mailing letter

Chapter 41

"Xiaoshu, it's time to get up." Sitting on the bed, Lin Qiuyi gently patted Zhong Xiaoshu who was still asleep, "Get up soon, my brother is still waiting for you."

Zhong Xiaoshu pushed his head into the pillow, and said in a moaning voice, "Mother, I'm so sleepy."

Looking at Zhong Xiaoshu's appearance, Lin Qiu chuckled, stretched out his hand and pinched his nose, and said, "Xiaoshu, come quickly, today is your first day at school, you will be punished if you arrive late, sir."

When Zhong Xiaoshu heard the word "school", he immediately lifted the quilt and sat up, looked at Lin Qiuyi, and asked in surprise: "Really?"

"Yes, so hurry up."

The school is the place Zhong Xiaoshu longed to go to since he was a child. When he was still young, he would often hold a book and sit on the threshold outside the house to read it intensively. vigorously.

Sometimes when Zhong Chengyi saw him like this, he couldn't help teasing him and said, "Xiao Shu, why don't you say I won't go to school tomorrow? Anyway, my husband always thinks that I don't know how to learn, and I only know how to play and have fun every day. You don’t even look like you’re studying, but you’re a child who hasn’t grown up enough to praise you repeatedly, saying that you have to be a gentleman no matter what in the future, otherwise it’s really a waste.”

Just because of Zhong Chengyi's joke, Zhong Xiaoshu wished for the stars and the moon and wanted to go to school, but now this wish has come true, and he is happy to see everything on the road.

"Brother Ayi, did you smell it?" Zhong Xiaoshu sniffled and asked with a smile.

Zhong Chengyi yawned, and asked lazily, "What's the smell?"

"Osmanthus fragrans, of course." Zhong Xiaoshu trotted a few steps following the faint scent, stopped beside an osmanthus tree, took a small yellow flower from the flower branch with his hand, and smelled it.

smell good.

At this time, a bell rang from the school not far away, and Zhong Chengyi who was on the side heard it and hurriedly pulled Zhong Xiaoshu and said, "Hurry up, it's going to be too late."

Zhong Xiaoshu put the little yellow flower in his pocket and ran forward.

It was the autumn harvest season at this time, and Shen Ying was busy harvesting crops in the field. Although the sun was not so strong and there was still a breeze, Shen Ying's sweat was still dripping from under the straw hat.

"Sister Ying, your man has sent a letter!" A person not far away shouted.

Shen Ying stood up, hammered her sore waist, squinted her eyes and looked not far away, and shouted with a smile: "Got it."

After school in the evening, when Zhong Xiaoshu and Zhong Chengyi were about to go home along the way, they saw a group of people surrounded by a haystack, and Li Erliang was among them.

Zhong Chengyi stepped forward and patted Li Erliang on the shoulder and asked, "What are you looking at?"

Li Erliang was taken aback by Zhong Chengyi. When he turned around and saw Zhong Chengyi, he remembered his big white crucian carp and the stick, and said angrily, "Why are you?"

Zhong Chengyi raised his eyebrows. Seeing this attitude, he didn't take it seriously. He followed the crowd to look into the haystack. It was a group of kittens. There were about three or four cats, but they were all very thin. They looked like they had just been weaned Before long, walking was still a little trembling.

"These kittens are so pitiful." Said the girl on the side.

"Poor is pitiful, but my parents will definitely not let me raise them."

"Then what should we do, after a few months, when the weather cools down, they will definitely not be able to survive."

Zhong Xiaoshu reached out and touched the fur of one of the tabby cats. The kitten's fur was soft, but because the fur hadn't fully grown, he could feel the kitten's warm body temperature and shallow breathing.

Zhong Xiaoshu looked at the cat cub, then at Zhong Chengyi and called weakly: "Brother."

Zhong Chengyi looked at the expression on his face with some helplessness. After all, he was about to run out of food, and it was absolutely impossible for Shen Ying to agree to raising another cat. If he brought this kitten back, he probably would He was thrown into the ditch by his cruel mother.

Zhong Chengyi got up and patted the grass clippings on his body, and said, "Let's go, Xiaoshu, it's time to go home for dinner."

Zhong Xiaoshu looked at the poor kitten and left reluctantly.

He was still happy when he went to school in the morning, but he looked downcast on the way back, and even the osmanthus cake at dinner didn't make Zhong Xiaoshu smile.

After the lights were turned off at night, the room was quiet. The dilapidated windows were creaking due to the wind outside. Zhong Chengyi was so disturbed that he couldn't fall asleep. He was about to get up to put some water when he heard Zhong Xiaoshu talking in his sleep.

Zhong Chengyi lowered his head and got closer to hear it. He sat on the edge of the bed and settled down for a while. He rested his chin on his hands and looked at Zhong Xiaoshu's back, sighed and got out of bed.

