Back home, Fang Bai handed the soy sauce and salt to his father, then slipped the remaining ten cents into his pants pocket.
The family prepared dinner: a plate of stir-fried lettuce with a few slices of meat, a large bowl of tomato egg soup, and a serving of pickles.
When Fang Shi saw his son had returned, he had gone out to buy pork on a whim. Normally, how could he bear to spend money on meat?
Fang Bai deliberately picked only the lettuce and avoided the meat. He was not particularly interested in eating meat.
Seeing him eat nothing but vegetables, his mother placed two slices of meat in his bowl. "Eat more and build yourself up properly."
"Mom, I'm not interested in meat right now. I got plenty of nourishment at the hospital.
"Mom and Dad, you've both worked hard. Making money isn't easy, and Younger Sister is malnourished. You should eat more. You don't need to give me any."
His parents froze when they heard their son's words. He had never said such things before, and hearing them now made them feel deeply gratified. Perhaps the accident had truly made him grow up.
Fang Shi pursed his lips and sighed. "Sigh, Dad's useless. I can't earn any money."
"Dad, I'm not blaming you. It hasn't been easy for you to raise us. Every family is having a hard time these days.
"Don't worry. Things will get better for us. We'll eat meat every day until we're sick of it." Fang Bai swallowed his food and said with a cheerful smile, nudging his younger sister's foot under the table.
That little brat was usually so clever, but now she was completely focused on the food.
Younger Sister blanked for a moment, then quickly caught on. "Big Brother is right. Mom and Dad have already worked very hard. Things will get better for us."
Her face was full of smiles, though even she did not quite believe it. Could they really eat meat every day until they got sick of it?
Big Brother, you really knew how to joke.
Still, although she was young, she understood that her brother was comforting their parents, so she could only go along with him.
"Mm, things will get better."
Fang Shi had wanted to comfort the children, only to be comforted by them instead. He smiled with gratification.
After dinner, Fang Bai finally brought up the matter of his Second Uncle and Aunt's family.
"Dad, Mom, keep your distance from Second Uncle's family. The moment they saw I was down on my luck, they avoided us like the plague, afraid my bad luck would rub off on them."
"You child, why are you speaking so sarcastically?"
"I'm not wrong. We put on a friendly face only to be met with cold indifference, and they still look down on us."
Fang Bai spoke bluntly. Fang Shi felt somewhat uncomfortable hearing his son say it so plainly, but he was not wrong.
Seeing his parents fall silent, Fang Bai took out eighty 10-Yuan Notes from the bag he had brought back. "I asked my boss for compensation. I spent more than two hundred yuan on a bicycle to make getting around easier."
His father's eyes widened in disbelief. "Your boss was that generous?
"Bosses in Wen City are pretty stingy."
When he had seen his son ride home on a new bicycle that day, he had assumed it was borrowed. He had not yet had the chance to ask about it.
Younger Sister and his mother stood nearby as well, curious about how he had gotten the money.
"Not bad. I explained some legal knowledge to him, otherwise why would he have paid so readily?" Fang Bai curled his lips into a smile. "Don't worry, I got the money fair and square."
Once he said that, the family was relieved. They had only feared that he had gotten involved in criminal dealings.
"Haha, studying is still useful after all."
Fang Shi happily took the money and counted it. He kept six hundred yuan, then pushed two hundred yuan back to his son. "My son has grown up too. You understand that making money isn't easy. Keep these two hundred yuan saved up. You'll need to buy study materials for repeating the year."
"I still have more than a hundred yuan on hand, enough for living expenses. I've already decided to repeat the year at Oubei No. 1 Middle School. There's no tuition fee for repeat students there, so Dad, keep this for emergencies first," Fang Bai said. In truth, he still had around 1,200 yuan, though it would disappear quickly enough.
"Fine. No need for father and son to be polite with each other."
Fang Shi readily accepted the eight hundred yuan. He was still worried that his son might impulsively squander it. He had only just gotten the money and already bought a bicycle.
Buying such a major item without even discussing it with the family left Fang Shi somewhat dissatisfied.
Fang Bai chatted with his family for more than half an hour, then took a hot bath.
There were no water heaters in those days. They could only heat water by burning firewood.
After heating the water, Fang Bai scooped a third of a metal bucket full of hot water and carried it to the crude bathroom. Then he scooped cold water from the water vat into it, feeling the temperature with his hand until it seemed about right.
