Chapter 49 Girls' School

Pengcheng Girls' School has an arcade-like facade, with shops on both sides of the outside. Only one door displays the name "Pengcheng Girls' School," and that door is the school's main entrance.

The girls' school was located in a relatively central area, surrounded by arcade buildings. Upon entering the school, next to the arcade buildings were two rather large canteens. It seemed that the school didn't have a playground.

The playground was usually used as a vegetable garden. The girls' school's vegetable garden was in front of the canteen, behind which were two two-story buildings with red brick walls and gray tile roofs.

Nowadays, houses almost never have an extra protective layer applied to the outside of the red bricks, so what you see are neat rows of red bricks.

The first floor houses the classrooms for the first year of junior high school. There are a total of six classrooms for the first year of junior high school on both sides. The layout for the second year of junior high school upstairs is the same.

Junior high school is now two years long, and senior high school is also two years long. The subjects studied are politics, Chinese, mathematics, Russian, music, and art.

These past few years, He Caiwei has no intention of just drifting along like this. Her grandfather was an accountant, and her mother also learned how to use an abacus and keep accounts. She plans to learn the same thing and see if she can study accounting after high school.

With this kind of expertise, she could easily become a finance manager in the factory. Except for the days when she gets paid, the rest of the time it's a relaxed job, which suits her "lazy" personality.

Having experienced what it's like to be in junior high school again, He Caiwei returned home to find the atmosphere at home a little strange; her grandfather and mother seemed to be arguing.

Normally, the two of them would have endless things to talk about at the dinner table, but today they're both unusually silent. What's going on?

He Caiwei felt incredibly frustrated during the meal, but since the old man was there, she didn't ask. She waited until after the meal, when she had taken the old man home, before asking her mother.

"What's wrong with you and Grandpa? Why aren't you two talking today? Did you make Grandpa angry?" He Caiwei asked her mother after helping to close the door and returning to her room.

"No, I wouldn't dare to make him angry now. It's just that Aunt Xu from the neighborhood wants to introduce me to someone, but I don't want to go. I think things are fine as they are now. With you here, I'm not afraid that no one will burn paper money for me when I get old. But I don't know what the old man is thinking, he keeps urging me to go and meet him."

He kept saying I'm only twenty-six and have plenty of time ahead of me, that I can't stay single forever, and that I'm getting annoyed with him so much I barely talk to him anymore. I don't want to bring this whole family into this mess. Could you spend some time with Grandpa when you have a day off, and see if we can drop this whole thing? I'm getting so annoyed with him these past few days.” He Yuping genuinely felt that getting married or not didn't matter; she hadn't met the person she liked, and she really didn't want to make things difficult for herself.

"The old man is quite stubborn, so we have to talk to him about this slowly. But to solve the root of the problem, we need to find the matchmaker. The old man is probably worried that after he passes away, no one will protect us. You know, he's seventy years old now, so it's normal for him to be worried."

"Speaking of which, this is your biological father, right? How come he's already seventy, and you're only twenty-seven?" He Caiwei thought the old man was worried about this, but judging by their current ages, the old man was about the same age as her mother's grandfather.

"You brat, what are you saying? How could my biological father be fake? My mother's health has never been very good. They were childhood sweethearts, and my mother's health has been maintained for many years. Even the doctors didn't dare to say that she could get pregnant. The old man didn't want her to suffer, and he didn't plan to have children. Who knew that he would have me when he was already old enough to be a grandfather?"

Once you have a child, you can't just not have it. So my mother suffered a lot for me, and almost lost her life during childbirth. After I was born, my mother stayed on the kang (a heated brick bed) and was constantly being nourished with medicine. But she still passed away when I was four years old.

After that, Grandpa raised me single-handedly, acting as both father and mother. Back then, when the Qu family invited him to be their accountant, the salary was really high. In those years, we borrowed a lot of money because of my mother's illness. Of course, Grandpa couldn't bear to give up a job that paid well. After he went to work as the Qu family's accountant, I went to a girls' school to board. "Never mind, why am I telling you all this? You have a day off tomorrow, find some time to talk to Grandpa." As He Yuping spoke, tears welled up uncontrollably. Over the years, she had completely forgotten what her mother looked like.

"Come on, if you don't get married, Grandpa will keep nagging about it. You know he's old now, and the two of us are what he cares about most. To put his mind at ease, from now on you should take this matter to heart and look for someone seriously. If you don't want to see Aunt Xu's side, just refuse. These things have to be something you're willing to do." He Caiwei knew that no matter how she tried to persuade him, Grandpa wouldn't give up on this idea, so she was too lazy to waste her breath on him.

Her mother really needs to find someone else so that she can feel more at ease when her daughter boards at school. Last week, during the holiday, she and a few of her classmates went to visit the high school.

There are sixteen classes in the high school in Pengcheng. Because it is co-educational, there are quite a lot of students. However, it is quite far from home, so you will need to stay at the school.

While He Yuping and her friends were leisurely planning their future lives, Qu Qingqing in Pingcheng was going crazy.

Their home was destroyed, and they didn't bring much with them except for her mother's dowry and some valuables they had on them.

They wanted to go to their maternal grandparents' house for refuge, only to find that their house had also been ransacked. Their maternal grandmother had fled with their belongings, their maternal grandfather had been arrested, and their two uncles and aunts, as well as their cousins, had all disappeared.

They finally found a place to stay, but their father was missing. No matter how hard they searched, they couldn't find him.

Later, her brother went to many places and asked for help from various people before he learned that his father had taken some of the family property that had already been transferred abroad and left them behind.

With no other option, the family had to find another place to settle down. Fortunately, there was her mother's dowry that she had hidden outside, otherwise the four of them would be starving now.

He finally managed to get into the factory through connections and set his sights on a college graduate who had been parachuted in as director. But who knew that this guy was a brainless idiot who somehow managed to graduate from college?

At first, she wanted to use money to help him realize his unrealistic ideas, but later she discovered that all the gold her grandfather had hidden was gone.

It's unclear whether Grandma took it away or Grandpa discovered something and secretly moved it away first; the entire secret room of the Zhang mansion was empty.

Without money, and unable to realize her dreams, Qu Qingqing became completely despondent. After dating for two years, she no longer wanted to waste her time on this man who was unwilling to get married.

After their breakup, the two had a very unpleasant argument at the textile factory in the county town. Qu Qingqing's relationship with her brothers was strained because of her going to the Zhang family's secret room to get money.

However, the real power in the family was always in her mother's hands. Even if her older brother, sister-in-law, and younger brother disliked her, they could not get past her mother.