Chapter 4
The night passed gently for once.
No restless shifting, no hunger gnawing him awake in the small hours. Chen Guowei surfaced from sleep slowly, the way you do when your body has actually been allowed to rest, and lay still for a moment listening to the sounds of the house around him.
Giggling. Small feet padding quickly across the floor, then stopping, then running again. Lihua was already in full motion, whatever game she was playing requiring apparently a great deal of back and forth between rooms. From somewhere deeper in the house came the low comfortable sound of his mother and Xiaomei talking, punctuated by the soft rhythm of needlework — the particular quiet industry of women mending things.
They had let him sleep.
He sat up slowly and reached into his pocket out of habit. The remaining money was still there, folded exactly as he'd left it. He sat with it in his palm for a moment, looking at it, and let himself smile.
He was still sitting there when the door burst open.
Lihua came through it like a small storm, her face split into the widest grin he'd seen on her yet, cheeks flushed from running. She pulled up short when she saw he was already awake, and then the grin somehow got wider. She crossed the room in four steps and wrapped both arms around his leg with the full conviction of someone who has found exactly the person they were looking for.
"Brother!"
And then the smell reached him. Warm, rich, drifting in through the open door from the kitchen — something with egg in it, and the last traces of yesterday's lard still living in the walls of the pot. Such a simple thing. Such an ordinary smell in any other home.
Something sharp moved through his chest.
This is all it took. One meal. A few eggs. The smell of something real cooking on the stove. That was the distance between an ordinary morning and this — his sister holding his leg like he might disappear, giggling with a happiness that was completely unguarded and completely genuine.
He looked down at the top of her head and made a decision without ceremony or drama, the way the most important decisions sometimes get made. Quietly. Finally.
No matter what it takes. This family. That's it. That's everything.
He reached down and grabbed her around the waist, hoisting her up in one motion.
"Eh — what's this? Why so happy this early?"
She squealed and laughed, then suddenly remembered herself and clapped both hands over her mouth, eyes going wide and darting toward the door. A beat of exaggerated caution. Then she leaned in close to his ear and whispered with great seriousness, as though delivering classified information:
"Mom put eggs in the food today." A pause for effect. "She gave me and Xiaomei one to share." Another pause. "Yours is in the kitchen."
She pulled back with the satisfied expression of someone who has just delivered wonderful news and knows it.
Chen Guowei laughed — a real one, from the chest. "Is that right. Well then, let's go see this egg."
She clung to his back as he carried her out into the main room.
Lin Yue and Xiaomei were seated together near the window, a pile of clothes between them in various states of repair, needles moving with practiced efficiency. The morning light came in thin and pale but it was enough, and the two of them had arranged themselves to make the most of it. Xiaomei looked up first.
"Brother, you're awake." She was already setting down her mending and rising. "Sit down, let me get your food—"
"No need." He shook his head, setting Lihua down. "I have hands and feet. Sit."
His mother began to push herself up from her seat.
"Mom." He gave her a look. "Sit down."
She gave him a look back — the particular look of a woman who has been taking care of people since before this boy was born and is not entirely convinced he knows what he's doing. But she sat.
He went to the kitchen keeping up a loose thread of conversation through the doorway — something his mother said about the neighbor's rooster, something Xiaomei added that made Lihua giggle. Normal sounds. Morning sounds. He stood at the stove and lifted the lid from the pot and the warmth rose to meet his face.
Two eggs sat on top of the porridge. Whole, carefully preserved, set aside from the family's portion.
He stared at them for a moment.
"Mom," he called through.
"Mm?"
"Did everyone already eat?"
A brief pause. "We ate already. Those are for you — you worked hard yesterday, you need the energy."
He stood there holding the lid. He thought about saying something and then decided actions were faster than arguments. He picked up one egg, walked back to the main room, and held it out toward his mother.
"Next time, don't do that. In this family, from now on, whatever we eat we eat together. If I eat rice, everyone eats rice. Here—"
"We can save it for tomorrow—" she started, reaching out.
He pulled the egg back the moment her fingers were close, broke it cleanly in two, and pressed half into Lihua's open mouth before anyone could object — she accepted it with the pure instinct of a child who does not question good fortune — and held the other half out to Xiaomei.
Lin Yue stared at him.
Then she leaned over and hit him on the shoulder, not hard, the way you hit someone when you can't decide whether to laugh or scold them. "What a wastrel. They already had some."
"I know." He was already heading back to the kitchen, completely unrepentant. "That's fine. Look at Lihua — she's all skin. She needs it more than the pot does."
"Chen Guowei—"
"Mom." He reappeared in the kitchen doorway with his bowl. "It's okay. We have a little now. Let's actually enjoy a little."
She pressed her lips together. The battle was clearly lost and she knew it. She settled back into her seat, shaking her head in the way that means what am I going to do with this child — which is its own kind of love.
He sat at the small table and ate.
Around him the house was alive in a way it hadn't been in a long time. Lihua circled the room on whatever errand her imagination had assigned her, narrating pieces of it to no one in particular. Xiaomei and their mother picked up their mending again, voices low and comfortable, occasionally breaking into laughter over something small. The morning light moved across the floor. Outside, the village was waking up in its usual way — distant sounds, a dog somewhere, the wind across the rooftops.
He sat in the middle of it and ate his egg and his porridge and didn't rush any of it.
After breakfast he washed his own bowl, wiped down the stove, and told his mother he was going to tidy up the shed a bit more. She nodded without looking up from her mending. Lihua offered to help and was gently redirected by Xiaomei before she could follow him out.
The yard was quiet in the mid-morning stillness.
He slipped into the shed and pulled the door shut behind him, standing for a moment while his eyes adjusted to the dimmer light. Everything was exactly as he'd left it — tools stacked neatly against the wall, old baskets arranged by size, the floor swept clean. And there in the back, half in shadow, the stone slab sitting flush with the earth like it had always been there and always would be.
He checked through the gaps in the shed walls. The yard was empty. His mother's voice drifted faintly from inside the house, answered by Xiaomei's.
He stepped forward, and placed his foot on the stone.