The two hired women did not recognize He Yi, but Zeng Qianqian certainly did. As soon as she came closer, she got a clear look at the newcomer’s face. She knew He Yi was handsome, looking very much like that dead father of his, but when had he ever carried himself with such composure and dignity? How strange. Could falling ill once actually change a person’s temperament?
Zeng Qianqian was too busy being surprised to notice that He Yi had addressed the wrong woman. She stopped abruptly, then slowly walked forward and said, “Well, if it isn’t our Yi’er! Are you completely recovered? Why didn’t you have Xu Peng come tell us before you returned, so your eldest uncle could go pick you up? Poor thing, carrying all that must have exhausted you!” As she spoke, she took out a handkerchief to cover her mouth and nose and retreated half a step, every word and gesture radiating disgust.
That sharp, caustic way of speaking was one of the greatest shadows in the original owner’s memories. How could He Yi fail to recognize who she was? Clearly, this woman was his real Eldest Aunt. He had mistaken the other one just now. If Eldest Aunt could not even be bothered to put on a decent show in front of outsiders, it was easy to imagine how low the original owner’s standing had been in this household. As for the Xu Peng she mentioned, He Yi guessed that was most likely Hunter Xu’s name. Her remark was probably aimed at his having asked Hunter Xu to bring A’ma home earlier. She must have felt it made their family lose face.
He Yi pressed his lips flat as coldness surged into his eyes, but he suppressed it almost immediately and instead said weakly, “Thank you for worrying about me, Eldest Aunt. Your nephew has mostly recovered. The village head specifically told me it was best to return home today, so naturally I hurried back as fast as I could… But I’m tired from walking, and tired from standing too. That’s why I don’t look very well. Eldest Aunt, may I go inside first?”
“Pfft—” Zhang Mudan, standing nearby, failed to hold back a laugh. Realizing that the barb had been aimed at her friend, she hurriedly pressed her lips together and stopped herself from laughing openly.
“…” What a sharp tongue. Was he mocking her for not letting him into the house? A vein throbbed at Eldest Aunt’s temple, and she was furious, but with so many people around she had no time to investigate why He Yi had changed so much. She could only say, “Fine, hurry inside! This is your home. Do you really need Eldest Aunt’s permission before you dare enter? You’re making me sound terrible. Go rest, and put your things down first.”
Then she called one of the hired women over to help unload the things from He Yi’s back and told another to pour him a bowl of water, arranging everything with an air of thoughtfulness.
He Yi politely declined the unfamiliar woman’s help. Squatting in a somewhat undignified manner, he finally managed to lower the carrying basket and heavy winter quilt. His shoulders and neck ached badly, so he rolled his shoulder joints and cracked his knuckles with a chilling series of cracks, startling everyone nearby.
The main hall, three bays wide and seven spans deep, looked very different from the one in his memories. Since Eldest Uncle’s family was preparing to move into town, the potted flowers and plants in the house could not be taken along, yet no one would buy them either. Leaving them behind in an empty house to decay would supposedly harm the feng shui, so they had hired people to remove all the plants and carry away the pots as well.
He Yi quietly surveyed his surroundings. Once the women resumed cleaning, he strolled back to the table, sat on a long bench, and drank from the bowl of water.
Eldest Aunt, meanwhile, used seeing off a guest as an excuse and disappeared somewhere with Zhang Mudan to continue chatting.
As for whether his so-called Eldest Uncle and that petty cousin of his were inside, He Yi had no idea. Their rooms were on the eastern side, and he had no desire to set foot there.
After finishing his water, He Yi noticed the household shrine mounted on the center wall of the main hall. Just as in his memories, A’ye’s memorial tablet rested there. Then he thought again. No, it should not look exactly the same. Where was A’ma’s memorial tablet?
Could it be that this dynasty did not allow female ancestors’ tablets to be placed there? He Yi searched the original owner’s memories and recalled that the shrine in his maternal family’s main hall contained a tablet for his mother’s grandmother.
“…” He Yi’s brows drew tightly together, and he cast a cold glance toward the eastern rooms.
He had come down the mountain without eating breakfast and had only now returned, around noon. He Yi was exhausted and starving, with stomach acid rising in waves and making him miserable. Most villagers did not eat lunch at all and barely even had the concept of a midday meal, so there was no chance of joining anyone for food at this hour. Still, he was hungry enough that he decided to check the eastern kitchen and see whether there was anything edible.
But once he entered, he found not a trace of food in the steamer baskets, pots, or on the stove. Even the dried goods hanging from the rafters and the pickled vegetables in the jars were nearly gone.
The only thing he found was the rice jar, but he already had brown rice of his own. He really was hungry, and he really was tired. If he had to go to the trouble of cooking an entire lunch, he would rather drink another couple bowls of water and go back to sleep.
He Yi helplessly looked around once more. There truly was nothing he could eat immediately, so in the end he walked back out.
