After taking a shower downstairs, Xing Wu came up to find Qing Ye sitting on the bed working on her laptop. The room had already cooled down, much more comfortable than outside.
Xing Wu had a towel on his head, though with his short hair, it dried quickly after just a couple of wipes. Glancing sideways, he noticed a large pile of clothes on the floor beside Qing Ye’s bed.
He’d only been gone a few days, and this woman had turned the room into a garbage dump?
Xing Wu frowned sternly and lifted his chin: “Why are you piling so many clothes on the floor?”
Without looking up, Qing Ye replied: “They’re dirty.”
“And piling dirty clothes on the floor makes them clean?”
This time Qing Ye raised her head and looked at him calmly. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to wash them. On her second day here, she’d asked Li Lanfang where the washing machine was. Li Lanfang had taken her to it and told her to just throw the clothes in. Not only was it an old-fashioned, color-faded twin-tub washer, but when Qing Ye looked inside, she found it stuffed with dirty towels from the hair salon’s customers, covered in hair clippings, with a layer of grime on the inner walls. Qing Ye seriously doubted her clothes would be cleaner after washing them there than they were dirty.
So she couldn’t bring herself to use it and brought the dirty clothes back to her room. These days she’d been wearing a new outfit each day, and was basically running out of clean clothes.
Seeing her silence, Xing Wu threw his towel aside and put his hands on his hips: “Too dirty for you?”
“Isn’t it?” Qing Ye countered.
Xing Wu was left speechless by her retort. A couple of years ago, he’d taken apart and cleaned the washing machine, but later discovered his mother was lazy beyond belief, stuffing customers’ towels and scarves in there to wash almost every night, leaving them to soak overnight before taking them out. After years of that musty smell, he’d given up caring and just hand-washed his clothes.
Xing Wu pursed his lips and nodded toward her bedside: “What are you going to do when you run out of clean clothes?”
Unexpectedly, Qing Ye answered: “I don’t know.”
What the hell kind of answer was “I don’t know”? This was the first time Xing Wu had seen someone so brazenly unable to take care of themselves. It made him laugh in exasperation.
He stood by the desk for a while, finally sighed, walked over picked up the pile of clothes from the floor, and headed out. Qing Ye asked in surprise: “What are you doing?”
“Going downstairs to wash clothes, might as well wash yours too. If you want to thank me, kowtow three times and call me grandfather.”
His voice was already fading as he walked away. Qing Ye sat stunned on the bed for a while. Although her clothes had always been washed by servants at home before, and she hadn’t thought anything of it, those servants were women, and besides, her father paid them.
But Xing Wu… Qing Ye suddenly called out: “Oh no!”
She hurriedly put on her shoes and ran downstairs. Her underwear was still in that pile! Qing Ye ran desperately to the backyard and into the shower room, where she found Xing Wu at the sink with a bar of laundry soap. He was holding one of her bras with furrowed brows as if studying some profoundly mysterious object.
Qing Ye rushed over and snatched it away, her face nearly exploding with embarrassment, and yelled at Xing Wu: “What are you doing? Are you some kind of pervert?”
Xing Wu was a bit embarrassed at being yelled at and coughed: “I was just wondering if I needed to take the padding out to wash it.”
Qing Ye pushed him aside and dug through the pile of clothes to retrieve her underwear, not daring to lift her head as she said: “I’ll wash these myself.”
Then she ran off without even looking at him, her face full of panic.
Xing Wu’s mouth twisted to one side, his eyes turning cold. Heaven knows he hadn’t had any improper thoughts – he helps wash her clothes and gets called a pervert? Had this woman fed her conscience to the dogs?
Xing Wu angrily turned on the tap. Despite his anger, he still picked up her skirt and started washing it. The fabric of Qing Ye’s clothes all felt fine and high-end to the touch. Xing Wu was naturally strong, but he didn’t dare scrub as vigorously as he did with his clothes, afraid he’d damage them. Who knew how the young lady upstairs would react then? So he just gently rubbed them. Fortunately, her clothes weren’t very dirty and still had a girlish fragrance.
Girlish fragrance? Xing Wu’s lips curved slightly. How did that phrase pop into his head? Now that was truly perverted!
Soon, he heard footsteps behind him. Qing Ye had run down again and tossed her mud-stained patent leather shoes beside Xing Wu: “Wash these too.”
Xing Wu glanced at them – they were the shoes she’d worn on her first day, still covered in dried mud after all this time.
He’d finally met a woman more outrageous than his mother. What sin had he committed to end up with four people in the house, and except for him, the other three women were all unable to take care of themselves?
Xing Wu cursed under his breath: “I must owe you something from a past life.”
As Qing Ye walked out, she replied airily: “You’re the one who got them dirty in the first place.”
Fine, great, just perfect.
After washing the clothes, Xing Wu put them on hangers and hung them on the clothesline in the backyard. He went upstairs to get his motorcycle keys, and Qing Ye lifted her eyes to ask: “Are you sleeping at Shunyi tonight?”
Xing Wu put his phone in his jeans pocket and replied: “What else?”
Qing Ye didn’t say anything, but as Xing Wu opened the door, she said very softly: “Thanks.”
Xing Wu turned back to look at her for a moment, then closed the door.
Although this inexplicably descended young lady constantly acted as if she was above everyone else, she wasn’t thoughtless or ignorant – she simply didn’t know how to do laundry.
When Qing Ye came downstairs the next morning, she saw her patent leather shoes polished to a shine on the first-floor windowsill, so clean they reflected light, without a trace of mud. Although she’d gotten muddy because of Xing Wu in the first place, Qing Ye still felt that this completely unrelated hooligan cousin wasn’t as bad as he appeared on the surface.
