid Transit’ above? This one is twice as expensive. Let’s not take this one.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan’s footsteps reflexively hesitated for a moment. By some strange impulse, she didn’t board the bus. The bus pulled away in an instant, its warm exhaust gas dispersing. The chilly autumn wind began to blow fiercely. Jiang Xiaoyuan stood there, shivering involuntarily. After a moment of shivering, she stared blankly, reflecting on her actions.
“Am I sick?” she thought. “Why didn’t I get on?”
Just as she was thinking this, another bus slowly entered the station, also a BRT. Jiang Xiaoyuan tapped her toes on the ground a few times but still didn’t get on.
She stood there with her eyes, nose, and mouth, turning into a statue of beauty that remained motionless, feeling horrified by her own transformation.
By the time Jiang Xiaoyuan stumbled into the hospital, she was already feeling a bit numb from the cold, but her posture remained elegantly numb, walking in as paralyzed as a coffin board.
She thought to herself as she walked, “If Zhang Tian can pay me back today, plus the half month’s salary I prepaid from Chen Noah1Just in case this isn’t obvious, this refers to Chen Fangzhou. Qi Lian calls him the Ark in reference to Noah’s Ark on Chapter 13, hence “Noah.” , it’ll add up to almost a thousand. I can use it to buy some thick clothes.”
Thinking of this, she felt a bit toothache — Less than a thousand, in her impression, was barely enough to buy a discounted and faded pair of jeans. Where could she find a decent thick coat?
Jiang Xiaoyuan endured the days of hardship in the dark internet cafe. The first thing she did was to throw away the “changed clothes,” swearing never to buy such cheap things again. She felt like her whole being was contaminated by that shabby outfit.
Maybe she can be like Feng Ruixue and go to the mall to buy some so-called popular brands, but not only are they ugly and copied from each other, but they also have matching clothes everywhere!
Did she have to buy clothes from those small stalls or subway shops?
What should she do if she encounters a shady businessman?
For a moment, all sorts of rumors and scaremongering about black-hearted cotton, ripping clothes off corpses to sell as new clothes… flashed through Jiang Xiaoyuan’s mind, making her feel itchy all over.
She has two incompatible qualities: being poor and having many things to do. The contradiction is simply irreconcilable, and she couldn’t figure out a solution all the way.
Jiang Xiaoyuan found herself in a predicament as she reached Sister Zhang’s hospital room. Sister Zhang was asleep, and Zhang Tian was sitting by her side. The girl’s originally soft and lively face had sunken in. She had a workbook on her knees, leaning against the back of the chair, half-dozing. The book slipped from her hand with a “thud,” waking her up in a panic. It took her a while to realize that nothing had happened. She frowned, angry at herself, and bent down to pick it up — then she saw Jiang Xiaoyuan.
When Zhang Tian saw her, she wasn’t surprised, but her expression changed slightly. Then she awkwardly forced out a polite expression and stood up, “Sister Xiaoyuan, you’re here?”
She was still young, and borrowing ten or twenty yuan between kids would seem like a big deal. Jiang Xiaoyuan borrowing five hundred yuan from her seemed like a huge “debt” that made her constantly uneasy. But when Zhang Xiuqin’s suddenly fell ill, the family’s once modest savings were quickly depleted in a blink of an eye.
The uncle who came to help told her that if the creditors came, she should pretend to be pitiful, to act as if she was desperate, and it would be best to cry pitifully so that others wouldn’t pressure her.
Zhang Tian thought naively, isn’t it right to return the money when you kill someone and pay the debt? How can you use others’ sympathy to play tricks like this?
The uncle said, “Okay, then go repay the debt. Where’s the money?”
There was no money.
So when Jiang Xiaoyuan came in, Zhang Tian almost dared not look her in the eye.
“I just came to take a look.” Jiang Xiaoyuan felt awkward walking into the hospital room. She should have brought a gift for visiting patients, but she had been thinking about black-hearted cotton all the way and forgot about it completely.
Zhang Tian: “Come in and sit.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan took a look and lowered her voice: “How is she doing?”
