As summer set in, the weather turned hot, and at night mosquitoes made it difficult to sleep, making it hard to concentrate on reading.
To help Zhou Siyu study properly, Zhou Lanfang stopped watching TV too, and every night she fanned her daughter with a hand fan until Siyu fell asleep, then finally went back to her own room.
After more than ten days , Zhou Lanfang herself had lost weight, her cheeks hollowed out.
Shen Mianmian had also slimmed down a bit from a few months of weight gain, but she had grown quite a bit taller.
It was just Zhou Siyu who didn’t lose any weight and her face even looked a bit rounder.
As the high school exams drew nearer, the workload increased, the learning became tenser by the day, and there was hardly any spare time left. Whenever it was Li Qiumei’s class, she monopolized all of their free time after class.
Li Qiumei stayed in the teachers’ room before the bell rang and never left, much to Chen Jie’s annoyance, though he couldn’t do anything about her.
Because Li Qiumei had become smarter, she never encroached on Chen Jie’s teaching time, always managing to leave just before Chen Jie entered the classroom.
Although the principal also knew Li Qiumei’s actions were not right, considering her recent low profile and with the belief that she was acting in the interest of the students, and given her years of teaching, she was still given some face.
So, her behavior was tacitly approved.
Behind her back, the students often complained that Li Qiumei was practically a devil.
They needed not just to study but also some space. The oppressive study atmosphere hardly let them breathe.
These days, everyone counted down the time, minute by minute.
In the blink of an eye, two days before the high school exam arrived, Zhou Siyu shouldered her backpack and stood at the doorway, waiting for Zhou Lanfang to take her to school, when she happened to see Aunt Liu and a woman from another village chatting at the doorway.
Zhou Siyu didn’t initially pay much attention, just as she was about to urge Zhou Lanfang, she heard the woman suddenly say.
"It’s lucky your Erni didn’t get engaged to Xu Haiyang, he’s been arrested, heard he got sentenced to ten years or so."
"Xu Haiyang has been arrested?" Aunt Liu was stupefied, "When did this happen? Why was he arrested?"
"It’s something from the start of the year, looks like it was for human trafficking. The news was kept quiet until the sentencing, then everyone found out. Two others often seen with him were arrested too, apparently the simple-minded girl from the town was trafficked by them, but it’s still unknown where to. She hasn’t been found yet."
Those who are trafficked, if they are unlucky, could be sold several times, and some who don’t obey might even end up dead.
Even if found by chance, they might have already had several children in another family’s home, and most don’t return.
"I thought he was just lazy and had foolish parents, never suspected he could be involved in trafficking," Aunt Liu said with a shiver, "These damn people, thank goodness my Erni didn’t end up with him..."
Zhou Siyu was stunned, no longer listening to what followed.
Xu Haiyang went to jail for human trafficking?
Thinking carefully, the timeline matched the period when Shen Mianmian had her incident, so Mianmian had escaped that fate because Haiyang had been arrested?
Was she worrying needlessly these past few months?
Shen Mianmian surely knew about it long ago and deliberately kept it from her just to make a mockery of her.
"Siyu, what are you spacing out for?" Zhou Lanfang pushed the bicycle out from the house and, seeing Zhou Siyu just standing there, urged her curiously.
Usually, it was the niece who rushed her to be quicker.