Chapter 10: Have Your Second Brother Divorce His Wife

Qiao Ran blinked at him in apparent confusion. “I’m Qiao Ni, your lawfully wedded wife. Have you lost your memory?”

“You’re not.” Lu Xiangnan denied it with certainty.

Despite his decisive words, his thoughts wavered. The Qiao Ni before him felt like an impostor, her personality utterly different from before. Yet her figure and appearance hadn’t changed at all, not even the unusually pale pink beauty mark on the tip of her nose.

Qiao Ran and Xia Xiaoqi might be unwilling to pretend to be other people, but that didn’t mean they would casually reveal everything about themselves.

Time travel? As if. It would be lucky if nobody believed them. If they were locked in a laboratory and used as guinea pigs, that wouldn’t be funny at all.

Qiao Ran sighed softly. “To tell you the truth, I really disliked the person I used to be. I don’t want people bullying me or calling me a silent lump. I want to change and live differently.”

It might not be a perfect explanation, but it was the most reasonable one. After all, the idea of traveling through time would be as strange to Xiangnan as a fairy tale.

He watched her silently, as though trying to see through her skin to everything beneath it.

Qiao Ran met his gaze openly, unafraid.

Then two fake coughs sounded from across the table.

“Had enough staring?” Xiaoqi leaned back with her arms folded. “I’m sitting right here like a giant light bulb, and you’re still gazing into each other’s eyes. Am I just a third wheel to you?”

Xiangnan’s ears reddened, and his beautiful phoenix eyes darted away from Qiao Ran’s face.

The meal came to two yuan and sixty fen. When the server arrived with the bill, both women stared straight at Xiangnan.

He pressed his thin lips together. “Before we came, you said you were treating me.”

“I did?” Qiao Ran looked astonished. “How come I don’t remember?”

“You definitely didn’t,” Xiaoqi chimed in. “I never heard it.”

Xiangnan had nothing to say. When had these sisters-in-law started working together? United, they were impossible to beat.

Naturally, he paid for the meal and gave them money for the chickens, along with some grain and cloth coupons.

He had classes that afternoon, so he returned to school.

Xiaoqi led Qiao Ran, and Qiao Ran carried the money. Together they plunged into the state-run store.

Sunset colored half the sky like a dazzling painting. Cooking smoke rose from the quiet village, and the occasional cuckoo called from the surrounding woods.

At the Lu house, Liu Chunhua sat on the kang, cursing. Their neighbor Auntie Wang hid her delight at the trouble behind sympathetic words. “Young people all like to slack off. Don’t scold them too hard when they get back. A few words will do.”

Lu Hongli came in from the kitchen, where she was cooking. “Mom, write to Second Brother right now. Tell him to divorce that spendthrift wife of his.”

Liu Chunhua glanced at her youngest daughter but said nothing.

It wasn’t that she was reluctant to part with Xia Xiaofang. The girl had brought a substantial dowry, and if the marriage ended, wouldn’t they have to give it back?

Auntie Wang continued, “That Xiaofang isn’t worthy of your Yanbei in the least. She’s pretty, all right—there isn’t a face like hers for miles around—but looks won’t put food on the table. She makes a shrewish scene every day, cursing everyone she sees. The things she says make the rest of us blush. And she’s always bullying the eldest wife and throwing the house into an uproar. Now she’s even stopped working for the team, skipping work and lazing about. What bad luck for Yanbei, marrying a creature like that.”

A few provocative words were enough. The more Liu Chunhua thought about it, the angrier she became and the more she felt her son had been wasted on the girl.

“Li,” she said, making up her mind, “write to your second brother now. Tell him to come home and get divorced.”

Hongli, who didn’t want to cook, promptly thrust the ladle into her elder sister Lu Hongna’s hand and ran inside to look for paper and a pen.

Auntie Wang smiled so broadly the wrinkles around her eyes could have trapped flies. “Chunhua, it’s settled, then. If Yanbei divorces that spendthrift, you must introduce him to our Dongmei first.”

“Of course. Yanbei and Dongmei grew up together; they know each other inside out. Dongmei’s good at running a household too. I’m very fond of her.”

“Then it’s a deal.”

“Yes, a deal.”

The two older women reached an instant agreement and privately arranged Lu Yanbei’s future all over again.

Outside, Qiao Ran and Xiaoqi arrived carrying bags large and small, pushing open the gate in the evening light.

Hongna, tending the cooking fire, came to the door and asked quietly, “Why didn’t you two go to work today? Mom’s angry.”

Their elder sister-in-law was actually quite nice. Though they’d known her only a short time, they could tell she wasn’t sharp-tongued like Hongli. She generally spoke softly too.

They’d heard her husband neglected his responsibilities and fooled around outside. Unable to bear it, she’d brought her two children back to her mother’s home.

Xiaoqi took a handful of Little Rascal candies from her pocket and pressed them into Hongna’s hand. “Here, for the children.”

Hongna froze.

Living at her mother’s with her children meant three extra mouths to feed. Even her mother sometimes treated her coldly, let alone her sister and two sisters-in-law.

The unexpected sweets left her touched and pleasantly surprised.

Qiao Ran had barely crossed the threshold when Liu Chunhua’s scolding reached her ears.

“Where the hell did you two go today? If Auntie Wang hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t even know you skipped the team. You’ve got some nerve! If you don’t want to live here, get out of the Lu family now.”

“I went to buy chicks,” Qiao Ran said. “Two little hens. They’re in the courtyard.”

Liu Chunhua hurriedly turned to look. Two young hens were wandering about, pecking for food.

They weren’t grown yet, but when they matured they could lay eggs, and when they grew old they could be made into soup. They were much better than the rooster they’d had before.

Her expression softened a little. Even so, she couldn’t let the matter of skipping work pass so easily.

She turned her anger on Xiaoqi instead. “What did your elder sister-in-law’s trip to town have to do with you? Why didn’t you go to the team?”

“I was afraid she’d get lost,” Xiaoqi said earnestly. “And with her personality, she’s easily bullied. I had to protect her.”

Liu Chunhua was speechless.

“Mm,” Qiao Ran added. “I bought too much to carry alone, so I asked her to help.”

They certainly had bought a lot: a washbasin, toothbrushes and toothpaste, soap pods, towels, Friendship snow cream, Qiuyue face powder, and a lipstick.

Besides those goods, there were walnut cookies, cake, and mung bean pastries.

“Have you gone mad? Do you plan to ruin this household?” Liu Chunhua’s shock turned to suspicion. “How much did all that cost? Where did you get the money?”

Neither woman answered. Alarmed, Chunhua ran barefoot to the cabinet and checked the picture frame hanging on the wall.