The sky was only just beginning to lighten, a thin layer of mist still hanging over the mountains. Much of the village was still hard to make out, and everything inside the house was quiet.
Half-asleep, Bai Chao reached his hand out, but it met no resistance and stretched far into empty space. Before even opening his eyes, he was already coming to his senses—he knew the big guy had gone out to work again, and since he hadn't even been woken up this time, the man must have gotten up even earlier than usual.
Without any delay, Bai Chao rubbed his eyes and sat up. Only when getting out of bed did he notice his legs felt a bit uncomfortable—looks like his knees would be sore for another couple of days.
Stepping out of the room, even though the sky was only dimly bright, the family's courtyard was already covered with a thick layer of rice drying in the sun. Freshly harvested rice had to be dried as quickly as possible; if it sat in piles and developed mold spots, the rice's appearance would suffer when it came time to sell.
A whole family's year of hard work—there was no room for carelessness.
Bai Chao slowly crouched down, took a deep sniff at the courtyard full of grain, his nostrils filled with the scent of rice. Satisfied, he rose and headed to the back courtyard.
Sure enough, Luo's Grandmother was already busy at work in the kitchen. Bai Chao obediently greeted her, grabbed a face towel, and headed to the back of the kitchen.
When the Luo family house had been built years ago, its location had been chosen with care—everything was convenient. For washing clothes, there was a large ditch not far away with a strong flow that made cleaning easy. For daily drinking and cooking water, there was no need to draw from a well or carry water from afar: just behind the kitchen, a short distance away, there was an underground spring. Though not very large, it was more than enough for a family's daily needs.
Because the spring was so small, the Luo family had dug a two-foot-square reservoir at the outlet, making it easy to draw water day to day.
Bai Chao hung the towel around his neck, scooped water directly onto his face, rubbed it a few times casually, then wiped the droplets off clean with the towel—and that counted as washing his face.
"Ah, I'm awake." His groggy mind was thoroughly awakened by the spring water, and with a clear head, even his eyesight seemed sharper.
On the pumpkin trellis not far away, quite a few little yellow flowers were blooming. At this time of year, even when pumpkins flowered, they rarely came to anything—the little pumpkins would only grow to the size of a walnut before stopping or rotting away outright. But Bai Chao didn't know any of this.
Seeing those tiny pumpkins, only thumb-sized, clinging to the little yellow flowers, he thought of yesterday's stir-fried green beans with shredded pumpkin. He slapped both hands against his cheeks, then pursed his lips and flicked his tongue as a substitute for whistling—it made a sound, at least—and ran back with a face full of smiles.
"Grandma, there are more little pumpkins! We'll have more to eat, more to eat!"
Grandma was stirring pig feed behind the stove. To fatten the pigs, feeding them only pig grass wouldn't do—after boiling the grass, she had to add wheat bran, rice bran, and the like and stir it all together, turning the thin, watery feed thick and sticky. Only then would the pigs have a good appetite.
After October, when the sweet potatoes came in, they'd be fed sweet potatoes too. That was how the pigs would grow plump and fetch a good price.
The pig feed was cooking in a large pot, and the air all around was warm as she stirred. With one hand never stopping its stirring, Grandma spread open her other palm and pushed it outward, signaling the person approaching her not to come too close.
Blocked by Grandma's outstretched hand, Bai Chao simply went to crouch by the stove and tend the fire instead, his mouth never idle as he kept telling her about all the little pumpkins he had just seen.
"You silly thing, all you know is eating all day long. It's almost September—that fruit won't come to anything, so there'll be none to eat." Granny was over sixty and had grown up in the village since childhood, so there wasn't a single big or small matter in the village she didn't know about.
Not to mention the crops and fruit trees in the fields—she even knew the weather and sky like the back of her hand. Just by looking at the strength and direction of the wind, the color and shape of the clouds, she could tell what the weather would be like for the next few days.
Bai Chao naturally had no idea Granny had such abilities. He wanted to argue a bit, to say that since the flowers had bloomed and the fruit had set, they only needed to wait patiently for the fruit to grow—as for seasons and timing, he couldn't think that far ahead. But before the words left his mouth, Granny assigned him a task.
