The two of them didn't go inside the restroom, but stopped at the sheltered spot right next to it.
"Ugh, your hands are ice-cold, stop touching me, ah... you... you're freezing me to death." The woman's grumble was laced with coquettish exasperation.
Xiao Mandong instantly recognized that voice—it was Auntie Ma.
Hearing Auntie Ma's coquettish whimpers, Xiao Mandong broke out in goosebumps all over her arms.
"Just let me touch for a little while, they'll warm up soon, mmm..." The man couldn't wait any longer and pressed his mouth over Auntie Ma's.
By the light of the moon, Xiao Mandong could see that even in this freezing weather, Auntie Ma's cotton-padded jacket was unbuttoned, and the man had his head buried inside it, out of sight. It was only after a long while that the man lifted his head. To be honest, he was quite good-looking, probably not even thirty years old.
After the foreplay, the man hurriedly turned Auntie Ma around. "Turn around, hurry up, dawn will break any minute now."
"Ugh, you're awful... ah... go easy on me..."
"Alright, alright, just bear with it a little!"
Before long, the woman's soft panting and the man's ragged, hurried breathing drifted over. Xiao Mandong's feet were growing numb from the cold, but the two of them were still going at it—this man really had quite the stamina.
A dozen minutes later, the man zipped up his trousers and pulled Auntie Ma into his arms.
"Sister-in-law, doing it out here is way more thrilling than at home. I'm really falling more and more for you."
"You're being silly. If I wasn't scared the kids would hear, I wouldn't have come out here to freeze with you." Auntie Ma slapped his chest playfully.
The man caught her hand. "Who told you to make so much noise?"
"Alright, hurry on home. You're always like a starved wolf. Can't Xiaofang satisfy you?"
"She's as stiff and unresponsive as a dead fish. Hey, I heard you were planning to set my little brother up with a girl?"
"Yeah, I was going to, but I got a bad feeling about her. She just moved into the family compound and already brings random men home, so I decided to call that one off. I'll find someone else for your brother."
"Hey, sister-in-law, is that other girl pretty? Let me get a look at her first." As he spoke, the man snuck his hand back inside Auntie Ma's cotton-padded trousers.
"Get lost! What do you think you're doing? I'm telling you, don't you even think about laying a finger on her..."
Their voices faded further and further away. It took Xiao Mandong quite a while to make sense of the whole conversation.
Wait a minute, this man is Auntie Ma's husband's younger brother?
She's having an affair with her own brother-in-law? Even the family compounds in the city are this messy...
Xiao Mandong rubbed her cold, numb legs, then tiptoed out of the restroom. After making sure no one was outside, she hurried home.
Once inside her house, Xiao Mandong first went into her personal space to take a shower and change into fresh clothes. She finished making breakfast, and by then the sky was fully light out. She let Diandian out of the space, then headed to the hospital for her shift.
The whole day she was distracted, her mind kept circling back to the question of whether the man she had seen with Liu Mengyao was actually a spy. When she got off work, she asked the hospital director for leave, deciding that she absolutely had to go to the military base the next day to talk to the division political commissar about the whole matter.
She had just walked into the family compound when someone bumped into her, nearly making her stumble.
"I'm so sorry, so sorry."
A girl was dragging a mountain of luggage, limping slowly as she made her way toward the building entrance.
"Let me help you carry some of that," Xiao Mandong offered, noticing that the girl had a bad leg.
"Thank you, but no need. My home is right here on the first floor of this building," the girl replied, then knocked on Chen Guixiang's door.
"Who is it? Bang bang bang, why are you pounding so hard? Are you gonna pay for the door if you break it?" Chen Guixiang grumbled as she wrenched the door open, only to gape in shock when she saw who was standing outside.
"You... you... what are you doing back here?" Chen Guixiang was so stunned she could barely get her words out.
"This apartment was allocated to my dad as compensation from his work unit, and part of it belongs to me. Why wouldn't I be allowed to come back?"
With that, the girl tossed her bundles inside and squeezed past Chen Guixiang into the room.
Xiao Mandong had just turned to open her own door to head inside when she heard Chen Guixiang shriek.
"Gao Huizhi, what are you doing? You're throwing all the kids' things out! Where are they supposed to live? You already went to the countryside for the rural resettlement program, what are you doing back? Did you sneak back here illegally? I'm warning you, if you ran away without permission, you'll get dragged back and struggle through public criticism sessions."
She never expected her sister-in-law to show up out of nowhere. Their home was already cramped enough as it was, and now there was one more person to feed and house—how were they supposed to make this work?
"This room is mine. They can sleep wherever they want," Gao Huizhi tossed her bag onto the bed, then turned to glare daggers at Chen Guixiang.
"I'm telling you Chen Guixiang, I'm officially back from the countryside. Do you get it? The Educated Youth Office approved my return, I meet all the requirements. All those years ago, you tricked me into going to the rural frontier, and I've been gone for three whole years. Now I'm back, and I'm never leaving again."
"Who do you think you're kidding? No one gets to move back to the city these days without a job waiting for them! There's no way they'd let you come back," Chen Guixiang planted her hands on her hips, her pregnant belly sticking out. "Gao Huizhi, I'm warning you, you better go back on your own before they drag you away, and don't you dare drag our family's reputation through the mud."
Chen Guixiang was seething with rage. Her husband had left for work early that morning, and as a heavily pregnant woman, she didn't dare lunge at Gao Huizhi—if she got hurt, she'd be the one suffering. But there was no way she believed Gao Huizhi had official approval to return. This little hussy must have snuck back on her own.
"Gao Huizhi, are you in there?" The neighborhood committee officer rushed over, and frowned when he saw clothes scattered all over the floor.
Chen Guixiang's face lit up the second she spotted the officer. She grabbed the man's sleeve at once.
"Sir, you're here just in time! My sister-in-law was sent to the far northwest countryside for resettlement, she must have run back here illegally. You need to send her back right away, before she drags all of us down with her."
She knew it, that little hussy had to have snuck back. The neighborhood committee was already here right after she walked in—she thought she could waltz back to the city? What a joke.
The neighborhood committee officer ignored her, pulled a document out of his bag and handed it to Gao Huizhi. "You left a copy of your official return paperwork at the neighborhood office, so I brought it over for you. The Educated Youth Office will probably send people over to check on you in the next couple days, so stay home and don't go wandering off."
"Thank you so much, Director," Gao Huizhi took the paper, glanced over it, carefully folded it up and tucked it into the inner pocket of her shirt, right next to her chest.
The smile froze right off Chen Guixiang's face. She'd heard every word the two of them said, and she suddenly shrieked at the top of her voice.
"Return... return paperwork? What return paperwork?"
"How can you be back in the city? That's impossible! Everyone else is stuck out in the countryside, why do you get to come back? There's no way... you must have used some underhanded, shameful trick to get that approval, didn't you?"
She looked Gao Huizhi up and down, her eyes rolling as her mind spun with schemes.
That little hussy definitely used some dirty trick. Her sister-in-law was always such a pretty thing, and all those years ago, her own brother-in-law had had his eye on Gao Huizhi first. She'd gone through so much trouble to trick that little hussy into going to the countryside, and pulled strings to make sure her own sister got Gao Huizhi's old factory job and married her brother-in-law...
She'd thought that little hussy would be stuck out in the countryside for the rest of her life. She never imagined that only a few years later, she'd be back.
Return to the city? Over her dead body.
Chen Guixiang clenched her fists so tight her knuckles went white, and bit down hard on her lower lip.
