W Chapter 10

Chapter 10: Sewing

Ling Xing got up not long after Shen Lai did.

Shen Chengshan and the others, like yesterday, went into the mountains early to collect firewood to sell. Only Shen Xiaochun and Shen Xiaxia were in the kitchen, holding ceramic bowls and drinking thin porridge.

The first thing Shen Lai did upon entering the kitchen was check the flour in the wooden cabinet. Finding that the amount hadn’t changed, his smile deepened.

After carefully closing the cabinet and re-tying the cloth strip, he asked Xiaochun, “Where did my mother go?”

Shen Xiaochun had dried porridge at the corner of her mouth. She lifted her face from the ceramic bowl, “Grandma said she went to Wang, the Ge’er, to buy tofu.”

Tofu cost five copper coins per catty. Buying one catty to cook with some vegetable leaves was enough for the Shen family’s ten-odd members to eat a meal.

Speaking of tofu, Shen Lai also wanted some. It would be great to buy it in the dead of winter. You could just cut it and put it in a winnowing basket, leave it outside to freeze, and make frozen tofu. Frozen tofu, with its honeycomb-like texture, was soft, spongy, and soaked up the broth, making it very flavorful.

Unfortunately, tofu cost eight copper coins a catty back then. The family only dared to buy it before the New Year and other festivals to make frozen tofu to eat on New Year’s Day.

Just that one meal. After that, if you wanted to eat it, you could only dream about it.

Although the weather was still cold now, it wasn’t cold enough to freeze tofu, only enough to freeze hands and feet.

Ling Xing was washing up at the foot of the mountain. He threw the used willow branch into the withered grass and went back to wash his face after rinsing his mouth.

Xu Youfang happened to return, holding a ceramic bowl with a large piece of tofu inside.

“Ling Xing, there’s hot water in the pot. Use hot water to wash your face.”

After giving the instruction, Ling Xing responded with a smile, “Got it, Mother.”

As Ling Xing finished washing his face and was about to enter the kitchen, he heard a wail from Shen Lai.

“Aaaah! Mother, how could you do this! Buying tofu but not letting me eat it, making me just watch and wait for tonight!”

As he spoke, he reached out to grab the tofu, wanting to grab a piece and put it in his mouth to satisfy his craving.

Unsurprisingly, Xu Youfang slapped his hand away. “Take your paws away. Your eldest brother-in-law said we’re making tofu buns tonight. If you eat it now, won’t you be full for dinner?”

Shen Lai didn’t know what buns were, but in his opinion, anything made with good flour couldn’t be bad.

Therefore, even though he didn’t know what buns tasted like, Shen Lai was willing to endure his craving for tofu for their sake.

But being able to see it but not eat it was truly tormenting. He couldn’t yell at his mother, so he went back to pester Ling Xing, begging him to make the buns quickly.

Buns needed filling. The Shen family didn’t have anything to use as filling, and they couldn’t afford pork. Ling Xing then thought of the tofu that Shen Lai had mentioned, adding some seasoning to make the filling, the taste should also be pretty good.

Before going to bed last night, thinking of Shen Lai saying that the Wang, the Ge’er’s tofu tasted the best, he asked Xu Youfang to help buy some.

You had to go early to Wang, the Ge’er’s to buy tofu, otherwise, it would be gone.

That’s why Xu Youfang clearly planned to make the buns tonight, but went to buy the tofu in the morning. Anyway, the weather was still cold, so the tofu wouldn’t spoil if left out.

After drinking the hard-to-swallow porridge, Ling Xing felt a bit of pain in his throat.

Once he recovered, he helped Xu Youfang with needlework.

He couldn’t embroider, but he could still sew and mend. When he was little, his family was poor, and his grandfather was frugal.

When his clothes had holes, his grandfather would mend them.

However, his grandfather’s skills weren’t very good, sewing them to look like centipedes.

When Ling Xing reached an age where he knew shame, he didn’t really want to go to school wearing centipede clothes.

He felt like everyone’s eyes were on him, everyone was whispering and gossiping about him, criticizing him.

Although he wanted to ignore it, he couldn’t.

Those voices would always haunt him, lingering in his ears. It also made him sensitive and insecure, and for a while, he didn’t dare to talk to people.

From then on, Ling Xing practiced sewing and mending himself. He was young and had good eyesight. After becoming skilled, even if he didn’t sew very finely, at least there wouldn’t be a obvious line on his clothes.

He would also cut strips of colored cloth into suitable sizes, make a simple pattern, and sew them over larger holes as decoration.

That was enough for Ling Xing.

He did his best to make himself presentable. If others still disliked him and said this and that, then there was nothing he could do.

Anyway, he had done the best he could. That was enough.

No matter how good his needlework was, it was like showing off in front of an expert when compared to Xu Youfang’s.

Xu Youfang didn’t complain at all and would occasionally give Ling Xing pointers to make his stitches finer.

The more she taught, the more Xu Youfang liked Ling Xing. This Ge’er was always smiling, as if he had no worries. That smile could infect those around him. Seeing him happy made everyone want to smile too.

He was also patient, willing to listen, willing to learn, and quick-witted, understanding everything immediately.

