While everyone was at work, Li Danyang secretly took several peanut candies that her mother kept in the drawer like a treasure, and went to the place where the children in the village often played.
These days she had been thinking about how to get close to Zhou Weiguo, but unfortunately he was still working in the city, so even though she had a lot of plans in her mind, she couldn't implement them.
However, although I can’t see Zhou Weiguo, I can see Zhou Weiguo’s children.
Li Danyang thought it would be a good idea to start with the children, so she took out all the peanut candies her mother treasured. Only her eldest nephew had the privilege of enjoying these good things, while others could only stare at them with envy.
When we got there, there were indeed many half-grown children playing around, chasing and fighting with each other. However, none of these children looked good, after all, the adults were busy at work and had no time to take care of them, and there was a shortage of food and drink at that time, so they were all skinny and hungry, and they were also tanned because of playing outside.
Li Danyang never liked these annoying kids, so it took him a while to recognize the two older children from Zhou Weiguo's family.
Thirty or forty years later, Zhou Jianhong, the tycoon of the clothing manufacturing industry and the richest man in the province, is now only a seven-year-old child, dark and skinny, wearing a patched and dirty clothes, and is fighting with his friends with a pile of dry cow dung...
Li Danyang almost thought she had recognized the wrong person, but she carefully looked at him several times before she was sure that she was not wrong. Now, this sloppy little boy who looked no different from an ordinary child and had nothing special about him, might really be a future multi-millionaire.
Although the child's facial features were still quite childish, he looked very similar to Zhou Jianhong, a wealthy businessman that Li Danyang had seen on TV in his previous life. He looked even more like his father Zhou Weiguo. Therefore, even if Li Danyang wanted to convince himself that he had recognized the wrong person, he could not.
Zhou Jianying, who would become a famous medical expert in the future, still had two snotty noses and her hair was stuck to her head in wisps because she hadn't washed it for a long time... She looked even shaggier than her older brother.
Li Danyang saw the two dirty kids and didn't want to go over, but for the sake of her future life, she still fought! She endured the disgust and nausea and waved at them: "Zhou Jianhong, Zhou Jianying! Come here, I have something to talk to you about!"
Zhou Jianhong and Zhou Jianying looked at her with confusion, not understanding why this sister, who used to avoid them with disgust, called them.
But she was an adult after all, so Zhou Jianhong and Zhou Jianying had no choice but to run over and ask, "Sister Danyang, why are you looking for us? We still want to play with Shitou and the others!"
Li Danyang looked at Zhou Jianhong, who kept glancing at his friends with an expression that said, "If you have something to say, please tell me now." He could only smile amiably, took out two peanut candies, and said, "Someone gave me some candies. They are very sweet. Do you want to try some?"
"Yes! Yes!" When Zhou Jianhong and his sister heard that there was candy, their eyes suddenly lit up and they answered hurriedly. Before Li Danyang even waited for them to give the candy, they couldn't wait to grab it and stuffed it into their mouths.
Li Danyang suppressed his nausea and wiped the dirt on his fingers that were stained by the two people on the tree trunk next to him, then whispered to them mysteriously: "You can't tell anyone that I gave you candy, understand? If you tell other children, I won't give you candy next time... But you can still tell your family..."
She was playing a trick.
The Zhou siblings had no idea of her little thoughts. As long as there was candy, they agreed to anything. They nodded their heads like chickens pecking at rice and agreed again and again: "Sister Danyang, we won't tell anyone else! You have to share your candy with me in the future!"
"Sister Danyang, you are so nice! I wish you could give me candy every day!" Zhou Jianhong said vaguely while holding a candy in his mouth.
Li Danyang rolled his eyes, smiled more gently, and said: "I am not a relative of your family, so I can only give you candy occasionally. But if he were a relative of my family, I could give him candy every day. My nephew is like this, he has cavities from eating too much candy."
Li Danyang boasted, relying on the fact that he was just a child and didn't understand.
When Zhou Jianhong heard her words, he was even more envious and said, "Can I eat candy every day just because I'm in your family? Then can I also be in your family?"
"But I'm not a member of your family now." Li Danyang sighed and said, "I like you and your sister very much, too. It would be great if we were a family, but unfortunately we are not."
Li Danyang didn't dare to say directly that she wanted to be their stepmother, so she could only hint to the two children in this way.
She swallowed the words she wanted to continue saying, closed her eyes, touched Zhou Jianying's greasy hair, and said to the brother and sister: "Okay, after you finish eating the candy, go play!"
After she turned around and left, she desperately wiped her hand that had touched Zhou Jianying's hair onto her trouser legs, trying to convince herself that the Zhou brothers and sisters were only slovenly temporarily, because they had no one to take care of them since they had lost their mother, and as long as she married them, they would naturally become clean and well-behaved children...
After a day of crazy fun outside, Zhou Jianhong and Zhou Jianying had forgotten about Li Danyang long ago when they returned home. Later in the middle of the night, Zhou Jianhong covered his teeth and whimpered in pain, waking up Zhou Weiguo's mother. When his mother asked him if he had eaten something wrong during the day, Zhou Jianhong remembered that it was Sister Danyang who gave him and his sister a piece of peanut candy.
Zhou's mother knew Li Danyang, but their family and Li Danyang's family were just ordinary villagers. They would exchange personal relationships, but it was impossible to say that their relationship was very good.
Li Danyang was a petty person who loved to haggle over small matters. How could he be so generous as to give candy to his grandson this time? You know, candy was very precious in those days. Ordinary people had to hide their candy and eat it bit by bit. Who would be so generous as to give two pieces of candy to other people's children
Zhou's mother was puzzled for a long time, but when she thought that it was her own child who had taken advantage, she stopped investigating.
She never thought that Li Danyang was planning to target her son, so Li Danyang's good intentions were useless.
"Li Danyang, where have you been again? You're such a grown-up, but you're just eating and drinking for free and doing nothing at home! How lazy have you become?" As soon as Li Danyang returned home, his sister-in-law, who had just returned from work, rolled her eyes and scolded him.
"How come I'm eating and drinking for free? Aren't I the one who eats the clothes in the house? The clothes your son takes off look like they've been rolled in mud. Don't you know how difficult they are to wash?" Li Danyang cursed back with a ferocious face.
She had been harboring resentment towards her sister-in-law for a long time. In her previous life, after Wei Shaocheng abandoned her and her son and returned to the city, Sister-in-law Li scolded her for being a money-loser who couldn't even keep a man, and a coward who stayed at her parents' home to eat for free. She had no idea how much she had suffered.
Hearing her scolding him again, Li Danyang couldn't help it anymore. He stared at Mrs. Li with vicious and resentful eyes, which scared Mrs. Li.