"What nonsense are you spouting? Talking rubbish all day long. At your age, do you still think you're a baby? No wonder you're always so ridiculous..."
Ye Yaodong grabbed a length of rope and pulled it taut toward his father to demonstrate. "What did I say? I've been alive for over three hundred months. That's true! Doesn't being so serious all day make you uncomfortable? You're just pretending to be proper! Can't a man even talk?"
The veins in Father Ye's forehead throbbed as he listened. He really wanted to drag him over and give him a beating.
Spare the rod for three days, and he'd be up on the roof tearing off tiles.
"If you're working, just work. Why all the chatter? Hurry up and get this fish into the water so we can head back. If the wind and waves pick up, the boat will be hard to handle."
"Aren't I figuring out how to tie it up right now?"
After some thought, Ye Yaodong waded into the water, planning to loop one end of the rope around the whale shark near its pectoral fins. It took a tremendous effort before he and his father barely managed to secure it.
Throughout all this, the whale shark remained motionless. It seemed to be breathing out more than it breathed in.
Just standing in the sun on shore for a while had left him terribly thirsty and drenched in sweat.
"Tying it like this should be all right, shouldn't it?"
"What if the pull is too strong and the rope strangles it?"
"Probably not, right? It's only around its pectoral fins and the front half of its body, and it's so big. If you tied a rope around my chest and rode a horse ahead to pull me along, it