Zhao Xingjian rejected his good intentions, so Chu Minghe sat up straight and turned his head to look at the wildflowers growing along the roadside.
Halfway through the journey, the old man looked back at the two of them and reminded them, “The road ahead is uneven, sit tight and protect the basket. Pomegranates don’t handle being crushed if they fall to the ground.”
The old man actually meant that it didn’t matter if the two of them couldn’t sit steadily, but if the pomegranates fell out, the money they were about to get would fly right away. These pomegranates, picked from the tree with such hard work, definitely couldn’t be wasted.
Chu Minghe leaned over to look at the road ahead. Perhaps due to the rain over the past two days, that section of the dirt road had been washed out into a bumpy, uneven mess. With one hand gripping the handrail of the flatbed cart and the other pulling on the basket, he still managed to divide his attention to care about Zhao Xingjian.
“Is it bumpy?”
Observing his movements, Zhao Xingjian also kept one hand on the handrail and the other holding the basket.
“I’m fine.”
Only after confirming that he was truly fine did Chu Minghe have the mental capacity to notice other things.
The straw hat on Zhao Xingjian’s head was simply perched there, and because he needed to watch the road and the pomegranates, he had tilted the brim upward. Chu Minghe thought to himself that if Zhao Xingjian were to change his clothes, he would really look quite down-to-earth.
“What are you looking at?” Zhao Xingjian asked.
Chu Minghe paused, snapped out of it, and replied, “You look really good wearing that hat.”
The original body hadn’t been blind, either. If he dared to brazenly crown himself a vase, he naturally had to find another vase whose status matched his own.
Unfortunately, he had picked the wrong person. If Zhao Xingjian were truly a pure, simple vase, the two of them probably could have sparked some romance a few years down the line, but Zhao Xingjian was not.
Seeing how sincere and earnest Chu Minghe looked and how earnest his gaze was Zhao Xingjian almost started letting his imagination run wild again. Fortunately, the two words “divorce” constantly echoed around his ears, allowing him to stay calm.
However, once he calmed down, he began to doubt and ponder.
“Do you usually treat everyone like this?”
He suddenly remembered the day Cheng Zhou had called him specifically to praise Chu Minghe after meeting him, as well as how naturally Chu Minghe had accepted the fruit Lin Dingshi fed him.
The more Zhao Xingjian thought about it, the weirder it felt. Just as the thoughts in his head were about to drift toward some rather unhealthy directions, Chu Minghe finally spoke up to interrupt him.
With an expression of utmost sincerity, he asked, “Like what?”
“…”
Chu Minghe himself couldn’t perceive what was wrong, so Zhao Xingjian turned his head away, unwilling to continue the topic, and simply said, “Nothing.”
Yet he clearly didn’t look like nothing was wrong. After a brief moment of contemplation, Chu Minghe leaned forward to look at his face. “Are you talking about me complimenting you?”
Zhao Xingjian didn’t speak, but it seemed he had guessed correctly. To make amends, Chu Minghe offered, “I’ve only ever complimented you, you know. I haven’t complimented anyone else.”
“Never complimented anyone else?” Zhao Xingjian turned his head involuntarily. He certainly had never heard Chu Minghe compliment anyone else, but he had heard others compliment Chu Minghe, watched Chu Minghe behave with intimate body language around other men, and even told him to learn from the other person.
…Even though that other person was a married man.
Still, Cheng Zhou wasn’t. Cheng Zhou was a straight man, yet he could praise him up to the heavens. Surely this situation wasn’t right either.
Watching him struggle to speak for half a day, Chu Minghe figured that the things capable of making a man angry probably only boiled down to a few categories. By taking a slight guess, he felt he could roughly grasp a clue.
The flatbed cart beneath them bumped heavily again. Gripping the basket tightly, Chu Minghe explained, “Complimenting people is a virtue…”
Here came the lectures again. Zhao Xingjian interrupted him directly, “I’ve never heard of it.”
“…”
He was genuinely angry. He was probably the first person to use the “compliment skill” to successfully anger someone into a huff.
And Zhao Xingjian was probably the first person to get angry from receiving a compliment.
Reasoning didn’t work, so he directly and colloquially translated his own guess regarding Zhao Xingjian’s train of thought. To prove his conscience was clear, his words carried resounding weight.
“I didn’t cheat.”
Fearing that wasn’t enough, he added: “You can rest assured.”
The moment those words left his mouth, even the previously creaking and groaning flatbed cart felt as though it had fallen silent. Up front, the old yellow ox let out a snort, and the old man turned around to look at them, asking with keen interest, “What’s going on here? Did you two have a fight?”
Zhao Xingjian hadn’t expected Chu Minghe to just blurt it out like that. Hearing that phrasing so abruptly, he found it a bit hard to digest.
He watched Chu Minghe calmly turn his head to tell the old man “it’s nothing,” before turning back to continue his standoff with him.
It took him a long while to process it. “When did I ever say you cheated?!”
“Our marriage didn’t have any agreement restricting each other’s freedom. You che—you having a boyfriend or not is none of my business to interfere with.”
Shouted at by Chu Minghe’s blunt remark, he had almost failed to understand what kind of nerve he had just struck within himself. It was only now that he finally sobered up.
With a look of scrutiny, Chu Minghe stared at him for a few seconds and repeated with extreme distrust, “Really?”