Ling Xing was mending Shen Lai’s clothes. Xu Youfang looked at the hole in the butt and couldn’t help but laugh as she said, “I don’t know who Lai, the Ge’er, takes after, being so mischievous. A Ge’er spending all day fighting with the boys. That hole was made when he was climbing a tree to chase someone and got it caught on a branch.”

Listening to Shen Lai’s glorious deeds, Ling Xing imagined the scene and was amused.

“It must be that the group of boys provoked Lai, the Ge’er, and made him angry.”

Spending these past two days with Shen Lai, Ling Xing could sense that this child wasn’t really recklessly mischievous and unreasonable.

He was just a bit impatient, couldn’t be provoked, and was very straightforward. You couldn’t tease him.

If you told him to climb a tree, he would definitely chase after you and beat you up, so he must have been really angered.

Xu Youfang was stunned when she heard this. She hadn’t thought about it that way.

In the past, because the family had to treat the eldest son’s illness, she opened her eyes every day thinking about how to earn money. She didn’t have much time or energy to deal with the trouble Lai, the Ge’er, caused.

Whenever someone came to find her, she only hoped to resolve it quickly so as not to waste any more time.

She did embroidery because time was money. The more she did, the more money she could earn.

Hearing Ling Xing’s words, Xu Youfang fell into a brief contemplation.

Could it be that she had always wronged Lai, the Ge’er?

“Mother, what’s wrong?”

Ling Xing noticed that Xu Youfang’s emotions were not quite right and asked.

“It’s nothing, I just remembered some things from the past.”

Xu Youfang didn’t want to say, so Ling Xing naturally wouldn’t press her. He lowered his head and continued to sew Shen Lai’s torn pants. After sewing them, he looked at the two or three pieces of clothing in the basket, “Second Brother’s clothes aren’t here?”

The Shen family didn’t actually have many clothes. They had two sets to change between spring and autumn, and each person only had one set of clothes for winter.

Ling Xing was wearing Shen Hai’s old clothes. There weren’t any extra clothes.

As the old saying went, clothes were good for three years when new, three years when old, and another three years with mending. The older ones wore them, then the younger ones. When they couldn’t be worn anymore, they could be taken apart to make cloth shoes or rags.

Among these few clothes, none belonged to Shen Hui.

Xu Youfang said, “Second Son sews and mends his own clothes. That child is too sensible and doesn’t want me to work hard.”

Ling Xing made an “oh” sound, thinking of when he was fixing Shen Hui’s hair and saw that his collar was badly worn and seemed to have been mended, but the effect was obviously not good.

At noon, Xu Youfang still made bean rice. Ling Xing checked the fermentation of the old dough starter, which was good.

In the evening, he could take it out and knead the dough.

After the bean rice was made, Shen Chengshan and the others also returned.

The firewood in the morning was still sold for one hundred and forty copper coins. With Shen Hui there, they gathered more firewood.

Yesterday afternoon, Shen Hui didn’t go. The three of them were tired for half a day, walked a lot, and only collected seven bundles, selling them for forty-nine copper coins.

Adding the eight hundred copper coins Ling Xing had, they now had a total of one thousand one hundred and nine copper coins, which was about one tael of silver.

But in the blink of an eye, five hundred copper coins would be gone.

“Ling Xing, I asked at the pottery workshop about the stove you wanted. Custom-made ones are larger, and the craftsmen need to experiment, so the price is five hundred copper coins. But they said that if it breaks later, they can repair it three times for free.”

Shen Chengshan told Ling Xing the details he had inquired about. Ling Xing was secretly taken aback. He thought five hundred copper coins would be enough for everything, but he didn’t expect that the clay stove alone would cost five hundred copper coins.

It wasn’t good to make the buns and steamed buns at home and then bring them over. The weather was still cold, and it would take time on the road, and they would be cold when they got there.

The taste of cold buns and steamed buns wasn’t good, and no one was a fool to waste their money buying them.

This money couldn’t not be spent, and he had to hurry up.

The sooner they were made, the sooner he could make money.

“Okay, Father. After dinner, I’ll count the money. I’ll trouble you to take another trip and ask them to start making it.”

After eating bean rice, Shen Chengshan took Shen Gui and his wife into the mountains again, this time going to a deeper area.

Although forty-nine copper coins were not as much as one hundred and forty copper coins, it was still money.

Fortunately, the weather was still cold, and no snakes or insects suddenly jumped out to bite people when going up the mountain. Otherwise, apart from Shen Hui, no one in the family dared to go a little deeper.

Shen Hui was going to make a steamer for Ling Xing today, so he still didn’t go.

In the yard, Ling Xing squatted on the ground, holding a small twig in his hand, drawing a steamer for Shen Hui on the soil.

Shen Hui took a look and remembered it in his heart.

“Okay, I understand.”

After speaking, he started to work on the wood, his expression focused and his movements fluent.

Ling Xing’s gaze lingered on the opening at the end of Shen Hui’s sleeve. While handing Shen Hui a wooden board, he said, “Second Brother, take off your clothes after you’re done, and I’ll mend them for you.”

Shen Hui’s movements paused slightly, and then the sound of splitting wood rang out again, “No need.”