"How, how could this be my fault?" Zhong Juan felt wronged too. Wasn’t it just because she felt sorry for Gao Jianshe being beaten for no reason that she thought of a way to teach Xu Nianhua a lesson in the county, without anyone noticing?
It was his own fault for getting caught. How could she be blamed for that?
Suddenly, Zhong Juan sized up Gao Jianshe and asked, "Did you really teach her a lesson with your face covered?"
Gao Jianshe felt a pang of alarm in his heart, but he wasn’t going to admit that he had wanted to bully her and even try to taste her that day.
Gao Jianshe answered without hesitation, and with Zhong Juan’s interruption, the fear in his heart faded a lot, turning into a trace of guilt.
Especially under Zhong Juan’s aggressive gaze, Gao Jianshe suddenly stood up and said, "I’m going to take a shower."
"No, Gao Jianshe, you need to make things clear to me." Zhong Juan had known him for more than a day or two; the more he avoided talking about it and the louder he spoke, the more it indicated that what he said could be false.
"You didn’t really harbor any thoughts towards Xu Nianhua, did you?" Zhong Juan grabbed Gao Jianshe, determined to get to the bottom of this issue.
Already feeling guilty, Gao Jianshe was pressed by her relentless questioning, which made him even more uncomfortable. He shook her hand off irritably and said, "What thoughts? Don’t talk nonsense."
Zhong Juan, shaken off by him and in her anger, lost her balance and fell to the side.
She instinctively covered her stomach.
Gao Jianshe heard something wrong in her voice, and as he turned around, Zhong Juan was falling backward. Luckily, there was a bed beside her, which she barely managed to grab, preventing her from falling to the ground.
"I, I didn’t do it on purpose." Gao Jianshe reached out to help, but Zhong Juan coldly pushed his hand away. Protecting her stomach and feeling that the child inside was alright, she angrily interrogated him, "Gao Jianshe, I’m carrying your child, yet you’re thinking about another woman. Can you justify yourself to me?"
Zhong Juan’s accusations rang out, each one suggesting Gao Jianshe had done something unconscionable.
"What are you babbling about? When have I thought about another woman?" Gao Jianshe’s previous worries instantly turned to anger. He didn’t like being aggressively accused by Zhong Juan and said irritably, "If you’re pregnant, just stay at home and stop overthinking things."
"And if you want my mother to know, go ahead and shout about it."
Gao Jianshe looked at Zhong Juan, who seemed ready to argue, and spoke with impatience. Before they got married, seeing each other sporadically was sweet and affectionate, barely enough to express their love. He thought she was perfect in every way.
But after the marriage, Zhong Juan constantly nagged and always liked to control him.
Zhong Juan watched his retreating figure furiously, wanting to shout, but when she thought of her strict and fierce mother-in-law, she couldn’t say anything more.
"There are too few bean sprouts; it would be great if we could sell forty or fifty pounds of them every day."
Xu Nianji had sold all the bean sprouts early on. The little mung bean jelly that was left was also quickly sold out, and on the way back, he lamented that there were too few bean sprouts.
"Big brother, once dad gets your wedding stuff sorted out, he’ll make a few more bean sprout buckets, and then you’ll have to sell bean sprouts every day," said Xu Nian’an contentedly, finding their current situation to be a significant improvement from before.
Without bean sprout buckets, they were like skilled cooks without rice. Once his big brother got married and their dad made a few more bean sprout buckets, they would have bean sprouts to sell at any time.