Two bottles of Jagermeister set, plus some duck necks, peanuts, and other marinated snacks, totaled only four hundred bucks.
Of course, Jagermeister in the nightclub was much pricier, but still within a range that people could afford.
Zhou Wang remembered the time he stayed in the presidential suite at Wanda, trying various drinks in every way possible, whatever was costly, he tried. Nowadays, he’d tasted quite a few premium liquors, and his mindset was different.
He no longer deliberately pursued price, just whatever suited him would do.
"Ugh~ it’s awful, tastes just like herbal medicine!"
At this moment, Shen Yutong, who had just uncapped a bottle, probably couldn’t resist her curiosity, took a sneaky sip, and her whole face scrunched up instantly.
"Hahaha, drinking it straight is a bit tough for most people, but with Red Bull, it’s different."
Zhou Wang grabbed a simple plastic cup, added ice cubes, and then, in a 4:1 ratio, poured Red Bull and Jagermeister into it, then handed it to Shen Yutong, "Try it."
The normal mixing ratio is 2:1, but Zhou Wang considered that Shen Yutong was a girl and made it milder.
"Wow, it really tastes good now!"
Shen Yutong exclaimed in surprise after taking another sip.
"As long as you can drink it."
Zhou Wang smiled, pouring himself a cup as well.
He hadn’t planned to drink today, but it felt different drinking with Shen Yutong... it was a casual sip, not enough to make him uncomfortable, so Zhou Wang didn’t mind.
"Now we got the drinks, how about a story?"
After clinking glasses with Shen Yutong, Zhou Wang smiled and said.
Shen Yutong, her eyes seemingly shimmering with little stars, glanced at Zhou Wang before hugging her knees and subtly inching closer to him.
"My mom... she married two men in total."
In the night breeze, Shen Yutong slowly began to speak about her upbringing, "The first was Yu Rou’s dad, an honest farmer. He was said to treat my mom well, but oddly enough, my mom only bore a daughter..."
"Yu Rou told me she couldn’t understand why only having daughters was wrong, and she definitely couldn’t understand why her dad, who always smiled at everyone, would hit my mom..."
"My mom said it was divine retribution, thus Yu Rou’s dad fell from the scaffolding at the construction site... he died."
"Yu Rou was only six then, she said she didn’t quite grasp sadness, only cried when others whispered for her to cry along."
Tilting her head, Shen Yutong seemed to tentatively lean against Zhou Wang’s shoulder.
Seeing no reaction from Zhou Wang, she felt relieved, took a sip of her drink, and continued, "A few months later, my mom married again, to my dad, a small contractor in the county, then had me and my brother Xiaoming."
"Then when I was six, my dad died too... he drove drunk into a river, with two other migrant workers in the car. Not only did my dad die, but we also lost all our family money, even had to sell the house."
Hearing this, Zhou Wang glanced at Shen Yutong, momentarily unsure of what to say.
"This time, it was others calling my mom a jinx, even forbidding us from attending my dad’s funeral on his family’s side."
With a hint of self-deprecation, Shen Yutong said,
"Zhou Wang, you know, that’s when I realized what ’not understanding sadness’ meant. I knew my dad was gone, but I couldn’t cry until one day, when my mom took my sister and me to collect bottles, and when I couldn’t walk anymore, my mom hit me, and that’s when I cried out loud, kept shouting ’I want dad, I want dad’..."
"Your mom... had it pretty tough."
That was all Zhou Wang could simply comment.
"Maybe."
Yet, a trace of mockery appeared at Shen Yutong’s lips, "If not for accidentally discovering she secretly saved four hundred thousand bucks, I might have thought her really noble..."
"?"
Zhou Wang was a bit bewildered.
"Why was your mom secretly saving money?"
"Because she planned to use that money for my younger brother’s house purchase and marriage."
Unknowingly, Shen Yutong had completely snuggled into Zhou Wang’s arms, "Of course, the fact that my mom raised us, neither Yu Rou nor I really had any stand to blame her, but... a large part of that money came from Yu Rou’s bridal dowry!"
At this point, Shen Yutong suddenly seemed a bit angry.
"Yu Rou didn’t like my brother-in-law Liu Chao at all, maybe hadn’t even met him once, yet for the so-called dowry of 288,000, my mom forced her to marry Liu Chao!"
"My sister was only twenty when she married, she could have gone to college, she got accepted, but my mom merely said she couldn’t afford the tuition, and Yu Rou really gave it up..."
"But my mom could’ve afforded it!"
"I was only in middle school then. When my sister got married, I didn’t understand why she wasn’t smiling, but cried instead..."
Hearing this, Zhou Wang also felt something.
Shen Yutong’s sister, Shen Yurou, undoubtedly possessed one of the traits most favored by Huaxia men, "submissiveness."
Yet meeting the wrong person could turn such a personality into a lifelong tragedy.
This wrong person didn’t solely refer to a partner, sometimes it included parents too...
"Then I guess I understand why your mom was so polite to your brother-in-law... he probably shouldered a lot of your family expenses, right?"
"Yeah, the house we lived in at Gui Province was his, and our tuition fees and living expenses for school, mine and my brother’s, he covered, including my dance class..."