As he passed an old cabinet against the wall, something suddenly flashed through He Yi’s mind. If he remembered correctly, this locked cabinet was where Eldest Aunt stored the polished rice.
He Yi pried the cabinet door open by a narrow crack and barely managed to glimpse two eggs inside, along with some oiled paper packets and jars, a container of cooking oil, and even a strip of fatty pork belly hanging beneath a wooden bar.
Hah. The things kept in here were certainly precious. Meat, eggs, seasonings. They were all foods the original owner rarely ever received a share of, and also the very things Eldest Aunt’s family had refused to let A’ma take up the mountain.
He Yi immediately quickened his steps back to the western room.
…
When he woke from his nap, it was already close to five in the afternoon. Normally, the evening meal would already have ended by now. No one had come to call him to eat, so He Yi guessed that Eldest Uncle’s family might have finished already and probably had not saved anything for him.
This time, however, He Yi had guessed wrong. Before long, Eldest Aunt personally came to the door of the western room and called him to eat in the main hall. He Yi answered and planned to change clothes before going. But after searching the entire room, he could not find a single change of clothes. At noon, afraid of dirtying the bed, he had actually slept naked with only a clean thin quilt over himself.
It was not that he had wanted to go without clothes. The only thing he found in the room was a winter outfit stored at the bottom of a chest, including an under-robe, padded jacket, long outer robe, and underpants. None of it was suitable for the current weather. Chongzi Village was considerably warmer than the mountain, especially when the sun was out. Besides, just before going up the mountain, the original owner had washed his other two outfits and hung them to dry near the woodshed. The woodshed stood behind the eastern kitchen, and going all the way there was too troublesome, so He Yi gave up. He could look after dinner instead.
Thus, He Yi could only put the same clothes back on and head for the main hall.
The sunset spilling into the courtyard cast the main hall in colors both old and vivid. Against the left wall stood an octagonal table with four long benches, where the household ate its evening meal.
Eldest Aunt had the hired women set out the dishes, paid their wages, and sent them home. She took a seat on the eastern bench, while the cold and solemn Eldest Uncle sat at the head. He Jie had not yet appeared when He Yi arrived. He Yi had no interest in sitting at the lower end, so he went straight to the seat opposite Eldest Aunt.
Eldest Aunt saw this and was about to lecture him, but Eldest Uncle straightened his chopsticks and set them down against his bowl with a sharp clack. Whatever had already reached Eldest Aunt’s lips instantly vanished.
They might have chosen not to make an issue of it, but someone else certainly did. He Jie, who never carried himself properly on an ordinary day, swaggered across the courtyard in cloth boots with a wine gourd hooked in one hand, wearing a roguish grin as he entered the main hall.
The moment he came closer and saw He Yi sitting on the western bench, his expression changed.
He Jie did not ordinarily care much about exactly where he sat, but he believed that whenever He Yi was present, He Yi had to sit at the lower end. It was a question of who was superior and who was inferior, and that boundary could not be crossed.
With a smile that was not quite a smile, He Jie tried to secretly kick over the long bench beneath He Yi. Before he could get close, however, He Yi turned his head and cut him a vicious, contemptuous look.
He Jie’s pride was instantly wounded. He rolled up his sleeves and prepared to punch He Yi, only for He Yongxing to stop him again.
“Come eat! Sit down!”
The meal had not even begun, yet the air already reeked of gunpowder.
In the end, He Jie pointed at He Yi through gritted teeth, then sat on the same bench as Zeng Qianqian and glared at He Yi as though every feature on his face offended him.
He Yi could not even be bothered to return the look. Instead, he turned his attention to the dishes on the table.
There were three dishes: one steamed crucian carp and two plates of stir-fried spinach.
The reason the spinach had been cooked as two dishes was that the spinach in this dynasty was a different variety from the common “short spinach” of the modern world. What sat before him was “long spinach,” also called spiny-seeded spinach, with thick, long stalks that could sometimes grow nearly a meter tall. Because the stalks were so long and thick, local people usually cut them into sections and stir-fried them separately, while plucking off the leaves and cooking those as another dish.
It was He Yi’s first time seeing spinach like this, and he wondered what it would taste like.
He Yongxing’s gaze was unreadable. He covertly studied He Yi several times before finally telling everyone to begin eating.
He Jie did not pick up his chopsticks. Looking at the dishes, he complained, “Why isn’t there any pork today? Didn’t we buy a strip of pork belly this morning? When did it get eaten? How come I didn’t know?”
Zeng Qianqian made as if to rap him on the head with the back ends of her chopsticks and said in a shrill voice, “Did you do any work? If you didn’t work, what gives you the right to eat pork?!”
He Jie dodged aside, but when his mother glanced at him, there was no anger on her face, and the words themselves were directed toward He Yi. He immediately understood and looked at He Yi with a gloating, nasty grin.
He Yi silently rolled his eyes and picked some spinach leaves and stalks into his bowl.