He was to go feed the chickens.
Chicken feed was much like pig feed, except the pig feed had to be cooked while the chicken feed didn't—just chop up some grass and greens fine and mix in a bit of rice bran.
The chicken coop at home was under the eaves of the outhouse. After Bai Chao poured the chicken feed from the wooden basin into the trough, he still bent over and studied it carefully for a long while. He wanted to see whether the family's chickens were plump, and how many hens there were.
Ideally there would be more hens. Roosters were no good—they couldn't lay eggs and couldn't be stewed into anything tasty. He'd often heard of stewing old hens but never heard of stewing old roosters.
Besides, roosters were villains. Crowing and squawking all day long—when you were still dreaming, they'd call your soul right back from the blessings of your dream, and you'd have no choice but to get up and work.
The chicken coop at home was quite large, taking up an entire stretch of wall. Bai Chao looked carefully for a long while and found the situation a bit troubling.
"Ah, there are rather a lot of roosters." At least seven or eight chickens in the coop had big red combs and glossy black tail feathers.
But no fear! Because there were also plenty of hens with short tail feathers and fat little bottoms!
Having finished looking at the chickens, his mood slightly affected, Bai Chao went on to the pigsty. One look at the big fat pigs and he cheered up again.
Counting on his fingers, he figured it was already the eighth month, and New Year wasn't far off—in another three or four months they could slaughter the New Year pig.
"You all eat well and grow nice and fat, you hear?" Perhaps because it was still early, all the pigs in the pigsty were still asleep, though they kept snorting and grunting, occasionally nudging the pig beside them with their snouts.
They had to sleep well too—that was how they'd grow fat. Roast pork, stir-fried pork, stewed pork—all delicious. He loved them all.
Bai Chao was clever, so he didn't say that last part out loud—he was afraid the pigs would hear it.
By the time Bai Chao came out of the pigsty, the sky was already fully bright. He had just reached the courtyard when he saw Great-grandmother and Yue-ge'er coming home with baskets on their backs. They had come looking for Bai Chao, to ask if he wanted to go with them into the mountains to pick soap pods.
"Not going. Once we get through these busy few days, I'll take him myself." Granny glanced at Bai Chao's shoes and refused flatly.
This little thing who tripped even on flat ground—who knew how many times he'd fall in the mountains? He barely had two ounces of flesh on him to begin with. If he fell and got hurt and became a little cripple, that would be a terrible loss.
Even though they were family, Granny didn't have the heart to say it was all because of the shoes, and Great-grandmother and the others didn't press—after all, it had just been an offhand question.
After Great-grandmother and the others left, Granny hauled the boy aside, preparing to comb his hair and take a look at the wound on his head while she was at it.
The wound on Bai Chao's head had been there for some time now. Grandmother mainly wanted to check whether it had left a scar, and whether the scarred area was bald. Some people in the village were mean-spirited—if they saw someone with a bald patch on their eyebrow or head, they would call them "scabby-head," and claim that scabby-head was contagious, stirring up the whole village to refuse to speak to or go near that person.
Seeing that the spot where the scab had fallen off wasn't bald but had fine hairs growing from it, Grandmother was much relieved, and only then did she wrap his hair up with a cloth strip.
After combing Bai Chao's hair, the two of them had new work to do. The front yard had no more space for drying grain, so today the backyard would have to be used as well. But the backyard ground wasn't paved with stone bricks, so they first had to lay out drying mats.
The Luo family's backyard was large, so the old woman and the child laid out three drying mats, then little by little carried the grain over and poured it in. Though Grandmother was quite old, she was surprisingly strong—she could haul a whole sack of grain, either carrying or dragging it, straight onto the mats.
Bai Chao wasn't strong, so he used a winnowing basket as his tool, moving the grain one basketful at a time. At the very least, he could save Grandmother some effort.
The old woman and the child worked for half the day. When only the last drying mat remained, Luo Yang came back, carrying a sack of grain on his back. After setting the grain down, he took the carrying straps off his back and used them as a fan.
Time was tight today, so Luo Yang didn't dare delay. He beckoned to Bai Chao, and once the boy came over, he prepared to check his knees.
