Chapter Seventy-Three Becomes a 'Melon Thief'

  My mom stayed overnight at my grandma's house, and my mom and I slept in Grandma's bed. My grandma and my cousin slept on the sofa because we didn't watch TV, so we went to bed early. Although it was hot during the day, it was obviously cooler here at night. My mom and grandma fanned themselves with old fans and talked about past events. I don't know how long it took for me and my cousin to fall asleep in their conversation. The next afternoon, my mom had to hurry back, but she still wasn't at ease. Since Grandma's house hadn't been occupied for a long time, there was no phone, and going to someone else's house to make a call was also inconvenient. My mom insisted on leaving her previously prepared mobile phone behind. My mom repeatedly emphasized that it wasn't expensive, but my grandma said to let my mom return it.

  My mom saw my grandma like that and didn't say much, but since my mom has always been unable to outdo me, just like how she was always unable to outdo me in the past and I would make her both angry and amused. This is also normal logic. Before leaving, my mom secretly handed over her phone for me to take care of and said: "Baby, although grandma doesn't want it, I still don't feel at ease. So you hold onto it first, when I call you later, you can give the phone to your grandma to answer, by then she won't have any way to refuse."

  I nodded in agreement, indeed there are policies from above and countermeasures from below. Before leaving, my grandmother still wanted to prepare some food for my mother, but my mother thought it was too much trouble, besides she wasn't hungry, saying: "Mom, don't bother, we just had lunch not long ago, and there's not much food at home anyway, you should just take a rest instead of going through the trouble of preparing something for me. I'm not a kid anymore going out to Yangcheng to study, and every time before I left, you would make me a sugar heart egg."

  Grandma smiled and said: "Daughter, no matter how old you get, you're still a little kid to Mom. Are you saying that the sugar heart eggs I made are not good to eat? Ya Tou and Zhan Feng like eating them, and even if you don't eat them, they can be finished off." Mom knew she couldn't refuse Grandma's kindness, so she agreed.

  We've been staying at Pingtouzi for almost a week now. I remember when my mom called the day before yesterday, my grandma was still muttering to herself that Jieqiong is just too lazy. I asked her to take the phone back with her, but she left it behind instead. To be honest, I had ulterior motives when I took my mom's phone in the first place. I wanted to call Xuan Yuan and ask him about some things regarding Ding Beichen, but when it came time to make the call, I realized I couldn't remember his phone number! It was really frustrating - it's all because of this rebirth that I've gotten into the habit of not memorizing phone numbers. Now that I'm older, I use my phone too frequently and never bother to remember anyone's number. As long as I have my phone, I can just look up the number, so I don't have the habit of remembering them anymore. Sigh... all I can do is hope that no news is good news, and who knows, maybe Ding Beichen will call my house and ask for the phone number that my mom gave me. For now, let's just take things as they come.

  I'm a special poor student, but since I came here, I've been sleeping early and getting up late every day. It's just that I couldn't sleep anymore, let alone take a nap. I resolutely refused to take a nap. Taking advantage of my grandma's afternoon nap, my cousin and I sneaked out, completely disregarding the scorching sun at noon. My cousin took me to a small grove, where I found many little friends already there, it turned out they had made an appointment long ago, only I didn't know, but now that I do, it's not too late.

  Peng Zhēnzhēn saw me coming and ran over, saying with a pout: "Bad girl, it's been several years since I've seen you. This time you've been here for almost a week and didn't even come to find me to play. You must have many good friends in the city, and forgotten about me."

  "Hurry up and comfort her, saying: "How can that be? You are also my good friend. Now I'm here, aren't I? There were special reasons for not coming back these few years, you have to forgive me. As for the crime of not going to find you, I couldn't bear it. I did go to find you, and you were the first one I looked for. Your grandmother told me that you went to your uncle's house and would be gone for four or five days. I had no choice but to leave with a sigh."

  By the way, I made a very disappointed expression, Peng Zhēnzhēn suddenly amused me and said: "Okay, okay, let's just say I was wrong, I forgive you. Do you know what everyone is gathering together for today?"

  I waved my hand and said: "I don't know, it was only when my elder brother brought me here that I realized there were so many people today. Is today some special day or a meeting?"

  Peng Zhenzhen gave me a white eye and said, "You're so stupid from reading. Isn't it obvious? This is to welcome you and Xianfeng's activity, the content of which includes game sessions and eating sessions."

  I took a glance, seemingly no one brought anything to eat, I wonder if they want to play magic tricks to make those things appear, with a curious face I asked: "Okay, forgive my ignorance, what game are we going to play, what food are we going to eat, the small woods except for shading and cooling, I didn't see any other way."

  "Look, the food is just over there in the field," said Peng Zhenzhen, pointing. "And isn't there a big bag next to Cao Qiang? It's full of sweet potatoes. He says you love them so much, but I don't know who told him that."

