Transmigrated Farmgirl's Scheme to Get Rich - Chapter 18
Wraps
When Mrs. Liang stopped, Mo Ling lifted her arm up to wipe her tears, “Yan’er, from tomorrow onwards, we will earn our own money and spend it ourselves. We won’t have to spend a penny on this waste of space. He can eat whatever he wants! It’ll be none of our business.” Then, she turned and ran back inside her room.
This was how the Mo family’s days were, full of arguments and with rarely any peace. When Mo Yan sat at the dining table, not even daring to breathe too loudly. She even drank her congee in small sips.
Mo Feng shoved the remaining few bites of food on his plate into his mouth like a hungry demon and then shovelled in the rest of the white bread.
Mo Yan didn’t dare to ask about what happened in the Lu family. No one at the table spoke at all, and only the sounds of Mo Feng eating could be heard.
After the meal, Mrs. Liang grumbled and went back to her room angrily, while Mo Yan washed up. Her hand wasn’t fully healed yet, so she had to work slowly with her remaining hand. Looking at the faint glow of the oil lamp on the corner of the stove, she felt a hint of despair in her heart. How much longer would this go on for? When would it end?
When she had finished, she went to the threshing field as always. She had arrived late and the threshing field was already full by the time she was there.
When she arrived, the crowd took their seats and gradually quieted down. Cao Zhang noticed the bandage on her hand and came over to ask if she was fine, but Mo Yan didn’t feel like explaining it to him, so she just shook her head and said she was fine.
The crowd asked her what she was going to say today, and Mo Yan forced a smile, “Today I will tell the story of Xue Pinggui and Wang Baochuan.” [1]
She was in a bad mood and wasn’t in the mood to tell any comedies or jokes, and wanted to use this sad story to vent a little of her negative emotions.
The story made everyone cry, especially the older people in the crowd. They were all sobbing uncontrollably by the time she finished.
When the story was finished, Mo Yan didn’t end with her usual uplifting endings, nor did she ask what they wanted to hear tomorrow. She just waved towards them and left.
Cao Zhang had noticed that she had come alone and offered, “Yan’er, let me walk you home!”
“There’s no need, it’s just a short road at the side of the village. You should go back first! Mr. Tian is still waiting for you to carry the lantern to light the way back to the school!”
Cao Zhang looked back and saw that Mr. Tian was standing by the table waiting for him, so he had no choice but to go back.
As she walked home, she heard faint footsteps behind her. She turned back to look but no one was there, and she turned back to walk again, the footsteps became audible again. She stopped walking, and the sounds behind her stopped.
When she reached a sharp turn in the road, Mo Yan suddenly moved to the side and quickly hid in the shadows. She quietly looked behind her only to see Lu Junming, who was carrying a small bag in his hand and looking around.
“Meow!” Mo Yan imitated a cat’s cry, and Lu Junming stopped looking around and walked towards her with his arms folded. When he reached her, he took an abrupt step towards the shadows and let out a cry like a cat in heat at the same time, scaring Mo Yan into flailing on his body with her eyes closed.
Lu Junming laughed loudly, “You’re such a scaredy-cat! Were you really trying to scare me like that?” He handed over the small bag in his hand to Mo Yan, “Why did you leave in such a hurry? You didn’t even take the food.”
“I knew there wouldn’t be any missing. Governing official Wu would’ve helped collect it.”
“You’re in a bad mood. What’s wrong? Did Mrs. Liu try to cause trouble?”
With Mrs. Liang around, what trouble could she cause?
“She didn’t. Nothing happened at all.”
While they were speaking, they arrived at her home. Mo Yan closed the courtyard gate and locked it, not even having the spirit to say goodbye to Lu Junming.
That night, Mo Yan didn’t sleep well. She knew her sister wasn’t asleep either, but she didn’t dare talk to her.
It was late at night, and all of the people were silent, but the sound of insects outside was incredibly noisy. Mo Yan didn’t know which hour of the morning she finally fell asleep at.
When she woke up, her sister was no longer next to her. When she ran outside, she saw smoke coming out of the kitchen and went over to see the sight of her sister tending to the fire in the kitchen.
