After class, Xiao Qi and Wei Cheng, Honey and Yun Book, the four roommates in the dormitory went their separate ways.
Xiao Qi and Wei Cheng went to the new district racetrack, while Honey and Yun Book went back to the old district.
Honey wanted to go to the student union to sign in, looking like an enthusiastic student union member.
After getting along for more than a week, I realized that the most introverted of the roommates was actually the rich second generation Gu Yun Book. She loved to stay in the dormitory whenever she could instead of going out. She really liked reading novels. When reading novels, her emotions were very rich. She would often cry along with the plot of the book. She would also often grin by herself uncontrollably.
After school, in addition to Xiao Qi and Wei Cheng, some students also went to the new district. The experimental building was close to the new district, and most new students were very free and had no goals, so there were many people wandering around.
The two boys in front of Xiao Qi's desk also went to the new district, and they ran into each other on the road.
Maybe because Xiao Qi didn't look like a very good conversation partner, her military training performance was outstanding, and she was also very serious in class, giving people the feeling that she was very good at studying, but she was not the bookworm type either. There was always an inaccessible feeling about her. Xiao Qi actually felt that it was the aftereffect of the unapproachable buff. Anyway, as long as she kept a serious face, she could avoid a lot of unnecessary socializing. Otherwise, it would be tiring to make small talk.
Now the two boys in front of Xiao Qi were chatting with Wei Cheng all the way. Wei Cheng was honest and would not reject people. When others asked her questions, she would always purse her lips and smile obediently to answer.
However, she did not mention the matter of going to the racetrack to work, probably because the matter was not finalized yet, and she had called Xiao Qi to go with her, so it was not just her own business. So when asked what she was going to do in the new district, she just smiled silly.
Xiao Qi discovered that Wei Cheng's silly smile was also very powerful. Recalling that sometimes when she didn't want to talk about something in the dormitory, she would just smile foolishly. It seemed that everyone didn't notice it and just felt that Wei Cheng was very honest and couldn't help taking care of her more.
A few people parted ways on the student street. Xiao Qi and Wei Cheng arrived at the racetrack. Wei Cheng had been here before and took Xiao Qi through the iron gate.
There was an uncle guard at the iron gate. Seeing the two young girls, his attitude was quite good. He took them to the horse stable.
The horse stable turned out to be a very long rectangular building. From a distance, Xiao Qi thought it was an employee dormitory or something. Only after walking in did she discover a different world inside.
"The boss originally said that the jockeys had to clean the stables themselves. Those young bosses were very excited the first two days, and cleaned up once or twice, but then they stopped coming," said Old Man Yu. "I usually clean up a bit, but there were a few more horses this semester, which was not easy to handle. Today, just follow me and do it first. The work is not hard, just tedious, and not very clean. You are students, right? My surname is Yu. Just call me Old Yu."
Of course, Xiao Qi and Wei Cheng would not call the other party like that. In the village, the elderly, regardless of whether they were relatives or not, should be called uncle according to their age.
The stable was empty and very new now, built very professionally. Old Man Yu gave each of the two girls a raincoat-like jacket and told them to put it on.
While chattering, he said, "It's the boss's rules."
Wei Cheng wore a blue plastic jacket and Xiao Qi took a yellow plastic jacket, with matching colored plastic rain boots.
Then there were tools, carts, forks, shovels, brooms.
Xiao Qi had seen her parents clean pig pens at home, but it was not so complicated. Cleaning the pigsty in the countryside was just shoveling away the pig manure and garbage, then sweeping it clean, washing it clean with water, drying it, and then driving the pigs back in.
The pigpen did not need to be cleaned regularly either, just swept once every one or two months.
When introducing new piglets, it had to be cleaned carefully once, for fear that the new piglets would get sick. Not only was it cleaned up, but new dried straw was also laid out for the pigs to sleep on.
There were no pigs raised in Wei Cheng's family, but there were various kinds of mushrooms grown in the greenhouse, which was also a lot of work. There were three children in her family, so things were not very delicate. She helped out with more work.
In fact, Xiao Qi did not do much housework at home. She was the only child, so her parents spoiled her more.
"Today I'll just teach you how to wash the stables first. As for the horses, it's best to clean them earlier when the sun is not too harsh, otherwise I'm afraid the horses will get sick. The horses here are very valuable, supposedly worth tens of thousands each, so they can't be allowed to get sick," said Old Man Yu.
