The next day, the sky was overcast, and the oppressive heat had eased considerably.
Because Pei Xiu had suffered a sudden attack of his heart condition, Su Ying did not go up the mountain. But she could not sit idle, so she decided to carry a few baskets of soil back from the slope behind the alley.
She had not originally planned to bring Pei Xiu along, but he insisted on going with her, leaving Su Ying no choice but to indulge him.
Each of them carried a basket of soil. On the way back, they also spent seven wen on a small watermelon.
Su Ying held the watermelon in one hand and Pei Xiu by the sleeve with the other, reminding him from time to time about potholes ahead. The journey passed without incident.
When they returned to the courtyard, she first put the watermelon into the well to chill. By the time she turned around, Pei Xiu had already unloaded his bamboo basket.
The clothes over his shoulder had been soaked through with two streaks of blood.
Su Ying stared for a moment. “If it was so heavy, why didn’t you say anything?”
Pei Xiu looked bewildered and shook his head. “I didn’t feel that it was heavy.”
“You’re injured.”
He seemed only then to notice something was wrong. Touching the dampness on his shoulder, Pei Xiu’s expression showed a hint of embarrassment. “Su Ying, I really didn’t feel that it was heavy. As for my shoulder… I’m just not used to carrying a bamboo basket. Once I get used to it, it won’t happen again.”
Su Ying said no more. She fetched a white porcelain bottle and asked him, “Can you apply the medicine yourself?”
“Mm.”
After handing him the bottle, Su Ying used broken stones from the corner of the courtyard to mark out a small plot of land. She poured the soil into it and leveled it with a hoe.
By the time Pei Xiu emerged after changing his clothes, Su Ying had already picked up the bamboo basket and was heading out.
“Where are you going?”
“To carry more soil.”
“…Isn’t it enough?”
“Mm. I still need to make a few more trips.”
Pei Xiu hurriedly groped for the basket. “Wait for me. I’ll go with you.”
Su Ying turned around. From across the small courtyard, she looked at the blood slowly seeping from his shoulder and shook her head. “I’ll go by myself.”
With that, she left.
She had not gone far when the sound of his white cane striking the ground came from behind her. Unlike his usual calm and unhurried pace, his cane taps and footsteps were both disordered.
Su Ying stopped. The footsteps behind her stopped as well.
Pei Xiu’s eyes were lowered, and several veins bulged on the hand gripping his white cane.
Then he heard footsteps approaching him. His back straightened, and even his breathing unconsciously seized.
Su Ying silently looked at him for a moment before taking the white cane from his hand and taking hold of his sleeve. Her voice was as soft as a sigh.
“Stubborn one.”
Although he had been scolded, Pei Xiu showed no sign of annoyance. The tension in his expression visibly eased.
After two more trips, the skin on his shoulder had been rubbed raw and bloody.
Su Ying applied medicine to it with a wooden expression. Pei Xiu acted as though he felt no pain at all and asked with great interest, “Su Ying, what are you planning to plant?”
“Radishes, cucumbers, Chinese cabbage, and beans.”
“Mm…” Pei Xiu nodded as though he half understood. “If we plant them now, will they survive the winter?”
“They’ll be ready to harvest around the First Frost solar term. We can pickle the cucumbers and radishes into pickled vegetables and save them for winter. The Chinese cabbage can be harvested in a little over a month. Like the beans, it won’t keep well, so anything we can’t finish can be sold at the market,” Su Ying explained.
Pei Xiu listened quietly, then praised her warmly. “Su Ying, how do you know so much?”
“…” Su Ying’s expression remained unchanged. “If you grabbed any three-year-old child in the county and asked them, they wouldn’t know any less than I do.”
Pei Xiu smiled brightly. “It seems my knowledge is shallow. I’ll study hard from now on.”
Su Ying glanced at him, feeling as helpless as someone punching a fist into cotton, and fell silent.
“Su Ying.”
“…”
“Su Ying.”
“…”
“Su—”
“…Say it!”
“We’re not making lunch today. We’ll just eat watermelon, all right?”
