To Get Married - Chapter 8

Chapter 8

On the day of the parent-teacher conference, several classmates secretly took pictures of Manzhu with their phones. For the next few days, people would often hover around Lu Yudong’s seat during breaks, trying to casually talk about her beautiful “sister.”

Faced with her classmates’ curiosity, Lu Yudong responded with silence. Eventually, she simply started pretending to be asleep the moment class ended.

This silence wasn’t entirely because she didn’t want others to know she was a child without parents. It was also because she genuinely didn’t know how to answer the questions her classmates were asking.

She didn’t know Manzhu’s age, wasn’t clear about Manzhu’s job, had never met Manzhu’s family, and didn’t even know why Manzhu had adopted her.

Manzhu, to Lu Yudong, was a complete mystery—someone who was so close to her, yet so entirely unknown.

But she never dared to ask for clarification. Manzhu’s appearance was already her saving grace amidst misfortune, so she didn’t dare to scrutinize where this luck came from, fearing that this entire unreal situation was just a fleeting bubble that would burst with the slightest touch.

So, when faced with her classmates’ curiosity, she could only evade.

Fortunately, most people’s curiosity about one thing doesn’t last long. When certain questions consistently go unanswered, they eventually stop bothering to ask.

After the parent-teacher conference, Lu Yudong finally stopped agonizing over the ten-yuan cost of each meal, which was a relief to Zhang Ziyun.

Time quickly arrived at the end of December, and Yuanchuan City welcomed its first snow of the winter.

Zhang Ziyun arrived at the classroom early, holding her phone with a worried expression.

She glanced at the time—it was almost exactly seven o’clock. Morning reading was in twenty minutes, and Lu Yudong, who brought her breakfast every day, should be arriving soon.

The classroom had a sparse handful of people scattered around—some memorizing texts, some eating, and some playing with their phones.

Zhang Ziyun looked down at the class group chat, her worry deepening.

A few minutes later, Lu Yudong arrived right on time. She was carrying Zhang Ziyun’s breakfast in her backpack, and before her butt was even warm in the seat, she pulled out her ledger to make an entry, as usual.

Zhang Ziyun took the breakfast Lu Yudong brought, instinctively glancing around. Seeing no unusual stares, she lowered her head and began to eat.

During morning reading, the English teacher was holding a spelling quiz. Lu Yudong was intensely reviewing her handwritten word list, racing against time, completely oblivious to her deskmate’s repeated attempts to speak.

It wasn’t until the morning reading session was over and the quiz finished that she noticed Zhang Ziyun’s expression was very strange.

“What’s wrong with you today? You seem distracted,” Lu Yudong asked with concern.

Zhang Ziyun frowned, tightly clutching her phone, hesitating whether to speak. Just then, a boy named Yang Kunpeng walked over with a smug look and called out, “Lu Yudong!”

Zhang Ziyun looked up and glared at him. “Why are you standing here? You’re blocking my view!”

“I came to chat with Lu Yudong,” Yang Kunpeng said, shifting his step. He leaned on Lu Yudong’s desk and asked with a grin, “So, your sister works at a bar?”

He spoke loudly, emphasizing the word “works” with deliberate sarcasm. Almost all the classmates in the room heard him.

A multitude of gazes immediately turned toward their corner.

“What are you saying!” Zhang Ziyun slammed her hands on the table, standing up and glaring fiercely at Yang Kunpeng.

A girl behind and to the side quietly muttered, “Zhang Ziyun, Lu Yudong doesn’t have a phone, but you do, right? The class group chat has been talking about this since last night. Why are you pretending you don’t know?”

“I knew it. No wonder Lu Yudong didn’t want to talk about her sister. Turns out she’s earning that kind of money,” someone else chimed in with a sarcastic tone.

“What kind of money?” Lu Yudong raised her head, looking at the gleeful Yang Kunpeng, and pressed him. “What kind of money are you talking about?”

“What else could it be?” Yang Kunpeng said. “A nightclub princess or a bar girl, duh. You didn’t know?”

Lu Yudong gritted her teeth, remaining calm. “You’re lying.”

“It’s not me saying it; Sun Xia said it,” Yang Kunpeng said, turning and yelling to Sun Xia, who was sitting not far away. “Didn’t you say yesterday that Lu Yudong’s sister was working as a hostess at a bar?”

Sun Xia waved his hand. “I didn’t say that. My… my cousin said it.”

“Then tell Lu Yudong what your cousin knows,” Yang Kunpeng urged.

Sun Xia subconsciously swallowed. “My cousin flipped through my phone album and saw her sister… he said, he said that woman works at a bar, and he and his friends have been there to see her a few times.”

Yang Kunpeng, completely oblivious to the chaos he was causing, knocked on Lu Yudong’s desk. “Hear that? Lu Yudong.”

Lu Yudong instinctively tightened her grip on her pen, her eyes burning with anger. “You’re deceiving me.”

