National Day

News of the monthly exam dampened some of the excitement over the coming holiday. Lin Er packed her schoolbag amid the chatter of her classmates.

The exam had originally been scheduled for the end of September, but for some reason, it had ultimately been moved to after the National Day holiday.

Lin Er didn't mind. What had her classmates excited now was that their homeroom teacher had said the seats would be rearranged after the exam.

Although she wasn't withdrawn or afraid of people in this life, she still didn't like initiating conversations.

She had made few friends in her first month at school. When Shi Meng asked whether she wanted to sit together, she had only said she would think about it.

Shi Meng had too many friends—or rather, everyone in their circle was a good student, and they all got along well.

But something seemed to have happened in Xu Duoduo's family. Her mother had come to school and taken her home the previous week, and word was that she wouldn't be continuing her studies.

No one tried to persuade her to stay, or rather, no one thought there was any need to.

When her mother came to collect her things, she pressed an apple each into Lin Er's and Shi Meng's hands, thanking them for looking after her before.

But Xu Duoduo had never really troubled either of them.

Having one fewer person made no difference to the class. They had had an extra student before, so now they could simply remove that desk.

In fact, every class was over capacity. A class usually had sixty students, but at the start of the school year, there could be as many as sixty-four or sixty-five.

As they continued their studies, students would leave, and by the third year of middle school, a class might have only fifty-odd students left.

Some weren't allowed to continue by their families, some didn't want to continue themselves, and others were expelled.

Xu Duoduo's departure caused no stir at all. When she left, Lin Er couldn't help asking what she would do after going home. She said she was sick, and her mother was taking her to have surgery.

Lin Er didn't know what she was thinking, and in the end, she said nothing.

The National Day holiday was much less restrictive than she had expected, because her grandparents had no time to keep an eye on her.

The old couple had even stopped picking peanuts. They covered them with a tarpaulin, and every day they cooked up the river snails and carried them into the city in buckets.

The two of them, who couldn't bear to buy a piece of tofu to eat even once a week, had actually hired a motorcycle.

Ever since Lin Er had come home the previous week and cooked those river snails, and the old couple had gone into the city and made money, they hadn't missed a single day.

On Mondays and Fridays, they went to sell them at the evening markets near the park and the work units. On Saturdays, they went to the gate of Experimental High, and on Sundays, to the gates of No. 2 Middle School and No. 3 Middle School.

The snails weren't an inexhaustible supply. The river snails in the river needed time to grow too.

They were afraid others would discover that selling them made money and compete with them for the market, so they planned to go every day.

They would sell all the river snails in the nearby river first, or wait until the customers had eaten their fill of them.

They didn't plan to make it a long-term business; they only wanted to make some quick money.

This week, however, Grandma Lin seemed much less anxious.

After giving Lin Huihui, who couldn't keep her hands to herself, a beating, Lin Er looked at the cheerful Grandma Lin and grew curious.

"Why aren't you in such a hurry lately? Is no one else selling them?"

Grandma Lin waved a hand, her face full of pride.

"Hehe, plenty of people tried to get in on it, but they all quit after a couple of days because no one bought theirs."

Seeing that Lin Er was still puzzled, she glanced outside the door, then lowered her voice. "The snails they cook are filthy. They can't even wash all the algae off, and plenty of them still have sand in them! Me, I have a secret recipe for cleaning snails!"

Lin Er was bewildered for a moment. What secret recipe? Wasn't it because she secretly used a spell every night after she came home?

But Grandma Lin wouldn't say. As she saw it, children couldn't keep their mouths shut, and she was afraid the two of them would reveal the secret recipe.

There were now two large basins of snails purging sand beneath the gardenia tree every day. Lin Er had watched from morning to night, and apart from a handful of salt, nothing had been put in them.

That evening, Grandma Lin uncovered the basins, stirred the snails, looked them over, and changed the water. Then she frowned.

"Has this bag of salt gotten damp? Why is it working so poorly?"

Grandpa Lin offered a few words of comfort, saying only that perhaps they hadn't been soaking long enough and would be fine after a night.

It suddenly dawned on Lin Er: could Grandma think the snails were so clean because of that handful of salt?

Sure enough, when the snails still weren't clean the next day, Grandma Lin added another handful of salt.

Lin Er didn't know whether to laugh or cry. She found an opportunity to clean both basins of snails with magic.

The clinking at home went on all day. Once the snails were clean, Grandpa Lin would cut off their tails and have Grandma Lin cook them.

The spicy, savory aroma wafted out of the kitchen. Their neighbors were all relatives from the same clan, and they all knew the family was making money selling the snails. The family had even given them some at the beginning, and they had indeed tasted good.

They didn't know exactly how much the couple had made, but seeing that Grandpa and Grandma Lin had even stopped picking peanuts to devote themselves to selling snails, they knew it was a good sum.

At first, the elderly aunt next door on the left would come over to help cut off the snail tails, but she stopped coming after word spread that they had made quite a bit of money.

Her children didn't live in the village. She was in her sixties or seventies and still very spry. She had been a child bride and was older than both Grandpa and Grandma Lin.

Her back looked a little hunched, but Lin Er knew she still had several decades to live!

She usually liked to come over and chat, and the two families got along quite well.

But when Lin Er came home for the holiday this time, she found that things seemed a little different.

"Why doesn't Auntie next door come over anymore?"

Lin Er was curious. When she was little, the family hadn't had a television, and she had rarely seen storybooks. Almost all the stories she knew had been told to them by this auntie.

Grandma Lin stirred the snails in the wok. They rattled as they struck the iron.

"Do you know who was the first to copy us and sell snails after finding out our family was making money from them?"

Lin Er fell silent and fed firewood into the stove. With Grandma Lin asking that, who else could it be?

Sure enough, without waiting for Lin Er to answer, Grandma Lin finished, sounding rather angry.

"It was her daughter. She caught the snails in our river too, copied us by cutting off the tails, and used much the same seasonings. I really didn't guard against her—she even came over and helped tend the fire!"

The chilies in the wok gave off a spicy aroma as they cooked in the oil and liquid. Grandma Lin craned her neck to look into the courtyard, then took a bottle of beer from the grain room, poured it into the wok, and put the lid on to let it cook.

"Good thing she couldn't wait. At first, we couldn't bear to buy beer either, or she would have learned the recipe!"

Lin Er really hadn't expected that to have happened, but it wasn't surprising. Their business required so little capital, and the ingredients were free from the river. Who could resist once they knew it made money?

After her anger passed, Grandma Lin gave a smile that was both smug and mocking.

"Copying us did them no good. Their snails aren't clean, and they don't taste as good as ours. She even wanted to sell them under our name.

"Whenever someone buys ours, your grandpa and I tell them they'll get a full refund if they find any algae. They don't dare make that promise. Once someone gets fooled, they never buy from them again!"