Chapter 65 Eggshell

"No, no, way! Ling, how did you turn out like this now?"

Han Chuang cried out with a long, mournful face.

"First Brother Meng, now you. You two used to practically live in the arcade. How can you both suddenly just quit playing like that?"

"You're not so bad, at least you still show your face. I haven't seen Brother Meng since the Lunar New Year. I went to his house and nobody was there; the front gate is locked up every day. The neighbors say they haven't seen him in ages either, who knows what he's up to."

"If you hadn't shown up after a little longer, I definitely would have run over to your place to check."

Brother Meng's full name was Shi Meng. He was seven or eight years older than Chen Ling and Han Chuang, originally from the county town. He had spent a few years in the security defense team and even served two years as a secretary to a leader at the power supply bureau.

Later on, nobody knew whether he had offended someone or gotten into some trouble, but not only did he lose his job, his parents were also implicated.

They had taken early retirement from the county middle school.

Ever since then, Shi Meng had transformed from a promising young man into a street hoodlum, spending his entire day lingering in arcades and pool halls, hanging around with Chen Ling and Han Chuang, and never coming home until after dark.

Yet according to Chen Ling's memories, he indeed hadn't seen him since after the New Year.

Hearing Han Chuang bring this up now, Chen Ling shook his head and said, "I'm different from Brother Meng. Brother Meng probably has something going on at home. For me, I'm simply tired of playing and don't want to do it anymore."

With that, he patted the ox cart. "Come on, get on, I'll give you a ride to the Cultural Palace."

"No, no need, I came on my motorcycle. If you're heading to the south of the town, we can go together."

Han Chuang pointed toward the noodle stall against the wall, where a brand-new motorcycle was parked.

It had an orange body and yellow mudguards, an extremely simple structure of a small motorcycle.

"Hah, a Star 50..."

Chen Ling couldn't help but exclaim in surprise.

The Star 50 motorcycle was a classic model produced by the Shimen Hongxing Machinery Factory.

When this thing first hit the market in the 1980s, it sold for twelve hundred yuan. In an era where ordinary wages were generally only around ten-odd yuan, it could be considered the standard equipment for a ten-thousand-yuan household.

Even by 1995, families owning such a motorcycle were few and far between.

"You fellow, didn't your old man complain about you hanging out at the arcade all day and refuse to buy you one?"

Han Chuang scratched his head and grinned. "Heh, my, my family just arranged a match for me, so my dad bought me another one to ride my wife around on."

"Oh? You're getting a wife? When is the wedding?"

Chen Ling laughed upon hearing this.

"At, at, at the end of the year."

Asked about this, Han Chuang's dark face flushed a deep purplish red. He looked a bit embarrassed, but the smile on his face grew even more radiant.

"When the time comes, you and Brother Meng simply must come."

"I've wanted to tell you guys about this for ages, but I haven't been able to catch sight of either of you these days."

"Don't worry, I'll definitely go."

"With something as big as your wedding, how could Brother Meng and I be absent?"

At this, Chen Ling couldn't help looking him up and down twice. "Chuang, you're about to get married, why are you still coming to the county town to play arcade games? Isn't there anything at home that needs your attention?"

"Of course there is. I came under the pretext of picking up my bride; otherwise, if my dad found out, I'd get a beating for sure."

Han Chuang chuckled with a naive and honest expression.

"So that means your wife is also in the county town?"

Chen Ling caught the implication in his words and asked.

"Yeah. Come to think of it, you definitely know who she is. She's that chubby girl of Director Liu's family from our old high school, though she's lost weight now and looks much better."

Han Chuang wore a face full of smiles when talking about his future wife, his mouth splitting all the way to his ears. "She tested into a junior college after graduating high school and is now a technician at the Agriculture Bureau."

"Well, well. Without making a sound, you managed to snag a college student for a wife. You really something else, kid..."

Chen Ling laughed and punched him lightly.

Yet inwardly, he had no impression of this Director Liu's daughter.

He had indeed attended the same high school as Han Chuang, but this fellow was too slow and had been held back two grades; when Chen Ling was a senior, Han Chuang was only a freshman.

"Heh, I'll go push the motorcycle over..."

Han Chuang scratched his big head with a laugh, then wheeled the Hongxing 50 over.

He waved at Chen Ling. "Come on, Ling, hop on and take a ride around!"

"This thing is a blast to ride. You can make a full circle around the county town in twenty minutes, super fast. Come on, try it out."

Chen Ling wanted to refuse, but since it was a brand-new motorcycle and the guy was willing to let him ride it, turning him down flatly wouldn't be very nice.

So he rode a small circle around the street corner.

"Awesome, Ling! It's your first time riding a motorcycle and you handle it so well, way better than I did before..."

Seeing Chen Ling's casual and practiced posture, Han Chuang opened his mouth wide in astonishment.

"When I rode my brother's motorcycle before, I veered straight into a ditch and almost knocked my front teeth out."

Chen Ling laughed heartily. "You rascal, knowing I'm a beginner and yet you dared let me ride it, aren't you afraid I'd wreck your new motorcycle?"

"Heh, I haven't seen you for two months, so I was just happy. Since you wouldn't play arcade games with me, I had to let you try out my new ride..."

Han Chuang winked, then straddled the motorcycle.

"The path here is narrow, I'll lead the way first."

"Alright!"

And so, one drove the ox cart while the other rode the motorcycle, heading toward the south of the town.

Before long, they reached the Workers' Cultural Palace.

As they parted ways, Han Chuang called him back to say one last thing.

"Ling, if you really can't get into the sand quarry, you might as well come to my family's cannery."

"Even though it's not as lucrative as the sand quarry, it's still better than farming at home. What do you think?"

Chen Ling smiled upon hearing this, first thanking the dark-skinned fellow and then saying he wouldn't go anywhere else in the future and would just farm at home with peace of mind.

Watching Han Chuang walk into the Cultural Palace with an expression of sheer disbelief, Chen Ling felt a slight sense of surprise.
The Chen Ling of the past had been such a scoundrel, yet he actually had a friend who wasn't just a fair-weather companion.

That was rare indeed!

...

At one-thirty in the afternoon, Chen Ling returned to the newly rented small courtyard in the south of the town.

First, he thoroughly cleaned both the courtyard and the rooms. Noticing that the courtyard was completely barren without even a tree, he retrieved a fig sapling from the grotto and planted it right beside the hand pump.

Then, seeing that the square pool on the east side of the courtyard was filled with dirt—which had previously been used by the elderly landlord couple as a vegetable patch—he shook his head, picked up a stone hoe, and dug out all the soil packed inside.

He restored the square pool to its original appearance.

Afterward, he planted lotus flowers in the pool, filled it halfway with water, and tossed in a bunch of fish fry from the grotto.

As Chen Ling poured several buckets of grotto spring water into the pool, the surface quickly filled with lotus leaves, and the small courtyard instantly came alive with vitality.

"Heh, this looks much more comfortable. Otherwise, it lacked any sense of life, desolate and gloomy like an empty tomb that hadn't been lived in for years."

Chen Ling clapped his hands together, wearing a satisfied expression.

Then, holding the stone hoe, he entered the grotto, intending to move the vegetables out and set up a vegetable stall by the shop entrance.

To his surprise, the moment he stepped into the thatched hut, a crisp "crack" sounded beneath his feet, giving him a start.

Lowering his head to look, he saw half of a white eggshell crushed into pieces.