MLH | Chapter 5

Fang Zichen only felt that when he woke up, the house had changed completely. It felt as if the snail girl had come wandering through his home and repaid a favor.

Zhao ge’er was standing at the doorway. He saw Fang Zichen carrying Guai Zai under his arm as if they were playing, walking toward the kitchen, and he could not help becoming nervous.

Whenever he got nervous, he liked to tug at his clothes. Guai Zai was the same.

Fang Zichen pretended not to see. When he saw that the water vat was full, he raised a brow. “You even hauled water? The riverbank isn’t far from here! So hardworking.”

Zhao ge’er let out a breath and followed him inside, pushing the porridge on the stove toward him.

The moment Fang Zichen saw the blackish stuff in the bowl, his throat hurt on instinct. “Only one bowl?”

At this moment, the pot was only warming a little water.

“You and…” Fang Zichen pointed at Guai Zai, who was still tucked under his arm. “What is his name?”

Zhao ge’er said, “Guai Zai.”

Did that count as a name?

Fang Zichen asked, “Just one bowl of porridge, and you guys aren’t eating?”

Zhao ge’er pointed at the wild greens he had washed clean off to the side and answered, “Guai Zai and I can eat this.”

Fang Zichen followed the direction of his finger and immediately showed an expression of surprise mixed with complexity, looking at Zhao ge’er.

He even felt a little doubtful.

“This stuff can be eaten?”

“It can,” Zhao ge’er said under Fang Zichen’s amazed gaze, unconsciously dodging. “…After blanching it in hot water, it can be eaten.”

He had always eaten like this before. If it could not be eaten, he would have died long ago.

“There isn’t anything else at home?” Fang Zichen asked helplessly.

“There’s a bag of coarse rice, not much, it has to be saved.” Zhao ge’er said carefully. He had moved the things in the kitchen without permission, and his heart was inevitably uneasy. When he was at the Ma family, they guarded against him like he was a thief, and when cooking, someone had to stand by and watch.

He also was not allowed to touch the things at home on his own, as if he were some especially filthy thing.

When Zhao ge’er saw that Fang Zichen was not unhappy because he had touched the kitchen things, only that when he mentioned coarse rice, Fang Zichen’s brows tightened, as if he looked down on that thing that every household used to fill their bellies.

“Cook it together and eat it,” Fang Zichen said. “Saving it isn’t meant to be saved like this. It’s not some great thing anyway. Tomorrow I’ll go out and see whether I can find some way to make money.”

The village was poor. If he wanted to earn some silver, he could only run to the town.

Zhao ge’er nodded, looking very obedient, yielding in everything.

He added some firewood to the stove, then took two stones and started striking them together. Fang Zichen found it novel from the side, put Guai Zai down, and leaned over to crouch with Zhao ge’er. Last night, he had been so hungry he had gone hard a whole night because he could not make fire. He pointed at the flint in Zhao ge’er’s hand and asked what it was, and when the fire came up, he asked with shining eyes how Zhao ge’er had done it.

Seeing his expression of disbelief and astonishment, Zhao ge’er answered whatever he asked.

“I’ll try,” Fang Zichen said.

Zhao ge’er handed over the flint and placed it in Fang Zichen’s clean, unscarred, flawless palm, long, fair, and with a healthy pink tint.

He lowered his head to look at his own hands, and a trace of inferiority rose in his heart for no reason.

When people saw something good, even knowing they could not compare, they would still unconsciously use it for comparison.

His hands really could not be called good-looking. He had worked all year round, and the backs of his hands were covered with scars, deep and shallow, crossing over one another. His fingers were rough, his palms covered in thick calluses, and the tips of his fingers and the spaces under his nails were not clean either. That was the color left behind from being soaked in grass juice for years, something that could not be washed off no matter how he washed.

There was only one bowl at home, and the three of them took turns eating.

Fang Zichen was the last one. As he ate, he was about to throw up. Zhao ge’er saw that his face turned ugly beyond measure while eating, and asked, “Is it not cooked well?”

Fang Zichen frowned and said with a face full of suffering, “This porridge is bitter, and it also has some indescribable strange taste.”

He knew that wild greens cooked without oil or salt would definitely not taste too good, but he really had not expected it to be this bad.

Before, the school had organized a countryside study trip, and he had personally seen a local villager feed pigs. It was actually very simple. He just cut sweet potato vines, mixed in some corn flour, and poured it into the trough. That old sow ate with real relish.

Pigs were not entirely useless. At least they could really endure hardship, Fang Zichen thought.

Zhao ge’er thought about it, got up and went out. After a while, he came back with a washed tree branch in his hand. Using the branch, he picked up a piece of lard the size of a peanut from the oil jar and stirred it into the bowl. “This should taste better.”

The fat melted in the slightly warm porridge and gave off a meaty fragrance.

The porridge did indeed become a little better.

But not much better.

Fang Zichen sighed.

If not for this matter of transmigrating, he would never have experienced this kind of life in his entire existence.

After eating, there was not much work left at home. Zhao ge’er rarely had any idle time. Once he stopped, he always felt uneasy. In the end, when he saw that Fang Zichen and Guai Zai had both left the kitchen, he stood at the kitchen doorway like a door god, at a loss for what to do.

He seemed especially fond of doorways.

Guai Zai crouched under the eaves counting ants. He was a very obedient child and never ran around. When Zhao ge’er went to work in the fields, he took him along. He was so small that he could not do much, so he would go pick wild greens by the edge of the field ridges. At this moment, Zhao ge’er was not busy, and he did not know what to do, nor did he dare move close to Fang Zichen, so he could only play with ants within Zhao ge’er’s line of sight.

