Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
“Oh, all right…” Zhou Yue was surprised by his comment, and she nodded reflexively.
Standing at the bottom of the staircase, Cheng Zhiyan opened his mouth as if to say something further. In the end, he merely shook his head and turned around to go back to his room.
…
From that day onward, Cheng Zhiyan became Xiaotu’s biggest concern during all her waking hours.
“Mommy, can I go to Brother Orange Juice’s house to play?”
“Mommy, has Brother Orange Juice gotten up from bed yet?”
“Mommy, is Brother Orange Juice at home today?”
The first question she asked every single day after opening her eyes was about Cheng Zhiyan.
Every day, amused, Zhou Ling helped Xiaotu get dressed, follow her morning routines, and then carry her breakfast over to Cheng Zhiyan’s home to feed her. Xiaotu had to be able to see Cheng Zhiyan or she wouldn’t eat. If Zhou Ling tried to get her to eat at home, all Xiaotu would say was I don’t want to eat…
After breakfast was finished, Zhou Ling and Zhou Yue would rush out the door to go to work.
Xiaotu’s father was a soldier, and so he could only come home to see them about once or twice a month, as was normal in the military. Cheng Zhiyan’s father now worked in another area because he’d been transferred and could only return on the weekends.
Therefore, after both their mothers had hurried off to work, only Cheng Zhiyan and Xiaotu remained at home.
Because of this arrangement, Cheng Zhiyan had to be responsible for Xiaotu all day long. This meant that Xiaotu followed him around all day. When he did his homework, she sat down on the floor under his desk to play with puzzles. When he practiced the piano, she sprawled across the couch to listen to him play. When he drew pictures, he gave her a piece of paper to doodle on as well.
As time went by, people in the neighborhood came to know these two children well. In the beginning, people had had the impression that Xiaotu was Cheng Zhiyan’s little sister. Only with time did they realize that these two children weren’t related at all.
Soon, people in the neighborhood also started to tease them, “Yan Yan, bringing your wife out to play again?”
“Xiaotu, don’t you think your husband is very handsome? Who’s more handsome, your husband or your father?”
“Yan Yan, tell your mother to give you a younger sister as adorable as Xiaotu. How does that sound?”
Every time someone said one of these teasing things, Xiaotu would screech at the top of her lungs, “No, no, no! Brother Orange Juice belongs to me only! And, he is my boyfriend, not my husband. I am still too young. I can’t get married yet.”
“Ha, ha, ha…”
The people who teased them would always burst out laughing upon hearing this.
Cheng Zhiyan would frown, because, unlike Xiaotu, he always knew that these adults were teasing them and therefore their words weren’t to be taken seriously.
As a result, every time someone started teasing them he would grab Xiaotu’s little hand, glance at them wordlessly, and then walk straight away.
In reality, these daily occurrences weren’t too great of a concern to him. The real issue was…trying to get Xiaotu to sleep every day.
At first, he’d thought that getting Xiaotu to fall asleep would be like it had been on the first day he’d met her. He thought that she’d play by herself and gradually fall asleep after feeling tired. However, reality had proved that he had been too naive.
From the very first day, Xiaotu had squeezed herself into Cheng Zhiyan’s arms and made all sorts of demands. She made him sing to her, tell stories to her, and make powdered milk for her.
Yet out of all the demands, Cheng Zhiyan felt that singing and making milk were the easiest ones. The one that gave him the biggest headache was storytelling.
This wasn’t due to the storytelling itself, but the fact that she had particularly specific requirements for her stories.
For example, when he was about to tell her the story of the “Three Little Pigs”, as she was listening, she would make certain demands such as, “I want to hear the story of the Red Little Pig.”