Chapter 35: The Second Generation of Wealth (3)

Su Ting placed the letter on the vanity table and didn’t pick up the second one. He Dongchuan noticed and asked: “Aren’t you going to read that one?”

“No, I’m going to sleep.” Su Ting said, turning over to lie on her side, facing He Dongchuan.

He Dongchuan responded with a hum, raised his hand to turn off the light, but his hand, which had been resting on her neck, didn’t withdraw. In fact, it seemed to be sliding downward.

When Su Ting realized that He Dongchuan had ill intentions, she hurriedly pressed down on his unrestrained left hand, saying: “No.”

Hearing the seriousness in her voice, He Dongchuan calculated the time in his head and asked: “Did your period start?”

Although Su Ting didn’t have any particular reaction when her period came, it wasn’t always on time. It wasn’t irregular, but sometimes the gap between periods was exactly thirty days, sometimes twenty-seven, or even thirty-three days.

Su Ting’s cycle was usually thirty-three days, so each time her period came, it would be a few days later than the last. In her past life, it had been the same, and so she didn’t have the habit of specifically tracking her cycle. She’d just prepare sanitary pads when she remembered, and if she was lucky, she’d be able to use one in advance. If she wasn’t, she’d sometimes end up staining her underwear.

This habit had carried over into this life, which was why she had only realized in the morning, during their conversation, that her period was late by several days.

Su Ting wasn’t sure, and He Dongchuan hadn’t figured it out either, since they had only been together for two cycles. They weren’t certain about the timing.

It wasn’t until she rejected him that He Dongchuan did the mental math and realized that it might be time for her period.

“No.” Su Ting shook her head and answered.

“How come it hasn’t come yet? When did it arrive last month?” He Dongchuan asked while recalling: “I remember I was on duty the day before, and when I came back the next evening, you said your period had started. It was the 21st, right?”

Su Ting didn’t remember as clearly as he did, uncertainly replying: “Maybe it was that day.”

If she had gotten her period on the 21st last month, then it should have been around the 24th or 25th this month, so it didn’t seem like it was delayed by too many days.

“I think it was around the 18th or 19th of May.” He Dongchuan continued, meaning that Su Ting’s period was delayed by two or three days compared to the previous month.

Aside from his younger years living with his parents, He Dongchuan hadn’t had much experience living with women, so his understanding of menstrual cycles was limited. He only knew that if a period didn’t arrive on time, it could mean pregnancy.

Therefore, when he noticed Su Ting’s period hadn’t come on time last month, he had been foolishly happy for an entire day. It wasn’t until he talked to Su Ting that he learned that everyone’s cycle was different, and some people had very irregular cycles, with periods sometimes coming just once every couple of months, which needed to be regulated—not a sign of pregnancy.

So, when he learned that Su Ting’s period had been delayed again by a few days, he didn’t immediately think of pregnancy. Instead, he looked concerned and said: “How about I take a day off tomorrow, and the day after, we can go to the city hospital for a checkup?”

Su Ting thought she had made her hints quite obvious, but He Dongchuan did not catch on immediately. He murmured softly: “You can’t tell anything right now, can you?”

“Then let’s wait a few more days. How about Sunday?” He Dongchuan asked.

Su Ting still hadn’t realized they were talking about different things, so she continued to think along the lines of He Dongchuan’s question.

Her menstrual cycle usually lasted for seven days. It had started on the 21st of the previous month, so it should have ended by the 27th, making today exactly a month since then. She recalled that when her colleague had been pregnant, it had taken about a month and a half before they went to the hospital for a checkup.

At this time, medical technology was not as advanced as it would be fifty years later. Su Ting said: “Let’s wait another half month.”

Su Ting thought that if she rushed to the hospital now, only to find out it was just a normal delay in her period, it would be quite awkward. It was better to wait a bit longer. Even if she couldn’t be sure, after a month and a half, the results would likely be much clearer.

He Dongchuan frowned. “Why wait so long?” He felt that if something was wrong, it should be checked out sooner rather than later.

Su Ting was puzzled and glanced up at him. “You can only get an accurate result by waiting until the right time.”

“Is there really a right time?”

“Of course there is. And who knows, maybe my period will come in a few days.”

He Dongchuan asked: “Does your period keep getting delayed, and each time it’s getting longer? Is that normal?”

“I don’t always have delays. My cycle is around 33 days, which is normal. On that basis, an occasional delay of about a week is also normal. If it kept being delayed like that every time, then there would be a problem.”

Although Su Ting spoke confidently now, in truth, hidden behind her words was a long, painful medical history that stretched over more than ten years.

Menstrual cycles brought their own worries: if they came too early, it was a problem; if they came too late, it was still a problem. If they didn’t come at all, it was a big problem. When the flow was heavy, it was worrying; when it was light, that was worrying too. All these worries led to frequent trips to the hospital to see doctors, which were exhausting!

Not to mention someone like Su Ting, whose periods were never regular and could drain half of her life with the unpredictability.

Having visited the hospital so many times, Su Ting had become something of an expert in front of He Dongchuan, who was clueless about the subject.

He Dongchuan understood now. He gently touched Su Ting’s belly and said: “Then let’s wait and see.”

Su Ting replied: “Mm.”

These two, who could barely understand each other, had come to a sort of agreement… perhaps?