Xiao Qi and Wei Cheng followed Old Man Yu into the stable. The padding in the stable was not straw, but looked a little like bran, only coarser, not sure what kind of wood chips it was.
Old Man Yu lifted the large water basin by himself, while at the same time directing Xiao Qi and Wei Cheng to take out the material basin and the horses' toys.
Yes, there were small toys for horses in the stable.
The two girls were wearing gloves and had come to work, so they were not disgusted by the dirt. It should be cleaned often. It was not that smelly, much better than the pigpen at home.
However, Old Man Yu had originally thought that the taller girl looked like she could work, while the other thinner and delicate girl might not be able to do much work. Unexpectedly, when they started working, the taller girl was a little clumsy, while the smaller girl was actually stronger and more agile. That material basin was so heavy that he thought the two girls would carry it out together, but the petite girl carried it out by herself.
Although the taller girl worked very steadily and did not slack off, following his instructions steadily even if a little inflexible.
Wei Cheng pushed the cart to the stable door, Old Man Yu used a fork to shovel the horse manure in the stable, and then shoveled up the padding that was already dirty and wet. The three worked together and soon filled half a cart.
Old Man Yu asked Wei Cheng to continue cleaning up, while taking Xiao Qi to push the car out to the designated area to dump the dirty stuff, otherwise it would stink and breed bacteria. In summer, it would easily attract a lot of flies.
So the dung pile was quite far away, almost spanning the entire racetrack.
Xiao Qi followed along to push the car. It reminded her of when she was at the hospital where Auntie worked. At that time, whenever she saw Auntie pushing the trash out, she would feel very ashamed and unwilling to be with Auntie. Everyone else looked fresh and clean while Auntie was covered in sweat and smelly trash. It felt like her status was lowered for some reason.
Young girls care about face.
Now pushing the cart filled with smelly horse dung and waste, Xiao Qi could actually look around at the scenery and people not far away, probably because there was no one she knew so she felt more comfortable.
However, it seemed that was not the case either. Near the horse trail, Xiao Qi did see someone familiar, or rather, someone who wouldn't recognize Xiao Qi but Xiao Qi recognized her, because Xiao Qi saw the iconic long hair, the girl with waist-length hair must be the English major freshman this year, Wu Xinyue.
She was actually leading a horse, walking side by side with a boy. The sunlight shone on her smooth long hair. Occasionally seeing her smile faintly felt very beautiful from afar.
She wore a white dress and a hat, with black hair. The boy next to her couldn't see clearly, probably wearing riding gear, quite tight, with riding boots.
Xiao Qi wore a yellow raincoat for work, rain boots, looking like a little yellow man.
When cleaning, they also had to clean the top and bottom corners of the stable to prevent spiderwebs and the like. So I also had to wear a hat. It was a little stuffy in the stable, and it was actually sweating all over after working. After coming out, Xiao Qi took off her hat, revealing her little hair buns, and continued to follow Old Man Yu to push the cart.
After walking a good distance, they finally dumped the trash in the cart.
It was much easier on the way back.
By the time Xiao Qi came back, there was no sight of Wu Xinyue near the runway, but there really were people riding horses, galloping past them, as if a gust of wind blew from beside them, making Xiao Qi's plastic clothes rustle.
When Xiao Qi returned, she saw that Wei Cheng was checking and cleaning the corners and bottom of the stable as required by Old Man Yu, sweeping away spiderwebs and trash from the corners that had quite a bit, indicating that Old Man Yu didn't clean so carefully himself on ordinary days.
Then the three poured the clean padding back into the stable together, covering three-quarters of the area, before moving the water basin, material basin, toys and the like back in again.
"There are also tricks to laying the padding. You can lay it a little higher near the wall and lower in the middle. This stable has a rubber mat laid inside, so just this much padding is fine without needing too much. If it was a cement floor, it would need to be laid thicker," said Old Man Yu.
Old Man Yu was quite satisfied with the two young girls who had come to work. He could see they were hardworking people. Some other students had come to try out before, but they had shrieked at the idea of mucking out horse stalls. Really! These university students were too delicate. These two girls were good though.
They worked carefully, unafraid of dirtiness or laziness, and they were strong too.
Old Man Yu told them to keep sweeping while he went to find the person in charge.
When Old Man Yu came back, he saw that the two girls were working briskly and had already cleaned out each of the horse stalls, not trying to cut corners while he was away. Nodding in satisfaction, Old Man Yu was quite pleased.