Mo Yan opened the courtyard gate, raising the doorstopper to allow the ducklings to enter and exit easily. She casually brushed her hair using her hand, before messily tying up her hair into a bun with a wooden hairpin. Finally, she ran towards the pond. [2]
She jogged along the path by the pond while breathing evenly. When she reached the Lu family home, she saw Sir Lu doing tai chi in the courtyard. As she greeted him, Lu Junming came running out.
He was still wearing those white silk clothes, but had forgone an outer robe. The two of them ran around the pond, one after the other. Mo Yan’s body was far too weak and she couldn’t run anymore after a single lap and squatted down to rest. She looked at Lu Junming, who was still breathing easily and didn’t seem tired in the slightest.
“Rest for a bit and wait for me to come back,” Lu Junming said as he continued running.
Mo Yan simply sat down on the ground to rest as she waited for Lu Junming to return. After that, he pulled her up and they started running again.
Mo Yan managed to run three laps like this on-and-off before she couldn’t bear it anymore. Lu Junming could only let her rest and ran by himself until he ran ten laps. Then, he brought Mo Yan into his courtyard.
Lu Junming wiped his sweat with a handkerchief and handed it to Mo Yan. Afterwards, he went inside to grab the medicine and bandages.
When he untied the bandage, the wound had already formed a light scab, so he didn’t dare touch it. He applied some more medicine and replaced the dirty bandage with a clean one.
When Mo Yan was about to return home, Lu Junming ran to the kitchen and quickly brought out a piece of rolled-up flatbread and handed it to Mo Yan, who opened it to see scrambled eggs and a few slices of meat inside.
“Try it!”
Mo Yan let out a sound of surprise with a big smile of delight on her face. But immediately, her smile disappeared and she handed the wrap back to Lu Junming, “I’ll eat back home.”
All that was waiting for her back home were salted vegetables and thin porridge. Lu Junming ran back to the kitchen and brought out an identical wrap, shoving one of them at her, “Eat with me and tell me how good it is. After all, the eggs were scrambled by me.”
Lu Junming pulled her to sit under the tree in the courtyard and started eating. Mo Yan had a bite and said calmly, “It’d be better if you added some shredded salted vegetables and some of my mother’s sauce.”
“Then ask her to bring some over. If it’s really good, she can send it every day, and we’ll pay you back for it.”
We’ll pay you back for it! Mo Yan thought to herself, Lu Junming must think I’m a mercenary girl who only cares about money and thinks about selling everything for money.
But in all honesty, this wrap was really good and could probably be sold for a tidy sum. She just didn’t know where to sell it or who to sell it to.
This wrap was a bit too large for Mo Yan to finish. However, it would be too rude to give her leftovers to Lu Junming, and it would be a pity to throw it away, so she tucked the rest away and smiled at Lu Junming, “I’ll save it for my next meal.”
As she stood up and walked out of the Lu family’s courtyard, Lu Junming reminded her, “Remember to keep your hand away from water.”
Looking at her thin back, Sir Lu sighed and said, “Poor child. She was born sickly and almost died of intestinal sickness when she was a child.”
“Why doesn’t her mother like her?” Lu Junming asked.
“It’s not that her mother doesn’t like her, it’s that she doesn’t like daughters. Farming households prefer sons because they are better at working and can perform heavy labour. They say it’s useless to raise a girl well, since she’ll be someone else’s eventually.”
“Since she will be someone else’s sooner or later, let’s ask her to come to ours!”
His grandfather laughed, “Silly boy, you want to marry her at this age?”
Lu Junming blushed, “No, I mean letting her live with us and be a member of our family.”
“They’re farmers, and we’re soldiers. They’re above us in the social hierarchy.” [3]
PS: Edited Nov 21st, 2023, to try and get the rest of the story up to the current standards. This includes using the current terms and polishing up the translation. I managed to eke out this edit out of a lot of real life events. Don’t expect them to be very frequent or regular.
[1] The story she’s referring to has a happy ending though.
[2] The doorstopper is a giant wooden pole, not the small triangular doorstopper you’re probably thinking of.
[3] The social hierarchy I heard of was scholars, farmers, artisans and merchants. Soldiers aren’t part of the hierarchy, and this is in no way, shape or form based on financial status whatsoever, considering how most farmers shown in this novel are dirt-poor.