“But how did you know?” asked Liang Chen as she sat down. The hot soup warmed her hands, but she had no intention of drinking it; not after the odd taste of the previous bowl. She was afraid that the taste would linger at her tongue for the rest of her life if she had another bowl.
“I can tell from the color of your face and lips. You need to nourish your body properly, or you’ll have problems getting pregnant in the future.”
Liang Chen paused, and placed her hand on her tummy. It wasn’t the first time someone had said this to her, telling her that the coldness had settled in her ovaries and made pregnancy difficult. But she was almost 36. Soon, she wouldn’t even be able to give birth to a child. At this rate, she would have to go for a test-tube baby.
But she didn’t want her child to come that way. A child born through such a cold method wouldn’t even feel like her own.
“You should try my soup, Miss Liang,” persuaded the nanny. “It’s a home remedy that has been passed down for generations in my family. When I was having my first child, I had the same problem as you, and the doctor warned me about a miscarriage. My mother-in-law even tried convincing her son to divorce me when she learned about it. My mother was the one who told me about the method, and after a year of drinking the soup, I had my first son.”
“Miss Yan faces the same problem too, so she has been drinking my soup consistently. Nourishing the body through food can be slow, but certainly safe.”
“Give it a try, sis,” said Yan Huan, gulping down a mouthful of soup. “I can’t promise it’ll give you a child, but it will take some of your menstrual pains away.”
She knew Liang Cheng had the same problem as her because she had seen her during her bouts of menstrual pain, rolling on the bed for an entire day before she was fit enough to do anything, just like her in the past.
But she was better now. At the very least, the pain no longer made her roll around and tear up.
Now that Lu Yi wasn’t around to take care of her, she had to take things into her own hands.
“Is it really that effective?” asked Liang Chen skeptically as she studied the bowl of soup. It didn’t smell good, but who knew if it had healing properties?
“Perseverance is the key,” said Yan Huan as she took another gulp.
“Okay, then,” Liang Chen gritted her teeth. If Yan Huan can endure it, why couldn’t she? She had gone through her own share of hardships in her youth. There might be a miracle in the soup.
She lifted the bowl to her lips and took a gulp. She almost spat it out. What kind of weird taste is this? She thought the soup didn’t taste that bad when she saw Yan Huan’s composed expression as she drank it, but the soup turned out to be absolutely disgusting.
She wanted to stop by the time the bowl was half-empty, but she made herself drink everything.
At night, they could hear the leaves being rustled by the wind. Someone who was in a bad mood would have mistaken the sound as a miserable, terrifying howl. Leaves brushed against each other as they fell to the ground.
With that many sounds blended inside, the wind didn’t even sound like the wind anymore.
Yan Huan took out her phone and unlocked it. The light from the screen illuminated her face, dazzling her for a second. She sheltered her eyes with her fingers, then started tossing and turning with the blanket in her arms.
There were many pictures stored in her phone—sneak shots of Lu Yi from when it all began, and occasional pictures she took after their encounter. There were about 20 photos, but she never stopped scrolling, as though there was no end. Then she realized she had long reached the end, and had since been going through the same pictures over and over again. The pain in her heart kept recurring too.
Clutching the blanket tightly, she put her phone aside and eventually fell asleep. She was frowning uneasily, even in her sleep, the way she always did ever since his passing.
She got up early the next day to take a jog in the safe zone of the forest. The settlement had been constructed with real stones and hills. Running alongside them, she breathed in the fresh air of nature and left the clamor and stiffness of the city behind. It felt refreshing. Many of the casts’ health had been improving, despite the lack of food variety.
This was a good place, truly. It would have made a unique experience, if Yan Huan hadn’t been pining over Lu Yi.
She stood below a tree, leaning against its trunk as her breathing harmonized with the wind. She wished she was a tree too, so she wouldn’t have to think about things.
The weather was getting chillier. A leave fluttered in the air before her. She reached out and caught it, then spun it between her thumb and index. Their goal was to capture the change in seasons. This wasn’t the roughest phase. The roughest phase was winter because winter was cold, and they had to act in that freezing weather.
Within the settlement, everyone doubled the efforts of hoarding food. It wasn’t that bad, since they had a good harvest in the earlier part of the year. The tribe had increased in population, but Shi Jia’s anesthetic traps opened up a new option to them. Sometimes, the bigger traps captured large prey that would usually take an entire squad to take down. In those days, Yao Xiaoyu had completed a good number of fur blankets that provided ample warmness. She also made a few fur coats and fur shoes.
They ended up spending the entire autumn stocking up on food. When autumn was ending and the days got colder, however, Shi Jia realized that hunting had become much harder. In previous days, they always had spare games to save up at the end of the day, but those days were over. They might soon have to eat from their storage.
Thankfully, they had enough food to last them a winter. If they ate frugally, they could even last until the next spring.