Tomorrow was the sixteenth day of the lunar month. The tide would probably reach its peak sometime after midnight, stay high for over an hour, and then begin to recede.
Ye Yaodong dozed for a while, then quietly climbed out of bed at around half past one.
He had tried to move as gently as possible, but the creaking bedboards still woke Lin Xiuqing. With a nursing baby beside her, she was a light sleeper to begin with. At the slightest sound, she would wake up and feel around to check on the baby.
But she could tell at once that this noise had not come from the baby.
Listening to the rustle of him getting dressed, she could tell he was not getting up to use the toilet, either.
"A-Dong? You're really taking A Yuan out to forage on the shore in the middle of the night?"
"We'll just have a look around and come back. Go back to sleep."
He was quite keen to see what they could find at night, too.
"A Yuan really deserves a beating. All he thinks about is playing. Playing all day isn't enough for him; he wants to go out at night, too."
"Don't blame him. I want to go myself. I've got nothing else to do anyway."
"It's the middle of the night. Everyone's sleeping. What do you mean, nothing else to do?"
"Shh, don't wake the baby. I'll be back in no time, okay?" After soothing her, he quickly slipped away.
He had just opened the bedroom door and was about to go next door to wake Lin Guangyuan when the door in front of him opened as well.
"Whoa!" Lin Guangyuan patted his chest and whispered, "You scared me!"
"Shh. Pretty alert, aren't you?"
"I've been half asleep this