Standing in the kitchen, he leaned his whole body back a little, both hands still on the pot handle and the ladle. The old general turned his head toward the living room and said,
"I've still got a few more dishes. You all chat among yourselves for a bit—relax, don't stand on ceremony."
For a grandfather, seeing his granddaughter bring a crowd of friends her own age home to play might seem a simple thing to anyone else. To Shen Fengting, it was like a sweet dream that had suddenly dropped out of the sky.
Listen—there was his granddaughter laughing again. Why did this child love to laugh so much?
Whether the granddaughter who had depended on him alone all these years was truly happy or only acting, Shen Fengting could of course tell... Now he knew it was real, so he truly shouldn't keep her tied to the house anymore.
Thinking this, even the "Iron Chick" and "Rusty Sister" that came nearly every other sentence from outside no longer grated on the old general's ears. He knew perfectly well it was "rust," but he chose to hear it as "Xiu."
Xiu-mei would do. All these kids were only a year or two older, and every one of them treated his Xiuxiu like a little sister.
The old man turned back, and even the potatoes and red peppers in the pot looked endearing.
In the living room, the group laughed and horsed around for a while.
Han Qingyu brought up how he was fretting over that hundred thousand yuan.
"Isn't that easy enough?" He Tangtang said. "Ask Captain Lao to find two people, dress them a bit nicer, wait for a chance, and 'accidentally' drop a briefcase in front of your parents. Then sneak a look and make sure they pick it up. Done."
Simple, crude, and it had a point.
But Han Qingyu and Wen Jifei looked at each other.
"Won't work. Do it that way and Qingzi's parents will definitely chase them down. Even if they can't catch them, they'll probably turn it in at the police station," Wen Jifei said with certainty.
Liu Shiheng went blank for a moment. "A hundred thousand yuan is an insane amount of money where you're from, isn't it?! How are Qingzi's parents so... so simple and honest?"
He had struggled to find the adjective, and as he said it his gaze drifted over Han Qingyu. To himself he thought that, looking at Han Qingyu, it didn't seem like that at all.
"I wouldn't exactly call them all that simple and honest," Han Qingyu said with a little laugh of his own, explaining, "but I know they'd be afraid and wouldn't dare take it... And they just don't have that kind of appetite. There's already over ten thousand at home, and all they want is to live quietly. They'd be even less willing to get greedy."
"Oh." He Tangtang thought a moment, then said, "If it were my parents, they might pack up and move overnight."
Everyone burst out laughing.
In the end they still hadn't come up with a way. Wen Jifei turned and looked at Shen Yixiu, sitting in her own special seat with her chin propped on her hand, listening. "Hey, Iron Chick, what are you spacing out for? Go get the photo album."
"...Oh. All right." Shen Yixiu stood, went back to her room, and brought out the album she had prepared long before. She held it in her arms and did not offer it over.
She had prepared it ahead of time, yet like any ordinary girl with her photo album, she was glad to let people see it and uneasy at the same time, afraid of running into a sharp tongue and a bad verdict.
"Relax. Even if I have to go against my conscience, I'll praise you."
As he spoke, Wen Jifei reached out and simply snatched it away. The few of them had been privately debating what Rusty Sister might actually look like for quite a while now, dying of curiosity.
"Whoa!"
He opened it, and the first photo spread before them.
Watching, Shen Yixiu tensed all at once.
Thud. At the same time Shen Fengting set a plate of stir-fried shredded potatoes on the table, rubbed his hands together, and sat down at the side. Without anyone asking, he explained of his own accord, "The mutton soup is stewing."
In truth he had come out of worry, sitting down to hold the room in check. Let anyone dare say his granddaughter wasn't pretty.
"So cute." At least three people said it at once.
The little girl in the picture looked about five or six and still had a bit of baby fat. She wore a little shirt under a knitted vest, her hands on a red children's tricycle, standing before a bamboo grove putting out shoots.
"Then why do you look all puffed up and mad?"
"She's aggrieved, right? Look at her eyelashes—there's still water hanging on them."
"..."
"Is that so?" Shen Fengting leaned over for a look and said, "Oh, this one. Yes. She was playing at the time and didn't want her picture taken. They carried her over by force, and she cried... Xiuxiu was terribly fussy back then."
The old man recalled the moment the photo was taken, speaking in little fragments.
The photos that followed were much the same. Every time they turned to an interesting one, the old man joined in, adding a recollection and an explanation along with it.
And so Shen Yixiu seemed, amid her grandfather's memories and telling, to walk once more through her beautiful childhood.
Later, perhaps as the memories grew clearer, she herself would join in and say a few words. When grandfather and granddaughter remembered something differently, they would even puzzle over it and argue a little.
Then came the last photo.
It was in color, but the colors were somewhat flat, and it was a little blurry.
In the photo the girl stood in profile, her hair tied in a ponytail, the strands at her temples flying in the wind. She wore the combat uniform of the Sole Witness Legion, and a three-dimensional apparatus on her back as well.
The war box slung across her and the black blade both rose from the same shoulder, close beside the hanging ponytail.
The metal connecting straps were smoothed flat, not a thread out of place.
Because it was a side view, what showed were the tip of her nose, her neck, and her lips—not very clear, but she still looked rather spirited.
"Wait, didn't you say you'd never been tested for degree of fusion? How are you already in a combat uniform? How old were you when this was taken?"
"Eleven," Shen Yixiu said. "Almost twelve."
"It's fake. Her mother cut the clothes herself from ordinary cloth and imitated the metal connecting straps, and her father made the war box and the straight blade out of bamboo and painted them." Shen Fengting said, "Back then, because we'd raised her too delicately, we originally meant for her to wait a bit longer before going for testing and joining up. But Xiuxiu got impatient herself. She thought the outfit looked good and made a fuss, so there was nothing for it—we made this so she could have her picture taken."
It seemed the girl really had been spoiled and doted on back then.
And the story that followed, they already knew: Shen Yixiu had never been able to take the test, and had never truly worn this uniform.
For the first time, the mood dipped a little.
Wen Jifei drawled, "Bucket Girl... hey hey hey, what's this? Save me. Spare me. I was going to say you're pretty, and definitely very fair..."
Shen Yixiu had grabbed him and lifted him clean off the ground.
The girl was a wonder. Call her a lump of iron, say she rusted easily—none of that mattered. But the moment anything brushed the word "fat," she exploded on the spot.
"Of course she's fair. I said so ages ago. Raised this well, she might even be that prettiest kind of fair with pink showing through—the kind where you'd think one pinch and her skin would split and she'd bleed." He Tangtang went on in the same vein. "Hey hey hey, what—why am I in trouble too..."
He was lifted up as well.
Shen Yixiu's S19 mode switched on. One little friend in each hand, she tormented them without mercy.
Shen Fengting sat to the side with his mouth hanging open, beaming as he watched. Han Qingyu and Liu Shiheng laughed too. By the time the torment was over and she set them down, even Shen Yixiu herself couldn't help laughing.
The dishes were all set out on the table.
Shen Yixiu carried her own stool over and sat down. She glanced at her grandfather, then turned to the others at the table and said, "I'll just listen to you talk... You can smack your lips, you can go 'tsk-ah,' eat like it tastes good. Hehe."
Chapter 114