Although it was the 1990s, she was still a rich young heiress. In the past, she had always eaten delicacies from the mountains and seas, with a personal nutritionist specially assigned to her.
Here, however, the food of the mountains was almost impossible for her to swallow.
Her father said, We are all children of the land. Since we’ve come here, we must adapt to local customs. So he hadn’t brought a single one of her nutritionists along. Her mother, feeling sorry for her, had packed some supplements, but even those were stopped by her father.
He said that there were so many children here who spent their entire lives suffering, and that his own daughter should also experience a different kind of life.
Even so, her father still doted on her. At every meal, he would put all the meat from his own bowl into hers, eating only a couple of bites of plain steamed buns himself.
What she found hardest to accept was that the food cooked on the makeshift stoves always carried a choking smell of firewood and an inescapable earthy stench.
The staple foods were steamed buns and noodles.
The dishes were always the same few things: chunks of potatoes, leafy-vegetable soup, and occasionally a bit of pickled vegetables.
Even the drinking water had a strong earthy taste that was hard to get rid of, no matter how long it was boiled.
“Miss, please eat a bit more,” her bodyguard, Brother Long, said quietly as he held out a bowl of noodles. “If you get too thin from hunger, I won’t know how to explain it to Madam when we get back.”
“Then go die if you don’t know!” Ling Yue snapped, flinging her chopsticks aside. Staring at the bare mountain ridge in the distance, the grievance and irritation in her heart reached their peak. “Stop annoying me!”
But not long after, she slowly turned her head back, glancing at Brother Long from the corner of her eye. “You eat it. You’ve helped out a lot these past few days and you’re exhausted. All my food is yours.”
“Thank you, Miss.” Brother Long scratched his head. He understood the young lady well—though her temper was bad, her heart was kind.
He squatted down beside her and began to eat the bowl of noodles in big mouthfuls.
At that moment, Ling Yue once again caught sight of that familiar figure in the shadows of the shelter out of the corner of her eye.
The boy was leaning against a crooked wooden post. His slightly long hair partially concealed his eyes, and he revealed only one of them, his gaze still fixed straight on her.
It had been like this the entire time. No matter where she went, he would quietly follow her, hiding at just the right distance, showing only his eyes.
Ling Yue let out a helpless sigh.
She looked straight over again, and sure enough, that guy immediately shrank back.
She didn’t know how to get rid of him. The irritation she had just managed to suppress surged up again. Brother Long also looked over, swallowed the noodles in his mouth, and sighed.
“Oh, that kid. I heard that during the last landslide, both his parents didn’t make it out… He’s the only one left in his family now. Supposedly, his ears aren’t good either—he can’t hear.”
The scolding that Ling Yue was about to blurt out instantly caught in her throat.
So he was actually that pitiful?
Brother Long continued in a low voice, “If you really dislike him, Miss, I’ll drive him away for you right now.”
“Wait.”
She spoke up.
Brother Long, who had just stood up, paused and looked at her in confusion.
“I’ll go ask him myself. It’s fine.”
Ling Yue took a deep breath and walked toward the boy leaning in the shadows. He shrank back even more, until not even a corner of his clothes was visible.
She was thinking—he kept staring at her like this, could it be that he had something important to say?
Maybe if she helped him, he would stop following her.