With only one bucket of warm water, he had to conserve it while bathing. Otherwise, it would be awkward if the warm water ran out before he had even rinsed off the soap.
He shut the rough wooden bathroom door and began bathing.
Through a hole in the bathroom roof, Fang Bai could see the brilliant starry sky. A gentle breeze drifted into the bathroom, making him shiver.
After bathing, he took more hot water out into the yard to wash his hair, and his mother brought him a dry towel to wipe it.
Once all that was over, Fang Bai sat beneath the eaves in the light, enjoying the peace and cool breeze of the countryside.
People in this era went to bed early and woke up early. It was nothing like later generations, when people clutched their phones until the middle of the night without wanting to sleep, could not get out of bed the next morning, and spent the entire morning muddleheaded and dizzy.
Fang Bai's severed finger had added to his parents' worries.
He remembered that in the past, his parents often went to a neighbor's house after dinner to watch television dramas.
His family had a fourteen-inch black and white TV, but Color TVs had already become fashionable.
Of course, not many families could afford a Color TV. Its purchasing power was roughly equivalent to buying a sedan in later generations.
There were not many TV dramas to watch in those days either. Journey to the West had aired in 1986 and been rerun countless times, accompanying innumerable people born in the seventies and eighties.
Whenever school was out, Fang Bai and Younger Sister would monopolize the black and white TV at home to watch reruns of Journey to the West. They had watched it at least three times.
After sitting for a while, Fang Bai returned to his room to sort through his old books.
He had tested the Golden Finger's function in the hospital. It only worked on newspapers, magazines, and books that his right Index Finger had touched.
He used a newspaper for the test and read about a hundred words after a while.
Then he closed his eyes and tried to recall them.
At the time, Fang Bai could roughly recite the first thirty or forty words. The later content remained quite clear in his mind, but he could not recite it.
His current memory and comprehension were a fusion of his present eighteen-year-old self and the experience and abilities from his previous life.
If only his soul had traveled through time, then the memory of his former self in his several decades would already have declined. It would have been difficult to remember sentences and formulas. Memorizing the first twenty or thirty words after seeing them once would have been impossible.
However, his comprehension in his several decades was naturally somewhat stronger than it had been in his youth.
With this situation, if he repeated the year, he would not need to start mastering knowledge from middle school. He still retained the memory he had after finishing the college entrance examination, while also possessing the experience from his previous life.
If he took mock exams again, his reading comprehension would be much stronger.
Fang Bai compared it with his memory before obtaining the Golden Finger and felt that it had been noticeably strengthened.
He opened his eyes and read it again.
When he recalled it once more, he found that he could recite the first fifty or sixty words.
After reading it several more times, he could more or less recite it all.
Of course, it was hard to say how much he would still remember after some time had passed.
But no matter what, even a temporary doubling of his memory and comprehension had delighted Fang Bai at the time.
Even if it was not a permanent enhancement, the improvement in his overall learning ability was more than merely double.
For example, some english words could not be memorized no matter how desperately one tried to cram them;
Some formulas remained difficult to understand no matter how teachers explained them, sometimes impossible to fully grasp.
It was like setting a learning threshold. Once one's ability reached it, learning would yield twice the result with half the effort.
It could also be understood as temporarily raising part of a person's intelligence.
Therefore, Fang Bai was even more confident about repeating the year.
Before going to sleep, Fang Bai told his parents that he would be reporting to Oubei No. 1 Middle School.
For a while, Fang Bai would not be returning home at night. Traveling back and forth every day was too exhausting, and he wanted to seize every second at night to review. Besides, studying at home was inconvenient.
On the other hand, it would reduce his parents' burden. Once he had earned more money, Fang Bai would tell them about it. By then, he would have more grounds to persuade them to do some business. Even a small business would be better than working for others.
People from Wen City liked having fathers and sons work together in business, which was why most companies in Jiangnan Province were family businesses.
Fang Bai could not possibly leave his family behind and work alone in business. That would be too exhausting. It would be better if his family could help him somewhat.
That night, after sorting out his old books and luggage, Fang Bai went to rest shortly after nine. It was rare for him to sleep peacefully.
He even had a wonderful dream: his family built a grand villa and lived a good life.
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