novelraw Chapter 543: Fifty-Style Freeloader in the 1950s, 22
Chapter 543: Fifty-Style Freeloader in the 1950s, 22
Not long after, a shrill female voice rang out again in the courtyard:
“What kind of nonsense is this? Were you all born as starving ghosts?”
Just after returning home and seeing the mess everywhere, Meng Yu felt her vision blacken on the spot. Especially when she saw the table strewn with torn-apart pastries and the grease packets tossed about.
Even the snowflake cream she had bought at great expense earlier had been dug into, with who knew how much already stolen.
Because of her previous reformed life, Meng Yu now could not stand hunger above all else, so the pile of pastries left in the room had weighed several jin. There were also the marinated meat buns, jerky, and braised chicken legs bought earlier…
But now, plainly visible to the eye, the food she had stored in the room had been almost completely devoured. Even in the kitchen, the flour Chen Fu Sheng had bought before was ruined more than halfway.
What on earth are these people doing, are they reincarnated starving ghosts?
There were also two elder sisters who, although she could no longer clearly recall exactly how life had been over the past ten-odd years, she remembered they had not been like this!
Back then, whenever they saw her, both would be full of warmth, occasionally coming over to help wash her clothes, cook, and clean.
Now these two had turned sour and mean — what happened to them?On the other side, the two elder sisters were still cursing and scolding.
They had used so many of someone else’s things without permission, and none of them, including the children, felt any guilt; they still strutted about with inflated pride.
The first to speak was the Chen family’s eldest sister, wearing a faded gray-blue top, her slightly thin cheeks highlighted by a pair of upturned eyes that made her look even more cutting:
“Oh my, I’m telling you, Fu Sheng’s wife—one can’t be so stingy in life. It’s only a few pastries, what’s wrong with giving your nephew a snack?”
“Doesn’t everyone know the Meng family used to have a deputy manager and was full of money? What’s the matter, you go out and eat at restaurants all the time but can’t spare this little bit?”
“Sigh, Fu Sheng’s wife!” The second sister-in-law sighed as well, her face full of disappointment:
“I’m not saying this to scold you, but you can’t be so selfish. My husband works from morning till night, exhausted, and then has to come home and serve you—what’s that about?”
Isn’t that what he should do?
Meng Yu’s chest burned with even more anger in that instant.
Cook and do housework? As if! And if it weren’t for the Chen family’s stinginess with seasonings and portions that made everything taste awful, would she want to spend her time buying food outside all day?
No, it was clearly only a few years earlier, so why was there such a difference in people now?
The two elder sisters’ endless scolding filled her ears, while before her eyes the other nephews kept rifling through the house…
Beside them stood a worried but unusually quiet, “honest” man who always failed to restrain them.
The huge gap between past and present lives tangled Meng Yu’s already disordered memories even more, making her mind slightly dazed.
It wasn’t until a brat shoved her hard to the ground and the gang of robbers, having eaten and drunk their fill, casually wiped the grease from their mouths, grabbed a few pieces of newly taken cloth, and left in satisfaction.
The eldest sister in charge rubbed her belly in confusion, tutting — unlucky little sister, these pastries hardly did anything; they’d eaten plenty just now, so how come their stomachs are empty again so soon?
What a pity, that dead girl isn’t clever, but she hid her money tightly.
However, Meng Yu didn’t know this was only the beginning. Soon, a nationwide famine would arrive.
Putting aside the confusion caused by two lifetimes of mixed memories, in her previous life Meng Yu had been the deputy manager’s precious daughter; even in the hardest times she had never been made to suffer.
So Meng Miss naturally had no deep awareness of the hardships of these coming years. She was still furious at the handful of unruly kids and their parents.
In the small courtyard, Chen Fu Sheng kept his head down, gloom flickering across his eyes now and then, the veins on his fists standing out at his sides.
“By the way, host, aren’t you going to prepare more?”
Seeing the various candies, pastries, and a heap of jerky snacks lying around the small room, the system couldn’t help but speak up:
As a genius with an especially developed brain, it’s well known that thinking, especially high-frequency thinking, consumes a lot of energy. So even though An Ning only returned for a few days each month, there was no shortage of good things in her room or at the dorm.
An Yun, An Ning’s sister and friend, was the same.
Maybe because she had been so hungry before, or because late-night studying burned so much energy, An Yun had the habit of hoarding food as well.
But even so, this was far from enough!
That was three whole years!
The system waited and waited. Apart from throwing a few fish into the nearby reservoir, the host still had no intention of doing anything.
Until one night, Director Wang crept home in the dark and brought back several boxes of canned food and biscuits, plus a large pile of air-dried preserved meats and various seafood…
And that was only the start. Before the news spread and before the black market and local grain prices rose, the family cellar gradually filled, the grain stockpile growing until most of the cellar was stored.
System: “Ah, really?”
Can it be like this? Is this person so well informed?
“Why be surprised! Those who always get the news will always get the news.”
Yet the truly well-informed are always a small circle of people.
Still buried in her exercise book, An Ning was noncommittal: “Never mind the rest. System, in my last life, when did you ever see Chubby Boy with less than a pocketful of food?”
Don’t even talk about supporting himself; he could support another person with ease!
She’s just a little kid—why worry about this? With the time he spends fretting, he’d better worry about his older sister’s studies; she’s about to be in the graduating class, and the harder it gets, the more strained the eldest sister becomes…
This is still only primary school.
And next year she’ll be prepping for the college entrance exam, so she definitely won’t have much time.
Then there’s Little Wang Brat; in this era, with such a capable biological father, she still had to take on this face publicly.
System: “……”