Chapter 11
Shu Shouyi can swear that he really slept well after his aunt left.
But just as he fell asleep, something banged on the bedroom door twice, waking him from his dream.
"aunt?"
He thought it was Shu Wanxiu returning from the mountains, but when he mustered up the courage to call out, there was no response.
He was nervous and scared, but amidst his trepidation... there was also a deadly curiosity.
By the time he came to his senses, he was already standing by the window.
The unknown always has a strong attraction. Without realizing it, he lifted the straw curtain that blocked out the light from the window and happened to see a fat gray rabbit slip away from under the window.
Perhaps it's because children love cute animals, or perhaps they're just too hungry for meat, subconsciously knowing that rabbits are edible.
Anyway, as if possessed, he opened the door and chased after them.
The rabbit ran away so fast that he could no longer see it when he went out, but he knew that the rabbit had passed by the main room earlier, so he followed it.
After searching for a while, my efforts finally paid off.
Shu Shouyi found it by the fire pit, but by then, the rabbit was no longer a living rabbit.
After listening to Shu Shouyi recount the whole story, Shu Wanxiu frowned and murmured, "Could it be... that it died of illness?"
With this guess in mind, Shu Wanxiu quickly pulled Shu Shouyi back a little, "Did you touch it?"
Shu Shouyi thought about it blankly for a moment, then shook his head with certainty.
"I only touched it with firewood."
Sure enough, there was a short, thick stick on the ground.
"Amitabha, that's good, that's good." Shu Wanxiu was relieved at first, and then took the opportunity to lecture him.
"Your aunt is telling you that you are still young. Before you grow up, don't chase or touch any pheasants or rabbits you see."
“You don’t know, even a rabbit will bite or kick when cornered.” She pointed to her hand and made a scratching motion. “If you get scratched by a wild animal, the flesh will rot.”
He then pointed to his eyes, saying, "If someone bites my eyes, I'll go blind."
Finally, pointing to the rabbit on the ground, he said, "If you encounter a sick wild animal, you will also get sick and eventually die from intestinal perforation."
The various hypothetical consequences made Shu Shouyi shrink back in fear.
Seeing that he was scared, Shu Wanxiu told him to step back a little more, "You watch from a distance, and your aunt will check you out."
She covered her nose, picked up another stick, poked the fat rabbit on the ground, flipped it over, and brought it closer to examine it carefully.
The rabbit had neat and soft fur all over its body, with only one wound on its forehead.
The wound looked like it had been hit quite hard; it was not only bleeding but also stained with some black ash.
Recalling the spot where its forehead was facing before she turned it over, it was the small pot that Aunt Chen had lent her.
Did he run too fast and crash into a pot and die?
This way of dying is too bizarre. Shu Wanxiu has not yet reached a conclusion, but it can be basically ruled out that this was a sick rabbit.
Because if it were a sick rabbit, it would be impossible for it to be so fat and its fur to be so neat and smooth.
Shu Shouyi squatted far away and covered his nose, just like Shu Wanxiu.
Seeing that Shu Wanxiu had been examining the document for a long time without saying a word, I couldn't help but ask in a muffled voice about the result.
"Auntie, is it sick?"
Shu Wanxiu pondered for a moment, then shook her head.
"Doesn't seem like he's sick."
Shu Shouyi then took his hand off his nose and instead rested his chin on his hands, but remained squatting in place, quietly waiting for his aunt to tell him what to do next.
Shu Wanxiu stopped covering her nose. She threw away the stick and picked up the rabbit in her hand. Her estimation skills weren't very good, but based on its size, she guessed that the rabbit weighed at least five or six pounds.
If two people share it, five or six pounds of meat is a lot.
If the meat is given back to the villagers, then there are a total of 22 households, including them, and there won't be enough meat for each household.
Since we've ruled out the possibility of splitting it equally with everyone, then...
Their homes are in remote areas, so they don't worry about the aroma of meat wafting to other people's houses even when they're eating meat in large quantities.
However, this approach has two drawbacks. First, they lack salt, and if they eat alone, the meat cannot be cured, as it will quickly rot in the current weather.
What if the two of them ate the whole rabbit in one day?
The old doctor in the county town who provided free medical care to these disaster victims once said: People who have been depleted for a long time will not be able to tolerate too much good food and will instead harm their bodies.
Or perhaps they could dry the meat, which would solve the storage problem. But there's a second, and most important, issue: they don't have knives, so processing rabbits requires skinning and gutting them.
These two inconveniences almost certainly meant they couldn't eat alone.
Besides that, she also had a lingering worry.
When I checked just now, it was true that the rabbit's head was covered in soot, but the pot itself...
Although she boiled a whole pot of water after cooking breakfast in the morning, she drank several bowls of the cooled boiled water during the previous trips to transport firewood, leaving only about half of it in the pot.
The rabbit weighed five or six pounds. If it had accidentally run into and died because the pot was blocking its path, the pot should have been knocked away. But the pot was perfectly fine on the fire pit, only an inch or two off course.
Upon arriving, Shu Wanxiu felt she hadn't offended anyone.
But the fact that this rabbit caught Shu Shouyi's attention and died here was too coincidental and too strange.
Rather than feeling like she'd gotten a windfall, she was more suspicious that someone... had planned all of this.
With a sigh, Shu Wanxiu clapped her hands and stood up.
Apart from Wupai Village, they had nowhere else to stay, so she had to be careful and prepare for the worst.
The idea of eating alone was completely banished from her mind. She smiled brightly at Shu Shouyi and said, "Let's go down the mountain with Auntie."
Carrying a fat rabbit directly would still attract too much attention, so she didn't intend to make a big fuss.
So they took a bamboo basket off the wall of the main room, put the rabbit inside, and went down to the stream at the foot of the mountain. They then picked a lot of plantain to cover the rabbit completely.
On their way to the village chief Pang's house, they were lucky enough to see Chen Lian sitting alone at the entrance of the main room mending clothes.
The fence gate to the courtyard was open, but before stepping into the courtyard, Shu Wanxiu stood by the gate and called out, "Sister-in-law Pang!"
After patching a hole, Chen Lian spat on her hand to wet the thread, and looked up as she prepared to thread the needle again.
"Hey! It's Wanxiu! The sun is so strong, why are you out with your nephew? Come in and sit for a while!"
Invited, Shu Wanxiu led Shu Shouyi into the courtyard.
As they got closer, Shu Shouyi shyly looked up and greeted her, "Aunt Lian."
Chen Lian smiled and agreed, put away the clothes and needlework, got up and let them into the house, then brought them stools and poured them water.
As expected of Aunt Chen's niece, the two women shared the same enthusiasm for entertaining guests. No matter how much Shu Wanxiu said there was no need to pour water, Chen Lian still handed the water to them.
Upon learning that Village Chief Pang and Aunt Chen were both resting in their rooms, Shu Wanxiu did not rush to explain her purpose.
While chatting and drinking tea, Chen Lian finished mending all the clothes she had on hand, and then the village chief and his companion got up.
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