Before long, Fan Wujiao finished cooking a large pot of millet porridge. He ladled it into several battered wooden bowls and carefully handed them around.
Du Yu took a look. This "millet porridge" looked very much like the millet porridge people drank in his own time, except that it contained plenty of grains he couldn't identify.
Du Yu noticed that Fan Wujiao had given himself the least millet and the most broth, while trying to put more millet into everyone else's bowls.
That tiny gesture told Du Yu that Fan Wujiao was a decent man.
Still, something felt odd. When he had first met Fan Wujiao, the man hadn't been a bad person, but he had always seemed very concerned with gains and losses. He was rather different now.
Du Yu accepted the wooden bowl and thanked Fan Wujiao. But he was already dead and couldn't feel hunger. He glanced at the Shame and Guilt Brothers, who were actually eating with relish.
"Auntie Zhang from South Ward Street gave us this millet. She's a good person. Let's go help her with some more chores when we have time," Xie Bi'an said between mouthfuls. "With war and chaos everywhere, we might get this meal and have no idea where the next one's coming from."
Du Yu had been about to try a mouthful, but after hearing that, he silently lifted his bowl and poured a little into each of theirs: Xie Bi'an's, Fan Wujiao's, Xiao Nian's, and the Shame and Guilt Brothers'.
"What's wrong, Ninth? Aren't you eating?" Xie Bi'an asked.
"I... I'm not very hungry. You go ahead." Du Yu sat to one side, watching them gulp down their porridge, an uncomfortable feeling stirring in his heart. In an age ravaged by war, ordinary people suffered the most. To them,