“Mm.”
Pei Xiu tilted his head back slightly, his eyes half closed as he murmured softly, “Su Ying, you’re really kind.”
After a brief silence, the door to the house gave a faint creak. Pei Xiu lifted his eyelids and let out a low chuckle.
The watermelon was not large. Su Ying cut it into eight pieces, then she and Pei Xiu each sat on a low stool and ate beside the little vegetable garden they had enclosed.
“Spit the seeds toward the corner by the wall. Maybe we’ll have watermelons to eat next year,” Su Ying said.
Pei Xiu genuinely gathered saliva and spat as far away as he could. When he was done, he asked, “Really?”
“I’m guessing.”
“…”
After they finished the watermelon, Su Ying used the hoe to crush the rinds and bury them in the soil as fertilizer.
When she had finished and turned around, she saw Pei Xiu with his head lowered, using a twig to write on the surface of the soil.
Su Ying leaned over to look. “Su… Is that my name?”
Pei Xiu nodded.
“Is the character ‘Ying’ really that complicated?” Su Ying muttered.
Pei Xiu pressed his lips together with a smile, then wrote four characters beside her name. Su Ying recognized only the character “zi.”
“This is my name.” He pointed to the two equally complicated characters.
Su Ying stared at them for a long while before asking, “Then what are the two characters beside them? Zi…”
“Ziwang.”
Pei Xiu turned his head toward her. His unseeing eyes curved into a pleasing arc. “It’s my courtesy name.”
Pei Ziwang.
This was the first time Su Ying had heard his courtesy name. It was… quite pleasant to say.
“Su Ying,” Pei Xiu called. “Would you like to learn to read? I can teach you.”
Su Ying fell silent.
Naturally, she wanted to. But even just brushes, ink, paper, and inkstones would be a considerable expense, to say nothing of buying books.
Pei Xiu seemed to guess what she was thinking. He dipped his index finger into the wooden bucket beside them and wrote the four characters “Heaven and Earth, Dark and Yellow” on the stone slab.
“Let’s start with the Thousand Character Classic. You don’t need to buy a book—I remember it all,” he said.
“The Thousand Character Classic…” Su Ying’s eyes widened slightly. “You remember all one thousand characters?”
Pei Xiu curved his lips upward. “Mm. I began learning at an early age. I had mastered it by the time I was three.”
“…”
Three years old.
When Su Ying had been three, she had only barely learned to call out “Father” and “Mother.” Her father had been overjoyed, hoisted her onto his shoulders, and paraded her around the entire village, telling everyone that his Seventh Daughter was not mute—she had merely been a late talker, as befitted someone destined for greatness.
Su Ying watched the water stains on the ground slowly fade. She licked the lingering sweetness from the corner of her lips and said softly, “All right.”
When Ming Zhou entered through the gate, he happened to see this scene—
A simple but clean courtyard. A young man and woman in the prime of their youth crouched side by side, their heads close together as they appeared to be examining something on the ground.
And Su Ying, who had never once shown him the slightest bit of warmth, now had a relaxed, gentle expression. From time to time, she even traced words with her index finger in the young man’s palm.
The blind youth’s gaze was lowered, and a soft smile rested on his lips.
The two of them seemed to form a world of their own, creating a barrier that no outsider could cross.
“Sister Ying,” Ming Caiyun called sweetly.
Ming Zhou came back to himself. When he looked at Su Ying, who had risen to her feet, her expression had already returned to its usual detached coolness, even carrying undisguised wariness.
He suddenly felt his throat tighten. His normally quick tongue could not produce even a single word.
Su Ying looked coldly at the two people standing at the courtyard gate. Behind them, Ming Jiu still hid timidly, his face as bruised and swollen as ever.
The group remained in a tense standoff for a moment. Ming Caiyun quietly poked Ming Zhou in the back with her elbow and lowered her voice.
“Brother! The fairy sister you’ve been thinking about day and night is standing right in front of you. Why are you pretending to be a wooden goose at a time like this?”