Over the next two days, Chen Shi'an and the three girls got busy again.
First came the deep cleaning. They did not do that themselves; Li Wanyin hired professional cleaners to give the place a thorough clean, including washing all the furniture and appliances, such as the air conditioners and range hood.
While their new home was being cleaned, their big shopping trip was underway too.
Chen Shi'an practically became an all-purpose chauffeur, driving the newly re-registered Off-Road Vehicle and taking the three girls between Yanjing's shopping malls and furniture centers.
Curtains, bedding, lamps, cookware, houseplants, decorative paintings... The shopping list grew longer, the trunk grew fuller, and their new place felt more and more like home.
Wen Zhixia decorated her room just the way she liked it. She replaced the curtains with pale yellow cotton-linen ones and chose a soft, powder-blue four-piece bedding set with little flowers and stripes. She also piled four pillows at the head of the bed. Do not ask why she needed so many pillows; sometimes pillows were not necessarily for resting your head on. They could also be hugged or used to support your lower back...
Wen Zhixia had also brought along the sensitive plant Chen Shi'an had given her, carrying it all the way from Cloud Perch to Yanjing. It had sat in the back seat, getting watered every so often, and now it had become a capital-city plant too...
Lin Meng Qiu's room was much more simply furnished than Wen Zhixia's. Her curtains were off-white, and the sensitive plant she had brought from Cloud Perch also sat on her windowsill. She bought a large full-length mirror to put beside the wardrobe. Sometimes, looking in the mirror and so on, that intense shame brought on by the visual stimulation really was something special,