After finishing her meal, Su Xiaoqi went out the door.
Gumula Village was very lively after dinner.
The children had all run out to play, frolicking and horsing around. One could hear the laughter and cries of the little ones.
One could also hear the more fashionable young people who had turned on the stereos in their homes, filling the village with the sound of popular songs.
The women who had finished eating were chatting freely about family matters, speaking ill of their mothers-in-law, daughters-in-law, and gossiping about certain neighbors.
The men were smoking, joking with each other about the mountains, discussing the harvest, and telling dirty jokes.
All this liveliness had nothing to do with her.
She did not head towards the village center, but instead turned left out the door.
In front of the door was a small river, and along the riverside was a stone path. Following the flow of the water all the way led to the tail of the river.
There was no one at the tail of the river, and it had a somewhat sinister feeling. After people in the village left, this was where they burned discarded clothes and old belongings.
But Su Xiaoqi actually really liked it here. The tail of the river wasn't actually the end of the small river, but rather here there was a large grove, with red maple trees marked with signs saying they were protected trees of ancient age. The stone path was covered in rotting leaves.
This made the stone path seem very quaint.
She slowly walked step by step. To get here took over two thousand steps.
At the end of the stone path was a stretch of rural fields, at a 60 degree incline, with knolls of rice paddies extending as far as the eye could see downhill.
In the distance was the setting sun, which had already sunk below the mountains, with just a hint of light remaining on the horizon.
She could see the rice in the fields had already started to yellow. In the evening breeze, the rice swayed back and forth.
In addition to these familiar scenes, she kept seeing a small interface in front of her eyes, with her step count continuously increasing. She stopped, and the interface showed she had taken 2672 steps, and earned 267.2 yuan.
It was truly unbelievable.
Her weekly allowance was 100 yuan. She usually lived on campus, and ate at the home of a cousin on her mother's side who lived nearby. The cousin was divorced and lived alone, and was very nice.
100 yuan for allowance sounded like a lot, but after transportation costs back and forth, there was only 82 yuan left. And out of that 82 yuan, sometimes she had to buy some study materials, and other times she would buy snacks with her classmates - everyone else bought them, so if you didn't, you looked like you didn't fit in.
Plus, sometimes there were gifts for classmates' birthdays and things like that. As high schoolers, they had already started to care about face and keeping up appearances.
100 yuan was no small amount for her parents, but for Su Xiaoqi it was always insufficient.
In her third year of high school, Su Xiaoqi started paying more attention to her appearance, unwilling to just wear the school uniform all the time, or T-shirts that were washed-out gray. She worked hard to save up money and bought brand new T-shirts, wearing them for him to see, blushing with happiness.
These things had distracted her attention for a long time.
But now, after walking just a few steps, it seemed all her problems were solved.
She kept walking, and since she had already come this far out, she decided to just go to her family's vegetable plot and pick some vegetables.
When she came back home hugging two cabbage hearts, it gave her parents a fright.
"A young girl out so late going to the vegetable plot, it's too dangerous. There are still leghold traps that people left in the fields, what if you had stepped on one?" Dad Su said.
Dad Su himself had a lame leg, and was accustomed to being bullied, so he doted on his daughter even more.
Mom Su, looking at the mud on her daughter's shoes, said, "Quick, take them off, Mom will wash them for you. Really, going to the fields wearing your white shoes, now they're all dirty. What will you do when you go to school?"
Su Xiaoqi looked down, and sure enough, her shoes were caked with mud.
The boy she had cared so much about impressing with her clothes and shoes was long gone.
"It's fine, Mom. Dirty shoes are in style now, so this makes them even trendier," Little Seven said with a laugh.
At this moment, the interface showed her step count was already 7768, with 776.8 yuan earned.
But Su Xiaoqi didn't feel like going back outside anymore.
If she ran into villagers out there, she'd have to greet them, and they'd all ask how her exams went, how's college.
Or some might make sour remarks, like saying the Su family's luck turned out well...
She wasn't very good at conversation.
The haughty attitude she put on was only because of her own insecurity.
"I'm going upstairs to read," Su Xiaoqi said, sticking her tongue out at her parents.
She went back to her bedroom, lifted up a corner of the plastic sheeting, letting in a breath of fresh air, finally feeling a little cool.
Looking at the romance novel on her desk, rented from a book rental shop, very tattered, who knows how many people had borrowed it before.
She had read over half but hadn't finished it yet. As her hand reached for it, she drew it back again.
Instead, she took out a New Concept English textbook.
Sitting there memorizing vocabulary.
Surprisingly, her worst score on the gaokao exams this time was English, just barely passing.
She didn't know why, but this English textbook that she normally found so difficult to get through now seemed very easy.
Perhaps it was a different mindset after taking the gaokao.
While prepping for the gaokao, she had been burdened by the pressure of the exam itself and all kinds of messy emotions, which made studying very inefficient.
She sat there reciting vocabulary for a full hour, time flying by quickly.
Just then, she suddenly heard a voice sound in her ear.
"Host's diligent studying has completed 1 hour of reading, rewarded with 10 day memory buff. For the next 10 days, the host will be able to quickly remember everything she sees."
