087, Lantern Festival
087, Lantern Festival
Halfway along the way, Lu Mingfei saw his father, leading his donkey, and his mother walking towards him. He paused, then smiled and greeted them, asking, "Father, Mother, why are you back so early today?"
"Business is pretty good today. We sold out the things early." Liu Sanniang said with a smile.
Lu Youtian asked his eldest son, "Are you going to pick up your mother?"
"Yes, I want to go see if my mother has closed her stall, and help her close it." Lu Mingfei turned around and walked back along the way his father and mother came.
"You don't have to worry about us all the time. There are so many people working at the stall, they can use your help." Liu Sanniang was worried that her eldest son would miss out on studying because of helping with housework, so she said to him, "You have an exam next month, so you should focus more on your studies and don't let family matters put you off."
"Mother, I know that I have been studying a lot recently. But studying should also be a combination of work and rest. How can you just sit there and do nothing? I'll go to the stall to see you guys, and I can also take a walk to keep fit. Only with a good physique can you have more energy to study, don't you think?" Lu Mingfei asked his mother with a smile.
Liu Sanniang reached out and touched her eldest son's arm, and replied with a smile: "Yes, yes, mother has never been educated and doesn't understand these things. Whatever you say is right."
The mother and son looked at each other with smiles in their eyes.
Lu Mingfei turned around and asked his father, "Dad, how is your business at your new stall?"
"The business at this new place is better than the original one, and I can also pick up your mother." After the New Year, Lu Youtian moved his stall to a new place. Now his stall is closer to the imperial city, and the business is much better than before the New Year.
Now the couple are doing business on the same road, but one is near the city gate and the other is near the imperial city. They are both in the same direction, so now the couple go out together early every morning. After Lu Youtian finishes selling things, he can also pick up his wife to go home together.
***
The family of three walked back home while talking.
After lunch, the two adults in the family went back to the house to sleep.
Lu Mingfei asked the four children to go to the study to write some big characters for a while, then asked Zhang Qi to take his younger brother Zhang Xiaobao back to their room to take a nap, and he asked his two younger brothers to go to his room to take a nap.
The house was quiet in the afternoon, so he would read alone in the study, looking over some of the things he had written in the past two or three months, and rewrite any parts he felt were not good.
There is a long sofa in his study where he can lie down horizontally. When he gets tired of reading, he lies down on the sofa to rest.
He woke up when he heard someone opening the door.
When he came out, he saw his mother washing rice in the kitchen. Lu Mingfei called out, "Mother."
"Did you sleep just now?" asked Liu Sanniang.
"I slept for a while and just woke up. Mingcong and Mingrui are sleeping in my room, and Zhang Qi and Xiaobao are in their room. They may not have woken up yet."
"How long have they slept?"
"About half an hour."
"Oh, then you go wake them up later, so they don't get too much sleep and can't sleep at night."
"Okay." Lu Mingfei remembered that he and Ye Zhuoran had made an appointment to go see the lanterns in the evening, so he mentioned it to his mother: "Mother, Zhuoran, Ling Xuan and I have an appointment to go see the lanterns in the evening. Let's go shopping together then?"
Speaking of watching lanterns, ever since that Mid-Autumn Festival when she went out to watch lanterns and nearly lost her child, Liu Sanniang hadn't taken her child out at night for so many years. So when she heard her eldest son say they were going to watch lanterns, she subconsciously wanted to say no.
But I was afraid of disappointing my eldest son, so I didn't know how to say it when the words came to my lips.
Seeing his mother's worry, Lu Mingfei said to her, "Don't worry, mother. We will each look after one child and prevent them from running around. They won't get lost. We will go out after dinner and come back after dark. It will only take about an hour."
The year they were in trouble, Kyoto Prefecture cracked down on all kinds of theft and fraud. During those two years, public security in Kyoto Prefecture was indeed very good, but after those years, the old habits resurfaced in the following years.
Therefore, all kinds of criminal acts of fraud and deception will easily resume once the government stops strictly controlling them.
However, Lu Mingfei also knew that such things were difficult to completely eliminate, whether in this era or in the era he had come from. It was like planting a field of sweet potatoes; there would always be a few rotten ones.
Since the eldest son said so, Liu Sanniang couldn't say no again, so she agreed: "Okay, that's fine. Your adoptive parents will come over to our house for dinner later. Then we'll tell them and we'll all go together."
"Oh, sure." Lu Mingfei guessed that his adoptive parents would be here soon to see the child. Because Lu Mingcong was essentially being raised in their home, he wouldn't go home during the day or at night. If his adoptive parents didn't come to see him, he wouldn't even think about going home.
He had agreed with his mother that they would go out and play together in the evening. When he went outside, he met his father and the Zhang Qi brothers. Lu Mingfei also told his father and the Zhang Qi brothers about the plan to go out and watch the lanterns in the evening.
