Beautiful Fools Were Born to be Spoiled by Their Husbands - Chapter 7

The next morning, before five o’clock, Zhou Gangxun got up to cook. In the kitchen, the bag that had held the peaches now contained only half a peach.

Looking at it, Gangxun realized he could no longer expect Ruan Zhijuan to do any housework, but could he at least not eat everything so messily? He had to leave behind this half-gnawed peach, getting sweet juice everywhere.

Gangxun picked up the peach, which had only one bite left on it, and let out a cold snort. It was disgusting, chewed up like something left behind by a puppy.

Just as he was about to throw it away, he noticed two cleanly gnawed peach pits in the trash can. Next to them was his remaining half-pack of cigarettes, completely soaked and ruined by water. “…”

Then again, if Ruan Zhijuan were reasonable, he wouldn’t be Ruan Zhijuan.

It seemed the “murder weapon” Gangxun had used in Zhijuan’s dream last night had been dealt with after all.

Zhijuan, still groggy from sleep, spotted him. He wobbled over and, without a word, opened his mouth and bit into the heavily oxidized, mangled peach dangling over the trash can.

“Did you buy peaches yesterday? Why didn’t you tell me to eat them?” Zhijuan mumbled through a mouthful of oxidized peach flesh, preemptively accusing him. He fired off questions one after another, “Weren’t they for me? Am I not your wife?”

Gangxun’s dark eyes stared at Zhijuan’s cheeks, which were bulging as he worked to store the peach meat. He let go, dropping the peach into the “trash can” named Ruan Zhijuan. “It was midnight. You were sleeping.”

“You could have woken me up even if I was sleeping,” Zhijuan said righteously. “Look, out of three peaches, only this half is left. Are there rats in the house, Zhou Gangxun?”

Gangxun looked down at Zhijuan, who barely reached his chest. Yes, there was a rat, a 176cm tall “stupid rat” with messy bedhead, a heart-shaped red mark on his face from the pillowcase pattern, who spat pits into the trash and soaked cigarettes in water.

“How did you know I bought three peaches?”

Gangxun asked, his gaze traveling down from the top of Zhijuan’s head. There was an inconspicuous soft lump on the right side of his head with a bit of bruising, likely from a bump last night. It seemed that in his quest to sneak food, he hadn’t even dared to make a sound when he hit his head.

“Huh? I guessed,” Zhijuan said, greedily biting into the peach to change the subject. “Why are you so poor? You only buy rotten peaches…”

He made an exaggerated show of disgust. “They taste bad, ptui ptui ptui.”

Despite his words, he didn’t let a single scrap of peach meat go to waste.

“Hurry up and cook, I’m hungry.” Fearing he would say too much and reveal that he had eaten all the peaches last night, Zhijuan abruptly ended the conversation and ran to the sofa to sit and eat.

Originally, he wanted to eat while lying in bed, but he was afraid of staining the sheets. Since Gangxun wouldn’t wash them, he’d definitely be forced to do it himself.

Then his fair, tender hands would surely turn red from scrubbing.

Just the thought of it hurt.

He remembered his previous life, where he had to wash clothes for four people: his parents and his seven-year-old brother. In the South, it was damp and cold outside, and there was no hot water. The hot water was for the family to drink; it couldn’t be used for his laundry. Besides, he had so many clothes to wash that a single kettle of hot water wouldn’t have been enough anyway.

So, he could only scrub them one by one in the bone-chilling water. His fingers would turn bright red, and over time, they became itchy, painful, and swollen, a condition they called chilblains.

He heard the village elders talk about a household where someone’s chilblains were so severe that the flesh turned necrotic and required amputation.

He was terrified back then, fearing his hands would rot and be cut off.

But then he wondered: if they were amputated, would he be excused from work? His parents probably wouldn’t throw him away just for that, right? Probably not… even without hands, he still had legs and could do other things.

However, Zhijuan’s hands were spared. Because his younger brother was sensitive to the cold, the family set up a small brazier for warmth. Every time he washed clothes, he would quietly move to a spot neither too far nor too close to the fire.

He couldn’t compete with his brother for the heat, or his parents would kick him out, but even that bit of warmth was better than freezing outside.

Still, the chilblains on his hands would flare up every winter.

Because he still had to wash clothes and work, his hands became rough and cracked, a dark reddish-black color like wooden sticks.

Nothing like they were now, raised to be white and tender.

Zhijuan looked down at his fingers, happily eating his peach. He took a jar of vanishing cream from the cabinet, scooped out a fingerful, and applied it to his hands and face. He immediately smelled fragrant.

“Time to eat.”

In ten minutes, Gangxun had made white rice porridge. He heated up two milk-flavored steamed buns for Zhijuan, a plain coarse-grain bun for himself, and brought out a dish of fermented bean curd to eat with it.

Zhijuan gnawed the peach pit clean, tossed it into the trash, and wiggled his butt to move from the sofa to the dining table.

Space in the rental was limited, so the dining table was usually only brought out during meals. Normally, Zhijuan ate his meals directly on the low coffee table.

The dining table was a folding wooden one left behind by the previous tenant.

It had several dark, unremovable stains on the top and carried an unpleasant odor. Zhijuan hated using it every single time.

As it turned out, Gangxun also despised it. Wherever he placed his arms, he either specifically avoided the stained areas or simply didn’t rest them on the table at all.

Gangxun ate very quickly, finishing in less than five minutes before heading off to the construction site.

The milk bun in Zhijuan’s hand had only just suffered a “minor injury,” a slight tear from being pulled apart.

He looked at the closed door, pressed his two bun halves together after carefully spreading them with bean curd, and grumbled as he ate, “He eats so fast, his stomach must be terrible. Hmph, I’m not racing him. I want to live a long life in this lifetime…”

After finishing his meal, Zhijuan went back to sleep. He only got up at that hour to catch a breakfast before Gangxun left for the site. This saved him from waking up at nine or ten o’clock and eating lunch shortly after, which would mean missing a meal.

In this nap, Zhijuan’s mouth tasted entirely of the peach’s sweetness.

By the time he woke up after ten o’clock, he was still reminiscing about the taste. After licking his lips and thinking about it for a few minutes, he changed his clothes and headed to the construction site to find Zhou Gangxun.

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