Editor: RuxyZzz
“Their Second Aunty picked them up. She said it was Niuniu’s birthday and had JingJing and Tianbao over there to celebrate with their cousin.” Looking at Shu Yan, Aunty’s lips parted and closed. She hesitated whether she should say something.
Shu Yan was busy with rebuilding her relationship with Xiao Bao and didn’t notice the look on Aunty. “Today’s Niuniu’s birthday? I had forgotten all about it. I’ll head over there too then. You don’t need to prepare lunch for me.”
Shu Yan bought a couple sets of clothes for Niuniu on her way over, a very pretty doll, and a giant cake. Given her Second Sister’s personality, she would not want to shell out the money for a cake.
Sure enough, Shu Li was cooking when Shu Yan arrived. She bought a lot of groceries but no cake.
“You are back?” Shu Li dried her hands, took the things from Shu Yan as she grumbled, “Why did you bright so much stuff? The kid has enough clothes. She is growing right now. A couple of sets to change out are sufficient. A doll? How old is Niuniu now? Bring it back with you for JingJing. And a cake? A cake this size must cost at least tens of yuan. It’s not that tasty either. Why did you waste your money on that?”
“You should have cake for a child’s birthday. You are an owner of a small shop now and no longer need to skim on the kids’ clothes and food.” Shu Yan noticed that Niuniu was staring at the doll. She smiled and said, “JingJing has plenty of dolls. You can’t tell me I can’t buy gifts for my niece.”
Seeing how her daughter clutched tightly to the doll, Shu Li didn’t say anything else. She just sighed. “Don’t buy more next time.”
Everybody sang the birthday song for Niuniu. Shu Li didn’t know the song and was a bit at loss. Niuniu, the star of the day, blushed. Nobody knew whether it was from excitement or shyness.
“Thank you, Little Aunty.” It was the first time in her life someone sang her a birthday song and bought her a cake. As far as Niuniu was concerned, her Little Aunty was an angel sent from heaven.
Halfway through the cake, the male teacher that Shu Yan had seen before came over, carrying with him a gift for Niuniu.
“I happened to see Niuniu’s birthday when I was looking through the class list yesterday. I was going to give this to Niuniu yesterday, but I forgot. I needed to buy some more test papers, so I brought it with me.”
“Oh, you shouldn’t have. We can’t.” Shu Li quickly declined him.
“It’s not something expensive. I am giving it to her as her teacher.” The male teacher was smiling, but his tone was non-negotiable.
Shu Yan looked at him dubiously. She had only heard of students giving gifts to teachers, never the other way round.
And, if she was to look carefully, the male teacher wasn’t paying that much attention to Niuniu. He paid more attention to Shu Li instead.
After he had taken off with the test papers, Shu Yan asked naturally, “Niuniu’s teacher always buys his exercise notebooks from here?”
“Yeah, he had always been helping me out with my business. Teacher Wang is a very nice man. His life, however, was as unfortunate as mine. His wife loved gambling and, not only did she lose all the money at home, but she also borrowed money from the loan shark before she ran off with someone else. The loan ended up landing on Teacher Wang’s shoulder. Luckily, Teacher Wang had a lot of friends and was able to get some money here and there to pay off the loan shark. He would not have been able to otherwise.” Shu Li had been here for over a year by now and knew almost everything about the teachers at school.
“How much did he owe?”
“That I don’t know. Teacher Wang had been over with his son a few times though. He’s very frugal and whenever he came into money, he’d pay off his friends and family. Never saw his wife coming back.”
