Li Yingqiao had always thought that the Uncle Yu next door was a little off in the head.
The biggest problem was his name.
One day, she saw Uncle Yu’s figure from afar, heading toward her family’s grocery store.
The guy was pretty tall, but his son, Yu Chuan Chuan, looked like a genetic mutation—a short-legged cat, even though his appearance was a mix of him and Tang Xiang Auntie.
Tang Xiang Auntie also had the height of a fashion model, at least one meter seventy-five, but Yu Chuan Chuan still hadn’t grown as tall as her.
Li Yingqiao thought he looked just like a Napoleon, the short-legged kind.
Yu Renjie had just stepped into the shop, one foot inside and the other still ready to leave, when he suddenly spotted Li Yingqiao with two pigtails, half her body sprawled over the glass counter, staring straight at him as he walked in.
Yu Renjie was all too familiar with this kind of eager-for-knowledge look from kids.
Tang Xiang said that all the kids in the neighborhood praised his name for being cool and sour.
Sure enough, before he even got close, this little rascal perked up like a squirrel discovering a giant pinecone, craned her neck, and couldn’t help but curiously ask, “Uncle, is your name really ‘Yuyan’?”
Yu Renjie had passed by here for years, watching Li Yingqiao grow bit by bit until she was as tall as the counter, skillfully fetching cigarettes and making change for adults, never making a single mistake.
Clearly, she’d been learning business sense from grown-ups since she was little, and learned it well.
He had no patience for these little smart-alecks, but this grocery store was still run by the Li Family’s eldest, Li Shuli.
The entanglement between their two families had dragged on for over twenty years; it was a festering tumor attached to flesh and bone.
To him, Li Wusheng, or rather, the entire Li Family, had become like the medial meniscus in his knee—a reflex that only proved he could still breathe, but meant nothing else.
After the town’s relocation, both families moved here.
The area was remote, and Yu Renjie had hoped for some peace and quiet.
But last year, this place was developed into a natural scenic area called Xiao Hua City. Like a Wife Cake with no wife, Xiao Hua City had no paintings.
He suspected barely anyone here could even read; it was just a crowd of noisy little brats.
Wasn’t there a birth control policy?
Where did it go?
He saw no need to explain to a kid why he had this name.
If he weren’t desperate for a smoke, he’d have walked two more blocks to buy cigarettes outside the scenic area.
Spending money here was like a grandpa burning incense for his grandson—completely upside down, a real Tian Gang.
Yu Renjie ignored her, but still stuck to his principle of letting them earn as little as possible, and handed over five yuan.
“Give me your cheapest pack.”
Li Yingqiao watched him fuss and pinch his money as if every bill had his name written on it, more trouble than her searching for test papers.
In the end, he pulled out the smallest denomination from his wallet.
So she announced loudly, “Uncle! We make the same profit on every pack of cigarettes, cheap or expensive, there’s no difference. You can take whichever you like to smoke.”
“Who told you that? Your mom?”
He didn’t know where he got the nerve to ask that right away.
“That’s right, it’s a clear regulation from the Tobacco Bureau.
It’s not something we can decide ourselves,” Li Yingqiao nodded seriously.
Yu Renjie thought about it—there’s no way a six or seven-year-old kid could make up such a professional-sounding lie.
So he put the five yuan back in his wallet and, going with the flow, asked her for his usual pack of Heili.
Li Yingqiao was quick and nimble.
She immediately took the last pack of Heiqun from the shelf, standing on the little footstool behind the counter.
When she handed the cigarettes over, she hesitated for a moment but still didn’t let him off, “Uncle, is your name really ‘Yuyan’?”
The pronunciation was exactly the same, but he knew she was asking about that holiday.
Kids were always curious about that.
There was no time to waste—he grabbed his cigarettes and hurried off, tossing back, “Yuyan your grandpa! Who celebrates foreign holidays?”
Li Yingqiao wasn’t upset—after all, she didn’t have a grandpa.
But she was sure this uncle was easy to fool.
The profit margin on cigarettes wasn’t high to begin with.
The first time she helped her mom sell cigarettes, she’d done the math.
Her mom said selling a whole carton only earned the profit from one pack, which meant a profit rate of ten percent.
With just one sentence, she made an extra nine yuan and fifty cents today.
For tomorrow’s lunch, she could ask Mom to add a chicken leg, but she was afraid Mom would use her knife and chop up the one they raised themselves.
Sometimes she felt like Mom was indifferent to the world.
Her first reaction to any living thing was: if you can’t eat it, what’s the point of buying it?
But sometimes, Li Shuli really was the gentlest woman in the world.
At night, Li Yingqiao lay in her little bed, her mind full of thoughts, unconsciously kicking her legs as she thump-ed against the bed frame, the noise reaching Li Shuli, who was counting the day’s cigarette sales.
She turned to glance at her, then went back to scanning and counting the shelves.
“Quiet down, don’t wake up Grandma next door.”
After speaking, her gaze landed on the empty spot on the cigarette shelf.
“Qiaoqiao, did someone buy a pack of Heiqun today?”
Li Yingqiao, like a captain of the Zajiaofu Dui, always diligent and ready for duty, immediately sat up from bed at being called, and nodded vigorously at her “boss”, “Yes!”
Her little bed was wedged between two shelves in the grocery store.
