Chapter 185 Needlework
Xie Qi stood in front of the door, not moving for a moment.
Xie Xuchuan noticed his hesitation and went in first.
This side room is not large, and it is right next to Xie Xuchuan's study. You can see the inside from outside the door.
In the center of the room stood two large mahogany chests, with two rows of wooden shelves on either side. The shelves were piled with many scattered items, which looked messy, but were actually due to someone frequently handling them.
Xie Qi looked at them and roughly knew where these things came from.
Xie Xuchuan walked to the wooden shelf and casually picked up a bamboo dragonfly that had turned yellow.
He picked up the bamboo dragonfly, gently stroking it with his fingers, his eyes revealing tenderness.
"You don't know, Yuanzhu's personality when she was a child was completely different from how she is now."
"When Aunt Ji was still alive, she wasn't as quiet as she is now. She was more mischievous than girls from ordinary families."
Xie Qi's expression was indifferent, but he was listening quietly.
"She got this bamboo dragonfly from someone while watching other children play in front of the Shen family's house, and she cried and chased after them to get it."
"She was just a little kid back then, but when she cried, her voice was incredibly clear."
"No matter how I tried to persuade him, I couldn't stop him, so I had to exchange half a bag of maltose for it from the child."
"This stuff isn't worth much; half a bag of maltose is enough to buy a lot of them."
Xie Xuchuan said, a slight soreness rising in his throat, "I swapped this thing for her, but she kept it in my hands."
"She said she didn't want to see what others had, but I didn't."
After saying that, Xie Xuchuan smiled faintly and handed the items to Xie Qi.
Xie Qi didn't take it, so he casually put it back where it was.
"After her mother passed away, she gradually calmed down. Since it was inconvenient for her to go out, I went to the Shen family to keep her company time and time again."
"The Shen family had a lotus pond the size of a palm, with a thick layer of silt at the bottom. In those years, her uncle and aunt passed away one after another, and she became increasingly quiet."
"The two of us would often sit by the lotus pond, and if we saw lotus seeds growing in the pond, I would pick them for her."
“One Mid-Autumn Festival, I gave her a pair of ceramic dolls. She smiled as soon as she saw them, and then took one out of her bosom and gave it to me.”
Xie Xuchuan took out a wooden box and carefully opened it.
Inside was a clump of cracked and broken mud, which looked like a gourd, but had long since dried and cracked into several pieces.
"It's been too long, it's broken."
His voice was choked with sobs.
Yuanzhu said that these mud dolls were made by drying the silt from that pond.
She said I had stolen too many lotus seeds from the Lotus Fairy, so she made a 'Lotus Fairy' for me and told me to worship her properly so as not to upset her.
After he finished speaking, he carefully closed the wooden box and gently put it back.
"This kite was made by the two of us, but unfortunately it has never been flown."
"She saw Shen Yuanqiong flying a kite outside one day and asked me for it for the first time. I said I would buy one bigger and prettier than Shen Yuanqiong's one tomorrow."
"But she said no, she asked me to make one with her."
Xie Xuchuan pointed to the kite hanging on the wall, his eyes filled with nostalgia: "We still don't know why this kite can't be flown. I said I'd bring it back and try to find a way to get it flying..."
Later, however, he forgot about it.
Xie Xuchuan looked at the lone kite hanging on the wall and sniffed.
The wooden shelf was filled with all sorts of things, a chaotic mess, but Xie Xuchuan knew them all like the back of his hand.
He remembered the expression on Yuanzhu's face when she gave him each item, and the joy he felt at the time.
"Xie Qi, these are all the little things between me and Yuanzhu, so how could she possibly, how could she forget them so easily?"
"Forget our past, forget that because she missed her mother, I carried her around the yard until she fell asleep on my back?"
Xie Xuchuan's eyes were bloodshot, and his words even carried a hint of pleading: "Xie Qi, I know you married Yuanzhu only to get revenge on me."
"Fine, you can do anything to me, but can you give Yuanzhu back to me?"
Xie Qi looked at the scattered items in the room, including the nine-linked rings, the abacus, the notes, and even a strange stone with an unknown story, and his skin began to itch again.
That sticky, suffocating, invisible thing clung to him again, as if blocking his mouth and nose, making him feel as if he were in the deep sea, unable to breathe.
He stiffly turned his body, and in front of him was a stack of yellowed papers, on which two kinds of childish handwriting were faintly visible.
Xie Qi exerted all his strength to resist the urge to flip through the pages and peek at what was written on them.
After a long while, he finally broke free from the suffocation and let out a deep breath.
He looked at Xie Xuchuan and sneered, "A broken clay figurine, a kite that can't fly, a marriage certificate withered and mixed with mud..."
"These worthless people are perhaps destined to make your relationship with her disappear into nothingness."
Seeing that he remained unmoved, Xie Xuchuan took two more steps and opened the mahogany boxes in the room one by one.
Inside were sachets full of sachets, medicine pouches, and even an outer garment.
He squatted in front of the mahogany box, took out a medicine pouch embroidered with twin lotus flowers, and held it up in front of Xie Qi.
"This was a gift from Yuanzhu to me for my birthday last year. She noticed that I couldn't stand the mosquito bites, so she consulted ancient prescriptions and made me a sachet to repel mosquitoes."
"This medicine pouch was embroidered by her own hand. You must know what the twin lotus flowers symbolize, right?"
After saying that, Xie Xuchuan put the medicine pouch back and took out a fan pendant.
"This is a lucky knot that Yuanzhu made for me by hand. She said that everyone else in the academy had one, so she went to look up the book and learned how to make it for me."
"This dress was also made for me by her own hands."
Xie Xuchuan frantically rummaged through the mahogany box, trying to prove that he was the one Yuanzhu truly loved.
"Xie Qi, we have so much in the past, why do you keep deceiving yourself?"
Looking at the clothes scattered on the ground, Xie Xuchuan suddenly remembered that Yuanzhu had made him a box of fine things before he went to Huizhou, but it was a pity...
Xie Xuchuan carefully packed it up, but Xie Qi chuckled as he watched.
He looked at all the things in the room and felt relieved.
"Xie Xuchuan, aren't you tired of playing these kinds of deceptive tricks? You're saying that Yuanzhu made all these things for you?"
Xie Qi sneered: "But Yuanzhu doesn't know how to do needlework at all. She said her mother never taught her these things."
Xie Xuchuan was taken aback upon hearing this, then sat down on the ground and burst into laughter.
After a long pause, he looked at Xie Qi with a smile and said, "Is this what she told you?"
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