Fang Zichen walked up to the steps and sat down with a thump. He beckoned to Zhao ge’er. Zhao ge’er looked at him blankly, a little dazed. Seeing that, Fang Zichen laughed without a care. “Come sit over here! Standing there, aren’t you tired?”

Zhao ge’er went over and sat on the other side.

Fang Zichen pointed at Guai Zai and leaned in a little closer to ask Zhao ge’er, “Is this one your son or a ge’er?”

Zhao ge’er looked at him with some surprise when he heard that. After a while, he said, “A son.”

Fang Zichen was a little confused. “Then why didn’t the Ma family keep the child, and still let you bring him… and remarry.”

Zhao ge’er’s answer was shocking. “He’s not the Ma family’s grandson.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, he saw Fang Zichen stare blankly for a while before looking at him with an indescribable expression.

Fang Zichen really had not reacted in time.

What did it mean, not the Ma family’s grandson.

If he sorted it out a little, the logic should be like this. He was the Ma family’s son husband, but the child he gave birth to was not the Ma family’s grandson, then that meant…

Fang Zichen looked at Zhao ge’er in shock and could not say anything for a long time. He felt like he had married someone extraordinary.

Zhao ge’er looked so obedient, he had not expected…

He touched his own head and asked, “Zhao ge’er, do you think my black hair looks good?”

Hair was all more or less the same, and aside from length and coarseness, there really was not much to evaluate.

Fang Zichen said tactfully, “I just think black suits me better. I don’t want this thing to one day turn green in the future. Do you understand what I mean?”

There was not a single dirty word in those words, but they also were not subtle enough. Zhao ge’er did not know many characters, but his brain was fine.

Who in the village did not talk behind his back about him stealing a man? The Ma family had originally wanted to keep him working for them, so they forced their way into saying the child was the Ma family’s, but that could not withstand scrutiny.

During the period when he was pregnant, Ma Wen had been running goods outside and simply had not been at home. And his own family knew their own business. He and Ma Wen had never shared a room. Whether the child was the Ma family’s seed, the Ma family knew.

The reason they had swallowed this breath was only because they were afraid that after the matter of him “stealing a man” got out, he would be beaten to death, and there would be no one to do the work at home. They had exploited him for more than ten years and still had not squeezed him dry, so how could they possibly let him die for nothing? Thinking like that, they naturally helped him keep it hidden.

There had been a period when he had always felt that he and Guai Zai would probably die in the Ma family’s place.

If not for this year when he really could not go on, and it just happened to be the falling-into-water incident, the Ma family would not have so easily driven their father and son out.

“I didn’t steal a man,” Zhao ge’er’s voice did not sound calm. There was a kind of forced composure after suppressing himself, an appearance of steadiness he had put on. He lowered his eyelashes and did not look at anyone.

“The Ma family cursed me, hit me, said I stole a man, said I had no shame. Some people in the village also discussed me behind my back, saying I did not keep妇道 and was not steady, saying Guai Zai was a wild seed. I understand all that, but… I really didn’t steal a man.”

The grievances that had been forcibly buried for many years finally had an outlet. Even if Zhao ge’er was pretending to be strong and steady, his voice still carried a faint sob.

No one had ever asked him what the matter of his pregnancy was really about. Maybe it was because they thought he was lowly, maybe because they thought it had nothing to do with them and was not worth asking.

So without asking why, he was sentenced guilty and identified as having stolen a man.

Pointed at for four years, silent and without a word, seemingly already having accepted this unfair result. But facing Fang Zichen, this person he had only known for half a day, for reasons he could not say, Zhao ge’er just did not want him to misunderstand and think that he really was such a worthless person.

Fang Zichen was silent for a moment and did not ask what had actually happened. First, they were not close enough for that. Second, he did not know whether Zhao ge’er had been forced. Asking about it would be no different from tearing at someone’s wound.

“Mm! I believe you,” he said, casually putting an arm around Zhao ge’er’s shoulder. “It’s fine, brother. It’s all in the past.”

Zhao ge’er’s body could not help stiffening, then quickly relaxed. He asked, “You believe me?”

“Of course!” Fang Zichen said in a rather improper posture. “You’re so small, your胆子 must be small too. Did you borrow a dog’s胆子 to go steal a man?”

Zhao ge’er: “……”

Zhao ge’er tried to explain, “I’m not small, I’m already nineteen this year.”

“Really?” Fang Zichen stared. “Feels like you’re only sixteen or seventeen. You look even smaller than me.”

Zhao ge’er pointed at his son, who was still crouching on the ground looking at ants, and said, “Guai Zai is already three years old.”

Fang Zichen choked.

Nineteen years old, son three years old, that meant he had gotten pregnant at sixteen.

Fang Zichen could not help letting his thoughts run wild. Sixteen-year-old Zhao ge’er, small and short, with a big belly, crouching by the stove…

He did not dare imagine it.

He shook his head and threw all the thoughts away, resting his chin in his hand as he stared at Zhao ge’er and changed the subject. “What’s the difference between ge’er and hanzi? I don’t see any difference between you and me or Guai Zai!”

Zhao ge’er said, “Ge’ers can have children.”

“Mm!” Fang Zichen nodded. “And then?”

Zhao ge’er looked at him. “That’s all.”

Fang Zichen: “…”

“Ge’ers and hanzi, don’t you people even tell them apart?”

“When they’re born, on the arm here,” Zhao ge’er pointed to a spot on his arm. “There will be a little red dot here.”

Fang Zichen: “……”

You win.