The few teenage boys following behind Old Man Yu had surprise on their faces though.
Old Man Yu had said there were some students coming to interview who were doing a good job. Usually cleaning the horse stalls was the stablehands' own work, but they often didn't want to do it after a try or two, which was why they wanted to hire someone. The boys hadn't expected it to be two girls. This work required some strength, which they themselves even found tiring. They'd assumed it would be male students. But now Old Man Yu was saying the girls were doing a good job and told the boys to inspect their work.
Upon entering, they saw two girls, one in blue and one in yellow, working up a sweat on their foreheads as they labored. Both had smiles of joy on their faces and were chatting happily.
The boy walking in front, Xiao Shengzhou, was the person in charge of the stables. He also had another identity - he was the student council president. But he rarely made appearances, with the vice presidents handling student council affairs while he devoted himself to horse riding. On a whim, he and his friends had set up this stable, and he had casually established an equestrian club too. The club membership was pathetically low, really just himself and his friends playing around.
Xiao Shengzhou had a broad forehead and angular features, looking imposing and dignified unlike the pretty boys currently in fashion.
Behind him, a few of the other boys were giggling. Among them was Li Weijin, who had come along to play because his friend had called him out. The other day, he had tried unsuccessfully to add that girl on WeChat. But he hadn't been too persistent about it. Since the add request failed, he had basically forgotten about it and moved on.
He was good-looking and came from a wealthy family, constantly fawned over since childhood. It was rare for him to take the initiative to pursue someone, especially given the group of fools surrounding him. Just look at Li Taiping - today he had brought that college girl to the stables again. Clearly this was a stable, yet she had worn a skirt totally unsuitable for horse riding. No doubt they had gone off to the lake to take pretentiously elegant photos to plaster all over WeChat Moments.
But Li Weijin hadn't expected to see a girl from his class here - Xiao Qi.
She was prancing around the stable in her skirt, hair streaming behind her. The sight of her hadn't made Li Weijin's heart stir. But looking now at the girl in front of him wielding a broom, face flushed red from exertion, flashing a bright smile as she chatted, teeth gleaming white - Li Weijin felt his heartbeat accelerate rapidly as if trampled by galloping hooves - thump thump, thump thump - like a burst pipe going drip drip drip.
After class, Xiao Qi and Wei Cheng, Honey and Yun Book, the four roommates in the dormitory went their separate ways.
Xiao Qi and Wei Cheng went to the new district racetrack, while Honey and Yun Book went back to the old district.
Honey wanted to go to the student union to sign in, looking like an enthusiastic student union member.
After getting along for more than a week, I realized that the most introverted of the roommates was actually the rich second generation Gu Yun Book. She loved to stay in the dormitory whenever she could instead of going out. She really liked reading novels. When reading novels, her emotions were very rich. She would often cry along with the plot of the book. She would also often grin by herself uncontrollably.
After school, in addition to Xiao Qi and Wei Cheng, some students also went to the new district. The experimental building was close to the new district, and most new students were very free and had no goals, so there were many people wandering around.
The two boys in front of Xiao Qi's desk also went to the new district, and they ran into each other on the road.
Maybe because Xiao Qi didn't look like a very good conversation partner, her military training performance was outstanding, and she was also very serious in class, giving people the feeling that she was very good at studying, but she was not the bookworm type either. There was always an inaccessible feeling about her. Xiao Qi actually felt that it was the aftereffect of the unapproachable buff. Anyway, as long as she kept a serious face, she could avoid a lot of unnecessary socializing. Otherwise, it would be tiring to make small talk.
Now the two boys in front of Xiao Qi were chatting with Wei Cheng all the way. Wei Cheng was honest and would not reject people. When others asked her questions, she would always purse her lips and smile obediently to answer.
However, she did not mention the matter of going to the racetrack to work, probably because the matter was not finalized yet, and she had called Xiao Qi to go with her, so it was not just her own business. So when asked what she was going to do in the new district, she just smiled silly.
Xiao Qi discovered that Wei Cheng's silly smile was also very powerful. Recalling that sometimes when she didn't want to talk about something in the dormitory, she would just smile foolishly. It seemed that everyone didn't notice it and just felt that Wei Cheng was very honest and couldn't help taking care of her more.
A few people parted ways on the student street. Xiao Qi and Wei Cheng arrived at the racetrack. Wei Cheng had been here before and took Xiao Qi through the iron gate.
There was an uncle guard at the iron gate. Seeing the two young girls, his attitude was quite good. He took them to the horse stable.
