Zhang Yunxi returned to the female educated youth dormitory, and Deng Damei stared at her gloves and hat.

“Oh, where did you get these? They’re quite rare.”

“I asked Zhao Mo to borrow them from a familiar villager. It cost me two mao.”

“Tsk, that’s not cheap.”

Deng Damei’s desire to have them was instantly extinguished, but she still touched the gloves and said, “These gloves suit you.”

“I think so too. We’ll be digging sweet potatoes soon, and it’s going to be exhausting,” Zhang Yunxi sighed. “After picking the corn, it’ll be time for the autumn harvest.”

“After the autumn harvest, there won’t be much work left. Everyone in the brigade will be scrambling to do it,” Deng Damei said.

Nowadays, the pressure on rural people is also high. Even though they have their own plots for vegetables, getting married, building houses, and raising children are all significant expenses. Especially for families with many members, it’s uncertain whether the whole family even has one cotton-padded jacket. When it gets cold, they have to take turns wearing it to go out. So, rural people are really diligent; they work as much as they can.

Zhang Yunxi listened with anticipation. She was tired. In modern times, she would suffer from insomnia, but now she fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. “Then I can rest for a while.”

She took out her needle, thread, and fabric.

She continued sewing children’s clothes.

Deng Damei glanced at her, feeling a bit envious of Zhao Mo. She also wanted an aunt like this!

Zhang Yunxi’s sewing skills were quite good, with fine and dense stitches. Children’s clothes didn’t take too long to make. In the midst of her hands getting sore and healing, the day before September 1st arrived, and she finished a small school bag and a set of new clothes.

When she brought Zhao Mo over to try them on,

Zhao Mo was in a daze. “Auntie, are these for me?”

“Of course. I’ve boiled some hot water for you. Take a bath, and later I’ll use scissors to trim your nails.” Zhang Yunxi had long wanted to deal with Zhao Mo’s nails, but before she couldn’t find nail clippers. They did exist now, but the people in Zhao’s brigade didn’t have them.

“Okay.” Zhao Mo’s body was drenched in the steaming hot water, and her heart began to warm up. Her aunt was really too good to her.

Last time, her aunt said that she just wanted her to be happy. She hadn’t fully understood that sentence, but now she seemed to get it a little.

Her aunt’s kindness didn’t come with any burden.

When her father and stepmother gave her a little something to eat, they would talk about it for a long time. They were good to her, and when she grew up, she would need to repay them in some way. But when her aunt did things for her, she was always smiling, happy, and content just seeing her smile. It was as if…

She deserved someone to be so good to her.

After her bath, Zhao Mo put on the new clothes. The style of the clothes was something Zhang Yunxi had dug up from the original host’s memory, made according to the fashionable tops for city girls at the time.

The top had horizontal seams on the front and back, with gathered pleats on the body for ease of movement. The collar was a small round collar, and the front and back horizontal pieces had to be cut separately in straight grain.

It was cute, lively, and playful.

Zhao Mo felt a bit shy. “This looks so good.”

“I saw city people making clothes like this for their kids, so I made it for you. It looks great,” Zhang Yunxi said, making her turn around, and nodded in satisfaction. “I’ll trim your hair now.”

She went inside to get scissors and a comb, and according to her own aesthetic, Zhang Yunxi gave Zhao Mo a short bob that framed her ears.

Zhao Mo’s chin was flat, and her eyebrows were bold. Before, her hair was long but messy. Now, after the trim, she looked neat and tidy.

As the female lead in the book, Zhao Mo’s appearance was naturally good. Paired with the cute clothes, she looked lively and endearing.

“She looks really good,” Deng Damei, who had been watching Zhang Yunxi cut her hair, exclaimed. “It’s like she’s a different person.”

Before, she was a country bumpkin.

Now, she’s a spirited elementary school student!

Zhang Yunxi held up He Xiaoxiao’s mirror for her to see. “How do you feel?”

Zhao Mo looked at herself in the mirror. Without the hair covering her eyes, her forehead was exposed. Apart from being a bit tanned, everything else was fine. Facing the gazes of her aunt and educated youth Deng, she felt a bit shy. “It’s good.”

“Alright then, I’ll trim your nails. After that, you can go to bed,” Zhang Yunxi said, holding her fingertips and carefully cutting her nails with scissors. “Does it hurt? Tell me if it hurts, okay?”

“It doesn’t hurt.”

Zhao Mo looked down at her aunt’s fair hands and her own small, dark hands together. Her dirty nails were being trimmed bit by bit by her aunt, and it didn’t hurt at all. They were just returning to their original clean state.

She remembered when her nails used to grow long, she would soak them in water to soften them and then tear them off forcefully. But that could sometimes pierce the flesh at the tips. Back then, she would envy seeing other kids’ mothers trimming their nails and would imagine her stepmother being good to her. Although her stepmother would scold her, sometimes she was willing to be kind, like when she mended her clothes. Zhao Mo cherished those moments and had always tried to please her stepmother, working hard so she wouldn’t be ignored. But now she felt that love shouldn’t require pleasing.

“Auntie, I will study hard!”

Zhao Mo’s gaze was resolute.

Zhang Yunxi was momentarily stunned, not knowing what she was thinking, but she just smiled and nodded. “Okay, our Zhao Mo will definitely do well in her studies.”

Zhao Mo nodded heavily.

Secretly, she made up her mind to study hard and go to a technical secondary school!!

That way, she could get a job.

She wanted to give her aunt a good life.

Right now, she didn’t know if studying would be difficult, but she thought that if once wasn’t enough, then ten or a hundred times would surely work!
She wanted to become her aunt’s pride!
After trimming away all the dirt under Zhao Mo’s nails, Zhang Yunxi looked at the cleaned-up girl and then placed a dark blue satchel on her back. The satchel had a smiling face sewn onto it, and inside were a pencil case, pencils, an eraser, and a small notebook.”

Zhao Mo had seen her aunt buy these before.

Holding the strap of the satchel, Zhao Mo looked at Zhang Yunxi, her lips quivering, and tears uncontrollably fell. Her shoulders trembled as she sobbed: “Auntie…”

“Alright, don’t cry,” Zhang Yunxi wiped her tears. “I’ll take you to school tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay!” Zhao Mo agreed immediately.

Zhang Yunxi held her hand and walked her out, watching her turn back every few steps in the afterglow, constantly waving at her, her little face full of smiles.

Deng Damei stood behind her and said, “If you treat her so well, what will you do when you get married? A man definitely won’t want you to bring your niece along.”

“Then he can get lost!”

If a man wants to stop her from being good to Zhao Mo?
He can go to hell.

Zhang Yunxi watched the small figure disappear around the corner and continued, “Zhao Mo has never been a burden to me. She’s smart, clever, kind, and brave. Being her aunt is my honor.”

Deng Damei didn’t understand.

She always felt that even a birth mother wouldn’t treat a child so well.

Like her…

She had never had a new set of clothes growing up; they were always hand-me-downs from her older brothers.

It wasn’t just Deng Damei who was envious.

Zhao Mo, with her new hairstyle, wearing stylish new clothes and carrying a new satchel, instantly became the focus of the entire village!

In these times, children didn’t get new clothes unless they were the only child.

But Zhao Mo became the exception!