Chapter 48: A Strong Man Belongs in the Kitchen

The third aunt hurried out of the kitchen.

Seeing that Xie Buchend had coaxed her son to sleep, her face lit up with pleasant surprise. She carefully took the baby, felt the diaper, and found it had been changed. Lin Shu, in both of her lifetimes, was witnessing such a look of gratitude for the very first time.

So even the smallest things could make a person feel so completely relieved.

Being a mother was truly not easy.

Holding her son in one arm, the third aunt patted Lin Shu on the shoulder, whispered to Xie Buchend to stay for dinner, and then carried the little cousin back into the room on tiptoe.

Lin Shu finally dared to speak in a normal voice.

"... That was terrifying. Raising a kid is so hard."

Xie Buchend said, "You were raised the exact same way."

Lin Shu snorted.

If her older brother had gotten married and had kids sooner, she would have changed diapers too. It was all Lin Zhou's fault for being so useless, what did that have to do with her?

Even though a guy who knew how to change diapers was indeed quite cool...

She would never say it out loud, though.

"Did you make a special trip to find me? You rode a bike here?" Lin Shu asked with a mischievous glint in her eye.

That was dozens of kilometers away.

Even an electric scooter would need to be charged twice.

Did he really pedal all the way here with just his two legs?

"Didn't I tell you I was around here too?"

"Huh?"

Xie Buchend said his maternal grandmother lived not far away. He didn't even need to ask for the address; he just rode his bike around the village and asked someone to know where Lin Shu was.

Lin Shu remarked, "Does that mean we might even be related?"

"Not really."

Xie Buchend lowered his head and bit his chapped lips.

Only then did Lin Shu realize she should pour him a glass of water.

The two of them sat for a while without talking much.

The little cousin's father, Lin Shu's third uncle, came back, bringing a whole sheep with him and calling for the family to come out and help.

He shouted for a long time, but no one came.

Because the adults were playing mahjong and cooking, while the children—and those with the mental age of children—had all been led away by Lin Zhou to buy firecrackers.

Lin Shu changed into her snow boots and went out to greet him.

As soon as the third uncle saw her, he immediately straightened up, threw his hands out, and looked as if he had lost all his strength. "What are you doing here? We're moving a sheep, go call your eldest cousin and the others."

Lin Shu said, "They all went to buy firecrackers."

The third uncle was stunned. "They knew I was going to buy a sheep, and not a single person is left at home? Are they even human?"

Lin Shu answered, "No."

The third uncle pointed. "Isn't there still one left? That... what's his name?"

Xie Buchend looked as if he existed in a completely different dimension from his surroundings. He didn't look like the kind of person you could order around, giving off the vibe of a delinquent who might throw a couple of punches if you spoke too many words to him.

The third uncle withdrew his finger and resignedly dragged the load himself.

The sheep had already been slaughtered and was wrapped in plastic.

Lin Shu hopped onto the cart and helped pull.

Oh my goodness.

Why was it so heavy?

Was eating this sheep strictly necessary?

Xie Buchend walked over, grabbed the mountain sheep's horns through the plastic wrapping, yanked the sheep toward him with a sharp crack, swung it onto his shoulder with another crack, and then carried it straight into the kitchen.

Leaving Lin Shu and the third uncle standing in the wind like stone statues of waiting wives.

The women in the kitchen burst into exclamations, instantly livening up as their voices chattered like little birds.

Grandpa was also inside braising pork. He could be heard praising Xie Buchend in a robust voice, and then asking whose son he was.

Although he didn't recognize him, Grandpa was thoroughly convinced that such a sturdy and handsome young man must be of his own bloodline.

That was hilarious.

The third uncle wore a frosty expression as he asked Lin Shu, "Who the hell is this kid?"

"You get mad when nobody helps you, and you get mad when someone does help you. Why are you always so eager to get angry? Are you a balloon, Third Uncle?"

After talking back to her third uncle, Lin Shu followed him into the kitchen.

Good grief, Xie Buchend had already been assigned a pile of chores.

The sister-in-law and the third aunt were complaining that their husbands only knew how to play and didn't do a lick of work, while Grandpa was complaining that his son and son-in-law had no consideration for the old man, leaving him to carry pig trotters to be braised on his own old bones.

Lin Shu announced, "He's my classmate! You guys drafted the wrong person!"

Good heavens, absolutely no one paid any attention to Lin Shu.

