A Stepmother's Journey of Discovery in the 1980S

Su Tong never imagined that after complaining the night before about capitalists exploiting workers with 996 work schedules, she'd open her eyes and find herself in the 1980s, when jobs could still be assigned by the state. She was so shocked her eyes rolled back... Well, she could only roll them in exasperation. There was no going back to the 21st century. In the 1980s, Su Tong's parents had died early, and she'd been raised by her maternal uncle's family. They weren't especially close, but she'd grown up safe and sound. She just had to wait until she graduated from vocational school, when the state would give her a job where she could coast through life. Then her future would be set. Things changed when her cousin, who had married into the Lu family, died unexpectedly. Her aunt worried that Lu Yicheng, a wealthy man with a huge estate, would remarry and that his new wife would mistreat his biological grandson. She found Su Tong and said, "Tongtong, it's time to repay us for raising you." Su Tong didn't want to. There were plenty of ways to repay her aunt and uncle for raising her, and she didn't have to sacrifice herself. Her aunt sneered. "It's not up to you whether you have to or not." Su Tong didn't believe her. This was an era of free marriage. They couldn't force her to marry, could they? But then Lu Yicheng came to her and offered her a thousand yuan a month. She did the math. The average monthly salary at the time was about eighty yuan. One month of this was worth a year's salary. You don't get rich by taking the ordinary route. She was in. Being a stepmother might be hard, but even if she didn't know what to do, she could learn as she went. Content warning: The child is the male lead's biological son, and the male lead and the heroine's cousin were a real married couple. ---Upcoming story--- Please bookmark the upcoming story The Calm-as-a-Chrysanthemum Stepsister in the 1980s! "You're the older sister. You have to give way to your younger siblings." "A family always needs one child to make sacrifices. You're the older sister, so who else would sacrifice themselves?" Li Juan heard words like these almost every day. In this era, it seemed perfectly natural for an older sister to sacrifice herself for the family. But Li Juan, who had transmigrated here, wasn't going to keep putting up with this so-called "perfectly natural" attitude. Why should she have to make sacrifices? Besides, those younger siblings were the children of her stepfather, whom her mother had married after remarrying. They could struggle as much as they wanted. She'd always been calm and unassuming, never fighting for anything, so she wasn't going to fight to take on their hardships. Her motto in both lives was: Let other people suffer, not me. Theme: Be the heroine of your own story, not the supporting character in someone else's