To this day, Gu Nuan Nuan could still clearly recall the complicated look in her grandfather's eyes as he lay dying—so complicated she couldn't understand it. In the end, he didn't say much, leaving her only a stone engraved with "Gu 5."
Gu Nuan Nuan let out a wry laugh as she thought of that ordinary-looking stone, the kind you could find anywhere.
In fact, as soon as her grandfather passed away, her scumbag father had 'kindly' told her the stone's origin.
Her guess had been right. The stone really was just something he'd picked up.
It was during the war. Before Gu Nuan Nuan's great-grandfather fled with his entire family, he feared they would get separated with no way to find one another. So, he decided to give each child a token. That way, if they truly were scattered, they might be able to recognize each other by the tokens years later.
It was a good idea, but reality was cruel.
Back then, the Gu Family was dirt-poor; they couldn't even produce a single keepsake that would last. In the end, her great-grandfather simply picked up a few similarly shaped stones, carved the character 'Gu' on them, and then added each child's birth order.
And just like that, what was probably the crudest 'keepsake' in history was made.
Unfortunately, the world isn't so kind. Not all lost relatives get to reunite. After being separated from his parents and siblings, her grandfather never saw them again for the rest of his life.
Of course, in her past life and in this one, Gu Nuan Nuan had no grand ambitions or vows to reunite her grandfather with his long-lost family.
'What would be the point of a reunion?' If they found them and they were just an ordinary family, it would only give the Gu family more to look down on and despise—even though the Gu family themselves were hardly from a prestigious clan.
On the other hand, if they had made a name for themselves, becoming fabulously wealthy or successfully marrying into a family of high-ranking officials, then Gu Nuan Nuan herself would be the one feeling disgusted—
Anything that would benefit the rest of the Gu family was something she could never bring herself to be happy about, no matter what.
Back then, she hadn't cared at all whether her grandfather left her anything.
Her grandfather probably knew it, too. If that stone hadn't looked so ordinary and worthless, the Gu family would have raised hell when she took it, rather than simply mocking her with schadenfreude for having wasted her efforts.
'But I wonder if Grandpa himself ever knew that the stone actually contained a mysterious space?'
Heh.
Though in her past life, the space hadn't been very useful to her—more trouble than it was worth. As for the nameless plant inside, she had scoured nearly every botanical encyclopedia without finding a match. Beyond having a slightly calming effect on her mood, she couldn't find any other use for it.
So, in the end, she could only use the space as a portable storage locker.
But she also knew that just because she found the mysterious space useless didn't mean others would. The stakes were too high, so she never breathed a word of this secret to another soul.
In this life, she had no intention of revealing it either.
The town wasn't large. The hospital and the dormitory assigned to Gu Nuan Nuan's mother by the supply and marketing co-op were both centrally located, so they weren't far from each other—only a walk of ten-odd minutes.
The moment she walked through the door, Gu Nuan Nuan subconsciously glanced around. The small, cramped room was tidy in a way that felt unfamiliar compared to her memories, but it was still a place she had lived for a considerable time, so she retained some impression of it.
Without hesitating, she pulled her mother straight toward the rice crock.
"Is the money in the rice crock?" Zhang Minzhen asked, looking at it doubtfully.
"No, it's in a hidden compartment behind the kitchen cupboard," Gu Nuan Nuan said, pointing to the handmade, ancient-looking solid wood cupboard beside the rice crock.
"This thing has a hidden compartment?" Zhang Minzhen was even more astonished.
"Yes, I saw Dad take money from back there." 'In reality, she had only heard about it in her past life when Gu Jiayi was boasting. Gu Jiayi had mentioned that this old cupboard had a hidden compartment where their scumbag father kept his private stash of cash...'
'She'd never seen it herself, and Gu Jiayi hadn't told her out of the goodness of her heart. She was mocking them. After living with that scumbag father for so many years, she and her mother were still in the dark about something even an outsider like Gu Jiayi knew.'
At her current height, Gu Nuan Nuan naturally couldn't reach the compartment. Fortunately, the room was small, and the cupboard wasn't flush against a wall. It served as a partition, and there was even a row of hooks nailed to the top of its back for hanging miscellaneous items.
Following her directions, her mother felt around for a moment before successfully finding a hidden drawer on the back. She opened it and pulled out a small, blue-green cloth pouch.
"Whoa, that's a lot of money! Mom, hurry, count how much is in there!"
When her mother pulled out a thick stack of banknotes, the one on top a hundred-yuan bill, Gu Nuan Nuan practically started drooling. She excitedly urged her mother to count the money.
'She was so antsy.' If she weren't afraid of making her mother suspicious, she would have rolled up her own sleeves and counted it herself.
"Don't rush me, there's more. I never realized you were such a little money-grubber," Zhang Minzhen said, amused by her daughter's excitement.
Moving quickly, she pulled out another bundle. This time, it was a thick stack of various ration coupons: for grain, oil, cloth... Zhang Minzhen unfolded the thick wad of cash and began to count. Besides the hundred-yuan bill on the outside, there were plenty of five-yuan, ten-yuan, and one-yuan notes, as well as many smaller bills.
It would have been too difficult to tally all the different ration coupons.
"It's exactly nine hundred and fifty yuan in total."
"Mom, what are these?"
Gu Nuan Nuan then found two neatly folded passbooks in an inner pocket of the pouch. She opened them and saw they were both non-registered passbooks from the Postal Savings Bank—one for five hundred yuan, the other for three hundred. Her eyes curved into crescents as she fought back a grin, feigning confusion as she asked her mother.
"Passbooks."
Zhang Minzhen gasped. She took them and checked the amounts, then the deposit terms. Both were for one-year fixed-term deposits that hadn't matured yet. Added to the cash in the pouch, the total came to one thousand seven hundred and fifty yuan.
She frowned at the sight of so much money. Shocked, she couldn't help but worry. "Nuannuan, what if your father gets desperate and calls the police after we take all this?"
'That's a good point.' Considering the current average monthly salary was only forty or fifty yuan, and their family had only finished paying off their debts two years ago, this amount of money was more than she'd expected.
'It just shows how ruthlessly that scumbag father was skimming off me and Mom,' Gu Nuan Nuan lamented to herself.
'If we take this much money all at once, he probably won't let it go.' Gu Nuan Nuan rested her chin in her hand and made a swift decision. "We'll take the cash and leave the passbooks."
'If he really dares to call the police, we can just use that as an opportunity to split the passbooks' value fifty-fifty, too,' Gu Nuan Nuan calculated.
"Alright. That way it's a nearly even split. It's only fair that our side gets a little more, since there are two of us," Zhang Minzhen mused before nodding in agreement.
'Not good at all.'
'What if that scumbag father thinks the same way? Are we really going to just let him, his mistress, and their bastard children have that eight hundred yuan for free?'