Chapter 87: Cell Phone (1/2)

In front of a farmhouse.

A fairly robust old granny was sitting on the mazha chair, squinting her eyes to block away from the sun’s blinding rays.

Her expression was filled with cheeriness, but the wrinkles crawling on her face showed that she was already way past her younger years.

A bright yellow turban covered most of her silver hair. She grabbed a bite of the sweet potato in her hand. She then saw the two youngsters moving closer to speak with her. The woman wasn’t at all stingy and grabbed two sweet potatoes, handing them over to the two, hinting for them to eat.

Ye Shangyu gratefully received a sweet potato, directly stuffing it in her pocket and simply not having any plans on eating it.

Bai Yan wasn’t as cautious as she was. Thinking that they also ate the food that a ghost served them, it wasn’t that different from this old granny. He took a bite out of the sweet potato, perceiving a sweet taste, its flavor also wasn’t bad.

After finishing it with two or three bites, the old lady gave him another one in response, and Bai Yan still accepted it with no sense of shame, not even feeling a bit embarrassed. You could say that he was extremely shameless.

As Bai Yan nibbled on his second sweet potato, Ye Shangyu opened her mouth and said, “Granny, do you know of a Dong Zi?”

Seeing that the two remained silent, the old woman sighed and said, “Tie Zhu is a good child, so don’t blame him. If he was raised by his parents, he wouldn’t have turned out like this. Right now, all the capable people in this village went off to the city to work, and the remaining villagers are all tired and weary. They take care of their own grandchildren, but in all honesty, it’s a strenuous task for old tired people to take care of others.”

The two people nodded their heads to express their understanding. After chatting for a while, Bai Yan suddenly asked, “Granny, do you also have a grandchild?”

“It’s summer break. During the weekends, that child is holed up in his bed, playing. I’ll call him out for you to see.”

Recalling that her grandson climbed out of bed just to play with his phone earlier, the old woman knitted her brows and took a deep breath, yelling, “Grandson, come out and meet some guests! Don’t just stay in bed and play with your phone! You’ve been playing all day!”

“Gran, morning hasn’t passed yet!” Inside, a young boy said, “I go to class five days a week! I’m exhausted, so let me play for a while longer!”

“What are you playing to make you not listen to your grandmother’s words? Gou Dan(1)! Get out here!”

“Pu——”

Upon hearing a name like Gou Dan, Bai Yan couldn’t help but laugh.

Inside, there was a strong-and-honest-looking boy sporting cotton shoes. His cheeks were flushed as he loudly argued back, “Gran, don’t call me Gou Dan!”

Seeing her grandson finally come out, the old lady pouted and handed another sweet potato to Bai Yan, “This is my grandson, who doesn’t study all day and just stares at his phone from morning until night.

Usually, his grades would bring the class average down, and time and time again, at the end of the semester, their teacher would give him a special mention and criticize him. In the house, he also doesn’t do any work, even seeing his grandfather go to the field, he still wouldn’t help out. Our neighbor Lan Lan helps do work for her family, I don’t know how he could learn from his Sister Lan Lan…”

“Gran!” The young boy flew into a rage out of humiliation and immediately interrupted her, “Xu Lanfang is also older than me by two years. She also played with her phone before. She played with it more than me! Why are you telling me to learn from her?”

The old lady stuffed a sweet potato into the young boy’s mouth, saying, “Hasn’t she recently started to do work? Why can’t you watch and learn from good people? In Lan Lan’s house, her grandmother’s body can’t move well anymore, so she immediately stepped up to help out with the housework. How about you, if me and your grandfather suddenly can’t move around anymore, could you shoulder both housework and schoolwork?”

“…” The young boy was dumbstruck and was at a loss for words. It was also possible that he was too busy chewing his sweet potato so it was harder to speak.

However, the boy said nothing, but Bai Yan had something to say.

He directly added onto the subject matter, saying with a depth of feeling, “Grandma, you are so right! Boys should take responsibility! When I was Gou Dan’s age, my father had already died, so my mother raised our family on her own. Seeing my mom work to the brink of exhaustion, I just had to assume the responsibilities of all the housework. Of course, my grades didn’t fall behind, I even got top of the class every single time.

Grandma, what I’m saying are my real feelings. Boys should also taste a bit of bitterness to become better. Children shouldn’t be spoiled. Sometimes, if the child is too coddled, that child would become an ignorant and incompetent idiot…”

Bai Yan still wasn’t finished talking when Ye Shangyu suddenly paused from biting her sweet potato.

She looked at Bai Yan with a complicated look, her heart filling with confused energy. ‘If I weren’t mistaken, when I checked your family background, your father’s still well and good!’

‘When did your father die?’

‘How don’t I know this!’

Secretly in her heart, Ye Shangyu was saying how bad habits were hard to change as her face didn’t move to not expose him.

On the other side of this conversation, the young boy’s face was filled with ‘WTF’ when he heard Bai Yan flatly mention ‘Gou Dan,’ making his face turn red.

Although he was still in middle school, he wasn’t that foolish. He could see that this person was clearly doing it on purpose!

‘After eating food from my home, you still laid me out. Don’t you have any shame, you?’

Hearing Bai Yan, he was still brainwashing his grandmother, which made his grandmother want to firmly discipline him by confiscating his phone to not let him become an idiot.

The boy was so mad that there was steam coming out of his head. He stretched out his arm towards the sweet potato on Bai Yan’s hand, but in the end, him extending his arm… was unexpectedly not enough.