Fleeting Midsummer

When a Virtuous Lady Advances (2)

Maybe I was too entranced as I thought or my expression that looked like I had Parkinson’s Disease was too scary. Right now, Tan Yi could no longer stand studying anymore and viciously pushed me in retaliation. It was only at this point that I realized Fang Yuke was no longer in the house.

I immediately asked, “Where's your Xiao Ke Bro?”

Tan Yi rolled his eyes, “Your man has gone out to buy ingredients to make food. If we waited for you to cook for us, we would have starved to death.”

“Sigh, too traditional. Fang Yuke is terrible in this aspect. He cares for people too well so nobody else has any opportunity to shine.” I purposely shook my head tragically.

Tan Yi grimaced as if he had eaten a housefly, placed his hands on the pit of his stomach and exclaimed, “If my grandfather knew that you were this type of person, he would have never let you enter these doors even if he was beaten to death. You were already stupid enough to begin with, but after falling in love makes you seem like you have brain damage.”

I stood up and gave him a Fo Shan Shadowless Kick. Now that this brat was under Fang Yuke’s tutelage, he became increasingly malicious. In no time, he would be able to destroy flowers with a single touch and he would wreak  havoc on the whole country.

Just as I was getting rid of this evildoer for the good of the nation, Fang Yuke had returned from buying the ingredients. Seeing the two of us quarrelling, he came over and held Tan Yi, “How could you be so ignorant?”

I looked cheerily upon the dejected Tan Yi, thinking that it was good to have someone to depend on. I was like the  head of the family who owned a giant piece of fertile land, as I watched the good show of a gang of scoundrels robbing a young lady.

Fang Yuke continued to say, “You are under my tutelage, which means that your IQ is exceptionally high. Messing around with her is a waste of all your efforts and your IQ will plummet. A young person should think these things  carefully, don’t just seek momentary pleasure.” After saying this, he wrapped it up by very earnestly patting Tan Yi’s back.

Tan Yi snickered. With  his handsome appearance flushed with success he looked extremely elated in being able to cast off a burden. Under Fang Yuke’s training, he would definitely be able to cause flowers to bloom and bless countless young women and rich wives in just half a year.

Ding dong. I heard a sonata from the kitchen. I  heard the sounds and went in and saw Fang Yuke’s slender back. I suddenly  had the urge to hug him from the back and rest my head on his shoulder while saying softly, “What delicious things have you cooked up?”

However, I kept feeling that something was strange. If we were following a kdrama script, things would turn out like this right? After thinking for a long time, I could not think of a reason why it felt strange. From the kitchen sounded Tan Yi’s loud voice, “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Sister-in-law you need to study more about this.” Hearing this reminder, I finally recognized the problem that lay with my initial script.

Usually, it was the petite wife whose silhouette would be busy working in the kitchen. After which, the buff husband would be the one who would blissfully give her a hug. Just now, under the situation that I had thought of, if I had hugged him from the back, I would have to whisper those words into his armpit, as if I was capturing him. How was that romantic at all?

Therefore, I had to learn how to cook! Just for the sake of that fleeting moment of bliss.

I walked over to where Fang Yuke was and saw him skillfully cut open the fish, pulling out its organs and scraping away its scales.

For the sake of starting a conversation and gradually numbing Fang Yuke in order to achieve my mission of stealing information, I casually irritated Fang Yuke in order for him to develop some protective feelings towards the fairer sex, I fearfully opened my eyes wide, “Oh my, how cruel. This fish died with such helpless eyes.”

Fang Yuke remained unmoved, cutting 3 more lines into the body of the fish, dousing it in cooking oil.

If one stops rowing their boat, they will end up falling back. I persevered on and continued to act, “It’s possible that this fish came to practice some martial arts. In its previous life it must have committed some evil sin, in this life it’s already over so we can let it go since it’s already been murdered. But it’s still been flogged publicly, receiving the top ten tortures during the Qing Dynasty. The saying “A man sacrificed on the chopping board and I’m the piece of fish meat [1]” must have come from here.

