Xu Yanshu returned to the hotel with her parents. On the way back to their room, they ran into an acquaintance in the elevator.
"Hey Lao Xu, what a coincidence, you're here to play too." The man was wearing flashy beach shorts and holding the hand of a little girl with a small bun. He looked behind Xu's father and said, "Where's your little daughter? I hear you talking about her every day. Let me see her and see how cute she is."
Mr. Xu's eyes were lifeless. "Youngest daughter? What youngest daughter?"
It seems his daughter, whom he raised, ended up belonging to someone else.
...
The rain seemed to be stopping after a while, but the weather forecast said there would be thunderstorms that night, and the rain wouldn't clear up until around noon the next day.
After the funeral, everyone left, and the old house suddenly felt much less lively, as if the temperature had dropped considerably.
The servants cleaned the room and left; the old man didn't like too many people staying in the house.
After dinner, Xu Chacha held the boxed milk that Wen Mubai had specially bought for her at the convenience store and sat on the sofa watching TV with the old man.
He was watching a traditional Chinese folk art channel, but the volume wasn't very loud. Instead, he was softly singing along, so familiar with the lyrics that he knew them perfectly.
Wen Mubai was washing up, and Xu Chacha, sitting beside him, didn't say a word, quietly drinking her milk. The milk in the straw kept flowing into her mouth, and just when people were about to misunderstand that the milk would never run out, the box made a "hissing" sound, and the white thread in the straw broke into several pieces.
She shook the box to make sure it was empty before standing up and throwing it into the trash can.
On the way back, I passed by the kitchen and grabbed a piece of osmanthus cake. After I finished eating, I went back and found that the old man had changed the channel and started watching TV dramas.
His taste surprised Xu Chacha; he watched the kind of melodramatic, ridiculous dramas that young people could edit into absurd and hilarious clips.
A white porcelain vase had appeared on the low coffee table at some point, while a teacup was placed next to it to avoid drawing attention.
Xu Chacha leaned closer, sniffing the air, "Isn't this wine? Grandpa, are you drinking it again tonight?"
"Hehehe, don't tell your Aunt Mu Bai." He probably already had half a glass of alcohol, as his face reeked of it.
"Do you know the dangers of drinking alcohol at night? Do you know how many elderly people die suddenly from myocardial infarction due to excessive drinking and smoking? Do you know—"
"Alright, alright, stop nagging." The old man had no idea that she, a child, could be even more talkative than an old woman, so he quickly begged for mercy, "Grandpa, can you just finish what's in your cup and then stop drinking?"
"You've already drunk quite a bit, haven't you?" Xu Chacha wasn't so easily fooled.
"You've only been gone a few minutes, and Grandpa just poured himself a drink." The old man coaxed and lied, "Grandpa is in a bad mood and afraid of having nightmares, so please let Grandpa have a little."
Xu Chacha sighed, secretly poured a little of what was left in his cup back into the bottle, and then put the cap back on. "Grandpa can only drink this much; you can't pour the rest out."
Drinking baijiu from a teacup—what kind of brave man is that? She admired the old man himself.
"Okay, Grandpa will listen to you this once, my little darling."
...
The bathroom door opened, and steam seeped out through the gradually widened crack. Wen Mubai, dressed in basic shorts and pajamas, walked out, a towel draped around his neck absorbing the water dripping from his hair.
She stepped barefoot onto the absorbent mat, her ankles looking slender and strong, with a slight protrusion of her ankle bone. Perhaps because the floor was cold, her skin was flushed.
She covered her mouth and nose and sneezed. She put on her slippers, poured herself a cup of hot water as she passed the kitchen, and headed to the living room following the sound of the conversation between the two children.
"During the morning reading recitation, Miao Miao confidently raised her hand, but when she stood up, she stumbled and staggered while reciting. She was so embarrassed that she cried and complained to me that she could recite it so fluently at home, but she couldn't recite it in class." Xu Chacha's tone was still familiar and cheerful, with a hint of a smile. "Then I gave her a piece of chocolate and she was fine."
"Our little Chacha is really worth a lot of chocolate for being class monitor." The old man laughed along, recalling the past, "Your aunt did something similar. When she was a child, her grades dropped in the exams, and she was afraid of being scolded when she went home. So she took a bus to our place and knocked on the door crying and begging to be taken in. She didn't dare to go back to face her parents."