Zhang Tian shook her head dejectedly, “She had surgery, but the recovery isn’t going well. She still needs to be observed in the hospital for a while.”
“Oh…” Jiang Xiaoyuan didn’t know how to bring up the topic of repaying the debt. She paused for a moment, then awkwardly changed the subject, saying, “Luckily, there’s medical insurance now, or else…”
“My mom doesnt have it,” Zhang Tian interrupted her, meeting Jiang Xiaoyuan’s astonished gaze. She said, “My mom always thought she was healthy and wouldn’t get sick. She thought paying for medical insurance every month was expensive, so…”
Jiang Xiaoyuan’s heart sank halfway upon hearing this. She couldn’t believe her eyes widened, “So… you have to bear all the expenses for staying in the hospital? Does your family have that much money?”
As soon as Zhang Tian heard this, tears fell like broken beads, dripping down like rain. She had thought she couldn’t act, but when it came to this, she acted out of sadness, playing her true self, not needing to pretend at all. Zhang Tian silently shrank into the small chair, shaking her head while wiping away tears. She wiped more and more tears until she almost couldn’t breathe.
“Sister Xiaoyuan,” Zhang Tian choked out, “I’ll figure out a way to get the money, and I’ll pay you back as soon as I have it.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan blurted out, “Oh, forget it, forget it. No need. It’s important to see a doctor. You take it for now, I’m not in a hurry.”
Zhang Tian looked at her in disbelief, realizing that there were still such poor and generous fools in the world. So she cried even harder.
When Jiang Xiaoyuan arrived, she was worried about the quality of the clothing in various brand-name foreign trade shops. When she left, she realized with a heavy heart that she had thought too much and only the supermarket with “99 yuan down jacket sale” was her destination.
As Jiang Xiaoyuan left the hospital, she saw the lingering ghost of Qi Lian. Qi Lian, whose identity was a mystery, leaned against a big tree, waving to her and speaking briefly.
The first thing he said was, “Let’s go, it’s along the way.”
The second thing was, “Have they returned the money to you?”
Jiang Xiaoyuan didn’t even have the strength to be surprised anymore. Anyway, Qi Lian seemed to know everything, so it wasn’t surprising that he knew Jiang Xiaoyuan had lent money to Zhang Tian.
Jiang Xiaoyuan was rendered speechless by the sudden gust of cold wind. She couldn’t say anything, feeling that the wind was even colder than before as night fell. She couldn’t maintain her pretense of composure any longer, she shivered like a quail and shook her head.
Qi Lian was a little surprised: “Were you embarrassed to ask for it?”
Jiang Xiaoyuan was inexplicably sad: “I…I told her no.”
Although she stopped wearing make-up, started buying old magazines, and started to learn how to ride the BRT, at heart she was still a rich second generation who didn’t know how much money was worth. No matter how poor or embarrassed she was, money was always just a prop in her eyes. The sudden absence will indeed cause a lot of inconvenience to her life, but it is not important enough to override other things – such as a human life and morality.
Qi Lian looked at her strangely, assessing her as if he had come to some new realization. He said, “I didn’t expect you to be quite generous.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan: “It’s not that… Let’s not talk about this. Didn’t you say we’re going to a party? How are we getting there?”
Qi Lian stood still, not moving an inch. Behind the lenses of his glasses, his eyes were as sharp as knives. “Why don’t you ask who’s coming today?”
Jiang Xiaoyuan: “…”
She felt that anything Qi Lian said was like a pun, poking at her fragile nerves one by one. Jiang Xiaoyuan knew she should try to play some Tai Chi, pretend to be more confused, but reason hadn’t yet taken control of her body. Impulse had already stimulated her to blurt out, “What are you trying to say? You already knew that I’m not…”
Qi Lian glanced at her, just that one glance, and Jiang Xiaoyuan inexplicably couldn’t speak anymore.
Qi Lian put a finger to his lips, making a gesture not to speak. “Don’t think that, and don’t say that,” he said, “Come with me.”
Jiang Xiaoyuan’s heart raced wildly and she quickly left the hospital with Qi Lian.
“Get in the car,” Qi Lian said, “Let me show you something first.”
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