Chapter 42
“Mom, I want to take my ant castle to Dali,” Cheng Yushan announced on Saturday morning, blocking the door of the first-floor storage room. “And my dolls, teddy bears, rabbits, elephants, all my toys, my books, and my ukulele.”
"You've got quite a lot to take!" Huang Ruoyu said with a frown, without looking up as she tidied up the storage room.
Huang Ruoyu decided to pack up her thick winter clothes this weekend so she could throw away what needed to be thrown away and donate what needed to be donated, traveling light and only keeping some thin winter clothes to take to Dali for the winter – after all, she heard that it's spring-like there all year round, and keeping a bunch of thick winter clothes would be completely useless and take up space.
Cheng Yushan didn't notice her mother's attitude and continued, "Oh, and there's the set of little bowls I used for playing house, the little stones I collected, and my scooter."
"But Shanshan, don't you think you're bringing too much stuff? Aren't you going to throw anything away?"
"No, I won't throw it away. Hmm... how about we throw the elephant away? But the elephant..."
“You can bring your elephant. We have enough space to bring the dolls and other small toys, I mean the big, hard-to-carry items, like the ant maze you mentioned and your brother's rocking horse. These things are too difficult to pack, and the shipping costs are quite expensive, so every penny saved counts. I think you can give the ant castle to Sisi.”
"Should I have Sisi keep it for me?"
"Of course, it's better than throwing it away."
“Okay,” Cheng Yushan said after thinking about it seriously.
But just a minute later, Cheng Yushan said to Huang Ruoyu, "Mom, I know what to do. I can give everything to Qianqian: my ant castle, my elephant, my doll, my teddy bear, my rabbit, my little bowl, and my..."
“Just give the things that are hard to pack and ship to Qianqian, why are you being so extravagant? I’ve already told you this once, why don’t you understand? Can’t you listen to me properly?” Huang Ruoyu’s voice grew sharper and angrier. Finally, she sighed and said, “Go out, stop causing trouble here, go play with your brother.”
"No, I don't want to play with him," Cheng Yushan muttered softly, pouting.
"Fine, do as you please. But I don't want to repeat the same thing a hundred times, especially to someone who's so stupid they don't listen to anyone."
Cheng Shi, who was lounging on the sofa scrolling through his phone, was glad that the mother and daughter had stopped bickering. Their conversation had been constantly bothering him, making him watch a video over and over again without understanding what it was trying to say.
Half an hour later, the house was so quiet that the only sound was the dragging of boxes in the storage room. Cheng Shi looked up with a slight unease and found that Cheng Yushan was no longer in the living room.
"Where did Shanshan go?" Cheng Shi raised his voice and asked Huang Ruoyu, who was still tidying up in the storage room.
"Are you playing with Koji in the yard?"
"No, Xiaosi is playing outside by himself," Narumi replied, slightly lifting herself up to peek into the yard.
The parents rushed upstairs in a panic and into their child's bedroom. There they found Cheng Yushan curled up on her bunk bed, her eyes brimming with tears, sucking hard on her thumb.
Huang Ruoyu lowered her head and sat down beside Cheng Yushan's bed. She touched the little girl's forehead to make sure she didn't have a fever, then gently stroked her hair and asked in a very soft voice, "What's wrong, little girl? Tell Mommy what's wrong, okay?"
Cheng Shi stood at the bedroom door, watching the mother and daughter, his eyes as wide as his daughter's. He swallowed hard, and Cheng Yushan, as if sensing his intention, also swallowed. Before that, she had already taken her thumb out of her mouth.
"It's alright," the little girl replied.
Taking advantage of the moment, Huang Ruoyu grabbed Cheng Yushan's small hand to prevent her from putting her thumb back in her mouth. When she pried open the little girl's fist, she discovered that her index finger was tightly wrapped with a black rubber band, several times wrapped around it. The rubber band was so tight that it had squeezed the little girl's fingertip into a deep purple, while the skin underneath was wrinkled and pale.
"Because of the move to Dali?" Huang Ruoyu didn't realize that she had just scolded her daughter for being "stupid and not listening to anyone," so she asked her while removing the rubber band from Cheng Yushan's fingers, "You're unhappy because you're transferring schools, aren't you?"
Cheng Yushan remained silent until Huang Ruoyu removed the last rubber band from her fingers, at which point she nodded slightly, as if trying not to be noticed. Then, the little girl turned around in a very awkward posture, buried her head in Huang Ruoyu's lap, and began to wail loudly.