The horse stable turned out to be a very long rectangular building. From a distance, Xiao Qi thought it was an employee dormitory or something. Only after walking in did she discover a different world inside.
"The boss originally said that the jockeys had to clean the stables themselves. Those young bosses were very excited the first two days, and cleaned up once or twice, but then they stopped coming," said Old Man Yu. "I usually clean up a bit, but there were a few more horses this semester, which was not easy to handle. Today, just follow me and do it first. The work is not hard, just tedious, and not very clean. You are students, right? My surname is Yu. Just call me Old Yu."
Of course, Xiao Qi and Wei Cheng would not call the other party like that. In the village, the elderly, regardless of whether they were relatives or not, should be called uncle according to their age.
The stable was empty and very new now, built very professionally. Old Man Yu gave each of the two girls a raincoat-like jacket and told them to put it on.
While chattering, he said, "It's the boss's rules."
Wei Cheng wore a blue plastic jacket and Xiao Qi took a yellow plastic jacket, with matching colored plastic rain boots.
Then there were tools, carts, forks, shovels, brooms.
Xiao Qi had seen her parents clean pig pens at home, but it was not so complicated. Cleaning the pigsty in the countryside was just shoveling away the pig manure and garbage, then sweeping it clean, washing it clean with water, drying it, and then driving the pigs back in.
The pigpen did not need to be cleaned regularly either, just swept once every one or two months.
When introducing new piglets, it had to be cleaned carefully once, for fear that the new piglets would get sick. Not only was it cleaned up, but new dried straw was also laid out for the pigs to sleep on.
There were no pigs raised in Wei Cheng's family, but there were various kinds of mushrooms grown in the greenhouse, which was also a lot of work. There were three children in her family, so things were not very delicate. She helped out with more work.
In fact, Xiao Qi did not do much housework at home. She was the only child, so her parents spoiled her more.
"Today I'll just teach you how to wash the stables first. As for the horses, it's best to clean them earlier when the sun is not too harsh, otherwise I'm afraid the horses will get sick. The horses here are very valuable, supposedly worth tens of thousands each, so they can't be allowed to get sick," said Old Man Yu.
Xiao Qi and Wei Cheng followed Old Man Yu into the stable. The padding in the stable was not straw, but looked a little like bran, only coarser, not sure what kind of wood chips it was.
Old Man Yu lifted the large water basin by himself, while at the same time directing Xiao Qi and Wei Cheng to take out the material basin and the horses' toys.
Yes, there were small toys for horses in the stable.
The two girls were wearing gloves and had come to work, so they were not disgusted by the dirt. It should be cleaned often. It was not that smelly, much better than the pigpen at home.
However, Old Man Yu had originally thought that the taller girl looked like she could work, while the other thinner and delicate girl might not be able to do much work. Unexpectedly, when they started working, the taller girl was a little clumsy, while the smaller girl was actually stronger and more agile. That material basin was so heavy that he thought the two girls would carry it out together, but the petite girl carried it out by herself.
Although the taller girl worked very steadily and did not slack off, following his instructions steadily even if a little inflexible.
Wei Cheng pushed the cart to the stable door, Old Man Yu used a fork to shovel the horse manure in the stable, and then shoveled up the padding that was already dirty and wet. The three worked together and soon filled half a cart.
Old Man Yu asked Wei Cheng to continue cleaning up, while taking Xiao Qi to push the car out to the designated area to dump the dirty stuff, otherwise it would stink and breed bacteria. In summer, it would easily attract a lot of flies.
So the dung pile was quite far away, almost spanning the entire racetrack.
Xiao Qi followed along to push the car. It reminded her of when she was at the hospital where Auntie worked. At that time, whenever she saw Auntie pushing the trash out, she would feel very ashamed and unwilling to be with Auntie. Everyone else looked fresh and clean while Auntie was covered in sweat and smelly trash. It felt like her status was lowered for some reason.
Young girls care about face.
Now pushing the cart filled with smelly horse dung and waste, Xiao Qi could actually look around at the scenery and people not far away, probably because there was no one she knew so she felt more comfortable.
However, it seemed that was not the case either. Near the horse trail, Xiao Qi did see someone familiar, or rather, someone who wouldn't recognize Xiao Qi but Xiao Qi recognized her, because Xiao Qi saw the iconic long hair, the girl with waist-length hair must be the English major freshman this year, Wu Xinyue.