Xie Buchend spun around like a top, moving pots one moment and carrying meat the next. Lin Shu had no choice but to follow along, serving dishes and peeling garlic, while fiercely cursing Lin Zhou and the others in her heart.

Taking advantage of the crowd, Lin Zhou hadn't even used his crutches; he had simply been carried out on the shoulders of two older cousins, and heaven knew when he would be back.

By three o'clock in the afternoon, they could finally take a break.

Xie Buchend sat in the dining room and ate a huge basin of noodles topped with densely packed braised pork (cooked by Grandpa, who claimed that young men needed to eat by the basinful).

Stuffed and dazed, the boy gently stroked his noticeably protruding belly with a hazy look in his eyes.

The sight was so breathtaking—resembling an immaculate conception—that Lin Shu didn't dare to look.

"... You're eating dinner at my house?"

"No, I'm heading back to Tongshi today."

Xie Buchend reached out to grab his helmet.

Lin Shu said, "Didn't you come to your grandmother's house for the New Year? You're going back already? You're going to ride fifty kilometers back?!"

"It's a two-hour trip."

*Cheng-ge*, I'm begging you, you have to take the village roads where there are dump trucks, it's dangerous!"

"I'll be careful."

That was all he said.

Damn him.

Lin Shu was worried sick.

As it happened, the third uncle was also making a trip to Tongshi to pick something up, so he told Xie Buchend to put his bicycle in the back of the Ford and gave him a ride back.

Xie Buchend wasn't too keen on the idea.

Lin Shu grabbed his arm in a death grip and hissed, "You'd better do as I say, kid, or else—"

Xie Buchend glanced at her and gave in.

He was inexplicably well-behaved today.

Well-behaved to a somewhat suspicious degree.

Lin Shu saw them off, then came back and sat alone in the courtyard cupping her cheeks, a chilly feeling settling in her chest.

Her older brother came back with the others, hauling a load of firecrackers.

All night long, the courtyard was illuminated. The noises weren't deafeningly loud, mostly consisting of fireworks.

Her parents were video chatting with her grandparents, chattering away for a long time. Lin Shu didn't want to go over; if she appeared on camera, she didn't know how many people she would have to greet one by one, and by then she'd be stuck chattering all night too.

The third uncle came back.

Lin Shu pulled him aside and asked, "Third Uncle, did you get him there safely?"

"Got him there, of course. You can trust my efficiency."

Lin Shu sighed.

The third uncle asked her what was wrong.

Lin Shu said worriedly, "That classmate of mine comes from a single-parent family, and his mother has passed away. Sometimes the way he does things feels like he's rushing toward his death. He clearly told me his grandmother is also around here and he just dropped by to see me on the way, but when I asked him to stay for dinner, he refused and insisted on going back... I don't know if he was lying to me."

The third uncle pondered for a moment before saying, "I don't think he was lying."

"How so?"

"I smelled the scent of incense and candles on him. Afraid he had just come from the cemetery."

Not far from the village was a cemetery—a relatively nice one where many people from Tongshi chose to rest in peace.

The third uncle figured Xie Buchend must have gone to pay respects to his family members.

It was a custom in Tongshi to visit graves during the New Year.

The kid looked much more mature than his peers.

Wait.

Xie Buchend had said his grandmother was here...

Did that brat mean he didn't even have a grandmother left?

Lin Shu froze.

The image of Xie Buchend standing in the courtyard earlier that day, looking up at her, flashed back into her mind.

Her heart seized.

Why was he always like this, never saying a word about anything?

...

The Spring Festival Gala was as boring as ever, serving as nothing more than background noise. She had collected a hefty sum of lucky money, though her lips had taken a beating from all the talking.

She was exhausted.

The words she had spoken over the past few days almost equaled her total output for an entire year.

Lin Shu had eaten and drank her way through the Spring Festival, gaining a layer of flesh around her waist.

Lin Zhou, on the other hand, hadn't rounded out at all, probably because his injured leg was consuming vast amounts of nutrients.

Lin Zhou took her out to buy clothes, and Lin Shu took a fancy to a spring-season leather jacket, but her brother mocked her aesthetic for looking like she was thirty...

Fine...

Fine!

Zhou Ya had originally promised to hang out with her during the New Year, but because air tickets from Tongshi to Beijing were cheaper on New Year's Eve, she was abruptly summoned away by her mother and enrolled in another elite cram school over there.

Terrifying.

Lin Shu didn't even know what to say.

She used to think Zhou Ya's parents were just overly concerned, but now she felt like they were bordering on pathological...