After the commotion that morning, when it was time for dinner, they were given an extra bowl of corn gruel compared to usual.
Normally, the two children would have been very happy, but tonight neither of them had much of an appetite.
The others were practically hoping they wouldn’t eat. Su Yuanyuan saw all of their ugly expressions but downed the bowl of corn gruel in one go.
She had a good laugh to herself. Even if the two children didn’t eat it, she certainly wasn’t going to let the rest of the Lu family benefit from it.
Li Hua glared viciously at her, but Su Yuanyuan pretended not to notice.
After dinner, they cleaned up and returned to their room. Su Yuanyuan closed the door, then crouched down in front of the two children, only to discover that both of them had tears in their eyes.
They had been arguing with Gouwa outside earlier, so Su Yuanyuan had no idea what had happened.
Seeing the tears in their eyes startled her, and she hurriedly asked, “What happened? Did someone secretly hit you?”
Su Yuanyuan was filled with regret.
She had still been too careless. She should have kept a closer eye on the children.
Li Hua was petty and narrow-minded. Who knew if she had been holding a grudge and secretly hit the two children?
No wonder. During dinner, the two children had barely eaten anything and didn’t seem to have much of an appetite.
Since they could have a private meal in the space at night, she hadn’t asked about it at the dinner table.
The two children hesitated for a long time, pursed their little lips, then shook their heads together.
Huh?
Su Yuanyuan was puzzled. What was wrong with these two little ones today?
She checked them over but found no bruises or injuries.
Forget it. She would ask them slowly after they had eaten their fill.
Su Yuanyuan took them into the space and made them each a bowl of plain noodles with an egg.
The two children had originally had no appetite, but when they saw the steaming, fragrant noodles Su Yuanyuan brought out, they immediately swallowed.
Even during New Year, they had never eaten noodles this delicious. The only time they had seen something like this was when they had gone to the market with their mother before. They had seen noodles like these at a restaurant, and they had looked especially delicious.
“Mom, you can even make noodles. You’re amazing.” Lu Siyuan was already swallowing hard.
Especially that egg. It smelled so good.
Lu Mingzhu’s eyes were shining too. Most of the time, their family ate fern-root noodles or buckwheat noodles. They had never tasted noodles like these and had no idea what they were like.
“You two didn’t eat much tonight. Finish your noodles slowly first, then tell Mom what happened today, okay?”
Su Yuanyuan’s voice was very gentle.
The children clearly had their reasons for not wanting to speak.
At times like this, she shouldn’t force them to talk. She should let them relax and wait until they were ready to open up themselves.
The two children sat at the dining table and slowly finished their bowls of noodles.
Their mother had always told them that they had to chew their food thoroughly and eat slowly, otherwise they might get burned or choke. So even though they were very hungry, the siblings rarely wolfed down their food.
After they finished, Su Yuanyuan took the bowls and chopsticks and put them into the dishwasher. She washed an apple, cut it in half, and brought the two halves to them in the living room.
“Come on, tell me. What exactly happened? No matter what happened, Mom will stand with you. If you did something wrong, Mom will also help you solve it. Then we’ll admit our mistake and do better, okay?”
Su Yuanyuan crouched down in front of the two children, keeping herself at eye level with them.
Lu Mingzhu and Lu Siyuan exchanged glances. Both children pouted, their eyes turning red again.
“Mom, Dad doesn’t want us anymore, right?” Lu Mingzhu asked softly.
“I asked around. Those soldiers all take their families with them when they follow the army. They don’t just leave for several years like this. Dad is so bad. How could he let Mom work so hard? He just decided he didn’t want us anymore.”
At that moment, Lu Siyuan had already decided that his father was a bad father.
Otherwise, why hadn’t he cared about them all these years?
The child didn’t understand that the eighty yuan Lu Zheng’an sent home every month was his way of showing that he still cared about his family.
Of course, there was another, even more important problem.
Su Yuanyuan was speechless.
For a moment, she didn’t know how to explain to the two children that their father wasn’t refusing to take care of them.
He simply didn’t know they existed!
The eighty yuan he sent every month was sent under the assumption that he only had his wife at home.
If all eighty yuan had gone to Su Yuanyuan, she could actually have lived quite comfortably.
Even if the Lu family had split it fifty-fifty with her, she still could have managed to make a decent life.
The problem was that the Lu family simply didn’t behave like decent human beings.
