Chapter 541: Chapter 541

After school, she immediately started cleaning and completely forgot about eating; fortunately, she had coal, firewood, and food in her space, which were enough to whip something up.

However, this reminded her that she needed to buy some groceries and food when she had time.

Now she had seven hundred yuan, one hundred from her father’s pension which she had withdrawn, six hundred yuan in land compensation from the village chief, and over one hundred yuan left over from previous savings. After moving and buying curtains among other daily necessities, she was left with about seven hundred yuan—her entire fortune.

She didn’t know when she would receive her salary from the organization; it would probably be around the same time others received their salaries, so there was no rushing it.

Since she still had plenty of leftover sweet potatoes, she used the firewood to boil some water, and with the remaining ashes, she baked a few small sweet potatoes.

After bathing in her space, by the time she went to eat the sweet potatoes, they were just the right temperature.

After eating, she washed her face, brushed her teeth, and applied some moisturizing cream that cost one yuan per packet before going to bed.

By then it was already eleven at night; she needed to wake up at four-thirty in the morning and be at school by five for morning exercises, so to ensure she got enough sleep, she slept in her space.

Since their school was in the county, not only children from the county itself but also those from the surrounding rural areas attended. However, finding a family as poor as Zhou Yiyi’s in one grade level might be challenging; after all, it had been two thousand years, and living conditions had certainly improved significantly since the 1990s.

Living in the city wasn’t any easier than living in the countryside, with morning exercises at five and study sessions starting at five-thirty that lasted until seven-thirty. They had only half an hour for breakfast before classes resumed sharply at eight, which then went on for four periods. There was no rest period at noon; school was dismissed at twelve, and classes resumed at one. After three periods, evening study sessions began at five-thirty and lasted till seven—this was the longest session because they needed to clean up then. This content belongs to novel(ꜰ)ire.net

Therefore, every junior high school student usually returned to their dormitory or home around nine or nine-thirty, and by the time they finished organizing and washing up, it was often ten or even ten-thirty before they could go to bed. High school could be even more demanding.

Tangyuan had also lived in H city in her former life but resided in the capital, so her junior high life was nowhere near this tough. She even had time for hobbies after school and during weekends, which made her realize how tough it was for a poor child to attend school, from dawn till dusk, and it was no exaggeration.

It was completely normal for the children to feel sleepy in class. Luckily, she had her space to ensure she got enough sleep, or else she would probably not be able to cope.

She had a small alarm clock set to wake her up at four-thirty. As soon as it rang, she quickly dressed and washed up.

She had turned off the hallway water heater when she left work because she tried to avoid using electricity when not necessary. After all, this was public electricity, and if her arrival suddenly increased the costs significantly, it would be too much. Therefore, except when doing homework, she hardly ever turned on the lights in her room.

And the reason she worked on her homework under the light rather than in her space was to be visible to the security guards; otherwise, they might worry about what had happened to her.

She usually didn’t have much of an appetite first thing in the morning, so after washing her face, brushing her teeth, and applying Xiangxiang moisturizer, she combed her hair.

Her hair was abundant and of good quality. In this era, most girls wore simple styles, predominantly ponytails, with very few wearing braids and even fewer perming their hair. By casually tying her hair into a bun, she already had a pretty hairstyle.

Zhou Yiyi was quite attractive, with thick eyebrows and big eyes, and even had cute dimples when she smiled. But no matter how cute, paired with washed-out clothes and shoes with the glue peeling off, it added a bit of earthly fragrance.

She loitered in her space for a while, but only five minutes had passed in the outside world. She locked her door, went downstairs, unlocked and locked the door again, and then rode her bike out of the compound, greeting the security guard on her way, "Be careful, stick to the main road; it’s better lit."

She waved at the security guard, obediently taking the main road. There were already many vehicles on the road, mostly farmers from the countryside coming into the city for the market. Some rode tricycles, others motorcycles, carrying fresh vegetables they had prepared at home, laboriously pedaling towards the direction of the market. Once upon a time, the original host’s mother was also among them, but times change, and her relatives were no longer around, leaving only her alone.

When she reached school, the time displayed at the school gate’s security booth was four fifty-five, just five minutes before the start of the morning exercises. She parked her bike and hurried to the sports field, but couldn’t find it at first because the back sports field had no lighting; being a transfer student, she had to stand in the last row and nobody spoke to her, at most giving her a glance.

As the whistle blew, the talking students quickly lined up and began running with the flow of the queue, lap after lap, until a light layer of sweat formed, and then the whistle blew to signal the start of class.

Today’s morning reading was Chinese, reciting texts, classical Chinese, with students leaving as soon as they recited correctly. Each one recited to the teacher individually. If it had been the old Zhou Yiyi, she might have been terrified just by this, but this had become routine—English texts, vocabulary dictation, Chinese texts, and math concepts and formulas all required the teacher’s queries and dictations.

Zhou Yiyi had a good memory and managed to memorize everything in half an hour, including the texts from previous classes. After checking the time and seeing it was right, she raised her hand, and the teacher came over. After reciting everything smoothly, she breathed a sigh of relief, as this meant she could go home normally after classes.

Zhou Yiyi didn’t plan on going home for lunch. She would find a place to eat last night’s baked sweet potato and then buy an egg from the school cafeteria.

Speaking of eggs, she remembered she needed to visit the Market to stock up on ingredients.

From now on, she planned to eat two boiled eggs every morning to ensure her nutrition. She couldn’t afford milk at the moment, so eating two eggs was already a luxury.

After school, seeing the swarm of students rushing toward the direction of the cafeteria, which was really just cooking inside and selling outside without any seating area, she decided not to join the crowd. She found a breakfast stall outside and bought two buns, with millet porridge being free.

Having a phobia of meat buns, she spent 50 cents on two vegetable buns and another 50 cents on an egg; a bowl of soup later, she was already full.