When Ji Ying saw this scene, her tears instantly breached their dams.
"Dad, I’m sorry for coming to see you so late," Ji Ying said with a choked voice, half-kneeling at the bedside, she asked tearfully, "Dad, where do you feel unwell? Let’s go to the hospital, we’ll go to the hospital right now."
In his pain, Ji Xinghua opened his eyes, but large beads of sweat had blurred his vision, he looked dimly at the person before his eyes, always thinking he was seeing things.
Ji Ying, in a state of panic and not knowing what to do, watched Ji Xinghua, her guilt and self-reproach reaching a peak.
Ji Xinghua managed to open the cloth at the corner of his mouth, his lips moved slightly.
"Yingying?" Ji Xinghua felt the pain in his body recede, he blinked and looked at the person in front of him, wondering if he was hallucinating from the pain.
"It’s me, Dad, I’m sorry for being late," she said.
Ji Ying looked at Ji Xinghua with eyes full of concern.
"Dad." Xu Qinghe arrived late and followed the voice into the room as well.
Xu Nianhua and Xu Nian’an squeezed into the cramped room, standing silently to one side, they looked at their grandfather, who seemed so different from the smiling figure in their memories. Now he was thinner, his white hair revealing his old age.
"You all, came late," Ji Xinghua said, forcing a smile that looked more painful than crying due to his discomfort; he grinned at them, lifting his head to look past Xu Qinghe toward Xu Nian’an and Xu Nianhua. He opened his mouth to speak but ultimately just weakly lifted his head, gesturing towards them with a wave of his hand.
Xu Nian’an and Xu Nianhua, the brothers and sisters, knelt neatly in front of the sickbed.
"Grandpa, both of us got into university, and after graduation, big brother will be a doctor," Xu Nianhua said, forcing a sweet smile and pushing back the tears in her eyes. She spoke with a cheery tone, "Big brother has found a master, an old practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine, and his medical skills are really good."
"Yeah, Grandpa, I’m going to be a doctor," Xu Nian’an chimed in, following Xu Nianhua’s lead. "And Nianhua is also amazing; she got full marks in a foreign language. It’s said there’s only a handful of full scores in the whole country."
Ji Xinghua said nothing, but the satisfaction and amusement in his eyes were quite evident; he gave them a thumbs-up.
Deng Juan was cooking in the communal kitchen when she heard from neighbors that there were visitors at home. Wiping her hands on her apron, she walked towards the house. When she saw Ji Shuyuan at the door, she was surprised and said, "Shuyuan, weren’t you at a classmate’s home these past few days? When did you come back? I didn’t cook your meal."
"Where did all these things come from?"
Deng Juan knew every single item at home very well, but now the table was cluttered with things definitely not of her own.
A case of chili sauce, which she usually bought bottle by bottle, had suddenly appeared by the case.
There were also egg cakes, seemingly in abundance.
Apples and bananas, and even white liquor were there.
"Shuyuan, where did these come from?" Deng Juan looked over these items and, suddenly hearing the noise inside the house, walked in suspiciously. When she saw Xu Qinghe standing in the doorway, it took her a long time to recognize him.
"You are..." Deng Juan looked at Xu Qinghe, feeling she had seen him before.
Once Xu Qinghe spoke up, Deng Juan recognized him—calling her sister-in-law, who else could it be but the young bride married off to her little sister’s family in the village?