He had only learned that Bai Chao had fallen after they'd gone to bed last night, and this morning the boy had left before dawn. He didn't know how badly his legs were hurt.
The family wouldn't light lamps unless it was necessary—waste of money.
When they got married, the pair of red candles they bought had cost nearly twenty wen, and his grandfather had been heartbroken over it. He even complained that the custom of lighting red candles on the wedding night and not blowing them out was a bad one—why should perfectly good candles have to burn all the way down? Couldn't they just be put out once people went to rest? That way they could be used many more times.
Thinking of the red candles from their wedding night, Luo Yang couldn't help glancing at the small, thin brother standing before him.
The red candles that symbolized walking through a whole lifetime together had already burned out on their wedding night, yet his husband was nowhere in sight.
"Big guy, I'm good-looking."
"Ha, why bring that up all of a sudden?"
Luo Yang's thoughts were scattered by that one remark, and all he could do was laugh.
This little brother really had no idea what modesty was.
Bai Chao reached out a finger and poked his own cheek, saying matter-of-factly, "You keep looking at my face. I'm good-looking."
At Bai Chao's words, Luo Yang hurriedly glanced over at his grandmother. But Bai Chao wasn't finished, and continued, "You can look. I'm willing to let you look."
"Fine, fine, you're good-looking. Let's not talk about this anymore." Luo Yang was feeling a bit flustered at this point—he couldn't handle this person's blunt words.
He looked away and changed the subject, quickly rolling up the boy's trouser legs. Now Luo Yang's attention truly shifted.
Seeing the two large patches of bruising on the knee with his own eyes, Luo Yang immediately frowned. "How did you fall? This badly?" If this had been an old person, their kneecap might have shattered.
Luo's Grandmother was pushing grain around nearby and said nothing at first. Sneaking a glance and seeing her grandson looking at her with his brows tightly furrowed, she finally admitted honestly that he had fallen at the doorway.
"This is all your grandfather's fault. Even if he wouldn't buy new shoes, getting a pair of secondhand shoes that fit from the village wouldn't have cost more than a few wen. But no, he's stingy to death—spending a few wen is like taking his life."
Luo Yang had actually guessed it already—it must be because of the shoes. He had stumbled several times on the way to the fields last night, and though he'd been lucky enough not to fall, he hadn't thought much of it at the time. Now that he knew, naturally he couldn't let someone keep wearing shoes like that.
"Grandma, after breakfast, go into the village and buy him a pair of shoes that fit. It won't be a waste—he can wear the old shoes for work, and wear the new ones at home or when visiting relatives."
"All right, I'll go right after we eat."
Bai Chao, listening to the two of them from the side, had eyes shining bright. He looked at the big fat shoes on his feet, so delighted he was shaking his head with joy.
Once he had proper shoes to wear, he'd kick these ones flying off his feet.
These shoes were bad—they made him trip.
Bai Chao was happy, and Grandma was happy too. She had originally thought that since this husband had only been married into the family to satisfy the court, her grandson surely wouldn't take to him. But it didn't seem to be that way at all—her grandson actually seemed quite fond of his little husband. That was good, that was just so good.
For people who were going to spend a lifetime together, it would be such misery if they didn't suit each other.
Luo Yang was the only child in the Luo family, and though no one said it aloud, everyone in the household treasured him like the apple of their eye. Knowing that her grandson's marriage was turning out well, Luo's Grandmother was overjoyed. She didn't mind the trouble, nor was she afraid of being laughed at—people might say the family was so stingy they couldn't bear to buy a pair of new shoes for their new husband. She picked her moment and headed into the village.
She knew perfectly well which households in the village had children around Bai Chao's age. She would ask door to door, and she was bound to find a suitable pair of shoes to bring back.
These past few days had been busy, so she had to call at mealtimes; otherwise the head of the household wouldn't be home.
By the time Grandma returned, those working in the fields had also come back for breakfast.
The moment Grandpa sat down on the low stool by the wall, a shoe came flying right at him, followed by another. He immediately sprang up, and without even a moment to scold Bai Chao, who was busy putting on his new shoes, he went chasing after the shoes.
"You wretched child, why are you throwing shoes around? Those are good shoes, good shoes—they can still be worn!"