Yang Kunpeng said, “The whole class knows, and he even has old photos from his cousin. Why are you pretending?”

Zhang Ziyun was furious. “Yang Kunpeng, is this fun?”

“No, no fun. I just saw you guys having such a great chat in the group and thought it was necessary to inform the person in question,” Yang Kunpeng said, then turned and whistled as he walked back to his seat.

For a moment, many people in the class were whispering to each other.

Lu Yudong lowered her head, silently clenching her fists.

Zhang Ziyun sat down, unsure how to comfort her. “Lu Yudong, you…”

“Are there really photos?” Lu Yudong asked in a low voice.

Zhang Ziyun bit her lower lip, pulled up the class group chat history from last night, and handed it to Lu Yudong.

There weren’t many photos. All were taken in a dimly lit location, with tables and guests clearly visible around the room. The woman in the photos—sometimes delivering drinks to guests, sometimes sitting on the stage singing—was indeed Manzhu.

Resting during the day, working at night…

Lu Yudong’s eyes reddened slightly. She returned the phone to Zhang Ziyun, lowered her head, and rubbed her hands together vigorously, as if trying to chase away the chill from her fingertips.

The entire day of classes passed. However annoying the gossiping classmates were, after a few taunts didn’t elicit the reaction they wanted, they stopped wasting their energy.

However, in the private class group chat, a few people occasionally used the phrase “bar girl” as a joke.

In private, countless people were quietly discussing the matter.

Junior high school students don’t have much worldly experience. Their first thought when hearing the word “bar” is the chaotic, hook-up spot they see in TV dramas. With this stereotype, they naturally assumed that women working in bars were mostly the type who could be “bought” for money.

The fact that one of their classmates’ parents worked in that industry was simply too sensational for them.

Zhang Ziyun spent the whole day worrying about Lu Yudong, but Lu Yudong acted as if nothing was wrong until the last evening study session, when she slipped Zhang Ziyun a note.

—Can you help me ask Sun Xia which bar his cousin mentioned, and what street it’s on?

Zhang Ziyun froze for a moment and quickly wrote a reply.

—You’re not planning to go, are you?

Lu Yudong’s note was immediately passed back.

—Just help me ask.

Zhang Ziyun frowned and looked up. She saw pure pleading in Lu Yudong’s eyes.

If she didn’t help today, Lu Yudong would surely find a way to ask herself… and asking about something like this in front of others would inevitably lead to ridicule.

Zhang Ziyun bit her lip and opened a private chat with Sun Xia.

After a long, agonizing wait of over ten minutes, Sun Xia got the bar’s specific address from his cousin:

Changshan Road, right side of the alley at the end of Yangliu Street—it was a bar called “Not Old Acquaintance”.

Lu Yudong silently copied the address onto a note and looked up at the clock above the blackboard.

The second hand ticked by, one movement after another. Zhang Ziyun saw a complex mix of emotions in Lu Yudong’s eyes. She wanted to comfort her but didn’t know what to say.

When the clock reached 9:30, the supervising teacher stood up and left the classroom. Lu Yudong also bowed her head and began to pack her backpack.

Zhang Ziyun whispered a warning. “Don’t go. It’s so late. Just go home quickly!”

“I’m just going to look,” Lu Yudong said.

“Bars won’t let students our age wander in,” Zhang Ziyun whispered in Lu Yudong’s ear.

Lu Yudong put on her backpack, ready to leave.

Zhang Ziyun anxiously grabbed her arm. “Do you care that much about what those gossips say about you?”

“I don’t care what others say,” Lu Yudong gently pushed Zhang Ziyun away, looked down at the address in her hand, and then quickly jogged out of the teaching building.

She didn’t care what others said about her, but she couldn’t afford not to care about Manzhu.

She cared too much.

She had never considered how exactly Manzhu managed to provide her with the comfortable, worry-free life she now enjoyed.

Because of this, she was afraid that her classmates’ claims were true, afraid that the job was truly disreputable, and even more afraid that Manzhu was forced to make such a choice to support her schooling.

Small snowflakes were still drifting down. A thin layer of white had accumulated on rooftops and branches.

The ground, however, was dirty.

Since arriving in Yuanchuan City, Lu Yudong had lived a routine life between two points.

She had never been to Changshan Road and didn’t have money for a taxi, so she could only walk and ask for directions along the way.

Fortunately, the place wasn’t too far. After wandering and searching for half an hour from the school, she finally found it.

She slowly walked into the seemingly deserted alley and finally saw the inconspicuous sign in the distance. It read: Not Old Acquaintance (Bú Shì Gù Rén).

This is…

The place Manzhu goes to work every day?

Lu Yudong exhaled a cold breath and walked with a complex heart to the bar’s sign.

Only from this distance could she clearly see a wooden plaque hanging beneath the sign, carved with eight strong, forceful characters:

—Not Old Acquaintance, Fate Gathers and Separates