Chapter 2 — The Scumbag Dad Regrets It?

“I’m Yu Zhou. Uncle Si, let Mianmian answer the phone.”

“Mianmian’s gone. She said she won’t take your calls. What do you want?”

There was a pause on the other end before he finally spoke. “I want to bring her to live with me. I want to take care of her… raise her.”

Old Uncle Feng Si couldn’t help but laugh. “What kind of dream are you having in broad daylight? The girl just turned eighteen this year—she’ll be old enough to get married next year, and you want to raise her now? Where the hell were you all those years ago?”

With that, he slammed the phone down.

But the calls kept coming. Uncle Feng Si, annoyed, picked up again. “What do you want, exactly? I told you, Mianmian won’t take your calls. It’s pointless to keep trying.”

“If she won’t answer, I’ll go find her after the New Year.”

“Suit yourself.” Uncle Feng Si hung up again. This time, he just set the phone aside so he wouldn’t have to listen to it ring.

As for Yu Zhou, it was just a small blip on the radar—Feng Mian didn’t give it a second thought.

Since she really had come to this place, she had to think about how to live her new life.

The moment she reached out, that underworld phone appeared in her hand.

So it had come with her.

Feng Mian was secretly delighted.

She quickly placed a few orders—steamed buns, shrimp dumplings, eight-treasure congee—and had a hearty meal.

With her stomach full, she went to tidy up the bed.

When she pulled back the outer layer of the duvet, she was stunned by the cotton inside.

In her memory, wasn’t cotton supposed to be white? But the batting inside this quilt was practically black.

She recalled from the original owner’s memories that even this quilt had been hard-won—her grandmother and aunt had argued for ages before finally managing to secure it for her. It had already been used for years and wasn’t fit to sleep under anymore; it was meant to be a mattress pad.

No wonder she’d woken up that morning with cold hands and feet—this stiff, cold thing provided no warmth at all.

Feng Mian ordered a silk quilt and a latex mattress.

She also searched for retro-style bed sheets and covers from the 70s and 80s—easily finding some that fit the aesthetic of the era.

She placed all the orders, received the deliveries into the underworld room, then used her mind to transfer them into the actual room. In an instant, her house was piled high with goods.

She efficiently swapped out the old bedding and bundled up the useless junk to sell later as scrap.

When she lay down on the bed again—it was soft and cozy.

With the New Year around the corner, there was no field work and nothing to do lately. Feng Mian took the opportunity to start tidying up her three-room thatched house.

This house had been left to her by her mother. It was a typical 70s-80s rural straw-thatched home. The main room at the front served as a hall, with the kitchen on one side and a small, low woodshed built behind it. The other side held the bedroom.

The walls were just yellow mud packed with bamboo slats, and the roof was made of thatch.

She remembered that when she used to have money, she’d stayed in this kind of house at a farmhouse-style inn.

But those places were well-maintained—clean, bright, and welcoming. Compared to that, this house was a disaster.

What was the difference? This house was short and squat, the windows were tiny, and—according to the original owner’s memory—they’d even been sealed to keep out the wind.

With things like that, you needed an oil lamp even in broad daylight.

The floor was just bare earth.

That was fine in dry weather, but when it rained, the house turned into a mud pit.

The windows and floor weren’t something she could fix in a day, so Feng Mian turned her attention to the piles of junk inside.

She finally understood why old folks loved hoarding junk—it was clearly a habit ingrained from childhood.

The original owner had no idea where all the trash had come from, but it was packed wall to wall. If someone accidentally knocked over an oil lamp in here, they might not make it out alive.

Feng Mian decided to tackle the junk first.

Rolling up her sleeves, she got to work.

She packed everything up and piled it in the main room. Then she went next door to borrow Lu Lan’s flatbed cart, planning to haul it all to town to sell the next day.

Early the next morning, Feng Mian set off for the county town with a cart full of scrap metal and ragged cotton coats.

Their place was fairly close to the county—just four or five li (a couple of kilometers).

When she reached an empty stretch of road, she stashed everything into her space. It wasn’t until she got close to the marketplace that she secretly took it all out again.

This county town was one of several surrounding a larger city, and the city itself was only a dozen or so li further.

The city she was in was a major southern city.

Judging by how fast it would develop over the next few decades, it was bound to be redeveloped one day. Her little thatched house and small plot of land might not look like much now, but one day they’d be worth real money.

“Comrade, do you take stuff like this?”

The scrap collector was a young guy, helping his parents run the place.

He sifted through the items on Feng Mian’s cart and said, “We’ll take these, but not those.”

“Alright, how much can you give me for them?”

In the end, the whole cartload of junk earned her three yuan and eight jiao.

With cash in hand, she strolled along the streets, focusing especially on the riverside street—that was the local black market.

Back in the day, regulations were strict, and even casual buying and selling had to be done on the sly.

Judging by the timeline, things would soon loosen up, and it would even be possible to apply for a self-employed business license.

This past year, maybe because the market was on the verge of opening up, enforcement had relaxed—authorities only raided once every few days, so vendors had gotten bolder.

Feng Mian walked the whole route and pretty much figured out what people were selling.

With the New Year approaching, some production teams had already distributed rations, so there were quite a few people reselling grain, ration tickets, and cloth coupons.

But she knew that reselling grain was a serious crime. It was much safer to deal in small goods and handmade trinkets—authorities didn’t pay much attention to that.

She ducked into a quiet alley, took off the big backpack she was carrying, and secretly placed an order.

She bought black plastic hair clips, elastic bands, plastic combs—popular items from the 70s and 80s.

To her surprise, the stuff was dirt cheap. Those rubber bands? 9.9 yuan with free shipping could get you an entire jin (half a kilo), which must be thousands of pieces.

Even the ones wrapped in yarn weren’t expensive—10 per small pack, and only a bit over 10 yuan for a few hundred.

She focused on items she could buy in bulk. Even 1,000 pieces didn’t cost much.

Feng Mian dumped the bamboo frame she’d used to support the backpack, stuffed all the goods into the bag, then wrapped a scarf around her head, leaving only her eyes exposed. She topped it off with a cap to keep it in place.

This kind of get-up was actually pretty common during local winters.

Then she went back out and set up a street stall with the flatbed cart.

The plain elastic bands were in large quantities, the yarn-wrapped ones were bright and colorful, and the hair clips came in pretty styles—soon, a crowd had gathered.

“Miss, how much for these hair ties?”

Feng Mian replied, “Three jiao for thirty plain ones; three jiao for ten yarn-wrapped ones.”

“These yarn ones are a bit pricey.”

“They’re not, Auntie. It wasn’t easy for me to get these. They changed hands a few times before reaching me, and I’m taking a risk selling them too.”

After some hesitation, the aunt gave her three jiao and bought thirty bands.

The small combs were five fen each, the larger ones one jiao each—they were sold out in no time.

Originally, she’d stocked more of the yarn-wrapped hair ties, thinking they’d be more popular. But to her surprise, it was the plain rubber bands that sold out first.

In less than an hour, a few thousand of the plain ones were gone.

Just as she was wondering if she should go back and restock, she suddenly heard a sharp whistling sound in the distance.

That sound was painfully familiar from the original owner’s memories—it meant the Market Supervision Bureau was coming.