—

The next morning, after waking up, Su Ting wrote a letter to Zhang Yaping. The content was short and simple. She congratulated him on finding a goal and wished that, after he arrived at the frontier, he would stay true to his original aspirations and achieve his ideals.

After finishing the polite words, Su Ting hesitated for a long time, holding the pen, before deciding to add a few more lines. She told him not to forget to keep thinking and learning after arriving at the frontier. Even though the college entrance exams had been suspended, there was still hope as long as one kept trying.

Though He Dongchuan had told her not to carry the fate of others on her shoulders, Zhang Yaping had been one of her first readers, and it was because of her story that he had made a decision that would shape his entire life.

Actually, if she were a person born and raised in this era, without any knowledge of future changes, she probably wouldn’t have done much. After all, even she couldn’t be sure about her own fate.

But she had come from fifty years later. She knew the developments that would unfold in the coming decades.

In this era, many people did not see going to the countryside as necessarily a bad thing; it was just another possibility in life. But she knew that staying in the city would be much easier than going to the countryside.

Although, in a few years, the Educated Youth would gradually be allowed to return to the cities, there were many restrictions on coming back. The policy allowing it would be issued in 7 or 8 years, but for many, it would be the 1980s before they could truly return to the city.

She couldn’t just coldly watch this child walk toward a muddy life, even if it was only a possibility.

She wanted to help him.

But the decision to send him to the countryside had already been made. She couldn’t directly tell him that the college entrance exam would be reinstated, so she could only advise him to study hard after he arrived at the frontier. That way, if he was determined, his chances of passing the college entrance exam when it resumed would be higher.

Of course, this was just Su Ting’s wishful thinking. She didn’t know what his plans for the future were, whether he liked studying or not.

Perhaps, after reading the letter, he simply threw it away. Or maybe he tried hard for a while, but was eventually defeated by life. Either way, she had done the most she could. If his life went well, she would be happy for him; if not, she wouldn’t think it was her fault.

Just like He Dongchuan said, he should be responsible for his own life.

In addition to Zhang Yaping, Su Ting also responded to a few other readers, all of whom were currently facing difficulties in their lives.

It was after replying to these letters that Su Ting realized that although she was a comic book artist, she had somehow become a wise older sister to others.

And then, where should she put the letters she had read?

Since the living room was still relatively spacious, after opening the plastic bags, Su Ting didn’t move the letters but simply took out a few when she needed to read them. After finishing, she would return them and stack them back on the vanity table.

In just two days, two piles of letters, reaching the same height as the mirror, had accumulated on the vanity table. And she had barely even gotten through one-fifth of the letters in the plastic bags.

So, after reading the letters that day, Su Ting decided it was time to find a place to store them.

Their house was not small, but there really weren’t many places to store letters. After all, they were paper letters, so it was definitely not an option to just pile them under the bed. At the very least, they needed to be stored in a box.

But they didn’t have any boxes. The only wooden furniture they had was the wardrobe and the chest of drawers.

There was no need to mention the chest of drawers; it was already filled with food and drinks.

The wardrobe in the master bedroom had originally been quite spacious. When she first moved in, the two large cabinets had only been used to store items in the upper compartments, and the small cabinet was the same. But after He Dongchuan moved back, the wardrobe quickly became two-thirds full. With the change of seasons, the blankets she used in the spring had been put into the wardrobe, and now it was packed tight.

After thinking it over, Su Ting finally set her sights on the wardrobe in the second bedroom.

Though the second bedroom wardrobe was smaller than the one in the master bedroom, it had double doors and contained fewer items—only He Yan’s seasonal clothes, and thick blankets that He Dongchuan had packed into plastic bags and stored at the top of the wardrobe.

This was the advantage of a small wardrobe. In the master bedroom, because the wardrobe was so large, the top of the cabinet was too close to the ceiling, so it couldn’t fit the blankets.

Since the wardrobe in the second bedroom had fewer items, the lower part of it was mostly empty.

Once she had made up her mind, Su Ting told He Yan about her plan. He didn’t mind what went into the wardrobe, so he readily agreed.

But after agreeing, He Yan raised a question: “What if the wardrobe in my bedroom can’t hold all the stuff?”

Su Ting laughed and said: “There are only two plastic bags of letters, how could it possibly not fit?”

“What if more people send letters to you in the future?”

“Probably not, right?”

“Peach Blossom Village” had finished its serialization, and Su Ting thought that the number of people writing to her would decrease over time.

Wait a minute, she was about to publish a comic book. Once it was released, there might be new readers, and with them, new letters. It wasn’t impossible that another plastic bag of letters could come.

Su Ting thought for a moment and said: “In that case, I’ll have to talk to your dad and buy a new wardrobe for the letters.”

“What if even the wardrobe can’t hold them?”

“Then we’ll buy a house to store them.”

Su Ting said this with a laugh. She had once read a piece of popular science that mentioned a famous children’s best-selling author who, due to receiving so many letters from readers, bought several houses in the capital to store them. Later, when the housing prices in the capital skyrocketed, the author became a billionaire.

At the time, after reading that article, Su Ting had been so envious she almost cried.

But now, Su Ting realized she didn’t need to envy those big names anymore.

If she ever reached the point of needing a house to store reader letters, with housing prices in the 1980s, buying a few extra houses in the capital would probably not be a problem.

Looking at the little one standing in front of her, Su Ting let her mind wander.

Perhaps, before she became a big shot’s stepmother, she could make Long Aotian a second-generation rich kid?