Chapter 42: Free Pie
The faces of Old Mrs. Bai and Liu changed drastically. They rushed forward and circled Bai Dazhu and Bai Erzhu. The two had returned empty-handed; there wasn’t a speck of flour to be seen.
"What happened? How did you end up like this? Where’s the white flour?" Old Mrs. Bai asked urgently.
Bai Dazhu muttered something under his breath, then nudged Bai Erzhu’s arm beside him. "You tell her."
Bai Erzhu gave a dry laugh. "You’re the older brother. You should be the one to say it."
Old Mrs. Bai finally came to her senses. Seeing the state her two sons were in, she realized that not only had they failed to win any white flour, but they had also wasted her one hundred wen and even come back covered in injuries.
She glanced at the curious, mocking gazes from outside the courtyard. Her face immediately turned cold as she said in a low voice, "Get inside. We’ll talk in the house."
Old Mrs. Bai led the way into the house, and Bai Dazhu and Bai Erzhu followed hesitantly.
Once inside, Old Mrs. Bai said to Liu, "Close the door."
When Old Mrs. Bai disciplined Zhao Lan and Bai Zhi, she never shied away from an audience. In fact, she would deliberately scold them in front of outsiders to show off her status and authority in the Bai family.
But she rarely disciplined her sons in front of others. To her, her sons were the face of the Bai family.
"Speak. What exactly happened?" Old Mrs. Bai sat down at the table, glaring coldly at Bai Dazhu and Bai Erzhu.
Bai Erzhu quickly pointed at Bai Dazhu and exclaimed, "It’s all Big Brother’s fault! If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have lost."
Hearing this, Bai Dazhu’s eyebrows shot up. "My fault?" he said angrily. "I haven’t even blamed you yet! How many did you even eat? I ate two more than you did. What right do you have to blame me?"
The two brothers started bickering, arguing back and forth, which made Old Mrs. Bai’s expression grow even darker.
"Both of you, shut your mouths!" Old Mrs. Bai demanded. "Didn’t you promise you’d bring back white flour? Where is it?"
Bai Erzhu shrank back, not daring to meet his mother’s eyes. He rasped, "I... we wanted to bring the white flour back, but... but we lost. So naturally, we didn’t get any flour. So... so—"
Old Mrs. Bai felt a headache coming on. She fiercely suppressed a surge of anger and asked again, "Since you didn’t win the flour, what about the one hundred wen I gave you? Did you get that back?"
The two brothers glanced at each other, then quickly hung their heads again, neither willing to speak.
Old Mrs. Bai was furious. She roared, "I’m talking to you! Are you mute? Did you get the one hundred wen back or not?"
Seeing that his younger brother still wouldn’t say a word, Bai Dazhu couldn’t hold it in any longer. He finally spoke up. "Don’t even mention it. Erzhu and I got into a fight with the owner over that one hundred wen. We didn’t get the money, and we ended up getting beaten up and sent back with all these injuries."
Their injuries weren’t actually that serious—just some scrapes and bruises that looked bad but would heal in a few days. They had torn their own clothes to make themselves look more pitiful. They hoped that if their mother saw they had taken a beating and gotten hurt, she wouldn’t hold the matter of the white flour and the one hundred wen against them...
Old Mrs. Bai was furious. She grabbed the nearest object to beat the two good-for-nothings, but when she saw their injuries, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. After all, they were her own sons, not like those two wretches, Zhao Lan and Bai Zhi.
"Forget it, forget it. I never should have believed you yesterday. How could there be such a good deal in the world? Giving away white flour for free? The owner would go bankrupt!" As the saying goes, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.