Chapter 451: – Returning Home
It wasn’t yet time for the school to close and there were still about half of the students taking exams. However, the nearby shops had already started to close one by one. It had only been two days yet the once packed array of stalls and shops had been reduced by half.
Even the efficiency of food delivery had dropped. Many of those students who worked part time as delivery people had started going home one after another. Only a few regular full time delivery people were still left taking orders. Some shops couldn’t find people to do the delivery, so the owners had started delivering orders themselves.
Business at her dad’s milk tea shop was getting worse and worse. Just a few days ago, he was so confident of his success, believing that his future was looking brighter. He thought that if he worked even harder, maybe his wife and children would come back. He felt that it might not even take a year before he would be able to buy back the house he had sold, maybe he could even buy a better one. But now, a few days later, he looked like a zombie. The entire day, he would be stupidly sitting in the milk tea shop, not developing new milk tea items, but just doing nothing and waiting for customers.
This bleak period would last for at least two more months, and her dad had no idea how he was going to get through these two months. Without customers, he wouldn’t even be able to pay the store’s rent. So, when he had no customers, he would argue with the landlord, hoping he would be able to delay the rent payments for the next two months.
At this time, Lin Jin was already sitting on the train and heading home.
She only had one bag of clothes with her, just two sets of clothing. She sat at a window seat of the high speed train, yawning as she leaned her head against the glass, slightly squinting as she looked at the fleeting scenery outside.
Actually, this time couldn’t really be considered as returning home. Their old house in the countryside had been rented out long ago by her dad. It was a yearly lease too, so there was no way she could stay there. Now, the house in the county town had been sold by her dad as well and was now probably occupied by an unknown family.
The sudden realization that she didn’t have a home to return to in her hometown made Lin Jin feel inexplicably sad.
Her mom had already gone to her grandparent’s house yesterday, she seemed to be gauging their reaction.
Of course, they had also tried this before, but it didn’t go very well.
Her head hurt.
Lin Jin sighed and rubbed her temples with her fingers.
If those relatives weren’t willing to accept her, then didn’t that mean she wouldn’t be able to go back in the future?
After about three hours on the road, Lin Jin finally arrived at her grandparent’s house by a manual rickshaw. She was so apprehensive she was slightly trembling. After handing the payment to the rickshaw driver, she trembled as she walked towards her grandparent’s three story house.
As soon as she reached the front of the house, Lin Jin stopped and looked at her cousin who happened to walk out.
It was that older cousin Wu Jia, who had previously studied and worked abroad. Now he had opened a small shop in the same town where her grandparents lived. He seemed to be living a happy life.
“You are?” Cousin Wu Jia blankly looked at Lin Jin. Although Lin Jin before him looked familiar, the problem was that Lin Jin was currently wearing a pretty dress and had long hair. So he didn’t immediately recognize his once handsome cousin.
“Lin Jin.” Lin Jin didn’t know what expression she should have when facing her cousin, so she just expressionlessly nodded at him and started to walk into the house.
But she was actually stopped by Wu Jia.
“Grandpa’s angry right now, don’t go in.” He seemed to know about Lin Jin’s situation and a wry smile appeared on his face “How could you wait until now to tell us something this big?”
He was someone who had lived abroad and it was even the morally questionable UK, so he could be considered as a pretty open minded person. But when he learned his beautiful cousin had become a woman, it still left him with an indescribable feeling.
“He’s angry?” Lin Jin immediately became timid and just peeked inside. She only heard some yelling from upstairs. She shivered and withdrew without any hesitation, smiling awkwardly at her cousin Wu Jia and said “Then maybe we don’t go in yet.”
“Yeah.”
This time when they met, Cousin Wu Jia was clearly more indifferent towards Lin Jin. Before, he would take her to the internet cafe to play together. But now, they just sat silently on the bench in front of the house, with Wu Jia smoking one cigarette after another without saying a word.
Lin Jin hadn’t smoked in a long time. Now that she once again smelled the cigarette smoke up close, it felt suffocating. She covered her mouth and nose with her hand and looked up at the balcony on the second floor with a bitter smile.
Her grandpa was obviously extremely furious about Lin Jin becoming a girl as his voice grew more and more agitated. Even though Lin Jin was sitting outside, she could still clearly hear the noise from the second floor.
If this kept up, her grandpa wouldn’t have a heart attack, right? Even though he didn’t seem to have those types of problems, you never knew with the elderly.
“What if, I go try to calm him down?”
Lin Jin asked her older cousin who was smoking beside her.
“If you go up there, grandpa might really have a heart attack.”
Her older cousin was the son of her grandpa’s son, while Lin Jin was the son of her grandpa’s daughter. So they addressed him differently.
“I see…” With that, the courage Lin Jin had just mustered up instantly disappeared. She hung her head, staring at the cigarette butts on the ground.
Her grandpa seemed to be really furious. Lin Jin’s grandpa was originally known for his bad temper. When she was little, she would always see him get angry and blow up at people. But ever since her mom and dad divorced, she basically hadn’t seen him get angry again.
And now that he was angry again, who knew if his body could handle it.
Lin Jin sighed, completely unsure of what to do.
She felt as if her visit had been solely to make her grandparents upset.
“When did you have the surgery?”
“Huh?” Lin Jin turned her head to look at cousin Wu Jia and saw he was now looking at her. Only then did she realize that he was actually talking to her.
“The surgery was just this semester." Lin Jin awkwardly smiled, completely unsure how she should face this cousin who she used to be really close with.
Her cousin looked at her with a somewhat incomprehensible look and softly sighed, as if he was muttering to himself: “When we were young, I thought you looked like a girl. Back then, I even thought of you as a little sister.”
“My mom used to always dress me in girls’ clothes. So that was normal." Lin Jin slightly smiled.
When she was little, even her younger brother Lin Chen, who lived with her every day and night, used to think she was a girl. So it wasn’t surprising her cousin thought the same.
“Back then, I thought if my cousin were actually a girl, she’d be really pretty." Cousin Wu Jia shrugged. “But I never thought you would really go do surgery. After all, your personality wasn’t like a girl at all.”
“Yeah, I used to be a brat and fought every day. Even following you to cause trouble everywhere.”
Talking about things in the past made Lin Jin’s mood much more relaxed.
“Your personality’s much better now. But maybe a bit too much." Lin Jin had been tempered through the black cat’s various tasks. She was now a lot gentler, but she had also become a lot more cowardly because of the various embarrassing tasks.
Of course, when she needed to, Lin Jin wasn’t really afraid to stand her ground.
Translator’s Note: In Chinese, there’s different terms for grandparents from your mom’s side vs dad’s side. I know we have Maternal and Paternal grandparents in English, but it just sounds awkward and I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who normally says “hello maternal/paternal grandpa”.