"Call me brother!"
"Brother... Brother Zhijun!"
Suddenly, Aunt Zhou's voice came from the kitchen again.
"Zhijun, why aren't you coming to drink the soup? It's gone cold!"
"Oh!" Zhou Zhijun responded.
...
Chuntao returned home. Xiaohong had already warmed the soup and, hearing her come in, said, "Sister-in-law, have some soup!"
After drinking the soup, Chuntao planned to make a bed on the floor in the empty room left by Liu Cuilan, but Wang Xiaohong saw her.
She knew Chuntao felt wronged, but as a younger sister, she still hoped Chuntao could reconcile with her brother. So she persuaded, "Sister-in-law, my brother was in the wrong. The way he is now is heaven's punishment for him...
He told me he's filled with regret, that if he could do it all over again, he would never have acted that way...
He knows he was wrong. Please forgive him!" As she said this last sentence, feeling guilty herself, she inwardly cursed herself, but for her brother's sake, she said it against her conscience.
She took the burlap sack from Chuntao's hands, folded it, and placed it against the wall.
Chuntao and Wang Jieshi had only held a ceremony; they hadn't registered their marriage nor slept together. When it came down to it, she had only stayed for her brother's sake.
They were merely "strangers" under the same roof.
But afraid Wang Xiaohong might overthink it, she still went to Wang Jieshi's room.
That night, Chuntao lay on the edge of the bed, her heart utterly calm.
Late into the night, all she could hear were the chirping of insects outside and Wang Jieshi's labored, uneven breathing.
Chuntao knew he wasn't asleep either. She turned over, facing the window.
Looking out through a hole in the window, the outside was pitch black, just like her current state of mind, not a glimmer of light to be seen.
"Chuntao, I'm sorry! I know you hate me. I hate myself too, I wish I could just die..."
Suddenly, Wang Jieshi's voice sounded beside her ear, jolting Chuntao back to reality.
"Let's not talk about the past anymore! Go to sleep!" Her voice was very soft, but Wang Jieshi heard it clearly.
They spoke no more, but neither fell asleep. The room was terrifyingly quiet, filled only with the sound of each other's uneven breathing.
Also unable to sleep was Zhou Zhijun. He lay in bed, clutching that piece of coarse homespun cloth in his hand.
He abruptly sat up, jumped out of bed, grabbed the coarse hemp rope hanging on the wall, wound it around his hand a couple of times, his eyes bloodshot.
Zhou Zhijun's mind was filled with Chuntao, constantly thinking about that incident. His heart ached, and he couldn't muster any energy for anything.
The job of building the wall for Old Man Zhang's nephew had been agreed upon long ago. He'd already postponed it for a day and couldn't delay it further.
Early in the morning after breakfast, as Zhou Zhijun was about to leave on his bicycle, he felt something bulky in his pocket and instinctively reached in to feel.
He pulled out a soft, bunched-up piece of fabric. Pulling out a corner to look, it was exactly the bellyband he had put on Chuntao the day before.
This silly girl, why did she put it back in his pocket? Zhou Zhijun's expression turned a few degrees colder, his gaze involuntarily drifting towards Chuntao's yard.
Chuntao was struggling to lift a bucket of slop to pour into the pig trough.
As she turned, her gaze inadvertently swept in his direction.
Their eyes met, and her little face instantly flushed red. Avoiding his gaze, she quickly carried the bucket into the kitchen.
Late last night, unable to sleep, Zhou Zhijun had groped in the dark to the wheat straw stack west of the village and hollowed out a niche inside.
Zhou Zhijun went to work on the construction job and didn't return until after dark. As he rode his bike to the village entrance,
he saw several men and women holding their rice bowls, squatting by the base of a wall eating and discussing something in low voices.
So engrossed were they in their conversation, they didn't notice Zhou Zhijun walking up to them.
"My goodness! That Li Chuntao, she looks so shy and timid, but who would have thought she's not a decent one!"
"What? What happened?"
A woman lowered her voice, glanced around at the others, and whispered, "I heard yesterday she went to cut grass and didn't come back until it was pitch dark, and she was wearing Zhou Zhijun's shirt?"
