Chapter 4: Chapter 4: Blustering yet Cowardly Ruffian
Returning to the village from the town usually took more than an hour.
Suizi was in a hurry, eager to confront Lun Lamei for an explanation.
Lamei had hitched a ride with her, but the moment she saw Yu Jingting arrive, she slipped away.
You can't run away from your own home; Suizi planned to confront her there.
Yu Jingting, however, was in no rush. He led Suizi towards the entrance of the Supply and Marketing Cooperative.
"What are you up to?" Suizi asked.
"No matter what you see, don't say a word." Yu Jingting responded, keeping his eyes darting around them.
Suizi broke out in a cold sweat, imagining him impulsively robbing the Cooperative, getting arrested... the mental image scared her.
In her previous life, he had been arrested for smashing up a hospital, leaving Suizi with deep psychological trauma.
At that time, he was cursing and struggling futilely as they twisted his arms and arrested him. Because of his flagrant behavior, he had landed a few days in jail.
The more Suizi thought about it, the more unease grew within her. She was about to grab him and warn him when he moved to approach a middle-aged woman emerging from the Cooperative.
He directed the middle-aged woman to an uncrowded corner. Two minutes later he returned, with an additional one yuan in his hand.
Tears of frustration were welling up in Suizi's eyes.
Did he rob that woman?
He was always skirted along the edge of the law. Where was the good in that?
"Where did you get this money?" Suizi was prepared to scold him if he did anything wrong.
"I traded it for sugar tickets."
Jingting showed her the remaining sugar tickets in his hand.
At this point, the sugar tickets were quite large, and they're valid for six months.
In the previous years, the controls were stricter. To buy something, you had to use both money and tickets. Without tickets, you couldn't buy, but the regulations have relaxed in the past couple of years, allowing people to purchase things with few extra money and no tickets.
Take sugar as an example; if you had a ticket, it was 0.78 yuan per pound. Without a ticket, it was 1.2 yuan.
He exchanged three months' worth of tickets for a yuan, making it a profitable deal for both parties.
Suizi withdrew her ready-to-reprimand-hand and let out a breath.
"How did you know that woman needed sugar tickets?"
"She had a basket filled with eggs and canned food, and her face was full of anxiety. It was very likely that she had a sick person at home, and people in such situations would definitely need sugar tickets."
Suizi suddenly realized, so that's why.
Yu Jingting was a cunning risk-taker. If you listened to the villagers talk, they'd say he never used his wits for good.
She knew from her past life that he had ways of making money. She was timid and thought his methods were wrong, hence her fear of him before.
She was now more awe than fear when witnessing his methods, given her experiences in the past life.
"Stay here and wait, I'm going to buy some sugar."
"Let's save our money and forgo the sugar." She pulled him back.
Jingting gave her a teasing smile, looking sweet with his two small canines showing. He was not intimidating at all.
"Don't tell me you think I can't afford to keep a wife and child? Just wait here patiently."
Suizi's face warmed up. So the sugar was meant for her.
An egg white mixed with sugar and water was seen by the villagers as the best nutritional supplement, fit only for the sick and the children. He cared about the child and tried his best to get the supplement for her.
After a while, he came out with a triangular cloth bag filled quite full with a lot of stuff.
"What are you looking at? I didn't steal or rob anything."
Jingting turned his head to the side, his face stern, as he hefted the bag onto his shoulder. It looked heavy.
He knew his wife didn't like his ways and was afraid of him.
He also knew that his actions of resource acquisition would be met with her disapproval. The villagers looked down on his behavior, and her disapproval was expected as normal.
But regardless of whether she was afraid, it could not deter his determination to properly care for his pregnant wife.
"What's in this?" Suizi felt around with the bags. It looked more than just sugar.
Jingting put down the bag and said gruffly:
"Look quickly, and then you can go ahead and report me." Let him try, and he'd carry her back home and punish her in bed!
Jingting had had enough of her acting scared and wary. Other people dismissed him, and she joined the herd. He planned to give her a good fright so she would be too scared to live comfortably with him — take her home and have his way with her for two or three days straight, and see if she'd continue crying or being afraid!
The man was full of malicious intent, so he opened the bag and waited for his plump little wife to take the bait.
Suizi checked the bag. Inside, besides a large bag of granulated sugar wrapped in kraft paper, there were also series of small things, odds and ends filling up half of the sack.
These items were all mortgage-traded from meat tickets and egg tickets.
Although he didn't have any cash on hand, he knew how to maximize the benefits by turning assets into cash.
"Our village is near the town, and nobody wants these things here. But I can take them to remote villages tomorrow and make a decent amount of money," Jingting said in an aggressive yet persuasive tone. "The Industrial and Commercial Bureau is just ahead if you'd like to report me."
"Why would I report you? Do I look that stupid? If you are put inside, who would look after my child? He would be left without a father!"
Jingting, who in his mind was already planning how to scare her straight, was taken aback by her words.
Normally, she would have been trembling and too frightened to speak, but now, she was even smiling — she had to admit, she looked really good when she smiled, with her small dimples and sweet eyes, much better than when she cried.
Jingting temporarily forgot his intent to menace his wife and helplessly indulged in her beauty.
"There are still things that need to be made clear," she said earnestly after tucking away her smile.
Here it was, the sobbing threat to report him! Jingting felt a chill.
"You do things outside for our family, and I understand that. But you need to have a line in your mind about what you can do and what you can't do. How do you know that the child in my stomach won't be a leader in the future?"
"What does this have to do with being a leader?"
"If the child's father has a criminal record, he will not be able to be an official in the future. If I am carrying a future leader in my belly, do you have the heart to let him lose this opportunity?"
Jingting had never heard such reasoning and was shocked.
The villagers often said that he would surely end up in prison and if he had a son, he would also grow up to be a loafer. His family, going back generations, never produced a decent person.
"Can our son become a leader?" Jingting asked in surprise.
Suizi lifted her head proudly.
"Even if he doesn't become a leader, but becomes a big merchant like his father, or a cultured person like his mother, wouldn't that also be good? When the child grows up, whether it's a boy or a girl, I will teach him to study hard and be a good person. You have to set an example for the child. Our family can produce leaders and talent, but we can definitely not produce loafers!"
"We're going to confront Lamei soon. We can demand an explanation and even ask her mother to return the betrothal gifts, but you can't resort to violence and beat people up. From now on, before you do anything, think it through. As long as you don't get arrested, anything else can be discussed."
Being the cunning man he was, Jingting quickly translated his wife's words in his mind: She wasn't opposed?
"Keep your shrewdness for us, the government is too lazy to manage these small amounts and even if it's a bit more, it would at most be a fine of a hundred or so yuan. Wait, what did you just say? Taking back the betrothal gifts?" How much had she been through that she even brought up such a thing?!
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone