"Later," Lin Canghai sighed with a smile, "she kept the bird in a cage on the windowsill, and every day after school she would catch insects to feed it. She didn't let it go until the bird could fly." He paused and looked at Su Jinli, "Your mother is the softest-hearted person."
Su Jinli felt a little sore at the tip of her nose. She had never thought that her mother, who always smiled gently, had such a vivid childhood.
"Grandfather," she couldn't help but ask, "what happened in our family back then..."
Lin Canghai paused, the lantern light illuminating the white frost on his temples. "I didn't judge people well enough, and I was tricked by my most trusted partner." There was a hint of bitterness in his voice. "Not only did the largest silk shop in Jiangnan burn down, but I'm also left with a mountain of debt. I didn't want Qing'er to be implicated, so I asked a matchmaker to marry her to your father..."
He turned to Su Jinli, his eyes full of guilt: "Jinli, don't blame your father. If he hadn't agreed to this marriage and paid off part of my debt, the Lin family would have long since..."
"Grandfather, I don't blame him." Su Jinli shook her head, thinking of her father's current clumsy doting—the cold-faced prime minister who would secretly slip banknotes into her purse, the father who would send his butler all over the capital just because she casually said she wanted some sweet cakes from the south city. "We get along very well now, and he... loves me very much."
Lin Canghai patted her shoulder with relief. Just as he was about to say something else, he felt the corner of his clothes being gently pulled.
"Grandfather," Siyan raised her little face, still clutching the abacus in her hand, "you just said you owed a debt. Have you paid it off?"
Lin Canghai was amused by this nonsensical question: "I paid it off a long time ago! Grandfather is a wealthy man now!" He pointed outside the courtyard, "Half of the street in the west of Hangzhou is occupied by my grandfather's shops."
"Oh..." Si Yan nodded and asked, "Grandfather, do you have an account book? I can help you check if there are any mistakes."
Lin Canghai: "..."
Su Jinli and Jiang Yan couldn't help laughing. Under the moonlight, Siyan's little face was full of seriousness, as if waiting for an important mission.
"You little brat," Lin Canghai scratched his little nose, "you're plotting against Grandpa!"
Si Yan said seriously, "You have to be careful with your accounts, or you'll lose money, Grandpa. My mother said that making money is not easy, and you have to guard your account books like you would a gold ingot."
Lin Canghai's beard was shaking with laughter: "Okay, okay, I'll leave my grandfather's accounts to you from now on!" He pulled out an oilcloth bag from his sleeve, and inside was indeed a thick stack of account books. "Look, this is the income and expenditure of the silk shop last year, and this is the profit of the rice shop..."
Si Yan immediately perked up, taking the account book and looking at it in the lantern light, his brows furrowed tightly and he muttered something to himself. Nian Li, on the other hand, leaned on his shoulder, curiously looking at the densely packed numbers.
Su Jinli leaned against Jiang Yan, watching the heartwarming scene unfold before her. Suddenly, she felt the night breeze take on a sweetness. Her grandfather's arrival felt like the warmest piece of a puzzle had been completed in her life. The regrets of her past life, the fulfillment of this one, now transformed into the fragrance of the gardenias in the corner of the courtyard, lingering on her nose for a long time.
"Jiang Yan," she said softly, "Let's come and spend New Year's Eve with Grandpa every year from now on."
Jiang Yan held her hand, feeling the warmth on his fingertips: "Okay."
In the halo of lantern light, Siyan suddenly raised his head and said, "Grandfather, you miscalculated the dyeing costs for this silk shop! The price of indigo has dropped by 20% this month, and you're still calculating it based on the original price!"
Lin Canghai pretended to be surprised: "Really? That's all thanks to Siyan's discovery!"
"Yes!" Si Yan nodded vigorously, as if he had won a battle. "Grandfather, I will help you change!"
Watching their son diligently correcting the accounts, Su Jinli and Jiang Yan smiled at each other. Perhaps the sweetest honey in the world isn't the delicacies of the land or the sea, but the laughter of those around them, the bond between grandparents and grandchildren beneath the lanterns, and the tangible happiness of the gardenias that fill the courtyard.
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