When Shi Chu woke up from his dizziness, he saw a short and fat woman in her fifties, speaking with her mouth open and saliva splattering:
"I know you're not in the mood to think about these things since your father just passed away, but now is the only chance. If you don't grab it, someone else will snatch it away! Zhou Weiguo has so many children at home, all crying and making a fuss. He needs to find a wife to take care of them.
Don't think that it's hard to marry him just because he has four children. Let me tell you, he is very popular. After all, he is a worker in the county town and has a stable salary every month. This is better than the guys who farm in our village!
Think about it, if you marry him, you won’t have to work in the fields. You will only need to take care of several children and do housework. Isn’t this much easier than working in the fields
There are many girls in our village who are eyeing him. If you agree too late, it will be too late to regret. I tell you..."
Shi Chu listened to the woman's words distractedly while reading the original owner's memory. She soon realized that this was the time when the matchmaker Aunt Zhou came to introduce her to be Zhou Weiguo's stepmother.
Aunt Zhou praised Zhou Weiguo's conditions to the skies, as if he were the best man in the world, and tried her best to persuade Shi Chu to agree to the marriage:
"I'm telling you, if you miss this opportunity, you'll never get it again. Why are you still being so reserved? Do you want to marry a man who works in the fields all day? Then you'll have to work hard in the fields, and in a few years you'll be exhausted and become a shrew..."
Shi Chu pressed his temple and said to Aunt Zhou, "Aunt Zhou, please stop talking. I'm not interested in being a stepmother. You should find someone else."
"What?" Aunt Zhou obviously didn't expect Shi Chu to reject her. She was so shocked that her eyes widened and her expression suddenly became unhappy.
"You don't even like Zhou Weiguo? Who else do you want to like? What's wrong with being a stepmother? Those children have grown up and don't need you to take care of them, but you still look down on them? Zhou Weiguo doesn't even look down on you for being unlucky because you have no parents!"
"Since he is so qualified, why don't you marry your daughter to him, Aunt Zhou? I remember you still have a little daughter who is not married yet?" Shi Chu's face turned cold. This matchmaker Zhou was a boaster. For the sake of money, she could hide the defects of her relatives with a black heart and caused suffering to many people.
"How can my daughter marry a widower?!" Aunt Zhou blurted out. When she saw Shi Chu's gloomy face, she said awkwardly, "What I mean is that my daughter is spoiled and pampered by me. She is only suitable for someone with a simple family relationship..."
"Zhou Weiguo's family relationships are not complicated. It's just a few more children, right? Besides, men are more caring when they get older, and your daughter is spoiled. Isn't this just right?" Shi Chu said with a smile.
Aunt Zhou's face fell suddenly. It was obvious that she was not so easy to fool. She immediately said in a gloomy tone: "You don't need to worry about my daughter. She is destined to marry in the city. But you, your family is so poor that even thieves don't bother to patronize you. Now your father is dead, and there is no relative to arrange a marriage for you. I don't think you can find a good family!"
"Even if I can't get married, I'd be happy to be an old aunt!" Shi Chu snorted coldly.
Seeing that this marriage had no chance of success, Aunt Zhou left cursing.
Shi Chu glanced around and saw that the mud house was dark and dilapidated, with bare walls and a very poor appearance.
She found the kitchen but didn't find any tea sets like a kettle, so she had to take a bowl and scoop some water from the pool to drink.
After quenching her thirst, she finally had the energy to understand the original owner's current situation.
The original owner was called Gu Shichu, eighteen years old. His father broke his leg half a month ago when he went up the mountain to hunt some wild animals to fill his stomach. It happened to rain heavily that day, and he couldn't go down the mountain with his broken leg and was exposed to the rain all night. When the original owner gathered the villagers to look for him the next day, he had already had a fever and was confused. He was carried back home and died within three days.
The original owner's mother died of illness when she was ten years old. After that, she depended on her father. Unfortunately, her father could not stay with her for long, leaving her an orphan at the age of eighteen.
She did have several relatives in the village, but unfortunately her family was too poor, and her relatives had long since distanced themselves from her. Even now that she was an orphan, other relatives were not interested in occupying her property - of course, her family had no property, and the only thing worth some money was a shabby house, the kind that no one else cared about.
This saved Shi Chu a lot of trouble. Otherwise, if she came here and had to argue with her bad relatives, she would have exploded.
Unfortunately, the original owner was not as strong as Shi Chu. Her only relative had just passed away. She was alone and helpless, feeling anxious and helpless all day long. So when Aunt Zhou talked about the marriage, she immediately agreed to marry Zhou Weiguo.
In fact, she had no interest in Zhou Weiguo himself or his enviable job in the city. She just didn't want to be alone and wanted to have a home. This marriage happened to come to her door, and she immediately grabbed this life-saving straw like a rootless duckweed.
Marrying into the Zhou family was far from as good as Zhou the matchmaker had said. She had to take care of four young stepchildren. The two aged seven and five were already half grown up and knew what a stepmother was. Therefore, they were resistant to her, went against her, and caused a lot of trouble.
Although the two-year-old twins are young and naive, they are at the age where they need to be looked after all the time. She needs to pay no attention to them at all, from washing diapers, feeding them, and coaxing them to sleep... It's all work. She is so tired that she can fall asleep while standing. It's a pity that she is only eighteen years old.
When Shi Chu thought of this, she couldn't help but shudder. The noisy crying of the children in the original owner's memory, and the basin full of dirty clothes and diapers waiting to be washed... all made her shudder and feel daunted. The original owner was really tenacious enough to persevere.
Fortunately, she had just rejected Aunt Zhou. Shi Chu was secretly glad that if she really had to be a stepmother who took care of four children's eating, drinking, defecating and urinating, she would definitely die and escape from this world.
In the previous world, although she was a stepmother, she was just a figurehead, and other things did not bother her. Even if she later adopted Du Zhao, there were maids and servants to take care of him, so she didn't have to do anything. Moreover, Du Zhao was a well-behaved child who was easy to take care of, and she didn't feel the hardship and fatigue of raising a child at all.
But this is not the world like this. Being a stepmother means you have to do the job solidly. You have to cook for people, bathe and dress them, wash clothes and change diapers, and do housework... Everything has to be done with her own hands. How can she bear this
When Shi Chu thought of this, he regretted being too polite to Zhou the matchmaker. He only said a few words to her and didn't kick her out. Just because she introduced such a deceptive marriage to the original owner, she deserved a beating.