Back To the Small Fishing Village In 1982 - Chapter 43

Chapter 43: They All Want to Come Along

Sister-in-law Ye was silenced by Father Ye’s words, and when Ye Yaohua glared at her, she reluctantly backed down.

She had always felt that her husband did more work, while Ye Yaodong hadn’t done much and just reaped the benefits. For a long time, this had been a source of resentment for her.

Now that their earnings from fishing with the family were going to the communal pot, while he was going off on his own and keeping his earnings, it felt unfair no matter how she looked at it. She couldn’t help feeling she was doing too much work.

Seeing his second daughter-in-law back down, Father Ye then glared at Ye Yaodong, “Did you hear me? Stop fooling around outside. We’re dealing with the important matter of building a house, and you need to help at the construction site every day. If I come back and hear you’ve disappeared again, I’ll break your legs.”

“I got it, stop nagging.”

“Everything I tell you every day is for your own good. You’re over 20 now, not a three-year-old child. You need to help with the family work. You’re married with children now, you need to have a sense of responsibility and family values…” Mother Ye couldn’t help but start lecturing again.

Ye Yaodong felt a headache coming on. Since he’d returned, he had been helping with work and fishing, and wasn’t like before anymore. But his parents’ perception of him was still stuck in the past, unconsciously ignoring that he had changed.

Hanging out with friends was normal, wasn’t it? He couldn’t just give up all his friends after being reborn, could he? Besides, his friends were good people, loyal and trustworthy.

He could only continue to prove himself gradually.

“Okay, okay… I understand, I understand… I’ll work hard, Mom, you should hurry up and cook, Dad’s starving!”

“You little brat, you’re the one who’s starving. Don’t you know how to talk properly?” Father Ye got angry just hearing him speak.

“Ah… right… I’m the one who’s starving, I’m starving… you all eat, I’m leaving!”

“We’re about to eat, where are you going now?”

“I’m going to eat at Ah Guang’s place, save some rice for the family…”

Ye Yaodong walked out while speaking, his voice gradually fading away. Inside the house, Father Ye’s cursing could be heard again, all about how unreliable Ye Yaodong was…

The smile from when he first entered the house was gone, as if it had been everyone’s illusion.

Though Ye Yaodong liked hanging out with friends, he knew his limits. After eating enough, seeing it was getting dark, he headed home early.

“Have you been smoking and drinking again?”

“Is the smell that strong? I only had two drinks.”

He lifted his arm to smell it, the tobacco smell did seem quite strong, and his fingers still had a lingering seafood smell that hadn’t washed off.

“I’ll go wash again.”

Only after taking another shower did he enter the room.

Lin Xiuqing immediately asked eagerly: “Can we still rent the boat tomorrow?”

“We can, but it’ll cost more. Ah Guang’s aunt’s mother-in-law found out we caught over 7,000 jin of horse mackerel using their fishing net today, and she went straight to Ah Guang’s house this afternoon to demand more money.”

She frowned, “How can they be like this? How much more do we need to pay her?”

“Ah Guang said his aunt and uncle were quite reasonable, but the old lady was a bit difficult. She said we can rent tomorrow, but it’ll be five yuan, making it ten yuan for two days. We need to pay her eight more yuan, or she won’t rent to us.”

She sat up in surprise, “What? Five yuan, why don’t they just rob us? Other fishing boats only make about ten yuan a day trawling, and that’s before fuel costs. At this rate, renting for a month would cost 150 yuan! How much do workers even make in a month? They can just lie around doing nothing.”

“Besides, you’re just beach combing. Today was just lucky that we ran into a school of horse mackerel. You’d have to be crazy to pay five yuan to rent a boat for beach combing, and fuel still costs several mao to a yuan.”

He didn’t want to tell her that he was renting the boat to overcome his inner fears. Otherwise, who would be foolish enough to spend money renting a boat for beach combing? Without enough luck, you couldn’t even cover the boat and fuel costs.

People were very frugal in this era, unwilling to spend such money. They wouldn’t even spend money on vegetables.

“Shh…” Ye Yaodong saw the two children turning over in their sleep, lying awkwardly, and said softly: “We’re in the wrong too. We only talked about renting the boat before, not the net. That old lady is quite forceful, and we can’t really argue with an elder. We made quite a bit anyway, we can just take it from the sales money, everyone can share the cost.”

Having tasted success, everyone wanted to go again tomorrow. Even Chen Wei and Fatty enthusiastically said they wanted to join tomorrow.

Being friends, they couldn’t really refuse.

“More people are going tomorrow?”

Her attention immediately shifted, her brows furrowing even deeper.

The money issue could wait, after all they had made 1,600 yuan, so paying ten yuan from that was acceptable. But with more people, if they hit another big catch, wouldn’t their share be even less?

“Sigh… they heard we caught over 7,000 jin of horse mackerel today, and they’re all kicking themselves for not coming along. They say they definitely want to come with us tomorrow.”

Actually, none of them were happy about having two more people to share the profits with, but they were all long-time friends, and they really couldn’t bring themselves to refuse. Besides, today was just luck, it wouldn’t happen every day.

Since they all wanted to go, they could only take them along. They couldn’t fall out over something uncertain. As he’d said before, if only they had their own boat.

“How can they be so shameless? As soon as they see you making money, they want to come get a share…”

“Oh come on, stop talking about it. If they want to come, let them come. There’s no valuable seafood to be caught by trawling nearby, we have to go to waters further out. With so many people, we might not even cover the boat and fuel costs, though we might get some seafood to eat. We’ll just go check out the lonely island, and if we happen to hit another big catch, we’ll deal with it then.”

But such opportunities were rare, more a matter of luck than anything else. He wasn’t getting his hopes up, getting whatever they could find would be fine.

“You men are all like this, always going on about friendship and loyalty…”

Women just talked too much, worrying about things that hadn’t even happened. He didn’t have any special abilities – if he did, he’d secretly make money on his own, get rich quietly, and not tell anyone else.

Seeing his wife’s endless nagging, Ye Yaodong decided to silence her with action.

“Stop it, your legs were still weak yesterday…”

“Hey, who are you looking down on?”

Youth was capital, and moreover, a man’s pride wouldn’t allow him to back down!

Although the tide wouldn’t go out until afternoon, since they’d paid a high price for the boat rental and everyone was enthusiastic, they definitely couldn’t wait until afternoon low tide to go out like yesterday.

Early in the morning, Ye Yaodong had barely gotten up when everyone came to his house to wait.

Under everyone’s urging, he hurriedly gulped down a few mouthfuls of rice porridge, not even waiting for it to cool down properly. Then, taking the tools Lin Xiuqing had prepared for him in advance, he excitedly headed to the dock with everyone.

As soon as they reached the dock, Fatty took the initiative to buy diesel fuel. If they were going to tag along shamelessly, they should at least help cover the fuel costs.