Regardless of how much he pleaded or played dirty, w.a.n.g Dahu’s grandpa finally dragged home by the neck.

w.a.n.g Dahu’s grandmother waiting at home had soon lost all patience. When she saw the grandpa and grandson finally come home, she hurried out to receive them.

All the dumplings were heated up in the pot, three people ate while they conversed.

“What happened in the end?” The old woman saw her grandchild left for a while and came back with a weak appearance, “This child really is nosy, there’s nothing good over there but he keeps demanding to go along.”

w.a.n.g Dahu at this time was still deep in thought about meeting Li Qingran again and didn’t make a noise. At a glance looked a little foolish.

On the other hand, w.a.n.g Shoumin was a bit suspicious. w.a.n.g Dahu’s actions today were a bit too “courageous”. When he went all out and hit someone, he didn’t seem to be a six year old child at all. He clearly wasn’t any different from an angered beast.

“Little Tiger, do you know the Li family’s child?”

w.a.n.g Dahu heard his question and was startled, finally recovering some of his awareness.

The chubby face was immediately full of indignation, and a small fist was raised, “Ran Ran is my good friend. If anyone bullies him, I will hit them!”

w.a.n.g Shoumin nodded his head, thinking that it’s possible they became acquainted while playing outside. They’re kids, two seconds and they’ll become friends.

Hearing there was something related to w.a.n.g Dahu, grandma was impatient and quickly asked for the whole story.

w.a.n.g Shoumin only gave the short story.

Grandma immediately slapped her grandson’s bottom. Thinking about it made her scared, so she scolded, “You stupid child, the other person was holding a knife and you still dared to rush in. Even though you’re a child, you were way too bold!”

w.a.n.g Dahu saw that she was genuinely angry, lowered his head and trembled, but didn’t dare to argue.

Grandma refused to let it go, continued to educate her grandson, then finally sighed and spoke with her old man, “Ay! These two years, that Li Zhanggui keeps making worse and worse trouble. If it keeps going on like this, I think sooner or later Xiumei will die by his hand.”

w.a.n.g Shoumin lit a cigarette and sucked on it twice before saying, “But what can we do? You also know their family situation. On a normal day Zhanggui isn’t any different from a normal person, it’s just that his brain has a problem. When he goes crazy, he can’t even recognize his loved ones. The last two times he hit Xiumei, after waking up he cried and screamed in regret. It’s not like you don’t know. I say, it’s really pitiful.”

w.a.n.g Dahu, who was listening on the side, immediately understood.

Ran Ran’s father had “mental illness” with violence tendencies. When he had an attack, he would beat his wife.

That’s too dangerous!

“Grandpa, if that person has that kind of sickness, why don’t they bring him to the hospital? You saw today that he even pulled out a knife. What if one day he kills someone?”

At this point in history, if a mentally ill person killed someone, they did not have to go to jail.

“What killing or not killing? Children shouldn’t talk nonsense,” Grandpa scolded.

Hearing that, w.a.n.g Dahu’s grandma spoke up, “I think our grandson didn’t say anything wrong. If this keeps up, there might be a deadly accident! Little Tiger, in the future, stay away from that family and stay away from the Li family’s child.”

How could w.a.n.g Dahu do that? He quickly explained how pitiful Li Qingran was.

Grandma’s heart softened, she said a few more words and didn’t mention it again.

That night, w.a.n.g Dahu lay in his warm blanket, but halfway through the night he didn’t feel the slightest bit sleepy.

He couldn’t suppress it and started thinking about his “past life”.

He met Li Qingran when he started high school, they were cla.s.smates for three years. At that time, in everyone’s eyes, Li Qingran was “an eccentric character, almost invisible”, but he had great academic achievements. On the other hand, w.a.n.g Dahu was famous around the school. He had a great personality, a sense of obligation, and was like a positive ray of suns.h.i.+ne. The two are diametrically opposed, but because of an accidental “hero saving the beauty” moment, they slowly got to know each other. After many years, under w.a.n.g Dahu’s relentless pursuit, they finally became an official couple in college.