"Okay, okay, fine, go ahead if you want to." Lu Youtian had no objection to this.
After talking to his eldest son, Lu Youtian came to the kitchen to see what his wife was doing and to lend a hand. The Zhang Qi brothers also stayed in the kitchen to help.
Lu Mingfei entered the room and woke up the two little guys who were still sleeping in bed. After he woke up, one of the two little guys looked like he was about to cry, and the other lay back in bed and refused to get up.
"Get up, play for a while and then have dinner. Your father and mother will come over for dinner later. Do you want to go home with your father and mother to sleep at night?" Lu Mingfei pinched Lu Mingcong's fat face and asked the boy who refused to go home.
"No!" Lu Mingcong shook his head decisively and refused to go home.
"..." Lu Mingfei was choked by the boy's blunt refusal. He knew that the boy was still young and had been somewhat spoiled by his parents. He was stubborn and would only respond to soft words and not harsh ones. He told him that he could only be coaxed and not forced.
So he gave up coaxing the boy to agree to go home at night. After all, if he coaxed him now, the boy would change his mind when they got home.
After giving up on coaxing the kid back home, he raised his hand and patted his little brother's butt, calling the brat to get up, "We'll go out shopping and see the lanterns after dinner. Do you want to go?"
"If you want to go, get up and wash your face, and have dinner later. If you don't want to go, just lie in bed and sleep. It's best to sleep until tomorrow morning." After saying this, Lu Mingfei went up and down the ladder, and no longer cared about the two boys.
At this time, Lu Mingrui, who was lying on the bed, sat up, looked at his second brother Lu Mingcong, and the two of them leaned on the railing and called their brother.
"Why are you calling me? Aren't you two going to stay awake?" Lu Mingfei turned around and looked at the two boys and asked.
"Brother, I want to go down." Lu Mingrui stretched out his hand to his brother.
"Brother, I want to go down too." Lu Mingcong also said to his brother.
"Then you just climb down the ladder by yourselves, I'll pick you up here." Lu Mingfei walked back to the ladder and waited for the two boys to come down.
Seeing their brother waiting for them at the bottom of the ladder, the two children, Lu Mingrui and Lu Mingcong, got out of bed one after another.
As for the quilt on the bed, neither of the two brothers remembered to fold it.
Lu Mingfei dressed his two younger brothers in clothes, shoes, socks, hats and gloves. After letting the two children go out to play, he climbed onto the upper bunk to fold the quilt and put the two small pillows in place.
He went outside and took a look at the four children at home. Only Zhang Qi was helping with cooking in the kitchen. The other three children were working on small crafts with their father in the craft room. He didn't care about these children and went back to the study to read.
However, he had not been in the study for long when he heard the sound of a door opening outside, followed by the voices of his adoptive father, adoptive mother and his father talking.
Seeing that there were guests at home, Lu Mingfei couldn't continue staying in the study to read, so he came out to greet his adoptive father and mother, and entertained the guests with his father.
"Mingfei, if you want to study, go ahead and study. You don't have to stay here with us." Boss Lu knew his adopted son was going to take the county exam next month. He had just seen his adopted son come out of the study, so he knew he might have been studying there, and now he had come out to entertain them.
"It's okay. I've been reading all day, so I can take a break." Lu Mingfei brought a copper kettle to make tea. He used a small teapot to make a pot of tea and poured a cup for his father and adoptive father. His adoptive mother went to the kitchen to help his mother cook as soon as she arrived, so she was not in the main room at the moment.
Before they had finished their pot of tea, his stepmother brought over the dishes and told them to clear the table and eat.
The two families had dinner together that day, with four adults and five children. They had to put a small table in addition to the big table to accommodate so many people.
After dinner, everyone agreed to go see the lanterns together.
Because Ye Zhuoran and Zhang Lingxuan hadn't arrived yet, Lu Mingfei asked his father, mother, adoptive father and mother to take the four children out first, and he would wait for Ye Zhuoran and Zhang Lingxuan at home. Otherwise, as they had agreed, if he left too, Ye Zhuoran and Zhang Lingxuan wouldn't be able to find him when they arrived.
When Ye Zhuoran and Zhang Lingxuan came to the Lu family to pick them up, they saw that only Lu Mingfei was waiting for them at home. Ye Zhuoran asked curiously, "Why are you alone? Where are your family members?"
"They went out first. Maybe we can find them if we go there now." Lu Mingfei, Ye Zhuoran and Zhang Lingxuan came out and saw that the two men came in a carriage, followed by an empty carriage to pick people up.
After closing the gate of the courtyard and locking it, he followed Ye Zhuoran and Zhang Lingxuan into the same carriage, and the three of them went out to the street in the carriage.
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