"It looks like your fever has completely subsided. How are you feeling, any discomfort left?"
Ji Ying watched her daughter Tiantian’s smiling face, and the tiredness from rising before dawn to hoe the weeds instantly vanished without a trace.
"All better, it’s all better now."
Xu Nianhua took the initiative to help out, prompting Ji Ying to repeatedly remind her that since she had just recovered, she needed to rest.
"Mom, it’s precisely because I’ve just recovered that I should do some work and break a sweat. That way, I’ll be invincible against hundreds of illnesses," Xu Nianhua didn’t want to be confined to bed anymore. She followed Ji Ying around, piling all the weeds in a corner of the yard, and asked, "Where are Dad, Big Brother, and Second Brother?"
"They’ve gone to work in the fields. Even though we’ve split from the family, we still have a share of this year’s rice," Ji Ying quietly observed Xu Nianhua, and seeing that she truly seemed to be fine, finally felt at ease.
She couldn’t tell if it was her imagination, but Xu Nianhua seemed to have become livelier after her illness, not as quiet as before.
The mother and daughter working together sped up the task considerably; before long, the yard, once overgrown with weeds, was now clean and tidy.
Worried about the fields, Ji Ying steamed a few sweet potatoes and carried a pot of porridge out to the fields. Before leaving, she repeatedly urged Xu Nianhua to rest more.
Xu Nianhua orally agreed to rest, but she wasn’t willing to at all. Looking at the old house, she knew that if it was to be lived in again, it needed to be thoroughly cleaned from the inside out.
An unfamiliar voice rang out.
Having just finished clearing out a room, Xu Nianhua walked out to see a person in the courtyard she recognized but couldn’t quite name. Her skin was somewhat dark, and she wore two braids, Xu Nianhua, without betraying her emotions, asked, "What’s up?"
"What, haven’t seen me in a while and you don’t recognize me anymore?" Zhong Juan approached with a smile and said, "When you were little, you always followed me around, calling me ’Sister Juan’."
Xu Nianhua remembered—wasn’t this the daughter of the Zhong Family from the village, seemingly named Zhong Juan?
"How could I forget? I was just a bit curious why you’ve come looking for me," Xu Nianhua said with a smile, returning the question.
After all these years, apart from those closest to her, she indeed had trouble remembering others.
"The news about your family’s division hasn’t been out for half a day, and there’s no one in the village who doesn’t know about it," Zhong Juan was quite the talker, never stopping once she entered the yard.
"If you ask me, old man Xu from the Xu Family really didn’t do right by you. In the division, he didn’t give you anything," said Zhong Juan.
Regarding the Xu Family’s division, there was no one in the village who had a good word to say about Xu Zhong. Xu Zhong and his new wife, Liu Sanmei, were notorious for their favoritism in the village.
Xu Nianhua smiled and remained noncommittal to Zhong Juan’s comments. No matter how wrong Xu Zhong was, he was still her grandfather, and if she agreed with Zhong Juan, by afternoon the village would be buzzing with gossip that she, Xu Nianhua, had no respect for her elders.
Zhong Juan talked nonstop until she finally asked, "Nianhua, I heard you fell into the lake on the back mountain yesterday?"
Xu Nianhua’s expression flickered, knowing full well this was Zhong Juan’s real purpose for coming.
She lowered her gaze and said, "Sister Juan sure is well-informed. But how did you know I went to the lake on the back mountain?"
"Everyone in the village is talking about it, saying that you were distressed because you didn’t do well on your exams," Zhong Juan looked slightly uncomfortable as she said, "Nianhua, it’s not a big deal if you didn’t get into university. It’s rare for our village to produce college students every year."