The Experiment Ends

Early the next morning, when Lin Er got up, Grandma Lin and Grandpa Lin were already threshing peanuts. Lin Huihui was nowhere to be seen either. Just like that, she was the last person in the family to get up.

After washing her face and brushing her teeth, she went to the kitchen. Breakfast hadn't been started yet. Lin Er checked the wall clock and began washing rice to cook.

Grandma Lin came over, surprised to see smoke rising from the chimney. When she came back and saw that Lin Er seemed to know what she was doing, she let her carry on.

Xiao Wang finally received another boxed meal that day. At the same time, the clothes Lin Er had transfigured for the first time returned to normal.

Three days. She figured the longest a Transfiguration spell could last was three days.

Time-limited spells like this could all last three days at most.

She dug out a spell she had studied for a long time but hadn't needed for the time being.

The Undetectable Extension Charm.

Who among those who had read novels hadn't hoped to have a portable space of their own?

Although the Undetectable Extension Charm had a time limit and couldn't keep things fresh, it could hold living creatures. There had once been a Hufflepuff who liked keeping Fantastic Beasts in a suitcase.

That suitcase used the Undetectable Extension Charm.

Lin Er went to the new house on the pretext of doing homework. Grandma Lin didn't stop her, only saying one thing.

"Come back and do your homework after you've played for a while!"

That was how little she was trusted!

She turned right after leaving the house, walked past a few doors, then doubled back. Great-uncle's door was open. She went in and, as expected, found only Great-aunt sitting by the door smoking.

At this time, every household was busy with peanuts. Grandma Lin had envied Great-aunt's life of leisure all her life: she had never once worked in the fields since marrying into the family, and after her son married, she had never once set foot in the kitchen.

"Great-aunt!"

When Lin Er entered, Great-aunt took a close look at her face. Only after seeing no wounds did she ask, "Xiao Er, is something the matter?"

Lin Er nodded and pointed at the broken net in the corner of the courtyard.

"Great-aunt, could I use that fishing net?"

The net was too badly torn to mend. It had been put there to keep the chickens out, for fear they'd come over from upstairs and poop in the house. After all, the houses here were built in a continuous row.

There were stairs in the courtyard leading up to the terrace. The terraces were separated by waist-high walls of openwork decorative bricks; all it took to get next door was a step over one.

Sometimes, when she came home from school without a key, she used to climb over from Great-uncle's house.

"Want to play house and cook? How much do you need? I'll cut you a piece!"

Lin Er hadn't expected Great-aunt to be so accommodating. In her memories, because Grandma Lin didn't get along very well with her, and because she smoked, the children of Lin Er's generation had never dared get too close to her.

Great-aunt was the sort of person who was clearly raised in a well-off family. She played cards and smoked, and the cigarettes she smoked were women's cigarettes, the kind Lin Er had never seen in the countryside.

Her hair was always combed into a little bun at the back of her head and held firmly in place with a silver hairpin and old-fashioned clips. Not a strand was ever out of place. She was unlike any other rural grandmother Lin Er had ever seen.

Except at New Year, Lin Er rarely spoke to Great-aunt, even though she did speak to Great-uncle. She was afraid, though she didn't know what she was afraid of.

Having been given a piece of fishing net outright, Lin Er thanked her and walked away in a bit of a daze.

Memory and reality really were very different!

Hubei might not have much else, but everyone agreed it had plenty of lakes. Their village had only two lakes, but it had nine ponds.

There were ponds both in front of and behind her family's new house. To the right was a peach and plum orchard, and beyond that was another pond. There was certainly no shortage of water.

The fishing net was the fine-meshed kind used to catch fish in rivers. She used it to fence off a corner of the pond. She didn't have much hope; the idea had simply occurred to her.

When she reached the new house, the upstairs storage room was a treasure trove. She took away the cardboard box and cloth cover to reveal her mother's dowry underneath: a sewing machine.

It was a very old model but had been kept in excellent condition. She tipped the sewing machine up from beneath the wooden board, fitted the belt and thread, then brought out a pile of brightly colored clothes and picked through them on an empty bed.

She hadn't expected to get money to buy clothes. To save on spells, it was simpler to alter them herself.

Summer clothes were simple, and she wasn't particular about the cut. A basic short-sleeved shirt would do.

There was, for example, a pair of very loose white bell-bottoms made of thin, light fabric. She cut off the legs and spread them out; each was just big enough to trace half a short-sleeved shirt.

Then she traced and cut out the pieces from the two legs, finished the edges, and sewed them together. She was rusty at first, and the machine stitching came out a little crooked, but she soon got the hang of it.

She was skinny and flat-chested now, so she didn't need to account for bust or waist measurements. Once the two pieces of cloth were sewn together, she could wear it. Since the bell-bottoms were narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, it even had a bit of a ruffled look.

Having successfully made one garment, she took apart several more. In all, she ended up with five short-sleeved shirts and three pairs of cropped pants. For the elastic, she used the jump rope from her pencil case.

She could tell she had taken good care of it before. It was still quite clean and hadn't broken. Maybe it was also because no one played with her.

Now it was just right for the waistbands.

She cast the Undetectable Extension Charm on the old schoolbag she had replaced earlier. Even with all eight garments inside, it didn't look much different.

After cleaning up the scraps of fabric on the floor, Lin Er still couldn't understand why her grandma and mother had never thought to alter the clothes.

They always thought the clothes were perfectly good. She might not be able to wear them now, but she could when she grew up, and cutting them would be a waste.

But who wanted to wear old clothes all their life?

In the end, they only piled up in the storage room. Fabric that was suitable was pasted onto shoe soles, while the rest was stuffed into sacks and piled up here as rubbish.

With the clothing problem solved, Lin Er went to the pond and lifted the fishing net for a look. Unexpectedly, a carp as long as a chopstick had been caught in it.

People here said carp was a trigger food, so they didn't eat it much except at New Year. But given the meals her family was having these days, Lin Er wasn't picky. She took it out of the net along with several palm-sized crucian carp and brought them home.

Grandma Lin didn't say anything. She simply cooked lunch herself and made a plate of red-braised fish with green peppers.

Lin Er suddenly seemed to understand something, especially when she watched Grandma Lin, as usual, nag her younger sister for coming back late for the meal.

That afternoon, Lin Er ran off again. Lin Huihui followed her the whole way and refused to leave, so Lin Er took fifty cents out of her pocket and gave it to her.

"I saved this from my allowance last week. Go buy yourself some spicy strips, and stop following me!"

Lin Huihui hesitated for a moment. When Lin Er made a move to take the money back, she immediately snatched it and ran.

"Sis, just one pack! I'm not bringing it back to share with you!"

Lin Er waved a hand, black lines all over her forehead.

"No need. But don't make me call you to dinner again tonight, or I won't give you any more money!"

"I know, I know!"

With her little shadow gone, Lin Er went to check the fishing net again. There were only three small crucian carp.

She took them out and put them in a plastic bag filled with water, then reached into her schoolbag and put them inside. The space didn't reject them in the slightest.

Once Lin Huihui had run out of sight, Lin Er shouldered her old schoolbag and went to the fields, a small hoe in one hand and a basket in the other. No one who saw her thought it strange.

The peanut harvest had just finished, and plenty of peanuts had been left in the fields. Many people sent their children to pick them up, and some elderly grandmothers came out to gather them too.

Lin Er had come for the peanuts as well. She had considered simply stealing electricity from home, but in the end she gave up on the idea.