Chapter 23: A Tiny Expectation

Two days before the wedding, it happened to be An Songyu's day off. She took a car specifically to Jiang Village.

After a full month of hard work, the foundation for the four homesteads in Jiang Village had been completed. Word was that the construction of the main structures would proceed much faster from here on out. Based on weather, labor, and material planning, they could finish one floor per week at the fastest, and no more than ten days at the slowest.

In addition, An Jianping had already begun searching for suitable renovation contractors. As for materials, they had sought advice from the neighboring Lin Village. After all, there were more than just one or two households in Lin Village preparing to enter the rental property business. Although most were limited by a lack of funds and preferred to build an extra floor rather than spend money on simple renovations, some who aimed for a premium rental market had indeed invested in basic upgrades.

An Jianping did not have much money on hand, nor did he intend to make things too refined; he simply wanted to secure the compensation difference between unrenovated and renovated properties. Furthermore, he had entrusted An Jian’an, the fourth child of the An family who worked at a moving company in Liangdi, to keep an eye out for any usable furniture encountered during moves. Small items would be collected first, and for larger pieces, he would find a way to retrieve them after work. At present, these discarded pieces of furniture were piled up in a cluttered heap next to the old house of An’s grandparents, well-covered for protection until the new houses were built and they could see which pieces would fit.

The builders working on their houses were skilled hands, reportedly having spent the last two years working almost exclusively between Lin Village and Jiang Village. After taking a rough tour, An Songyu hurried off to the silkworm house to help her grandparents.

This was the busiest time for the silkworm house. When An Songyu arrived, she saw that not only the two permanent workers but her grandparents themselves were busy adding mulberry leaves to the racks. Baskets of freshly picked leaves were emptied quickly by the four of them. Fortunately, the silkworm trays were already well-stocked.

Shi Youqin stood up, rubbing her aching waist, and spotted An Songyu at the entrance. She waved her hand, saying, "The silkworms here have just been fed, so you don't need to worry about this part. Go check on the other silkworm houses in the back!"

An Songyu nodded, hesitated for a moment, and then said shyly, "Grandma, please don't work too hard."

"Do you think I want to be this tired?" Shi Youqin shot her granddaughter a look of exasperation. "It’s just that your father hasn't found the right people yet."

An Songyu was speechless.

Thinking about how the silkworms had just entered their fourth instar stage and needed to be fed mulberry leaves two or three times a day, it was no wonder her grandmother was exhausted. As for finding help… her father had been too optimistic from the start.

The mulberry garden spanned about four hundred mu. Sixty percent of that area was taken up by fish ponds of varying sizes, leaving only forty percent for mulberry fields. Following the advice of fellow villagers, An Jianping had built four large silkworm houses beside the larger ponds—spacious sheds 20 meters long, 10 meters wide, and 3 meters high. The biggest expense wasn't the labor, but the materials. In addition, taking advantage of the terrain, he had built medium-sized silkworm houses of about a hundred square meters and smaller ones of a few dozen square meters near the smaller ponds.

Of course, while two people could manage these initially, it would certainly be impossible later on. He also had to hire temporary workers to pick mulberry leaves, paid by weight. These workers were either women from the other side of Jiang Village or local women who had no work at their own farmhouses during off-peak seasons and couldn't sit still.

An Songyu checked the other large silkworm houses first. Although she didn't see anyone, the mulberry leaves in every tray were neatly spread. She wasn't an expert in sericulture and couldn't observe them closely, so she went to the smaller and medium-sized houses. There, she finally found the workers. They had seen An Songyu more than once, so they exchanged greetings and continued working together.

"The silkworms are older now; can you keep up with the workload?" An Songyu asked while helping out.

The middle-aged woman, who had been introduced by the first two workers, smiled sheepishly. "It's alright!" Seeing that An Songyu didn't seem to fully understand, she explained carefully, "The larger the silkworms, the more they eat. But once they're larger, feeding them is much easier. When they were small, we had to chop the mulberry leaves into bits. Now that they've reached the fourth instar, we just need to be a bit careful when picking the leaves, and we can feed them directly. Also, smaller silkworms require more frequent feedings. Now that they are bigger, the number of feedings has actually decreased quite a bit."

After speaking, the woman seemed even more embarrassed. She moved her lips, then made up her mind to add, "Your aunt and uncle taught us all this. They were afraid we wouldn't understand just by listening, so they even worked alongside us during feedings yesterday. They check every silkworm house one by one."

"The diseased silkworms from a few days ago were discovered by your uncle first," she added. As soon as she said it, she realized that telling the employer this might imply her own lack of competence. But then she thought that the presence of diseased silkworms probably couldn't be hidden from the owners anyway. The daughter of the house was quite young and probably didn't know much about it.

An Songyu felt even more ashamed, but she truly couldn't spare the time to help her grandparents. However, once her three-month internship was over, she did not plan to participate in the school's campus recruitment.

In her past life, she had worked at the Nanshi First Hotel for over twenty years, rising from a junior front desk clerk to a lobby manager, and eventually a VIP room butler. If there was any harvest from that time, it was probably nothing but exhaustion, aside from the salary. Working in the service industry, especially in hotels, shift work was the norm. While others only worked overtime occasionally, night shifts were an inevitable part of her career; she only stopped rotating shifts in the last few years after being promoted.

If her memory served her correctly, the demolition of Jiang Village was set to happen before the National Day holiday. As for the exact date, An Songyu, who had been working in Nanshi at the time, hadn't been entirely sure. She only knew that when she returned for the National Day break, her home and the entire village had changed completely.

Therefore, An Songyu had made up her mind. Once her internship ended, she would return to school to complete her graduation formalities, and as soon as she received her diploma, she would return to the village. Before the demolition, she would help manage village affairs. As for everything else, that could wait until after the relocation.

Starting over, An Songyu didn't have many original ambitions. But since she could return to a time before the demolition, she felt… perhaps she could aim a bit higher. If she remembered correctly, after the village was demolished, most families used their compensation money wisely, with only a very small minority failing to manage it well.

It was said that two families in the Jiang clan had a relative who married into a neighboring city not far from the coast. When their village was demolished, it happened to coincide with the coastal development there. The two families joined forces, brought in a few others, bought land there, and built apartments, which they then turned into apartment-style hotels.

An Songyu wasn't greedy for anything else. She only hoped that in this new life, the years of hard work and study she had once invested would not go to waste.