She was actually leading a horse, walking side by side with a boy. The sunlight shone on her smooth long hair. Occasionally seeing her smile faintly felt very beautiful from afar.
She wore a white dress and a hat, with black hair. The boy next to her couldn't see clearly, probably wearing riding gear, quite tight, with riding boots.
Xiao Qi wore a yellow raincoat for work, rain boots, looking like a little yellow man.
When cleaning, they also had to clean the top and bottom corners of the stable to prevent spiderwebs and the like. So I also had to wear a hat. It was a little stuffy in the stable, and it was actually sweating all over after working. After coming out, Xiao Qi took off her hat, revealing her little hair buns, and continued to follow Old Man Yu to push the cart.
After walking a good distance, they finally dumped the trash in the cart.
It was much easier on the way back.
By the time Xiao Qi came back, there was no sight of Wu Xinyue near the runway, but there really were people riding horses, galloping past them, as if a gust of wind blew from beside them, making Xiao Qi's plastic clothes rustle.
When Xiao Qi returned, she saw that Wei Cheng was checking and cleaning the corners and bottom of the stable as required by Old Man Yu, sweeping away spiderwebs and trash from the corners that had quite a bit, indicating that Old Man Yu didn't clean so carefully himself on ordinary days.
Then the three poured the clean padding back into the stable together, covering three-quarters of the area, before moving the water basin, material basin, toys and the like back in again.
"There are also tricks to laying the padding. You can lay it a little higher near the wall and lower in the middle. This stable has a rubber mat laid inside, so just this much padding is fine without needing too much. If it was a cement floor, it would need to be laid thicker," said Old Man Yu.
Old Man Yu was quite satisfied with the two young girls who had come to work. He could see they were hardworking people. Some other students had come to try out before, but they had shrieked at the idea of mucking out horse stalls. Really! These university students were too delicate. These two girls were good though.
They worked carefully, unafraid of dirtiness or laziness, and they were strong too.
Old Man Yu told them to keep sweeping while he went to find the person in charge.
When Old Man Yu came back, he saw that the two girls were working briskly and had already cleaned out each of the horse stalls, not trying to cut corners while he was away. Nodding in satisfaction, Old Man Yu was quite pleased.
The few teenage boys following behind Old Man Yu had surprise on their faces though.
Old Man Yu had said there were some students coming to interview who were doing a good job. Usually cleaning the horse stalls was the stablehands' own work, but they often didn't want to do it after a try or two, which was why they wanted to hire someone. The boys hadn't expected it to be two girls. This work required some strength, which they themselves even found tiring. They'd assumed it would be male students. But now Old Man Yu was saying the girls were doing a good job and told the boys to inspect their work.
Upon entering, they saw two girls, one in blue and one in yellow, working up a sweat on their foreheads as they labored. Both had smiles of joy on their faces and were chatting happily.
The boy walking in front, Xiao Shengzhou, was the person in charge of the stables. He also had another identity - he was the student council president. But he rarely made appearances, with the vice presidents handling student council affairs while he devoted himself to horse riding. On a whim, he and his friends had set up this stable, and he had casually established an equestrian club too. The club membership was pathetically low, really just himself and his friends playing around.
Xiao Shengzhou had a broad forehead and angular features, looking imposing and dignified unlike the pretty boys currently in fashion.
Behind him, a few of the other boys were giggling. Among them was Li Weijin, who had come along to play because his friend had called him out. The other day, he had tried unsuccessfully to add that girl on WeChat. But he hadn't been too persistent about it. Since the add request failed, he had basically forgotten about it and moved on.
He was good-looking and came from a wealthy family, constantly fawned over since childhood. It was rare for him to take the initiative to pursue someone, especially given the group of fools surrounding him. Just look at Li Taiping - today he had brought that college girl to the stables again. Clearly this was a stable, yet she had worn a skirt totally unsuitable for horse riding. No doubt they had gone off to the lake to take pretentiously elegant photos to plaster all over WeChat Moments.
But Li Weijin hadn't expected to see a girl from his class here - Xiao Qi.
She was prancing around the stable in her skirt, hair streaming behind her. The sight of her hadn't made Li Weijin's heart stir. But looking now at the girl in front of him wielding a broom, face flushed red from exertion, flashing a bright smile as she chatted, teeth gleaming white - Li Weijin felt his heartbeat accelerate rapidly as if trampled by galloping hooves - thump thump, thump thump - like a burst pipe going drip drip drip.
