Gu Jianghan had even brought his own ax. Without saying much, he entered the courtyard and began chopping firewood.
Xiao Mandong watched him for a while, calming herself down before hurrying inside to cook. Fortunately, she was used to preparing ingredients in her personal space.
She made sauerkraut with vermicelli, pork with cabbage, and fried eggs. She didn’t dare bring out any greens. Finally, she put on a pot of chicken soup.
She did most of her cooking in her personal space, so no smell could escape outside.
But now that she was cooking indoors, the aroma soon drifted throughout the entire corridor.
“Where is that smell coming from? Why does it smell so good? It must be coming from the apartment across the hall, right? This is the first time I’ve ever smelled cooking from her place.”
A woman’s voice came from outside. Xiao Mandong recognized it as Chen Guixiang from across the hall. Qi Yuqing had mentioned that Chen Guixiang’s husband worked at the canning factory, while she had no job and stayed home to give birth to and raise their children. They already had three, and the one in her belly was six months along.
The reason they were able to live in the hospital staff compound was that Chen Guixiang’s father-in-law had worked in the hospital morgue. Years ago, when a fire broke out at the hospital, he had died trying to put it out. To comfort the family of the fallen hero, the hospital had assigned them an apartment.
“Oh, she really doesn’t understand the rules. She’s been here for so long and hasn’t even gone door to door to show her appreciation. When Little Liu moved in upstairs, she gave everyone two pieces of hard candy.”
This was another woman’s voice. Xiao Mandong couldn’t tell who it was, but she could be sure that this woman was no better than Chen Guixiang.
Just as the chicken soup was placed on the table, someone knocked on the door. Standing outside were a boy of about ten and a girl of five or six. Both children were thin and dark-skinned. One held an empty bowl, while the other hugged two sprouted potatoes.
“Sis, I have two big potatoes. Can I trade them for four small pieces of meat?”
The boy’s eyes kept peering through the crack in the door. When he saw the dishes on the table, he began drooling.
From the corner of her eye, Xiao Mandong spotted a figure behind the door across the hall. She guessed that these two children belonged to Chen Guixiang. The woman was too embarrassed to come out and ask for meat herself, so she had sent her children with a couple of sprouted potatoes to make the trade. What shamelessness.
“No deal. If you want to eat, have your mother cook something for you.”
With that, Xiao Mandong moved to close the door.
She had never liked children, and the boy’s shifty appearance made her dislike him even more.
The boy’s voice suddenly rose. “I called you Sis! What’s wrong with giving me two pieces of meat? I’m not taking advantage of you—we’re trading! I’m giving you big potatoes in exchange for small pieces. How can you be so stingy?”
His mother had told him that if he said this while there were outsiders in the woman’s home, the woman would definitely agree to the trade to save face.
“Because these things belong to me. I don’t want to trade, so I won’t.”
Looking at the boy’s self-righteous expression, Xiao Mandong was so angry that she almost laughed.
“If you didn’t want to give us any, why did you cook the meat so fragrant? That’s too much! We all live in the same compound, and we’re just children. How can you be so heartless? You’re eating meat by yourself while making us smell it!”
Xiao Mandong didn’t want to argue with such an unreasonable child. She tried to close the door, but the boy stubbornly held on to the doorframe.
In truth, she wasn’t short of this little bit of food. But she had disliked the boy from the moment she saw him. Perhaps it was because his tone resembled Lu Ming’s in some ways, giving her an instinctive feeling of disgust.
Then, in the very next second, the boy of about ten dropped straight to the floor and began kicking his legs as he cried.
“Waaah! Waaah! An adult is bullying a child! This woman hit me!”
Hearing the boy’s cries, Chen Guixiang immediately rushed out from behind the door. One hand supported her pregnant belly, while the other held the hand of another boy.
“You’re really unbelievable! How could you bully a child? Never mind that my child brought something to trade with you—even if he hadn’t brought anything, you still shouldn’t argue with a child, should you? And even if you didn’t want to give him anything to eat, you had no reason to hit him! We all live in the same staff compound. How could you be so ruthless? You’re a doctor, too. Who would have thought you could be so narrow-minded?”
By now, quite a few people had come out to watch the commotion. Chen Guixiang had lived in the compound for more than ten years, and the neighbors knew her well. As soon as they heard that her child had tried to trade potatoes for meat, everyone understood what had really happened.
So when she claimed that Xiao Mandong had hit her child, no one said anything. Chen Guixiang had used this trick to extort more than one household before.
“How about this? Everyone has a hard time, but my child can’t have been hit for nothing. Just serve him a bowl of that meat, and we’ll call it even.”
There was only one wage earner in Chen Guixiang’s family, supporting five people. Their life was genuinely difficult; they barely had enough to eat, let alone meat. The aroma of the stew had been drilling into her nose nonstop. Never mind the children—even she was struggling not to swallow her saliva. Since this opportunity had presented itself, she might as well get a bowl of meat and satisfy her craving.
“Sis didn’t hit him. He sat down and started crying all by himself. He’s lying!”
A little girl’s childish voice came from the second floor.
A girl of five or six was leaning over the stair railing, peering down at them. Her small face was red from the cold, but her eyes were bright.
“You little brat, how dare you spout nonsense?” Chen Guixiang’s expression darkened. Pointing upstairs, she shouted, “Liu Ping, control your daughter’s mouth. Don’t let her say such things!”
The little girl shrank back after being yelled at, but she stubbornly muttered, “I’m not talking nonsense. That big brother was lying.”
The girl’s mother was startled when she saw her child being scolded, and she immediately lost her temper as well.
“Stop pointing your finger at my daughter! Everyone in the compound knows what your children are like, even if we don’t say it aloud. It’s a real shame that you’ve turned perfectly good children into this.”
“Why don’t we report this to the police?” Xiao Mandong said. “You brought your child here to extort me. That’s coercion. You came asking for something, and I was somehow not allowed to refuse? This is the first time I’ve ever encountered anything like this.”
The moment he heard her mention the police, the boy scrambled to his feet and hid behind Chen Guixiang. He had only wanted two pieces of meat—how had things become so serious? This wasn’t even the first time he had used potatoes to trade for food. In the past, it had worked every time.
“You… What kind of person are you?” Chen Guixiang protested. “We all live in the same compound. Why are you being so petty? My son came to trade, not steal. How could it possibly be serious enough to report to the police?”
“Doctor Xiao! Doctor Xiao, please help! Second Girl is convulsing all over at my house. What should I do?”
The aunt who had carried Second Girl home came rushing over. Her steps were unsteady, and her voice was full of tears. She had only brought the child home out of kindness, but if something happened to her at her house…