  Not far away, there were pieces of tender and oily vines, and on the ground, there were things like leather balls. It wasn't until then that I realized it was a watermelon field. Speaking of which, my grandmother's family also grew watermelons in the past, but much later than this time period, around when I was in third grade, the trend of growing watermelons just started to rise. Looking at the distant watermelon fields, which were not many in number, I knew that it was still in the experimental stage and not many people had tried it yet.

  Liu Liangrong also ran over and proudly said: "Xiao Xiao, that patch of watermelon field in the distance is my family's, today I'll treat you to a watermelon!"

  On the side, Peng Yue said with a smile: "You're so generous with your words, who doesn't know?"

  The translation of the text to English is:

  "The owl hoots in the old temple, the cowherd's whip cracks, the industry is prosperous, and the people are happy. The strong and brave heroes are like tigers, their words are like sharp swords. They are not afraid of difficulties, they are not afraid of death. They are loyal to their friends, they are kind to their relatives. They are not arrogant, they are not proud. They are humble, they are polite. They are not lazy, they are not idle. They are diligent, they are hardworking. They are not greedy, they are not selfish. They are generous, they are public-spirited. They are not cruel, they are not brutal. They are kind, they are compassionate. They are not deceitful, they are not treacherous. They are honest, they are trustworthy."

  Liu Lianrong was so angry with Peng Yue that her face turned red, but she didn't know how to fight back. Speaking of the name "Gui Hua", it seemed familiar, as if I had heard it somewhere before, but couldn't remember for a moment. I made a roundabout remark: "Peng Yue, isn't today supposed to be for fun? Why say such things about Lianrong? She already has a good heart, and besides, even if she 'stole' something, it's not like it was from your house, is it? You have food to eat but can't keep your mouth shut, don't bully Lianrong for no reason."

  Peng Heping usually treats everyone equally, but he just likes to bully Liu Lianrong, and it's unclear whether it's because of his grudge against Liu Fei, Liu Lianrong's older cousin.

  When we were young, there weren't many games to play, just hide and seek and the like. I immediately brought out my specialty as a reborn person and suggested playing killer and truth or dare, I told them the rules of the game, they were all very interested and agreed right away. There were over ten people, so it was quite fun.

  First, we played the killer game. It's really lucky that Liu Fei brought a deck of cards with him. In the first round, I unfortunately drew the killer card and "killed" one person after another without being discovered, which was thrilling! In my past experiences playing this kind of game, I always got caught as the killer, but this time I might be able to break the record.

  There were only three people left, one was my brother-in-law, one was Cao Qiang, and the other was Wang Jingjing, who was also an assassin like me. I couldn't bear to "kill" my brother-in-law from the start, but in the end, he died miserably at Wang Jingjing's hands. When my brother-in-law spoke his last words, he almost exposed that I was an assassin. Alas, it's really hard to be a good person! He wasn't killed by me, so why did he suspect me like that? This left only Cao Qiang, who could have revealed that Wang Jingjing and I were assassins, but he said nothing, which made Lu Zhifeng very angry. Isn't this obviously the assassins winning? We could have ended up with a draw originally.

  I asked Cao Qiang again and again: "Cao Qiang, do you have anything else to say? After this store, there is no village." Cao Qiang looked at my triumphant and excited expression, smiled and shook his head. Okay, in the final round, Cao Qiang was also "killed" by us, and I and Wang Jingjing won completely.

  Then we played Truth or Dare, and I was really lucky, not once did it land on me, just watching them one by one being embarrassed, telling their own embarrassing stories, or mumbling and trying to get away with it.

  After playing, we went to the field to pick watermelons. Considering there were over a dozen of us and most were boys, they exaggeratedly picked six watermelons. How could we finish them? Actually, nobody knew how to choose watermelons, so they randomly picked some big ones that sounded good when knocked on. After cutting open the watermelons, we found four out of the six were not bad - red pulp and black seeds looked appetizing. However, two of them were completely tasteless, so naturally, nobody wanted to eat them. Everyone started digging in to the sweet watermelons with gusto. Originally, we picked too many, and each person ate until they were stuffed, which still didn't finish off all six watermelons. In the end, it was a bit of eating and throwing away, especially since those two weren't sweet anyway.

  Later, we also roasted sweet potatoes. You can't say that the sweet potatoes grown at home are fragrant. Everyone had a great time playing until the sun set in the west and then thought of going home, otherwise, they would be scolded by their parents again.

  The next day at noon, a woman came to the door and asked for an explanation from her grandmother, saying: "Yang grandma, are you in charge or not? You're all city people now, why did your granddaughter and grandson steal our hard-earned watermelon?"

  A thief is very piercing, I looked out from the house, isn't this the woman who spoke sour words on our first day back? It seems to be called Guilhua or something. Looking again at Liu Lianrong crying beside her, Ah, yesterday Peng Lei said that Aunt Guilhua was stingy, so this Guilhua is actually Liu Lianrong's mother, okay, I've realized it.