The Stepmother’s Counterattack: Raising a Child in a Bygone Era
Chapter 588 - 587: New Member

Chapter 588: Chapter 587: New Member

In her spare time from work, Shen Mingzhu would drive south of the city to look at houses.

She planned to buy either a semi-detached villa or a detached house, as she had grown accustomed to living in a standalone house. She was not pleased with the idea of moving back into an apartment.

But finding a new house that met her desires was not an easy task.

She had looked at quite a few, but either she did not like the layout, or there were not enough rooms.

There was one she liked, a three-story detached villa. It lacked a yard but had a private garage and a total of six rooms. Shen Mingzhu also liked the interior decor. But the price made her shake her head in despair.

If she hadn’t invested the family’s money in Lihua’s project, she could have managed to buy it with help from others.

But now, she did not even have one-tenth of the amount needed for the down payment.

"If you really like that house, we can talk to the landlord tomorrow, pay a deposit to secure it, and then figure out how to raise the money,"

At night, seeing Shen Mingzhu tossing and turning over the house, Pei Yang embraced her and suggested in a hushed tone, "My uncle might still have around a hundred thousand, I could probably borrow twenty thousand from my sister, and get some from Brother Zhao. If that’s still not enough, I’ll take out a loan from the bank."

Hearing him say this, Shen Mingzhu’s affection for the house seemed to diminish.

The price was one thing.

Rather than spending over two hundred thousand to change her living environment, she would prefer to invest that money in the production line.

"Let’s keep looking."

"Yeah."

The lights went out, and the room fell silent.

In the darkness, Pei Yang stared at the fair and beautiful face of the woman beside him, his brows shrouded in melancholy and frustration.

Not being able to provide the life his woman wanted was a sense of defeat and impotence for a man.

...

As the Spring Festival approached, and with too much on her plate at work, Shen Mingzhu simply gave up on house-hunting for the time being.

It’s not that she wouldn’t buy one, but there was no rush. After all, buying a house was no small matter; it had to be the right fit.

Pei Yang also found time to fortify the home by reinforcing and raising the perimeter walls, adding barbed wire, and changing the gates to anti-theft door locks.

A couple of days later, they brought home a German Shepherd.

The German Shepherd was known for its intelligence, loyalty, and high alertness, making it suitable for guarding and protecting a house.

However, the one Pei Yang brought home was still a puppy, just two months old, fluffy all over with a mixture of brown and yellow fur giving him a simple and naive appearance.

After a family discussion, they named the German Shepherd "Fugui," which meant prosperity.

Their joy lasted less than half a day before trouble ensued.

To prevent Fugui from relieving himself all over the place and stinking up the house, they temporarily kept him in a cage.

The two-story cage had an old padded jacket on the top level for Fugui to sleep on, and the bottom level contained a dog bowl and a litter box for eating and toileting.

It turned out that dogs did not think the same way humans did.

The first night at home, Fugui barked all night long, keeping the whole family awake.

The next morning, they found that every corner of the cage was covered in Fugui’s feces and urine.

The stench was unbearable.

After cleaning the inside and outside of the cage, drying and laying out fresh, dry old clothes, and replacing the dog bowl and litter box...

Turning around, Fugui squatted on the newly laid old clothes and took a dump.

Shen Mingzhu couldn’t be bothered anymore and left for work with her bag.

When she came home from work and approached the dog cage, Fugui was curled up in the corner asleep, with an old towel now underneath him.

It was fine as long as he was quiet and not noisy.

But come midnight, Fugui started barking non-stop, just like the night before.

Shen Mingzhu tried soothing him, feeding and giving him drinks, she even sang a lullaby.

It was to no avail.

It wasn’t until the wee hours of the night, probably because Fugui was exhausted, that the house finally quieted down.

The third night, in the middle of the night.

"Woof, woof-woof—"

Fed up after being disturbed for three consecutive nights, Shen Mingzhu could not stand it anymore and kicked the man lightly with her foot.

"Send the dog away tomorrow!"

Pei Yang turned on the light, his face also filled with helplessness and fatigue, "I’ll move the cage to the kitchen and close the door, that should make it less noisy."

Shen Mingzhu was furious but too lazy to argue, responding to the man’s suggestion by turning over in bed.

After moving the dog to the kitchen, its barking was somewhat reduced, but still audible.

Shen Mingzhu stuffed cotton in her ears and covered her head with the blanket before she could finally manage to sleep fitfully.

At breakfast, Shen Mingzhu reminded Pei Yang with a sullen face to send the dog away.

"Whether you give it to someone or return it to the store, the dog must be gotten rid of today."

Whoever wanted to keep that damned dog could, but she certainly didn’t want to anymore.

"Then I’ll ask my brother-in-law to see if he wants it..."

"Mom, why do we have to send Fugui away?"

Before Pei Yang could finish, Pei Tang interrupted him with her puzzled voice.

Shen Mingzhu explained to her daughter with patience, "It’s too loud, it keeps Mom and Dad from sleeping well at night, and if we don’t sleep well, we can’t work well during the day."

"Mom, can we not send Fugui away?"

Shen Mingzhu was about to reason with her when she heard her daughter say, "Fugui left its mom to come to our house, it’s just not accustomed yet, it’s noisy at night because it misses its mom."

"As long as we take good care of it, love it, it will surely come to like our home and won’t miss its mom anymore."

Shen Mingzhu was taken aback.

She had grown accustomed to the weighing of pros and cons and the sorting of benefits in the adult world, but her daughter’s words reminded her that there were still pure, beautiful emotions in this world, untainted by any self-interest.

And that was a child’s love.

...

"So, are we still sending Fugui away?"

After breakfast, when Pei Yang quietly asked her while she was getting dressed in the bedroom, she said,

"Forget it, let’s keep it."

Her daughter’s words at the breakfast table had touched her too deeply not to be moved, and she was willing to indulge her daughter’s kindness and tenderness.

Perhaps she, too, should learn to be more tolerant and patient with the vulnerable.

Night fell again.

Shen Mingzhu had prepared herself for another sleepless night due to the noise, but Fugui was surprisingly quiet this evening, curling up in its little nest and sleeping soundly like a caterpillar.

In the middle of the night, Shen Mingzhu was awakened by a rustling noise.

When she opened her eyes, she saw a beam of flashlight passing through the crack of the door.

The recent burglary had startled Shen Mingzhu, and she was about to wake Pei Yang when she realized that he was already awake.

"Shh."

Pei Yang leaned close to her ear and whispered, "Don’t move, I’ll go check it out."

"Be careful."

"Hmm."

In the darkness, Shen Mingzhu saw him tiptoe out of bed and casually picked up the crystal ornament from her dressing table.

Shen Mingzhu’s heart clenched.

What if the intruder had a knife, or there were several of them...

Considering the worst-case scenario, Shen Mingzhu hastily got out of bed to pull Pei Yang back.

Let the thief steal if he must, as long as they avoided harm.

As she got up, Shen Mingzhu inadvertently knocked over a water glass on the bedside table.

Clang!

Shen Mingzhu was so startled she nearly cried out, but in the next second, the room light came on.

Pei Yang held the doorknob while turning back to instruct her, "Stay here, don’t come out."

"Don’t go out yet..."

Shen Mingzhu hadn’t finished speaking when the voice of her daughter came from outside the door—