The leaves tasted little different from the spinach he was accustomed to. He could taste the oil, so they clearly had not been stingy with it. Stir-fried simply, the leaves were slick and tender yet still fresh and not greasy, unusually delicate. He Yi guessed the spinach must have been picked straight from the field that day. Otherwise, it could not have tasted this fresh.
The stalks were crisp too, but in the crunchy sense, with a faint sweetness that was easy to miss. After finishing them, He Yi picked up another chopstickful of stalks and ate with gusto.
They had not expected He Yi to remain completely unaffected by Zeng Qianqian’s indirect jab and simply keep eating without paying either of them any attention. For a moment, they all stared.
The crucian carp was plump at this time of year. He Jie could not understand why He Yi ignored the fish and ate the greens with such enthusiasm. After thinking about it, he relaxed somewhat. Clearly He Yi simply did not dare compete with him for the fish. A coward was a coward after all! He had almost thought He Yi was finally growing a spine, but apparently that had only been an illusion. Hah!
The belly of the crucian carp had only large bones and none of the fine pin bones, so He Jie kept scooping it into his own bowl, scraping the entire belly clean as though terrified someone might fight him for it.
Although none of the belly remained, He Yi had never planned to eat that part. With one dip of his chopsticks, he picked out only the meat around the fish’s eye socket, then did not reach for the fish again.
He Yi had always liked the fatty meat around a fish’s eye. It was especially smooth and tender, just far too small a portion. Only after He Yi ate it did the other three snap back to their senses. He had actually dared to take some fish.
In the past, He Yi had never dared touch a meat dish. Every time, only when A’ma could no longer stand watching and put some into his bowl would he get to eat any. Now that A’ma was gone, he actually dared take it for himself?
He Yi ignored why the three of them were staring at him instead of eating. He did not care. He lowered his head and ate rice with the spinach. He did not take any more fish, not because he disliked picking out the fine bones, but simply because He Jie’s chopsticks had touched the fish and the thought disgusted him. He had no interest in touching it. It was not as though this one meal of fish mattered to him.
Before they could start anything, He Yi was nearly finished eating. Just as he prepared to leave the table, Zeng Qianqian’s sharp voice trembled as she stopped him. Unable to restrain herself, she snapped, “Where do you think you’re going?! We’re not finished eating yet. Don’t think you’re getting out of washing the bowls and chopsticks!”
He Yi paused, then sat back down. He did not answer, but since he had not left either, Zeng Qianqian once again decided he was still the same timid pushover and had merely been bluffing. Having regained her sense of triumph, she and He Jie ate while throwing several barbed remarks at He Yi, pleased with themselves.
In the end, after they finished eating too, He Yi still carried all the bowls, chopsticks, basins, and plates out to the courtyard to wash. With a loofah sponge and plant-ash water, the small amount of grease came off quickly. It took hardly any effort before everything was clean.
The well water was simply too cold. Even in this season, it chilled his hands red.
After returning the utensils to the eastern kitchen, He Yi recalled where the original owner used to hang his clothes to dry and walked around that way.
Then, in the place where his two outfits should have been hanging, all he saw was an empty patch of yellow earth.
He Yi was still calculating the likelihood that someone had kindly taken his clothes in for him when He Jie suddenly sprang out and taunted, “What are you doing here? Don’t tell me… you’re looking for those two outfits?”
“…Where did you put them?” He Yi turned and asked in a low voice.
“Hey! What’s with that attitude? Just because you’re older than me doesn’t mean I have to respect you. You’re a useless piece of trash who came back carrying that kind of disease, trying to get our whole family killed. You even dared leave your things hanging outside instead of putting them away. I couldn’t stand looking at them, so I burned them.”
“…Burned them?” He Yi could hardly believe it. Both outfits had been sewn by the original owner’s mother herself: one bamboo-green cloak and one dark-blue long robe, both formal clothes worn only on festivals. Their monetary value aside, the original owner had treasured them deeply. Whenever he missed his mother, he would take them out to remember her by, and fearing they might grow moldy, he occasionally aired them in the sun. And now He Jie was telling him they had both been burned?
“What else was I supposed to do? What if the disease bugs crawled onto us? Could you afford to compensate us?”
He Yi’s fists clenched.
In less than half a day, He Yi had learned firsthand how this family pushed him around whenever they pleased, without ever letting up. Now that he occupied this body, their malice was directed at him. Experiencing it himself once was more revealing than watching the original owner’s memories hundreds of times. He had thought he understood the original owner’s circumstances well enough, but the reality had been nowhere near as mild as he imagined. And with the original owner’s soft temperament, how could he possibly have endured this kind of trampling and humiliation? Just thinking about it was suffocating.
This home was no home, and there was no place for him here. He Yi had originally intended to first understand the situation and find out whether He Jie’s coming post as a yamen runner counted as some kind of government soldier and how much authority it actually carried. He was unfamiliar with this world, and directly confronting Eldest Uncle’s whole family right now would not be especially wise. He had planned to understand everything first and then settle accounts with them…
But fuck it. Why the hell should he keep indulging these assholes?