During the day, it was folded up and stored in the warehouse, and at night it was set up—not too narrow or wide, just enough to fill the aisle between shelves.
Sometimes, if she rolled over too hard, the wooden boards would creak, and the shelves would shake.
Then, like Doraemon’s pocket tipping over, packets of snacks would fall from above her head.
She would take advantage of Li Shuli not paying attention to secretly stash a pack under her quilt.
When Li Shuli was sound asleep, she’d open a snack in bed as a reward for herself at the end of the day.
Li Shuli wondered aloud, “Who was it? Did Xiao Hua City get a big boss today?”
There wasn’t much foot traffic in the scenic area back then.
Few outsiders lived there; most were familiar faces relocated from the old town.
The Li Family had a reputation as bullies back in the town, so even Li Shuli’s Xiao Mai Bu was affected—people would rather walk a bit farther to buy things outside the scenic area than shop here.
Li Yingqiao answered honestly, “Yu Chuan Chuan’s dad.”
Li Shuli didn’t respond, just took out tomorrow’s breakfast money for Li Yingqiao, locked away the remaining cash and account book in the cabinet, then got ready to pull down the shutter.
Li Yingqiao had just taken the money when she sensed what her mom would do next, her eyes lighting up instantly.
As the clatter, clatter of the shutter echoed, Li Yingqiao seized her chance to blurt out the thing she’d been anxious about all day, “The teacher wants you to come to the office tomorrow.”
Xiao Hua City was very quiet.
The loudest moments of the day were probably Miao Jia Grandpa’s trumpet-like farting during his exercises, and the sound of their own grocery store’s shutter closing.
She could never predict when Miao Jia Grandpa would let one rip, but the shop’s closing time was something she could count on every day.
So she’d waited the whole day, just for the split second when Li Shuli closed the shutter.
If Mom didn’t hear it, she couldn’t be blamed for not saying it.
But most of the time, her mom’s ears worked just fine.
For example, when she’d just asked if tomorrow’s breakfast could get a two-yuan raise, her mom hadn’t heard a thing.
“Did you get into another fight at school?”
When you least wanted her to hear, she always did.
“No,” Li Yingqiao got down from bed, wearing her slippers like a dragster, trying to show her mom an earnest face, “It was Yu Chuan Chuan, he kept trying to make me eat his jelly during class. I said no, no, who would eat that stuff? When I pushed him away, his nose started bleeding.”
“He’s still alive, right?”
Li Yingqiao thought for a moment and said, “He was still alive when school let out.”
Li Shuli squatted down, pondered for a moment, then skillfully locked the shutter, and turned to ask, “You’re sure that ‘holiday’ kid only came to buy cigarettes? Didn’t say anything else?”
Li Yingqiao shook her head firmly, “Nothing else.”
“Then tomorrow, bring that little holiday some Mimi Shrimp Sticks, two packs should be enough.
Then you two shake hands and make up, and have the teacher take a picture for me.”
Li Yingqiao: “…..”
“I don’t have time to go to school. Tell your teacher, let him talk to Yu Renjie instead. Why give kids so much money for nothing?”
By now, Li Shuli was straightening out the goods customers had messed up during the day, giving her final warning.
“And if you two keep fighting in class, I’ll ask the teacher to separate your seats.”
Yu Renjie was the big boss of several toy factories in the county.
Teacher Hu, while fair to the kids, was still a bit of a weathercock with the parents.
He never gave Yu Chuan Chuan’s dad a hard time, always making her, the grocery shop owner and part-time Da Ka Che driver, come running to school.
Li Yingqiao swore she’d never speak to Yu Chuan Chuan, that crispy chicken, again.
She went back to her little bed, sat on the edge, swinging her legs, and asked Li Shuli, “Mom, are you going out to drive the Da Ka Che again? How long will you be gone this time? Will Auntie come to stay with me? Will you be back before my birthday?”
Li Shuli had been divorced twice.
After the second divorce, she never remarried. With Li Yingqiao about to start school, she chose to return to Fengtan’s Xiao Hua City and open a grocery store—small but well-stocked.
For a long time, she didn’t drive long-haul trucks anymore.
In those days, a single woman with a child driving a truck was always inconvenient.
Outsiders saw her as forthright and bold, but the more she was like that, the more attention she drew.
Li Shuli herself wasn’t afraid, but she worried about Qiaoqiao getting snatched.
Back then, human trafficking was rampant.
Li Yingqiao was clearly cut from the same mold.
She was bold, too, and loved running long-haul with her mom, living a “wandering” life, saying she wanted to be a “mother-daughter fugitive” with her.
It was touching, but that didn’t stop Li Shuli from wanting to sew her mouth shut.
Only after becoming a mother did she realize that talking too much wild nonsense with a kid made it hard to sleep without taking a pill.
She decided not to answer her daughter’s machine-gun questions.
After all, a box of tranquilizers cost four yuan and you needed a connection to get them.
So she coaxed her perfunctorily, “Baby, go to sleep.”
Li Yingqiao saw her mom ignoring her, let out a humph, and slipped under her quilt like a loach diving into a pond, wrapping herself up until the world around her was swallowed by deep darkness.
Li Shuli pretended to be asleep, deliberately breathing loudly.
Until, from a certain corner—or more precisely, from under the covers—came the careful, crisp crunch, crunch of someone chewing on crisps.