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“Well, didn’t we bring a lot of clothes back from the Zhou residence?” Lu Qiniang said, bracing herself.
“Mother, you’re not saying you won’t make me new clothes, are you?” Erya exploded like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.
“It’s just that we don’t have the money anymore!” Lu Qiniang tried hard to avoid sounding too guilty.
“Where’s the money then?”
“Look, it’s sitting right there on the kang.” Lu Qiniang pointed at Xiao Yan.
Xiao Yan immediately felt his face heat up.
“Wait, you really only have that little silver left? Didn’t you hide any?” Erya asked, shocked, her expression wounded.
She had been hoping for a new outfit for the New Year.
To her, it was fine to eat coarse food at home, but when going out, she had to look neat and presentable.
“Really, there’s none left…” Lu Qiniang tried to comfort her. “But I promise you, once I earn money, I’ll make it up to you. I’ve got strength, and I can earn money no matter what. Be good—”
Erya’s eyes instantly turned red. She put down her chopsticks, stood up, and left the room without looking back, heading straight for her own room.
After a moment, her loud crying could be heard.
Lu Qiniang listened with a lump in her throat. But she couldn’t conjure up any money; all she could do was sigh.
Daya was about to go console her but Lu Qiniang held her back. “Don’t go. She’s just crying to make us feel bad. You won’t get anything if you go.”
After she said that, the crying in the room seemed to quiet down a little.
“Alright, stop making noise.” Lu Qiniang feigned weakness. “Why does my head feel so dizzy?”
“Mother!”
The three daughters, unable to continue their quarrel, all rushed over to help her. Even Erya had returned.
“Mother, did you overexert yourself today?” Daya asked.
“I think it’s because of what Erya did,” Sanya stuck out her tongue.
Erya shot her a fierce glare.
“You’re talking nonsense. Mother, are you okay? Tomorrow I’ll go find Doctor Hu to have a look at you again.”
“I’m fine, just a little dizzy.” Lu Qiniang breathed a sigh of relief, then took the opportunity to say to Erya, “Don’t worry, I promise you I will keep my word. If I can’t save up before the New Year, I’ll definitely make it up to you afterward.”
Erya mumbled unhappily, “You really don’t have any money left? Did you buy that person?”
“Yes.”
“You’re really foolish.”
“I’m not foolish, look at us,” Sanya chimed in. “You’re the one who made Mother so upset. Erya, you’re the worst.”
“Zhang Sanya, are you looking for a fight?”
“I’m not afraid of you! Father, watch me bite her!”
Lu Qiniang: “Help me!”
Xiao Yan sat on the kang, watching the battle between the four women, his expression somewhat confused.
He had never experienced such a scene before.
Isn’t the norm supposed to be a mother’s kindness and a daughter’s filiality, with sisters getting along well?
“Alright, enough fighting,” Daya spoke up. “Let Mother rest. Mother, you…”
She glanced at the big kang, which was usually where Lu Qiniang rested, but now it had been taken over.
Her gaze shifted to Xiao Yan, but she quickly looked away.
“I’ll sleep with Daya,” Lu Qiniang said.
“Mother, you snore. Big Sister can’t sleep,” Sanya said. “Don’t you and Father sleep in the same room?”
Other people’s fathers and mothers always sleep together.
But Lu Qiniang still insisted on sleeping with Daya.
As a result, Sanya began to cry.
“Mother, I knew you found a fake father to deceive me. Did my father die? I must be a fatherless bastard, woo woo woo…”
There were many malicious rumors outside, leaving a shadow on her young heart.
“Bastard? Who said that?” Erya’s brows furrowed. “Tell me who said it, and I’ll smash their family’s pot!”
Lu Qiniang: “…Alright, alright, we’ll sleep together. You all eat quickly, and after dinner, rest early so we don’t waste the lamp oil.”
She really was tired today.
Sanya was reluctant to leave and leaned her chin on the kang, gazing at Xiao Yan lying on it, muttering to herself, “I have a father, I have a father.”
Lu Qiniang felt a headache from her antics and shooed her away.
The noise from next door soon quieted, and the three daughters must have all gone to bed.
Lu Qiniang sat by the kang and spoke to Xiao Yan.
“…You have one blanket, and I have one blanket. With such a large kang, even with two more people lying in the middle, it would still be enough.”
Xiao Yan said nothing.
He was living under someone else’s roof—what right did he have to object?
But Lu Qiniang thought he might mind, and couldn’t help but mutter, “So pretentious.”
She hurried out, soon dragging in the wooden basin and filling it with warm water.
Xiao Yan was stunned—she, she was going to bathe in front of him?
Xiao Yan turned his head to look at the window, his ears turning red. He wasn’t sure whether it was from anger or embarrassment.
“Be good! Stop squirming! Ah Huang, listen up! I’ll give you a nice clean bath, and then you’ll go to bed on the kang.”
Xiao Yan turned around in surprise and saw Lu Qiniang using almost the same method as when she bathed him to put the little yellow dog into the basin, wash it, dry its fur, and toss it onto the kang.
Xiao Yan: So, washing him and washing the dog—there wasn’t much difference.
Lu Qiniang settled Ah Huang between them, “Are you reassured now?”
Xiao Yan felt the need to clarify, “I wasn’t worried to begin with.”
“Heh.” Lu Qiniang snickered, “You people always talk one way and act another.”
“We? Who am I with?”
Lu Qiniang didn’t answer. She took off her outer clothes and crawled straight into the blanket.
“Sleep. The children were throwing tantrums today, just make do with it. Later, I’ll go sleep with Daya.”
“Mm.”
Lu Qiniang spent a long time thinking about how to make money, but she still felt that wanting to have a good New Year and buy new clothes for Erya was too difficult.
She hoped for a dream where money would fall into her lap.
In the darkness, she asked Xiao Yan, “Are you asleep?”
“No.”
Memories flashed vividly in his mind, the twists of fate that made him a child of fortune and then cast him into the abyss.
Reflecting on the past twenty or so years felt like a long dream.
Now, he was in this crude house, a nominal husband to a widow, with three half-grown daughters…
“I remember you came from a wealthy family, right?” Lu Qiniang asked.
“From the Qingping Marquis’s residence.” When Xiao Yan mentioned this, it felt like a needle was piercing his heart.
“I’m a second-born son in the family.” Xiao Yan volunteered this information without waiting for her to ask—he felt that since Lu Qiniang had used all her savings to redeem him, he should be honest with her.
“My legitimate mother is the seventh daughter of the current Emperor, Princess Jiahe. My birth mother was a maid beside the princess.”
“Your father is a marquis, and your legitimate is a princess. Given your current situation, they must be having a hard time too, right?” Lu Qin Niang said with sympathy.
Having a hard time?
“No,” Xiao Yan replied, “They are doing well.”
“Ah?” Lu Qiniang was shocked. “They’re fine, but you’re like this? Did you burn your ancestral tombs or sleep with a concubine?”
Xiao Yan was choked by her coarse words, unable to respond for a while. After some time, he finally said, “I didn’t do any of those things. I was wronged and didn’t want to drag my family into it, so… so I voluntarily severed ties with the Marquis’s residence.”
“Severing ties, and they really stopped caring about you?” Lu Qiniang said, “I know I speak harshly, but if you really haven’t done anything outrageous, then they’re the ones being too much.”
“Some things, you don’t understand,” Xiao Yan replied.
“Look down on people, huh? I’ve stayed in high-class homes too! Though not your Marquis’s residence, I bet they’re all the same kind of people.”
“Then why did you come back?”