I admit that after I had finished speaking, I realized that I was too impulsive and harmed my own life. I couldn’t help but to run to the basin and throw up before continuing.

Fang Yuke’s face twitched before he turned around and said to me, “Just now when you talked about sacrifice, you spoke incorrectly. It’s not ‘sacrificed’, it’s ‘sacrifices’."

I was embarrassed, “What? Ah ah, how embarrassing, it’ll be great if I can have a sudden death right now.”

It was probably because he was used to being a tutor recently. Fang Yuke actually continued on to explain where I had gone wrong, “The meaning behind ‘sudden death’ already carries the meaning of ‘right now’, so you don’t have to say ‘sudden death right now’, since ‘sudden death’ is enough.”

I really knew, at this moment, what it meant for a man to sacrifice on the chopping board while I was the piece of fish meat. Fang Yuke didn’t even leave me with a bit of face, but ruthlessly killed me.

“CAO! You self-centered showoff!” I could no longer hold back and cursed quietly.

Fang Yuke said indifferently, “I don’t need someone like you, who has no guts to ask about my family.”

In my eyes, the Fang Yuke at this moment had turned into a cruel and mean jerk. In my entire life, the thing I hated the most were those who intentionally tried to lecture me. They were the ones who assumed that, since they were helping me, I had to prostrate myself and worship them in gratitude. I never imagined that someone like me, even though I liked hearing the truth, was actually someone who loved freedom even more.  Why should you bother about how I said this word, even though it did not improve my interactions with others, the pronunciation of the word had  pretty much achieved its purpose.  Furthermore, my pursuit of eloquence was merely at the most basic level.

Fang Yuke continued on, “Anyway, my family will soon become your family. If you say it like this, frankly speaking, it’s considered incest.”

I had mentioned it previously many times ,that I was someone who could adapt really quickly. After listening to the first sentence, the Fang Yuke, who was being trampled under my foot, had suddenly became an outstanding god.

My heart burst with joy as I said to the god, “There is no need to speak frankly, speaking broadly, it is still incest.”

In order to prove that I was not a good for nothing, I took the initiative to crouch down beside the dustbin and pluck off the celery leaves. Life in the kitchen, except for the occasional check for saltiness, had other activities, which pretty much encompassed choosing the edible parts of the vegetables. This was the compromise that my weak father had made towards my valiant mother. While my father had wanted to turn me into a perfect housewife, where even without equipment, the most delicious dish could be brought out for the sake of being able to tame a man through his stomach during married life, satisfy the tastebuds of parents-in-law and be looked up to by his family members, on the other hand, my mother had always insisted that the trend was now for the men to be in the kitchen. Women only needed to learn how to adapt and compliment them, or else they would turn into a husk of a wife, a faded old woman who would recount, with tears, unable to shake off her past, thinking about her previous 20 years and proving in the end that this calamity had already been occurring everywhere, so one should not continue the cycle.

And so, caught in between the two of them, I finally took initiative to pick out the edible parts of the vegetables. Also, the degree to which I studied this made it obvious that it had resulted in an increased amount of expenditure on housework. My father could not help but to buy things that could increase his efficiency, in order to satisfy my prowess in eliminating inedible vegetables.

I plucked out the celery leaves and looked at Fang Yuke’s busy silhouette. Listening to Tan Yi’s voice that came from the living room as he was watching tv, I could not help but to let out a sigh, “We are really the auspicious precious three treasures of Buddha, a really lucky family!”

After Fang Yuke heard this, he mocked, “I definitely don’t want a son who is as old as Tan Yi. Fang Lei is only 5 years old right now.”

“Fang Lei?”

Fang Yuke said as a matter of fact, “My son.”

I was someone who had very high demands with regards to people’s names. I really despised my own name. I was confident that one call of my name would cause 10 people to turn their heads in response. I had once violently protested to change this tacky name, but my mother had secretly rejected the idea by saying that a common name was infinitely easier. I had protested, asking her why she had not just called me Goudan, or Huniu or something like that. My protests had been lowly accepted. As such, my mum’s temperament changed greatly. She let me choose between Goudan, Huniu, Linlin and Linlin. I spit out blood 3 times…… In the end, “My Name is called Jin San Shun” was broadcast. I held back my tears and finished watching it and knew myself. Jin San shun!  In the end, I concluded that my name was too common, but it definitely had to have the word “Lin”. This would definitely have some indistinct story and profound correlation with my mum and some young and inexperienced romantic love. So, my entire life had turned into a constant chase for the monument related to the word ‘Lin’.

