While the Hu family was in chaos, Liu Chen was accepting a love lunch from her mother, Ms. Liu—a KFC family bucket.
Looking at the tempting aroma of the family bucket in her arms, and the warm cup of pearl milk tea that Liu Fang insisted she drink, Liu Chen took a sip. Mmm, soft pearls, perfectly chewy.
In her previous life, neither she nor Liu Fang would spend money on such small snacks. It was too expensive, and over time, the habit of spending formed. Even after being reborn, she had barely drunk any.
Seeing Liu Chen holding a cup of pearl milk tea and drinking it, her eyes involuntarily narrowed in happiness, Liu Fang’s eyes began to well up. How difficult must the child have been to be this happy over a cup of milk tea?
“Mom is going back to the shop. Call me if anything happens. You’ll always be the most important person in Mom’s heart, understand?”
After speaking, Liu Fang looked her obedient daughter up and down with a gaze full of pity, then sighed:
“You’ve lost weight.”
With that, she counted out ten hundred-yuan bills from her black leather bag and put them into Liu Chen’s hand, along with the school bonus she had received that morning.
“Mom’s leaving. I’ll make you chicken soup tonight.”
Seeing that the first class of the afternoon was about to start in half an hour, Liu Fang finally released her daughter’s hand and walked downstairs, looking back repeatedly.
Liu Chen held the thousand yuan in her hand, feeling a bit bewildered. What had gotten into her mom today? Giving her money and KFC all of a sudden?
“Heh heh, I saw it. Auntie asked Mi Zhuzhu’s dad how much her weekly living expenses were. He said a thousand yuan, otherwise, with prices being so high now, the child wouldn’t be able to eat enough.” Lai Jielun, while grabbing a fried chicken leg from the family bucket, answered her confusion.
Hearing this, Ren Mo’s eyes widened as he looked at Mi Zhuzhu, who was sitting in front of him and had lost some weight due to her recent diligent studies. “A thousand yuan? So Zhuzhu, you’re a little rich girl? Then why were you reluctant to buy pearl milk tea last time? I thought your dad didn’t give you enough money.”
Mi Zhuzhu chuckled, not explaining. Liu Chen, however, looking at Zhuzhu’s smile, suddenly had a guess.
Her eighteenth birthday was coming up soon. Could Mi Zhuzhu be… saving money to buy her a birthday present?
Because of this guess, Liu Chen felt it would be inappropriate to ask further about the reason for saving money and urged everyone to hurry up with their lunch break.
***
It was past nine in the evening when Hu Qian arrived home. The house was dark, and there was a strong smell of smoke in the living room. Hu Qian didn’t open the windows to ventilate. She tiredly walked into the bathroom, washed her hands, and then went to open her bedroom door.
She reached out and turned on the light by the door. The bedroom lit up.
“Ah!”
Hu Qian screamed, startled by Zhang Lili’s bruised face. She quickly squatted down, holding Zhang Lili’s leg, and asked, “Mom? What happened to you? Who hit you?”
Looking at her daughter’s flustered expression, Zhang Lili felt a glimmer of relief. She twitched her lips, enduring the pain, and looked at Qian Qian, saying, “Mom took a sleeping pill for Grandma today because I was going to your parent-teacher conference and worried Grandma would wake up with no one to look after her. As a result, your paternal aunt came back this morning and couldn’t wake Grandma. She was sent to the hospital for examination, and they found she had taken a sleeping pill. Your dad found out and came to beat me.”
Hu Qian listened, her mouth agape, squatting on the ground. She found her mother terrifying. The hand that was holding Zhang Lili subconsciously loosened. After a moment of daze, she trembled and asked, “Mom, how could you do this?”
After being ridiculed, taken advantage of, and laughed at during the parent-teacher conference since early morning, and then being physically assaulted by Hu Xingfa in front of everyone in the ward, Zhang Lili closed her eyes and took a deep breath, feeling the pain in her head and chest worsen.
Sitting up from the bed, Zhang Lili said nothing more, but she had already made up her mind. From now on, she would only mind her own business. As for Hu Qian, she would let Hu Xingfa worry about her!
***
After the city-wide joint examination, the topic of the top rank in the grade gradually faded as the temperature dropped.
Before leaving for school in the morning, Liu Chen glanced at the prize pool. 1120 tickets. Liu Chen didn’t touch them. She wanted to wait until after midnight on her birthday to clear them all out. Besides, tomorrow was Sunday, so she could give herself a day off.
Due to the temperature drop, the normal school uniform rules at Shifan Fuzhong were not as strictly enforced. After all, with bulky down jackets on, the outer school uniform could barely cover them.
This resulted in a sea of colorful down jackets all over the school…
Class Six of Senior Three was no exception, with every color from red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, to purple present.
Mi Zhuzhu, wearing a pink long down jacket that covered her from head to her calves, and pink snow boots, pounced into Liu Chen’s arms like a pink snowman, her voice full of joy: “Chenchen, hehe, look, we’re wearing matching best friend outfits!”
Liu Chen reached up and patted Zhuzhu’s head, messing up her hair. Before Mi Zhuzhu could get angry, she took out a Fujiya lollipop from her pocket and gave it to her.
“Heh heh, my Chenchen is the best. She knows I like milk flavor~~”
Saying that, Mi Zhuzhu sat back in her chair with her hair a mess. It wasn’t until Lai Jielun exclaimed that she had a bird’s nest on her head that she realized it. She then raised her small, chubby fist and beat up Lai Jielun.
Liu Chen, sitting behind, braced herself for an attack from Mi Zhuzhu, but found that after looking at her phone, Mi Zhuzhu just sat at her seat grinning foolishly…
Saturday afternoons only had two classes before school ended. The boarding students had brought their laundry to the classroom during lunch break so they could leave directly after school without wasting time.
However, today there were quite a few cloth bags, piling up the empty space behind Liu Chen’s chair.
The second class in the afternoon was Ms. Lai’s Chinese lesson. She never liked to extend class. With ten minutes left before the end of class, Ms. Lai called Liu Chen to the front to share the reason for her high score in Chinese reading comprehension.
As the teachers’ favorite student, Liu Chen was accustomed to being called upon occasionally to share her study experience, but it was the first time for Chinese.
Walking from the last row to the front platform, she had just settled in and turned around when she heard a bang.
The students sitting on either side of the platform held small party poppers. The sound was from pulling them. Colorful streamers shot up to the classroom ceiling and then slowly fell.
The students of Class Six, Senior Three, had brilliant smiles on their youthful faces and said in unison:
“Liu Chen! Happy eighteenth birthday!”