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Koukou rarely cried. Even when he did, it was usually fake wailing without tears, mostly to get Xu Han to hold him. At such a young age, he was already particularly crafty.

But if he truly cried tears, it meant he had really been wronged or frightened.

"What's wrong with Koukou? Did he cry?"

"It was my fault. I gave him a scare just now," Grandma Qiao said with a guilty expression. "I took him out for a walk, and somehow we wandered near the school. I don't know what happy occasion the school had, but they suddenly started setting off firecrackers. I wasn't prepared, and Koukou got frightened by them."

So that was what happened. Xu Han knew firecrackers weren't banned in the village, so there was nothing to be done about it. She hurriedly 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 he saw Xu Han holding him, he happily raised his little arms for her to carry him.

Seeing that he was fine, Xu Han didn't dwell on it. She carried him inside to feed him. Koukou had a great appetite. Milk alone was no longer enough for him now, and he needed some supplementary food too. 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. Even he himself couldn't escape it.

At noon, Xu Han was peeling taro by the sink. Auntie Li had given them a piece of homemade cured pork yesterday, just right for making cured pork taro rice. Just then, someone knocked on their courtyard gate.

"Who is it?" Xu Han asked, pausing her work.

"It's me, Auntie Zhu." Auntie Zhu's voice came from outside. Xu Han washed her hands and went to open the door.

When Xu Han opened it, she saw Auntie Zhu standing outside, panting heavily. Xu Han froze. "What's wrong? Is something urgent?"

Auntie Zhu leaned against the doorframe and spoke only after catching her breath. "It's like this. Our principal asked you to pick a basket of whatever cauliflower, tomatoes, and radishes you have in your garden and bring them over right away. They have to look good and fresh. It doesn't matter if they're a little expensive."

"Oh, all right. I'll get a basket." Xu Han went inside and brought out a basket Grandma Qiao had woven herself. As she headed to the vegetable garden with Auntie Zhu, she asked, "Why do you suddenly need vegetables? Is someone coming?"

"Here's the thing," Auntie 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 wealthy gentleman came in person. Afterward, he ate in our school cafeteria. But he wouldn't touch the fancy fish and meat. Instead, he ate the vegetables your family had sent over and said they were especially delicious. He kept praising how naturally tasty things from the countryside were."

"Is that so?" Xu Han smiled. Their family's vegetables really did appeal to everyone, young and old alike.

Logically speaking, anything out of the ordinary was suspicious. They grew out-of-season vegetables that tasted so good; the villagers should have suspected they had used some special method.

But Xu Han had always insisted that she grew vegetables scientifically. For some reason, people here had an inexplicable faith in science, so they didn't have much suspicion about it.

Even if some people truly had doubts, they saw that Xu Han's family never bought fertilizer or pesticides, and their vegetable-growing methods were ordinary enough, without anything unusual. They couldn't find anything wrong, and the family ate the vegetables themselves, so people gradually stopped finding it strange.

"Exactly. The principal thought that since he donated a building to us, we ought to give him something in return. Since he likes them, we'll send him a basket of vegetables."

"...That was certainly a modest gift with great sentiment."

The two of them worked together and picked plenty of fresh vegetables from the garden. They rinsed the dirt off the cherry radishes and white radishes with water from the nearby man-made irrigation channel before placing them inside.

The basket was full, with red, white, and green intermingling. It looked beautiful and fresh. Auntie Zhu carried it away, basket and all.

Though Koukou was young and forgetful, and had long since forgotten being frightened by the firecrackers, that didn't mean it hadn't harmed him. When it was time for his noon nap, he suddenly started crying. Xu Han hurriedly soothed him, and he quieted down in his mother's arms.

But that afternoon, he suddenly began crying his heart out without stopping. Nothing could calm him down. Later, he even developed a high fever that rose all the way to 40 degrees.

This terrified Xu Han and Grandma Qiao. Xu Han got on the electric scooter while Grandma Qiao sat behind her holding Koukou, and they hurried to the town hospital.

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 Grandma Qiao to cool him down physically. After all that fuss, the fever finally subsided.

When they left the hospital, Xu Han looked at the sleeping Koukou with lingering fear and realized that her hands were still trembling.

That sudden scare had truly frightened her.

Although she was only a bargain-bin mother who had taken over halfway through, they had spent five months together day and night. She would have grown attached even to a child picked up off the roadside, much less one she had gone through so much trouble to give birth to.

She had long since stopped caring whose son he was supposed to be.

"Grandma, hold Koukou here for a while. I'll go get the scooter."

"There's a pretty good snack shop up ahead. Let's eat something before we go."

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 them over, 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 a man's cool voice came from behind her. "Qiao Wanqing."

Xu Han: "..."

Well then, the villain's father was back.

This plot made no sense! Wasn't this guy supposed to have exited the story already?

Don't tell her that her bad attitude toward him had successfully caught this domineering CEO's attention.

She refused to accept such a melodramatic development, all right?

"Why are you here again? Still haven't given up?"

Xu Han's tone was poor as she locked her scooter. Looking up, she watched him get out of the car and inadvertently caught sight of its emblem: a pair of dazzling wings with a B in the middle.

Unfortunately, this was the countryside, where people weren't very worldly and didn't understand what impressive meaning a car with a B between a pair of big wings carried. Most of them were instead secretly sizing up the strikingly attractive man and woman.

Rankings

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Transmigrated into a Book

Sweet Romance

Sweetness Is Justice