"I knew it was because of this, my sweet little girl." Huang Ruoyu gently patted the little girl's back. "But there's nothing to be unhappy about. Moving and changing schools are quite interesting things."
But once Cheng Yushan started crying, she couldn't stop. After hearing Huang Ruoyu's words, she cried even harder.
"Do you remember when we moved here from Songyuli?" Huang Ruoyu asked. "Do you remember how sad you were when you had to leave your old home and your kindergarten friends? But what happened next? In less than a week, Qianqian's mother brought her to our home, and then you met Vicky and the three older boys from your Uncle Sun's family. Then, not long after, you started school, where you made even more new friends, and from then on, nothing made you unhappy anymore, right? It will be the same when we go to Dali. Trust Mom."
Cheng Yushan lifted her tear-streaked face, as if she had something to say. However, it was too difficult to utter a word amidst her rapid breathing, so after several seconds, the little girl finally said haltingly, "Will we...will we...live...in Dali...for a very...long time?"
"Of course, but you don't need to worry about that."
"Will you live in Dali forever?"
"Well..." Huang Ruoyu hesitated for a moment, then patiently continued, "It might not be forever, but we'll definitely be living there for a long time. But, my dear, you don't need to worry about these things. Your father and I will take care of them. You're unhappy because the weather outside is so nice, but you're staying inside. Go wash your face, then run out and see what your little brother is doing. Hurry up!"
After Cheng Yushan left, Cheng Shi stood sullenly at the door of the storage room—because Huang Ruoyu had gone back to the storage room to continue her "work"—and said indignantly, "This is too...too damn..."
Huang Ruoyu didn't turn around but continued packing her things, absentmindedly asking Cheng Shi, "What do you want to say?"
“I can’t quite explain it, but I feel that our plan may not have been well thought out, especially from the children’s perspective. I think there’s something we can’t ignore, and that is that going to Dali is very difficult for the children to accept.”
"They will get through this."
“Of course they will ‘get through’,” Narumi tried to make her words more assertive. “We can throw them to the ground, or break their arms and legs, and they can still ‘get through’. But that’s not what I’m trying to say. What I’m trying to say is…”
"Sung-shi, are you saying we should abandon this plan now?" Huang Ruoyu finally turned around, but with a smile on her face and a feigned "tough" posture.
"No!" To avoid looking directly at Huang Ruoyu's expression, Cheng Shi walked around her into the storage room, casually opened a closed cabinet door, and said hesitantly, "Of course that's not what I meant... How could I possibly mean that? But why do you always think in that direction?"
"Because if you don't think that way, there's no need for discussion at all. This isn't about who gets to decide; it's about someone proposing a plan first, then we discussed it, everyone agreed, and now all we have to do is execute it firmly. That's all, what's the problem? Isn't it the same when you implement a plan at the company? So if the kids had proposed a plan first, we would obviously have discussed it, and if we all thought the plan was feasible, we would have resolutely implemented their decision and done what they thought was most appropriate. But they didn't propose any plan. And what do you think would be most appropriate? They would think of staying here forever, waiting to rot, mold, and die..."
"Wait, I never said that..."
“Wait a minute,” Huang Ruoyu interrupted Cheng Shi forcefully. “We are adults, we are parents, we have lived more than 20 years longer than them, so we have better judgment, right? So of course we should go to Dali, no problem at all. Of course, there is still one problem now, which is that we should help them get through this transition period as easily as possible!”
"That's exactly what I wanted to say!" Cheng Shi waved her arm. "Why are you getting so worked up? We should do our best to help them get through this transition period smoothly. That's what I wanted to tell you!"
"That's good." Huang Ruoyu shrugged. "What I want to tell you is that we won't change our minds anymore. We'll stick to the plan and do our best until they're fully adapted. In the meantime, I don't think there's any need to whine about how pitiful they are or spout nonsense like breaking their arms. Stone, honestly, I think you should get rid of all that unnecessary sentimentality you liberal arts students have."
For quite some time now, Chengshi and Huang Ruoyu hadn't argued because of their shared project, so this was the closest they'd come to a fight in a while. Therefore, they were both on edge throughout the rest of Saturday, and their interactions became extremely polite. Even when they slept in the same bed that night, they were careful not to touch each other to avoid reigniting the argument.
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