Chapter 84: Can’t You Be a Little Reasonable?

Chapter 84: Chapter 84: Can’t You Be a Little Reasonable?

"Lihui, let me help you quickly pack up a few things, then we can head back together. We’ll get home just in time for lunch. You probably can’t live here much longer anyway. That bitch Zhang Minzhen will definitely be fired at the end of the month, and the supply and marketing cooperative will take this house back. Leave the key with me later, and I’ll find some time to come pack everything. Then I’ll find a couple of guys and a tractor to move all your stuff back home for you."

As soon as they got back to Gu Lihui’s small home and walked through the door, Gu Jinhua looked around. The house wasn’t large, but with big items like the bed, wardrobe, and table, one tractor trip probably wouldn’t be enough. Fortunately, thanks to her father-in-law’s connections, she wouldn’t have to pay to hire people or a tractor. At most, she’d just have to give each person a pack of Daqianmen cigarettes, and that would be that.

"I just walked in the door and haven’t even caught my breath, and you’re already rushing me. Even the grim reaper isn’t this pushy." Gu Lihui yanked off the straw hat he had pulled down low over his head. He touched the gauze-covered side of his face, feeling the uneven texture beneath and growing irritated.

He hadn’t had a chance to see his own face since the injury. He had no idea what it looked like now. Just now, on the way here, the gauze on his face had drawn strange stares from passersby, even with his hat on. Their gazes felt like needles on his back. The feeling had become all too familiar in recent days. He felt it every time he left his hospital room to use the washroom or fetch water, and he just couldn’t get used to it. That was why he’d barely been willing to leave his room at the hospital, and it was the biggest reason he’d been so eager to be discharged.

Originally, the doctor had said the wound on his face was healing fairly well. His eye, in particular, had been affected but was fine after treatment, and his vision wouldn’t be significantly impacted in the future. He had been quite happy when he realized he didn’t need to stay in the hospital any longer and could just apply the medicine himself at home. But on the short walk back, that happiness was doused as if by a bucket of ice water.

On the way, he had pulled the brim of his hat lower and lower, but it still couldn’t completely hide his face or stop people from staring at him like he was a monkey in a zoo. The thought of the long walk back home made his skin crawl. Now, hearing that his sister could get a tractor, his face lit up with hope. "Sis, why don’t you go call for the tractor right now? We can just pack a few things today and go back together on it. How about that?"

"Today?"

Gu Jinhua was stunned, then flatly refused. "It’s already so late today, how could we possibly have enough time? Besides, everything in this house is still all over the place. We haven’t even started packing."

"We don’t have to move everything, just a portion of it for now. You said it would take more than one trip anyway," Gu Lihui argued, his mind completely set on taking the tractor back to avoid the long, uncomfortable walk.

"You think I can just snap my fingers and a tractor appears? I have to cash in a favor with my father-in-law and give them advance notice. Who do you know that’s just on call like that? And when you ask people to help you move, of course you do it all in one day. Even if it takes a few trips, that’s fine. But who asks for help and then splits the move over two or three days?"

Gu Jinhua was so exasperated by her brother’s naivety she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He was a grown man, yet he didn’t understand the first thing about how the world worked. "And look at the time! You think it’s that easy to get people? Even if they don’t ask for money, don’t you think we should at least offer them a pack of cigarettes, a cup of tea, or even a meal?"

"I don’t care. I’m not walking back today. Since you knew yesterday I was being discharged today, why didn’t you arrange things properly? I’m still a patient! Don’t you think it’s unreasonable to make me walk such a long way?" Gu Lihui refused to listen to reason and started throwing a tantrum. "You used to say all the time that you treat me the best, but look at you! Not only did you not arrange for a tractor to pick me up, you didn’t even ride a bike to give me a lift. You’re *so* good to me, making a patient walk all the way back. Hmph. Tell me yourself, am I wronging you? Isn’t this completely out of line? Were all those things you used to say just lies?"

"Can you be reasonable for a second? I only found out last night that you could be discharged today. Even if I could get a tractor, I can’t be processing your discharge papers and handling a move at the same time, can I? And a bike? Don’t you know I fell off a bike once and have been scared to ride one ever since? Besides, I took another day off work just to pick you up from the hospital today. I’ve been running around all morning and haven’t even had a sip of water. All the days I’ve taken off recently, weren’t they all for you? My father-in-law and mother-in-law are already nagging me for constantly worrying about my family’s side. What more do you want from me?"

Gu Jinhua felt both angry and wronged. Her earlier good mood—from successfully processing her brother’s discharge and getting more than 120 yuan back from the 200 yuan deposit she had paid, which she had naturally pocketed since her brother didn’t ask about it—had now mostly evaporated.

She glanced at the clock on the wall. Watching the minutes tick by, she started to feel anxious. ’If we delay any longer, will we even make it home for lunch? And after I take him back and have lunch at our parents’ house, I still have to rush back here to help him pack. If we’re going to have people move everything, it has to be packed up first. Packing up an entire house takes time. I can’t possibly take another day off just for packing, can I?’

"I don’t care. Either you get my brother-in-law to give me a ride on his bike, or you figure something out," Gu Lihui retorted, refusing to back down. He couldn’t stand the thought of spending so much time on the road, enduring everyone’s strange looks.

"Your brother-in-law is on a business trip." Gu Jinhua was at her wit’s end with her younger brother. ’If my own son dared to throw a tantrum like this, I’d have slapped him silly by now. But I don’t dare do that to my brother. For one, he’s bigger than me now; I couldn’t win a fight. And even if I could, if I so much as laid a finger on him, Mom would come after me and beat me half to death.’

The childhood trauma ran deep.

Once, annoyed that her younger brother was misbehaving, she had lightly smacked him. Her mother happened to see it. She was still very young then, only six or seven years old, but her mother went berserk, grabbing whatever was at hand and hitting her with it, chasing her and beating her so badly she nearly died. In the end, her father had to step in and stop their mother, something he rarely did. After that, she learned her lesson: she was never to lay a finger on her two younger brothers, not even as a light, playful tap.