Even if I was unable to change my own fate, it did not mean that I was unable to stop this kind of situation from happening to another person, “The name Fang Lei won’t do. It’s too tacky. We are so cultured, we have to choose a picturesque and beautiful name.”

“Then you should suggest one.”

I pondered deeply but my brain was like a piece of stone and refused to move. I started at the celery for a good few minutes, and the name that I could come up with was actually ‘Zhao Qin’ (literally translated to Confession Celery), a name that was commonly used by our ancestors.

Fang Yuke smiled satisfactorily, “Look, even though you’re a person with such culture, you can’t think of one either?”

I could hear the taunt hidden behind his words, “You still can’t call him Fang Lei, you might as well call him Fang Dong. When other people hear it, it’s similar to Zhou Dong. Those who don’t know him will really think he’s the chairman of a Board,  it’ll be a life full of people who cling on to his leg.”

TLN: (Fang Dong is a pun and means landlord)

“By your reasoning, you can still call him “Fang Zheng Wei (Political Officer Fang), Fang Zhu Ren (Director Fang), Fang Da Ye ( Mister Fang), Fang Da Ge (Big Brother Fang) and so on. This will give people more opportunity to take advantage of him.”

At this point, I really wanted to crouch down and draw circles on the ground. I still insisted on saying, “Anyway you can’t call him Fang Lei.”

“A common name is easy to raise.”

“Then why not the name Goudan or Hunu.”

TLN: Goudan means Dog egg, Hunu means Tigress

“Then you can choose between Fang Lei, Goudan and Huniu.”

When I heard this sentence, a hot feeling started to arise from my Dan Tian, “Say it, are you the trueborn child of my mother??” Because this sentence had been spoken with too much accuracy. It echoed throughout the kitchen like a heartfelt poem.

TLN: Dantian, dan t'ian, dan tien or tan t'ien is loosely translated as "elixir field", "sea of qi", or simply "energy center". Dantian are the Qi Focus Flow Centers, important focal points for meditative and exercise techniques such as qigong, martial arts such as taichi, and in traditional Chinese medicine (Wikipedia)

Tan Yi could stand it no longer and came in and grabbed onto a leg, “Aunty Xiao Ke, if you continue talking, all of us on this floor will topple over. Right now, the foundation of this building is built on soybeans, it can’t handle your lioness roar.”

I huffed indignantly, “Tell me, would you agree if your son was called Fang Lei?”

I immediately treated Tan Yi as if he were my own younger brother, and hung on his back, “Right, right? How could one choose this kind of common name?”

Tan Yi strongly pushed my hand away, “ What I’m saying is, I can actually still hold on if you're so childish. However, I never expected that Brother Xiao Ke could actually be pulled down to your level. It’s impossible for me not to say it, you’re really awesome. Also, don’t just casually touch me. If not, some unknown person, whose IQ has also plummeted, will take this kitchen knife and stab me.”

Right now, I had pretty much figured it out. For someone like Tan Yi, who said that we were similar, we would always incessantly mock each other. Since there was actually an opportunity to mock someone, we would definitely hold onto it regardless of anything and would never let it go in spite of all consequences.

I put the kitchen knife across Tan Yi’s neck, “Quickly apologize, or else you will die drop by drop.”

Tan Yi played along and raised his hands in surrender, “I can help you  name your child, it will definitely be incomparably great!”

I toyed with the celery and indicated for him to continue.

Tan Yi looked extremely mischievous, “Your son will be called Fang Zheng[2] -- made in Beijing University.”

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[1] Power over life and death lies in the hands of others, that’s where one’s own life is taken.

[2] a country in Harbin, Fang Fang Zheng Zheng also means square-shaped.