"My aunt?" Xu Chacha raised her voice, clearly intrigued. "She can cry too."
"Of course! She was much cuter when she was little than she is now. She was good at being affectionate and was a bit of a crybaby. I remember there's a photo album under the TV cabinet. Come on, Grandpa, let me show you."
Wen Mubai's heart skipped a beat. The shame of having her past exposed pressed down on her, forcing her to quicken her pace to stop the person, but she was still a step too slow.
The old man usually coughs every three steps when walking up the stairs, but he lifted her shorts very quickly.
As Wen Mubai walked up behind Xu Chacha with his water glass, she pointed to a photo and asked, "Is this Auntie?"
"Stop looking, there's nothing to see." Wen Mubai tried to take the photo album away.
Xu Chacha didn't try to snatch it. She just held her empty hand, looked up at her, and pouted, "Auntie is stingy."
"I'm already here, why are you looking at photos?" Wen Mubai hardened his heart and closed the photo album.
"That's not fair," Xu Chacha said angrily. "When I grow up, my aunt will know what I've looked like since I was little, but I won't. She won't even let me see any photos. My aunt is so stingy."
“Why are you bullying the child? These photos were taken by your grandmother and me, and I’m in charge of showing them to Chacha.” The old man chimed in.
"..." Wen Mubai sighed deeply, handed over the photo album, and still made a last-ditch effort, "There's really nothing to see. Don't all kids look the same?"
"Then I want to see it too."
Xu Chacha held the photo album and turned her back, secretly giving a smile. No one saw the little scheme that flashed in her eyes.
Just from the old man's verbal description, Xu Chacha couldn't quite connect the name Wen Mubai with "little crybaby," but now there are photos to prove it.
"Haha, Auntie is such a crybaby." She burst into laughter.
This is not her fault; the photos had a huge impact on her.
Wen Mubai looked similar when he was a child, except that his eyes and face were rounder and he didn't have the sharp, aloof look he has now.
She does laugh a lot, but she also cries quite a bit. Half of the ten photos show her laughing, a third show her crying, and the rest are candid shots and sleeping photos.
"Xu Chacha." Wen Mubai sat down next to her, his long hand reaching around her neck to pinch her chubby cheek, the warning meaning obvious. "You're quite 'lively' today, huh?"
The low, hushed "hmm" from her made Xu Chacha feel threatened, so she shrank her shoulders and said, "I won't laugh anymore, okay... Pfft, hahahahahahahahahaha!"
How could I possibly resist?!
With his hair sticking up in two buns and a red dot on his forehead, Wen Mubai grinning foolishly at the camera was absolutely hilarious.
Wen Mubai initially tried to feign seriousness to intimidate her, but he was soon swept up in her laughter and let out a few laughs.
"Is this Auntie's mother?" Xu Chacha looked at the woman in the photo who was holding Wen Mubai.
She had never met Wen's mother, nor had she searched for her information online. Just by looking at the woman's photos when she was young, she could immediately match her with the free-spirited, prickly young lady in the book.
In Xu Chacha's imagination, a woman like Wen's mother would definitely have slender eyebrows and slightly downturned eyes like in the photo, possessing the gentleness of a woman from Jiangnan, yet with a breathtaking beauty that makes people hesitate to approach.
"Mm." Wen Mubai nodded, picked up his water glass, looked away, took a sip, and didn't turn back.
Her feelings for her mother were far more complex than her feelings for her father. She already knew how to deal with the latter, but she no longer had the chance to even try to figure out how to handle the former.
Wen Mubai wanted to tell herself with a completely tolerant attitude that she was a good mother, but whenever she thought that, there was always a force of resistance pulling at her heart, neither too strong nor too weak, but it always left a little awkwardness in her heart.
And she was extremely bad at expressing her emotions; that little bit of awkwardness stuck in her heart, slowly turning into a knot.
"You look terrible, and your lips are pale," the old man asked Wen Mubai. "Did you forget to close the window last night and catch a cold?"
Xu Chacha turned her head and leaned over to look at her, "Really, Auntie, you look terrible."
Wen Mubai's lips were originally light in color, but now they looked even whiter, like faded paper.
"No, I've already taken my temperature." She finished the hot water in her cup, and the dryness in her throat felt much better.
It's probably because I was too busy during the day and forgot to drink water, that's why it's like this.