But early in the morning, Qing Ye quickly washed her underwear. Running out of clean ones was one thing, but having dirty underwear piled on the floor was too much even for her to look at.
Xing Wu’s family didn’t even have a drum washing machine, let alone a dryer. People here just hang washed clothes in the yard to dry naturally. However, the yard was shared, and having her underwear hanging there fluttering in the breeze seemed quite unseemly. Qing Ye agonized over it for a long time, unable to bring herself to do it.
It wasn’t until Li Lanfang got up and saw Qing Ye standing in the yard holding a basin that she said: “Are you hanging clothes? Give them to me, I’ll hang them up with the others later.”
Then Li Lanfang quickly hung up all her underwear on the clothesline. So today the backyard was decorated with a row of colorful dresses and various styles of underwear, which directly led to Xing Wu not daring to lift his head when he came back at noon to feed his grandmother. When collecting the bowls, he accidentally glimpsed Qing Ye’s white lace-trimmed panties and immediately felt an inexplicable irritation.
So after feeding his grandmother, he left without looking back. As Li Lanfang was helping the old lady back to her room, Qing Ye heard the grandmother muttering something about someone. Her speech was unclear, so Qing Ye couldn’t understand what she was saying, but she heard Li Lanfang curse: “Even if you die, your son won’t ask about you once, yet you keep thinking about him!”
Soon Li Lanfang came out fuming, and Qing Ye remembered how Xing Wu had said his father barely came home twice a year, which made her curious.
“Where did Xing Wu’s father go?”
Li Lanfang complained bitterly: “Wherever there’s construction work, he goes there to carry bricks. Says he’s working on a building in the next county, who knows if it’s true or if he’s started another family out there? I’m here killing myself raising his son and taking care of his mother, and that heartless bastard hasn’t brought a single penny home in all these years…”
When it came to Xing Wu’s father Xing Guodong, Li Lanfang could curse for ten minutes straight without repeating herself, giving Qing Ye a headache. She could only think that every family had its difficulties. When her father was still doing well before, he too was always out socializing, finding all sorts of excuses not to come home. Men neglecting their families had nothing to do with whether they were rich or poor.
But as for Li Lanfang saying she was working herself to death, Qing Ye had her reservations. If she was tired at all, it was probably from staying up late playing mahjong.
When Xing Wu came back in the evening, he brought two bottles of Jinlongyu cooking oil. When Li Lanfang saw them, she immediately started complaining: “Why did you buy this kind of oil? It was so expensive, must have cost over a hundred yuan for two bottles! We have oil at home.”
Qing Ye sat at the wooden table with her head down. Xing Wu pushed Li Lanfang into the kitchen and said: “Throw away that lard, it’s got flies in it. Is that fit for people to eat?”
Li Lanfang wanted to say more, but Xing Wu cut her off: “Boss Cao gave it to us.”
Boss Cao was Shunyi’s owner, who usually stayed in the county town and rarely came by. He trusted Xing Wu and Quanya to manage the store. Quanya had dropped out of school early and stayed at the store all day, and when Xing Wu wasn’t in school, he was there too.
When Li Lanfang heard it was from Boss Cao, free of charge, she didn’t say anything more.
During dinner, Qing Ye was acting strange, keeping her head down and not speaking throughout the meal. After eating, she went upstairs without a word, her whole demeanor seeming off.
Xing Wu looked up and asked Li Lanfang: “What’s wrong with her?”
Li Lanfang replied angrily: “Speaking of that, it makes me angry – someone stole Qing Ye’s underwear.”
“What?” Xing Wu was surprised. When he’d come back for lunch, they were still hanging in the yard – they’d been stolen?
Li Lanfang deliberately raised her voice to curse: “Don’t know which shameless creature would steal a young girl’s underwear, doing such a despicable thing, may their parents die horrible deaths, what kind of person would raise such a mongrel…”
Li Lanfang’s curses became increasingly vulgar, deliberately directed at the three households at the other end of the yard, seemingly convinced that some shameless person from one of those families had stolen them.
Xing Wu frowned. The backyard usually had all sorts of people coming through – hair salon customers using the toilet, mahjong players, neighbors who came specifically to watch the mahjong games, and people from those three large courtyard houses. It was hard to say who had done this despicable thing, but it had probably upset the girl quite a bit.
“So what will she wear?”
Li Lanfang said: “It’s fine, I’ll give her some of mine to wear for now.”
Xing Wu raised an eyebrow and looked askance at his mother: “She’d wear yours?”
Li Lanfang said carelessly: “What’s the problem? Mine are all clean, what’s wrong with wearing them?”
Xing Wu hissed and gave his mother a strange look: “Haven’t you considered the size issue?”
Li Lanfang seemed to just realize: “Oh right.”
Xing Wu was completely done with her. Even he could think of this problem, yet Li Lanfang was being so thoughtless.
Xing Wu sighed and took out two hundred yuan to give to Li Lanfang: “Why don’t you go buy her some new ones tomorrow?”
“I buy them? How would I know what kind she wants to wear?”
“If you don’t know, you think I fucking know?” Xing Wu snapped at Li Lanfang.
Li Lanfang took the money and said: “I can’t tomorrow, I promised Zhao Mazi’s wife I’d help out. Isn’t her son getting married?”
“What’s that got to do with you?”
“We already agreed! We play cards together every day, when she asks me, how can I refuse? Let Qing Ye wear mine for now, I’ll get her some when I go to the county town next week.”
Xing Wu’s face turned cold as he snatched back the two hundred yuan and left.