The three of them fell silent for a while.
Suddenly, Lu Siyuan raised his head and looked seriously at Su Yuanyuan and Lu Mingzhu.
“I’ve decided. We have to follow the army! I want to take both of you with me to follow Dad!”
He spoke with absolute certainty, an unprecedented determination shining in his eyes.
Su Yuanyuan’s eyes widened in shock.
She stared blankly at her son.
Follow the army?
No, wait.
She had been thinking about taking the two children and running away, but she had never considered following the army.
Yet Lu Mingzhu’s eyes lit up when she heard this. She nodded along with her brother.
“Big Brother is right. We should follow the army. How can Dad abandon us? I want to find Dad and ask him clearly why he doesn’t want us!”
The two children had a surprisingly convincing argument.
Lu Siyuan smiled at his sister. She was thinking exactly the same way he was.
“Other military families follow their husbands to the army, so they can see each other often. We should follow Dad too.”
The two children looked at Su Yuanyuan with shining eyes and asked in unison,
“Mom, what do you think?”
The anticipation in their eyes was almost tangible.
Su Yuanyuan raised a hand to shield herself from their dazzling gazes.
How was she supposed to refuse them?
Thinking about the husband she had never even met, Su Yuanyuan felt a little awkward, but with the two children’s expectant faces, she couldn’t bring herself to say no.
“Okay. But there are many things we need to consider and arrange before we can follow the army. You two eat your apples first.”
Su Yuanyuan sat down on the sofa opposite the children and stared up at the ceiling, feeling a little overwhelmed.
In the era she came from, going from one place to another was practically just a matter of taking a step.
But in the setting of this novel, it wasn’t that simple.
They would have to pack up all their belongings, walk a long distance before they could even find an ox cart, and then take the ox cart to the train station—which itself was a long journey.
Even if she were traveling alone, Su Yuanyuan could already imagine the hardship of trudging through clouds of yellow dust and traveling long distances.
With two children in tow, the difficulty wouldn’t merely double.
They were going all the way to Jingbei, not some neighboring county.
It was a very long journey.
The two little ones finished their apples, threw the cores into the trash can, and obediently went to wash their hands themselves.
They had already learned to wash their own hands without Su Yuanyuan helping them.
“Big Brother, how do we follow the army?” Lu Mingzhu frowned. “Actually, I don’t really understand what following the army means.”
She gave an embarrassed little giggle.
She simply thought what her cousin had said was awful and hateful. She wanted to find their father and ask him whether he really didn’t want them.
If he didn’t want them, then she would leave this family with her brother and mother. She absolutely didn’t want to stay here and continue being mistreated.
If their father still wanted them, then they would go with him.
In any case, they just didn’t want to stay here anymore.
“Um… Following the army means going with Dad, right? It should be. It means staying by his side. In that case, we have to find Dad first. But where is Dad?”
Lu Mingzhu shook her head.
She didn’t know where her father was.
Whenever she had asked her mother before, Mom would always become very sad, so she had stopped asking. She was afraid that she might say something wrong and make Mom unhappy.
Mom was so silly.
Even when people scolded or hit her, she never talked back or fought back. She had only gotten a little better these past few days.
Before, whenever it rained, her eldest aunt would tell Mom to go cut pigweed, and Mom would actually go. She didn’t even know how to say she would wait until the rain stopped.
Sigh.
Lu Mingzhu sighed.
She was determined to learn lots of skills and earn lots and lots of money when she grew up. Then she would buy an ox cart and take Mom wherever they went, so no one could bully her anymore.
Lu Mingzhu had only ever seen ox carts in the village, so in her eyes, being able to buy an ox cart was already incredibly impressive.
Lu Siyuan washed his sister’s face and said mysteriously, “Don’t worry. One time, I secretly overheard Grandma and Grandpa talking.”
The little boy pulled his sister back into the living room. Only after they sat down on the sofa did he continue.
“Before, when Grandma and Grandpa had our eldest uncle write a letter to Dad, they said that Dad’s army was in Jingbei. The village teacher said that you could go to lots of places by train. So if we take a train, we can definitely get to Jingbei!”
In a child’s world, traveling far away simply meant walking a very, very long distance. They hadn’t considered any of the other difficulties involved.
“Once we get to Jingbei, we can ask the uncles and aunties there. Then we’ll find out where Dad is.”