Chu Minghe believed that even in an arranged marriage, no man could bear the thought of his other half wearing a green hat.
Sure enough, Zhao Xingjian simply stared at him and fell silent.
Zhao Xingjian was even thinking: What if the moment this “really” leaves his mouth, Chu Minghe brings another man home tomorrow?
This train of thought was somewhat dangerous.
Still, Chu Minghe had no intention of backing him into a corner over such a sensitive matter. If he pushed the teasing too far and incurred Zhao Xingjian’s grudge, completely wiping out the favorability points he had managed to accumulate over the past few days, he might just end up locked away in a psychiatric hospital.
He took the initiative to explain, “Aside from you and Uncle Liu… Uncle Liu is our family driver whom you left behind for me when you set this up, I haven’t seen a third man.”
The voice with which Chu Minghe spoke was soft, and his attitude was equally soft. If one listened closely, it even carried a faint trace of accusation.
Zhao Xingjian’s rationality began flying wild again, causing him to instinctively offer an excuse: “I’ve been busy.”
The conversation between the two of them was truly bizarre: one was splitting hairs to prove he hadn’t seen any other men at home, while the other was making excuses and rather irresponsible, rotten excuses at that.
However, letting it stop at a point was best; once explained, they would let it go. There was no need to keep dwelling on it, otherwise, factoring in the true reality of their marriage, things would only feel even weirder.
Forget about having no right to interfere; simply touching upon this topic already radiated a sense of bizarreness. Thus, once both of them calmed down, an invisible wall erected itself between them.
Yet just as the two of them quieted down, the flatbed cart rolled over some unknown trench. With a heavy clank, it sank in, jarring their hearts and livers with a sharp ache, while the basket tilted straight forward. Even though both of them were on guard and protecting the basket, they couldn’t resist the forward momentum that sent them lunging ahead.
Sitting cross-legged, Chu Minghe couldn’t brake himself; his survival depended entirely on Zhao Xingjian pulling both the pomegranates and his person back.
Unfortunately, the momentum was too strong. Seeing Chu Minghe leaning further and further sideways and the basket tilting with him, the moment Zhao Xingjian let go of his grip, Chu Minghe’s eyes widened in a circle. Without time for second thoughts, he let go of the handrail he was holding to rescue the basket instead.
The instant his hand brushed against the rim of the basket, a hand swept across his hips precisely spanning just above his thighs and pulled him and the entire basket of pomegranates back with forceful leverage.
He even managed a fleeting, stray thought: Zhao Xingjian didn’t give up on me and the pomegranates.
As a result, the moment he was yanked back, they hit another ditch and pitched backward instead. This time, however, it was much safer: the basket slammed against his chest without dropping a single pomegranate, and his back collided against “stone” neither of them fell over.
Once they stabilized, Chu Minghe’s forcibly emptied brain registered no other sensations except for a spinning head, a piercing, running-through pain from his chest to his back, and the waist that had just been firmly gripped and reined in.
Hearing the massive commotion from the back, the old man hurriedly yelled to halt the ox, “What’s wrong back there? You guys okay?”
Chu Minghe was speechless and unable to speak, while Zhao Xingjian called out, “We’re fine.”
So the old man continued on his way.
However, when he turned his head back to check, Chu Minghe was leaning motionless against his legs. Zhao Xingjian frowned. “What’s wrong?”
After a long while, Chu Minghe finally replied, “…Help me steady the basket.”
It looked like he really had taken a vicious hit. That basket of pomegranates was large and weighed twenty or thirty catties; slamming against someone’s chest with that kind of momentum definitely hurt.
Reaching out, Zhao Xingjian pushed the basket farther away, but in taking care of one end, he neglected the other because of Zhao Xingjian’s movement, the “stone” behind Chu Minghe shifted backward. Startled, Chu Minghe leaned back, then leaned right back against it, experiencing a sense of relief akin to escaping the jaws of death except his soul had practically flown right out of his body.
He even had the mental capacity to think: This is the first time I’ve ever been tossed around and flipped like a pancake in such an undignified way.
Noticing this, Zhao Xingjian pressed against Chu Minghe’s back and shifted his own leg further forward.
“Feeling better?”
It would be a miracle if he felt better. Chu Minghe took a moment to steady himself, sat up, grabbed hold of the pomegranate basket once more, and put on a strong facade of composure. “I’m fine.”
Seeing that the person was alright, Zhao Xingjian didn’t retract his leg either. With one leg laid horizontally across Chu Minghe’s back and the other propped upright beside him, he explained just how dangerous it had just been.
“You almost dove headfirst into the basket just now.”
The basket was still tilting toward the front, making it look as though he had lunged forward while intentionally trying to stuff himself right into it.
No wonder he hadn’t grabbed his waist earlier and had instead locked onto his hips; if he had leaned forward just a tiny bit more, it would have turned into grabbing his thighs.
Recalling that visual, Chu Minghe adopted a “broken jar, smash it” attitude and asked, “Was it a good look?”
Like a seal slapping its belly, asking if its posture was graceful.
For reasons unknown, Zhao Xingjian paused for a beat before very cooperatively uttering the words: “It looked good.”
“…”
“Thank you.”
The journey to sell the pomegranates was fraught with disasters and hardships, and only upon arrival did they realize that this was merely the appetizer.