"You need to dry your hair after washing it." Xu Chacha noticed that her hair was still dripping wet and realized that this wasn't the first time she had done it like this. "You made me catch a cold even though I wasn't originally one."
She stood up to find a hairdryer for Wen Mubai, but then remembered that this was someone else's house, and she had no idea where it was.
"Auntie, where's the hairdryer?"
"I'll go get it from the bedside table." Wen Mubai made a move to stand up.
Xu Chacha pressed her shoulder down and pushed her back, saying, "I'll go get it. You sit here quietly."
"She looks so small, but she's quite good at managing people." The old man glanced at Xu Chacha's small figure disappearing around the corner of the stairs, then immediately stood up, nimbly opened the wine bottle on the cabinet and poured it into the teacup, then put it back. The whole process was so smooth that he didn't even need to use his cane.
"Please drink less." Wen Mubai knew his temperament. His family had tried to persuade him for most of their lives but couldn't change his bad habit. They could only verbally advise him, "You didn't eat much today. If you drink this, your stomach will burn at night."
"Who said I didn't eat any? That little girl stuffed almost ten osmanthus cakes into my mouth all afternoon. I'm so full." The old man held his teacup, his little finger curled up contentedly, and took a sip. "Ah...delicious."
Wen Mubai shook his head and ignored him. He bent his knees and put his feet on the sofa. His slender white arms, under his loose short-sleeved shirt, stretched out and held the remote control to change the channel.
After browsing through various shows for a while without finding anything interesting, I finally picked a noisy variety show and left it unwatched. I then picked up a book from the bookshelf and flipped through it casually.
"Pat-pat-pat" is the sound of Xu Chacha walking down the stairs.
The old man, who was enjoying his wine, was suddenly startled, and his body trembled with fright.
Wen Mubai looked at him with a puzzled expression, as if he had encountered a ghost. The next second, she saw the old man pour the remaining half cup of liquor into her water glass, urging her, "Quick, quick, help Grandpa drink some."
Wen Mubai suspected he was joking: "What?"
"Hurry up, she's coming." The old man grabbed the cup and handed it to Wen Mubai. "It's alright, it's just a little bit, what's the big deal?"
Wen Mubai took the water glass and glanced out of the corner of his eye to see that Xu Chacha had already gone downstairs.
The little boy, noticing the old man's strange expression, quickly walked over with his hands on his hips. "Grandpa! Did you pour wine behind my back again?!"
The old man stood between Wen Mubai and Xu Chacha, laughing it off, "No way, look, Grandpa's cup is empty."
"Then why were you acting so suspiciously?" Xu Chacha pointed at him with her finger, then turned to Wen Mubai with a puzzled look, "Could it be..."
Meeting Xu Chacha's narrowed eyes, Wen Mubai didn't know why he felt guilty. On a whim, he tilted his head back and drank the "water" in his cup in one gulp.
Her throat slid, and the spiciness on her tongue and the pungent smell of alcohol made her frown involuntarily. It was so strong.
"What do you mean, 'what do you mean'?" The old man changed the subject. "Weren't you going to help your aunt dry her hair? If you don't, she'll catch a cold."
"Oh, right."
Xu Chacha unplugged the hair dryer she was holding and plugged it into the socket.
"I can do it myself." Wen Mubai reached out to take it, but Xu Chacha dodged him.
“Auntie is too tired today, so let me take care of you this time.” Xu Chacha walked behind her, “so you won’t complain about always having to ‘serve’ me.”
She seemed quite serious about her words, but Wen Mubai just wanted to laugh. She lowered her head to hide her embarrassment, "Okay, then you can do it. Let me know if you get tired."
The hairdryer was heavy, and she was worried that Xu Chacha's arm would get tired from holding it up.
"What's the big deal? I'm a professional."
Xu Chacha gathered Wen Mubai's long hair behind her with both hands, and as she was about to blow on it, she noticed that Wen Mubai's exposed neck and earlobes were flushed with a peach-red hue.
She crept closer and keenly caught a faint smell of alcohol on Wen Mubai.
"Hmm? Auntie, you..." Xu Chacha didn't finish her sentence, wanting to save face for Wen Mubai.
How come even you, a "good student," have gone astray? Xu Chacha was a little disappointed in you.
"What's wrong?" Wen Mubai was clearly unaware and looked puzzled.
"It's okay, you can turn back." Xu Chacha pushed her face back.