Quick Wear: Cousin, Come to the Bowl Quickly

"Go away! You just touched your pants with your paw and you want to touch the cherries? If you grab it, we can't eat it. Go wash your hands!"

Zhang Jianguo was quick-witted and swift-handed. He slapped Li Bin's hand away, reaching for the bamboo basket. His eyebrows were twisted into knots in disgust. He deliberately took half a step back, as if the other party was carrying some bad luck.

"Ouch!" Li Bin rubbed the back of his red hand and jumped up and down. "I just washed those shorts yesterday and rinsed them three times!"

"Come on!" Zhang Jianguo snorted, "Everyone knows that you only rub a piece of clothing twice after washing it? You don't even want to shake off the soap foam, and besides-"

He deliberately stretched out his voice, causing the surrounding educated youth to prick up their ears. "Your pants are patched up with patches upon patches, and there's probably a lot of old mud hidden in the seams!"

“Ugh—” An educated youth who was drinking water nearby suddenly choked and started coughing, covering his mouth. “Cough, cough, cough, Old Zhang, you…you’re so disgusting!”

Li Bin blushed with embarrassment and slid out the door in his Liberation shoes, mumbling unyieldingly, "How can you be so particular... I was rolling around in the dirt planting rice seedlings the other day. Everyone has muddy hands, but I still eat steamed bread..."

"Stop talking nonsense. The soil is clean, but is the mud in your butt clean?"

Zhang Jianguo picked up his soap and handed it over, "Wash it well." Then he turned around and shouted to the educated youth in the room, "Everyone heard it. Anyone who wants to eat it secretly will have to wait until our 'respectable people' come back!"

Everyone immediately started to jeer, "Don't worry!"

"Make sure to leave him a core!"

"Old Li, go quickly. I'll keep an eye on the basket for you!"

Li Bin walked slowly to the door, and just as he was about to leave, he suddenly turned back and stuck half of his head out from the door frame, "Wait for me!"

Everyone in the room was stunned for two seconds, then burst into thunderous laughter. Zhang Jianguo pretended to go forward and pull him away, saying angrily and amusedly, "How about I beat you up? Then you don't have to wash."

"That won't do--" Li Bin saw this and quickly ran away.

After Li Bin's back disappeared, everyone slowly gathered around the table and asked curiously, "It's raining so hard, how did you get such a basket of cherries in the short time it takes to leave?"

"It wasn't me. Lin Zhiqing from the front yard sent it to us. He said it belonged to the team leader's family." Zhang Jianguo picked up the cup, took a sip of water, and began to explain.

"It's hard for a little girl like her to wear such a heavy straw raincoat, she staggers with every step..." Zhang Jianguo hadn't finished speaking when he saw Song Guanwen, who had been curled up on the kang, engrossed in a book, suddenly get off the kang and hurried out the door. He couldn't help but call out to him in surprise, "Eh? Old Song, where are you going? We need to share the cherries!"

"Wash your hands." Song Guanwen responded without turning his head, strode over the threshold, picked up the umbrella on the wall outside the door, and rushed into the rain.

"Why go out into the rain instead of washing your hands in the water room?"

"Could it be that the rain washes it away more cleanly?"

"He touched his pants too?"

Everyone in the room looked at each other in confusion. Finally, Zhang Jianguo came to his senses and seemed to suddenly think of something, and said hesitantly.

"They should go and see Lin Zhiqing off. After all, he's been lying in bed these days, and they've been coming every day to ask about his well-being."

After hearing this, several people showed a look of sudden enlightenment and nodded in agreement.

"That's true. It's been raining every day for more than half a month. Even a stone would be melted by it."

"It's just that Old Song has such a cold personality. Even though he thinks of his good sister when there are good things, he still puts on a cold face every day. If it were me, I would really want to hold her in the palm of my hand if I had a cousin who is so devoted to me."

"I think you are not thinking about your cousin, but your mistress."

"Go away! What nonsense! All I have in mind is pure revolutionary friendship."

"Hahahahaha, who knows."

Amid the laughter of the crowd, Song Guanwen, who was hurrying with an umbrella, chased for a distance before finally seeing the short figure not far ahead through the dense rain.

Just as Zhang Jianguo described.

She was wrapped in a heavy straw raincoat, with her hat pulled down so low that her neck was almost invisible. Her already short figure looked even more limp under the weight of these two heavy things. She walked unsteadily in the mist, like a mushroom spirit that appeared from nowhere.

Song Guanwen didn't know why he chased out.

He was clearly a little upset and even felt suffocated because she hadn't come to see him as usual in the past two days. But when Zhang Jianguo casually mentioned "Lin Zhiqing sent...", before his brain could react, his body had already jumped off the kang and rushed out.

But he chased her so quickly, as if he was afraid of not being able to catch up with Lin Xi. But when he really saw her back, he slowed down his pace hesitantly, and all kinds of messy thoughts floated through his mind.

"Don't I hate people who cry all the time? I wish she wouldn't come."

"She's Hu Yun's niece. What good can come of being a relative of someone like that?"

"It was because of her that I was lying in bed for more than half a month. It's only natural that she should come to see him every day."

Since childhood, Song Guanwen has lived in the evaluation of his father and stepmother:

"This child's eyes are too cold. When he looks at people, it's like a draught in the twelfth lunar month." Father Song said to the visitor with a frown.

“If you feed an ungrateful person, you won’t be able to earn a smile no matter how much good food you feed him.” Hu Yun always liked to say this to the aunts helping in the kitchen while she was picking vegetables.

At the dinner table, relatives half-jokingly said, "Guanwen, why do you always have such a sullen face? You look like someone owes your family 800 kilograms of food coupons."

At first he would make excuses with a cold face, but gradually, he stopped even making excuses.

Day after day, these words were like a blunt knife cutting flesh, engraved into his bones bit by bit. In the end, even he himself believed it - he, Song Guanwen, was born a cold-hearted person.

He was indeed rarely friendly to others. The villagers said he was aloof, and the educated youth thought he was aloof.

But only he himself knows that this is just a kind of protection: if you don’t expect, you won’t be disappointed; if you don’t pay, you won’t be hurt.

The exchange of interests is so clean. You help me get a pot of water, and I lend you a book. It is clear and we owe nothing to each other.

What I fear most is those inexplicable feelings that entangle me like a spider web, and I can’t break free or get rid of them.

This was the way of survival he had figured out early on in the muddy waters of the Song family.