The temperature in the autumn night made Zhong Chengyi feel a little cold, he wrapped his thin coat tightly, and sneezed when a gust of wind blew.

"Meow, meow" came a few faint meows from behind the haystack, and Zhong Chengyi walked to the edge of the haystack, only to see the kitten that Zhong Xiaoshu had stroked in the afternoon shivering in the haystack.

Zhong Chengyi rummaged through the haystack beside him, but did not find the other ones. Presumably they were taken away by those students, or by the old cat, but this piebald kitten was just left behind.

Not knowing if it was God's will, Zhong Chengyi gently stroked the kitten's head with his fingertips and said, "I'll bring you home, but I have to find a place to hide you well. You have to be obedient."

After speaking, he picked up the kitten and stuffed it into his arms. The kitten seemed to understand, and licked Zhong Chengyi's fingertips obediently.

The door outside the house was opened, Zhong Chengyi slipped in silently, the temperature in the room was much warmer, Zhong Chengyi thought of something to make a nest for the kitten, but found that all the old clothes he wore when he was a child were sold by Shen Ying.

Zhong Chengyi sighed, looked at the clothes on his body, took them off and hugged the kitten in a ball, put it under the bed, knelt down and nodded the kitten's head, and said viciously: "If you dare Urinate on my clothes, I will definitely throw you into the ditch!"

After finishing all this, Zhong Chengyi was really sleepy, so he turned on the bed and woke up at dawn.

Early in the morning, the sound of the rooster outside began to crow. I slept late last night, and Zhong Chengyi’s head swelled because of the noise, so he had to get up. As soon as he got out of bed, he saw Lin Xinshu sitting beside the bed with the kitten in his arms. , saw Zhong Chengyi woke up, ran over happily, and said, "Brother Ayi, did you catch this for me last night?"

His eyes were bright when he spoke, and he was not as depressed as yesterday.

Zhong Chengyi squinted his eyes and nodded, "Yes, how are you going to thank your brother?"

Zhong Xiaoshu frowned in confusion, and after thinking for a long time, he said weakly, "I'll give you a piece of the salted shortbread this morning."

Zhong Chengyi raised his eyebrows, he had contributed all his heart's desire, so he nodded in agreement.

Ever since the two brothers raised this tabby cat and ran to the house after school, at first Shen Ying and Lin Qiuyi felt that their behavior was really weird, thinking that they had hidden something in the house, but Then I searched around and couldn't find it.

Later, the farm work was really too much, so they went with the two brothers. The two Zhong brothers dared to take the kitten back from Li Erliang's house when they saw that Shen Ying and Lin Qiuyi were no longer coming to the house.

"Is there nothing wrong with you at home? This kitty has made me miserable. I fell asleep in the middle of the night and woke up and kept screaming. I was afraid that my mother would hear me, so I had to sleep on the bed." Li Erliang complained, "I'm going to sleep this night. Damn, this cat wet my quilt when I got up in the morning, I was so scared that I hurriedly washed it secretly, if my mother knew about it, she would definitely be beaten again."

Zhong Chengyi held the kitten in one hand, took out a bunch of marbles from his pocket with the other hand, handed it to Li Erliang and said, "All of these are for you."

Looking at these marbles, Li Erliang's original sad expression disappeared, and he asked in disbelief: "Chengyi, you really gave me all of them?"

Zhong Chengyi nodded, saying that he could win it back next time, and left.

The kitten grew up in a few months, and Zhong Chengyi's house couldn't keep him closed anymore. He would disappear every time, but he would always appear in the house on time every night.

Shen Ying has been flustered for no reason these days, thinking that something will happen, but after seeing the doctor, there is nothing wrong with her, she only said that she was overworked and didn't take it to heart.

"Hey, have you heard? There's a war going on in the southwest. It's said that a group of bandits are making trouble. It seems that they are planting some kind of flower. It is said that this flower is priceless, but it does a lot of harm."

"Really, I haven't heard of it."

"Sister Ying, do you know about this?"

Shen Ying sat and listened, but she was distracted from the side, and she returned to her senses after someone called her: "I'll go to the village chief's house."

At this time, a bunch of people had already gathered at the door of the village chief’s house, all clamoring to ask about the southwest. The people in this village were basically old people, children and women. Those men who could work either went to the city to do work. If you want to make some achievements in your career, or go to be a soldier, when a crowd of people hears that there is a war, they rush over to see if there is any letter to send back.

Shen Ying struggled among a group of people, and finally left with nothing to do. She could only go home and wait for the letter that might never come.

A few days later, a simple wooden box was mailed to Shen Ying's house. There was only a handful of loess in the wooden box, and on top of the loess was a letter from home that was full of dust and blood.

"Eiko:

Sorry, I broke my promise. "