Torrential rain poured down outside the window as though someone were emptying buckets. The typhoon howled outside, growing fiercer and fiercer, roaring like a wounded beast as it rampaged everywhere. The doors and windows rattled all night.
The children were each more excited than the next, and none of them wanted to sleep.
Ye Chengyang climbed onto a stool to play with the candle on the table, capping all ten fingertips with wax. He hissed through his teeth, saying how hot it was, and muttered to himself, though no one knew what he was saying.
Once all ten fingers wore wax caps, he kept flexing them to crack the wax, then dipped them into the melted wax again, playing the same game over and over without ever getting enough.
Meanwhile, Ye Chenghu pressed himself against the window, staring into the pitch darkness outside. With the wind howling, he joined in with eerie whooshing noises, shouting, "The ghosts are coming! The ghosts are coming!"
Lin Guangyuan happily kept somersaulting on the bed and doing handstands. He was far too excited.
"Cousin, your house is great. It actually doesn't leak. Whenever there's a typhoon and heavy rain, our house leaks like a sieve. When I was little, I could only sleep on the table in the main room, and my mother sat beside it watching over me all night. Now that I'm bigger, I have to leave that spot for the youngest."
"Ours was the same! Whenever it rained, we took out all the bowls and put them on the beds to catch the water. This is a new house, so it doesn't leak. You can go home and tell your dad to build a new house. Then it won't leak when it's windy and rainy anymore."
"But our family doesn't have