Li Xiaoniu didn't hear what his grandfather and father said clearly. He just thought it was two bags of rice and hurried back to tell Qian Shufen.
He was sitting on the hood of the car showing off with his friends, but he didn't know that there would be a meal of fried pork with bamboo shoots waiting for him when he got home.
After Zhao Yong had a full meal in his hometown and heard enough thanks from the villagers, he took the two hundred kilograms of freshly beaten rice sent by his grandfather and uncle and successfully completed the food supply task in Hongxing Village.
He first delivered a hundred kilograms of rice to his father-in-law and mother-in-law's house, and then went home with the remaining one hundred kilograms of new rice under the disbelieving looks of Wang Xiaojuan and Li Dawei.
In the evening, Li Manjun came home. The food was ready and placed on the table, steaming hot and fragrant.
Zhao Yong filled two full bowls of white rice, placed one bowl in front of her, and said meaningfully: "Try how the rice I cooked today tastes."
Li Manjun picked up the rice bowl and took a mouthful of white rice. It was chewier than what he had eaten before. The rice grains were one by one and very fragrant.
"Not bad, it tastes better than before. Did you buy new rice today?" Li Manjun asked, mixing vegetables with rice to eat, which made it more fragrant.
"It's delicious." Zhao Yong sat down next to her and raised his chin towards the kitchen, "New rice is produced in Hongxing Village. Grandpa asked me to bring it back. It's two hundred kilograms in total. I left one for our parents.
One hundred catties are at home, and we can eat the remaining one hundred catties ourselves."
He finished these words in a nonchalant tone, and Li Manjun almost didn't react. He was startled for a moment, quickly put down the bowl in disbelief, got up and came to the kitchen.
The wooden rice bucket was filled with white rice, with most of the unfilled bags lying next to it. Li Manjun picked it up and took a look, and said "Huh?" in surprise. He covered the rice bucket and returned to the sofa in the living room.
Seeing Zhao Yong smiling with pride.
"I've heard that the rice produced in your Hongxing Village is indeed more expensive than ordinary rice. It costs seventy cents per catty. Two hundred catties is equivalent to one hundred and forty yuan. If I run for a whole morning, this income is not bad, right?"
Li Manjun gave him a thumbs up, this is not just okay, this is great!
"Zhao Yong, I really belong to you." Li Manjun sat down on the sofa again, picked up his rice bowl, and surprisingly ate one more bowl than usual.
"This is my first time to eat such good rice." Li Manjun sighed with emotion.
Zhao Yong gulped it into his mouth and nodded repeatedly. This expensive rice just tastes different!
Today, the couple scraped all the rice out of the rice cooker and still wasn't full.
Helpless, I had no choice but to eat some snacks such as biscuits, and then I sat contentedly on the sofa and watched TV to digest my food.
The phone rang at home, and Li Manjun immediately picked it up. Sure enough, it was Wang Xiaojuan calling.
Ask her: "Have you had dinner?"
"Yes, you are eating this year's new rice. Where are you?" Li Manjun smiled.
"Same, don't tell me, this rice just tastes delicious." Wang Xiaojuan's tone was full of satisfaction.
Years of depression are now over. Li Manjun can imagine her mother's comfort at this moment without even looking.
The mother and daughter chatted some more about home affairs before hanging up the phone.
Zhao Yong turned his head and said, "It's getting colder and colder now, and it gets dark earlier. Why don't you get off work early? It's not safe on the road."
Li Manjun didn't expect him to suddenly mention this matter, and shook his head, "It's okay, there are no street lights on that section of the road, I just need a flashlight."
Zhao Yong didn't answer, he was worried.
In the next few days, Zhao Yong will wait for her at the door of Li Manjun's store around 5:30 and take her home.
Li Manjun was very surprised in the first two days. Zhao Yong was riding a bicycle and she was sitting in the back seat, watching the autumn leaves falling on both sides of the road. It was quite romantic like a young couple dating in a movie.
But romance alone can't be used as food. In a few days, Xiaoguan's side will explode.
He was too busy on his own. Many contracts and accounts required Zhao Yong's personal signature and approval, not to mention the occasional entertainment. He went to two events for Zhao Yong, but because the boss didn't come in person, they insisted on making him drink, and he drank until everyone was drunk.
I'm going to die. I'm so tired of reading.
They all run companies. Although there are only two people in his company, Li Manjun understands such emergencies and tells Zhao Yong not to pick him up when something happens.
Zhao Yong gave in to reality and modified Li Manjun's bicycle and installed a searchlight on the basket to make it safer at night.
Sometimes when things were not urgent, he would still go to Li Manjun's store to pick her up, drop her off at home, and then go back to the company to work overtime and socialize.
A month passed like this, and in December, winter entered Rongcheng overnight, with the temperature dropping from the original 11 to 12 degrees to 1 or 2 degrees.
The coldest day is directly below zero degrees Celsius. Winter in the south is always accompanied by a damp and cold wind, and the body temperature will drop by two or three degrees.
Yao Zhaowen complained that it was too cold in the dormitory and applied for an electric blanket and electric heater.
Li Manjun approved it and asked him to buy two more quilts to avoid freezing at night.
"You have to be careful when using electricity, as people use the power switch." Li Manjun reminded.
Yao Zhaowen said he knew, took the money given by his boss, got on his tricycle, and immediately went to buy the things he needed for the winter.
It got colder every day, so the two moved their office from the front door to the office, and burned a charcoal stove during the day.
Li Manjun has never seen this kind of charcoal stove before. It looks like a fat-bellied jar. It is made of pottery. The upper part of the lid is made of hollow holes. Put a layer of ash inside, burn the charcoal, and close the lid.
You can put your feet directly on it to bake.
Heat spreads up through the hollow holes, making the soles of your feet feel hot.
But she couldn't bear the warmth when she put her feet down, so Li Manjun always put her feet down after baking for a while, and then put her feet up again.
Yao Zhaowen found a few pieces of waste wood, nailed a square frame and placed it on the charcoal stove. He found an old thin quilt to put it on and it became a hot table.
Li Manjun looked at this homemade kotatsu and thought, isn't this a Japanese kotatsu?
I don’t know if it’s because of the cold weather, but the business in the store is much slower than before.
It used to take Li Manjun and Yao Zhaowen one day to pack the scraps, but now they can do it all in half a day.
The rest of the day was spent sitting on the kotatsu table, waiting for the seller to come to sell scraps.
Li Manjun felt something was wrong. Yao Zhaowen flipped through his account book and muttered: "This shouldn't be the case."
When the two of them were confused about this miserable business, the old man who always rode a tricycle to sell scrap steel came.
[To be honest, I have been using the Changing Source app recently to read and catch up on new books. It allows me to switch sources and read aloud with many different sounds. It can be used on both Android and Apple.]
Li Manjun hurriedly put on the old cotton shoes he bought from the farmer's market and walked out of the office, "Uncle, I haven't seen you for a few days. Is everything okay?"
The uncle waved his hand and said it was nothing, it was just that it was cold and he came out less often. He only took him out after he had accumulated enough.
"Boss Li, what's the price of your house today?" the uncle asked curiously.
Li Manjun would write the purchase price of the day on a small blackboard and hang it next to the kilogram scale. It said 1.12 yuan per kilogram of scrap iron.
The extra two points is the custom of Li Manjun's family.
Li Manjun told the price, but the uncle frowned, "So cheap? Then I won't sell it!"