School life is actually quite uninteresting; what can these older children understand? In class, if it’s not one crying today, it’s another causing trouble tomorrow. Only when they reach higher grades do they gradually come to understand things better. Qin Xiangnuan’s life was actually quite good; having an adult’s mind, she never really took primary school seriously. Every day, she used time with a tenfold efficiency, learning the skills she needed, her days were very fulfilling.
Until one day, she had just returned home and saw Aunt Hua coming over, with a stern look on her face, while Granny Lu was trying to comfort her.
Aunt Hua immediately stood up when she saw Qin Xiangnuan.
"Nuannuan, you’re back. There’s been trouble at the shop."
"Trouble?" Qin Xiangnuan was also startled.
What kind of trouble could there be?
The bus station wouldn’t be renovated for another five or six years, but even if it were, their shop would also have a place in the new building; at most, they would rest for a year or two. Plus, there were neither city management officers nor gangsters around anymore, and people were still simple and unworldly.
Thus, she really couldn’t guess what kind of trouble could have befallen the shop.
Could it possibly be that someone had died from their food? But that seemed impossible. Aunt Hua was not so careless to mistakenly put poison in the pot.
Soon after, with the furious voice of Aunt Hua, Qin Xiangnuan finally understood that the trouble was not due to city management or food causing death, nor was it demolition; it was because of Wendi.
Wendi had been working in their shop for a full five years. During these years, neither she nor Aunt Hua had ever treated him as an outsider. His salary had increased from 30 yuan to 80 yuan, and he was provided with lodging and board, never lacking anything during holidays.
But human greed knows no bounds.
Wendi’s parents also tasted the sweet fruit of running a business. Earning 80 yuan a month already made the Wen family one of the richest in the village, and inspired by Wendi’s accounts of the shop making hundreds of dollars a month, Mr. Wen started having ulterior motives.
They ended up covertly learning the trade and opened another scallion pancake shop right across the street, selling the same items as Aunt Hua. It’s no wonder, having been there for five or six years, Wendi knew how to make everything Aunt Hua did, after all, he learned it from Qin Xiangnuan. Betrayal was a new, bitter taste for Aunt Hua, who had always been proud and never postponed striving ahead. Being tricked by Wendi this time, she was infuriated enough to grind her teeth, especially since the business at her shop suddenly dwindled; naturally, she was extremely unsettled.
Though the shop was Qin Xiangnuan’s, Aunt Hua had invested her heart and soul into it, no less than Qin Xiangnuan herself. She had planned to expand the business in the future with her daughters-in-law, but instead, Wendi had engineered such a shameless act.
There were already many food sellers at the station, but everyone sold different items—people ate what they wanted—who would sell exactly the same thing, identical in every way? How they could eat, earning such unscrupulous money, was beyond her.
Aunt Hua confronted them, but the Wen family simply didn’t take it seriously, truly valuing money over their own father; the shameless audacity left Aunt Hua with a literal pain in her chest. She kept patting her chest, barely able to contain her anger.
Granny Lu tried to comfort Aunt Hua from time to time, but how could Aunt Hua easily let go of her anger?
This was not merely business competition—it was a vicious stab right in the heart.