Koukou rarely cried. Even when he did, it was usually fake wailing without tears, mostly to get Xu Han to hold him. He was quite the little schemer for his age.
But if he actually cried tears, it meant he had truly been wronged or frightened.
"What happened to Koukou? Did he cry?"
"It was my fault. I startled him just now," Grandma Qiao said with a guilty look. "I took him for a walk, and somehow we ended up near the school. I don't know what good news the school had, but they suddenly started setting off firecrackers. I wasn't prepared, and Koukou got scared."
So that was what happened. Xu Han knew firecrackers weren't banned in the village, so there was nothing to be done. She quickly gathered Koukou into her arms. "Don't be scared, Koukou. Mommy's holding you."
Koukou was still too young to remember things. He had already forgotten about it by now, and when Xu Han held him, he happily raised his little arms for her to carry him.
Seeing that he was fine, Xu Han did not take it to heart. She carried him inside to feed him. Koukou had a good appetite. Milk alone was no longer enough for him now, and he needed some supplementary food as well. His favorite was the vegetable puree Xu Han made for him.
...In the end, it was because the vegetables watered with his pee tasted good. Not even he could escape it.
At noon, Xu Han was scraping taro skins by the sink. Aunt Li had given them a piece of homemade cured pork yesterday, just enough for a pot of cured pork taro rice. Just then, someone knocked on their courtyard gate.
"Who is it?" Xu Han asked, pausing her work.
"It's me, Aunt Zhu," Aunt Zhu called from outside. Xu Han washed her hands and went to open the door.
When Xu Han opened the gate, she found Aunt Zhu standing outside, panting heavily. Xu Han froze. "What happened? Is something urgent?"
Aunt Zhu leaned against the doorframe and only spoke after catching her breath. "It's like this. Our principal asked you to pick a basket of whatever cauliflower, tomatoes, radishes, and such you have in your garden and bring them over right away. They have to look good and fresh. It's fine if they cost a little more."
"Oh, all right. I'll get a basket." Xu Han went inside and brought out a basket Grandma Qiao had woven herself. She headed to the vegetable patch with Aunt Zhu and asked, "Why do you suddenly need vegetables? Is someone coming?"
"It's like this," Aunt Zhu said with a smile. "A rich man from the city donated a teaching building to our Dongyang Elementary School. They held some kind of donation ceremony today, and that rich gentleman came in person. Afterward, he ate in our school cafeteria. He wouldn't touch any of the meat and fish, but he kept eating the vegetables your family sent over. He said they were especially delicious and kept praising how pure and natural things from the countryside tasted."
"Really?" Xu Han smiled. Their vegetables really were suitable for all ages.
Ordinarily, anything too different from the norm would be seen as suspicious. They grew out-of-season vegetables that tasted so good; the villagers should have suspected them of using some kind of trick.
But Xu Han had always insisted that she farmed scientifically. For some reason, people here seemed to have blind faith in science, so they did not question it much.
Even if some people did have doubts, they saw that Xu Han's family did not usually buy fertilizer or pesticides, and that they grew vegetables in perfectly ordinary ways. There was nothing unusual to be found. Since they ate the vegetables themselves too, people gradually stopped finding it strange.
"Exactly. The principal thought that since he donated us a building, we ought to give him something in return. Since he likes them, we can send him a basket of vegetables."
"..."
That was certainly a modest gift with profound sentiment.
Working together, the two of them picked plenty of fresh vegetables from the garden. They rinsed the cherry radishes and white radishes, still covered in dirt, in the nearby man-made irrigation canal and placed them in the basket.
The basket was filled to the brim, red, white, and green mingling together. It looked beautiful and fresh. Aunt Zhu carried it away along with the basket.
Though Koukou was young and forgetful, and had long forgotten being frightened by the firecrackers, that did not mean he had not been harmed by it. When it was time for his nap at noon, he suddenly started crying. Xu Han hurriedly soothed him, and Koukou quieted down in his mother's arms.
But in the afternoon, he suddenly began crying heart-wrenchingly without stopping. Nothing could soothe him. Later, he even developed a high fever that rose all the way to forty degrees Celsius.
This terrified both Xu Han and Grandma Qiao. Xu Han got on the electric scooter, while Grandma Qiao sat behind her holding Koukou, and they rushed to the hospital in Town.
The doctor was quite calm. Seeing Koukou's little face flushed red from the fever, he gave him a fever-reducing injection and told Xu Han and the others to cool him down physically. After all that fuss, the fever finally subsided.
As they left the hospital, Xu Han looked at the sleeping Koukou with lingering fear and realized that her hands were still shaking.
That sudden scare had truly frightened her badly.
Although she was only his bargain-bin mother halfway through the journey, they had spent five months together day and night. Even if she had picked up a baby by the roadside, she would have grown attached to him, let alone after she had gone through the hardship of giving birth to him.
She had long since stopped caring whose son he supposedly was.
"Grandma, hold Koukou and wait here for a bit. I'll go get the scooter."
"There's a good snack shop up ahead. Let's get something to eat before we leave."
Seeing that Xu Han looked unwell, Grandma Qiao worried about her and suggested that she take a moment to recover.
Xu Han had no objections. She rode over with the two of them, and just as she parked outside that snack shop, a car horn sounded behind her.
Xu Han thought her scooter was blocking someone's way and was about to move it farther in when she heard a man's cool voice behind her. "Qiao Wanqing."
Xu Han: "..."
Well, the villain's father was back again.
This plot made no sense! Wasn't this guy supposed to have exited the story already?
Don't tell her that treating him badly had really caught the attention of this
overbearing CEO
and that this was how the cliché was going to develop. She refused, okay?
"Why are you here again? Still not giving up?"
Xu Han did not sound pleased. After locking her scooter, she looked up to see him getting out of the car and accidentally caught sight of its emblem—a pair of dazzlingly bright wings.
But this was the countryside, where people had not seen much of the world. They did not understand what was so impressive about a car with a B between a pair of huge wings. Most of them were secretly studying the exceptionally attractive man and woman instead.