Even after they started living together, Li Qingran never mentioned his family. w.a.n.g Dahu did try to subtly ask a few times, but each time it was as if he stepped on a landmine. Over time, he didn’t dare to ask any more.

“It’s because the situation is like this, so he refused to speak about it?” Remembering Li Qingran’s melancholy appearance, w.a.n.g Dahu’s heart hurt as if it were stabbed by needles.

Is it warm in the clinic? Ran Ran still hadn’t eaten dinner yet and went to sleep just like that. Is he hungry right now?

Caught up in a worried state, w.a.n.g Dahu finally overcame the longest night of his life up to that point.

Early the next day, as soon as the rooster crowed, w.a.n.g Dahu immediately got up.

In this house, he had a small separate room, so he wouldn’t disturb his grandparents.

w.a.n.g Dahu put on a cotton s.h.i.+rt and cotton trousers, used cold water to wash his face, and snuck in the kitchen.

He lit a fire under the stove, poured some water and two cups of rice into a pot, and started to make congee. The houses in the countryside had large stoves and bigger flames. Not long after, a delicious fragrance wafted out. w.a.n.g Dahu took out six eggs from a bowl under the shelf and put them into the pot of congee. He cooked there until the sun came up, but he still woke up his grandparents in the room.

Dahu’s grandma wore a cotton s.h.i.+rt and ran out, opened her eyes wide and dropped her jaw, watching her grandson run around like an ant.

“What are you doing so early in the morning?”

w.a.n.g Dahu turned around, smiled and flattered, “Grandma, Dahu is making breakfast for grandpa and grandma!”

The old woman was moved to tears. Look at that! In this world, is there any child as filial as this?

“Oh, my precious grandchild!” The old woman hugged her grandson, squeezed him and kissed him twice. She praised Dahu as the most obedient child in the universe.

Whether or not this “best child in the universe” was actually being filial or not, we* don’t know. We only know that this obedient grandchild, with a small but nimble body, brought along everything he needed, only leaving behind a sentence, “I’m going to go see Ran Ran,” before rus.h.i.+ng out the door.

*There’s a weird jump in perspective here.

The speed of those actions stunned the old woman, causing her to choke on the sentence, “You’re not allowed to!”

w.a.n.g Dahu’s house couldn’t be considered far from the clinic, but he was still a child. He needed more than half an hour to get there. Right now it was the end of the year, the coldest phase. By the time he walked over the threshold of the clinic, his small face was so frozen that it turned red.

But Li Qingran wasn’t on the bed.

w.a.n.g Dahu frowned and ran to the sick room next door.

Sure enough, when he lifted the parting curtain full of the smell of disinfectant, he could immediately see the small boy leaning on the sick bed sleeping soundly.

w.a.n.g Dahu didn’t wake him up, instead two eyes stared at the woman lying on the bed—Ran Ran’s mother.

In “the previous life”, although Ran Ran didn’t mention his household affairs, but after all w.a.n.g Dahu still shared a pillow with him. After so many years he would still know a bit. For example, Ran Ran’s mother abandoned him when he was still young.

w.a.n.g Dahu couldn’t clearly say what he was feeling right now. He looked at the woman lying on the bed with a face full of bruises and a body covered in wounds, what could he say?

“You, you’ve come?” Suddenly a hoa.r.s.e voice rang out. Li Qingran blinked his sleepy eyes and sat up.

He looked exactly like a small cat, so adorable that w.a.n.g Dahu had to run over and gently “grope” his face a couple times.

“Is Ran Ran hungry? Brother Dahu brought some food for you.”

After coaxing Li Qingran to wash his face, w.a.n.g Dahu took out the food he brought from home. At this time there was no insulated thermoses, so they had to use layered tins to store food. w.a.n.g Dahu was afraid of going out in the cold weather, so he wrapped it in several layers of towels. The congee was wrapped so tightly that it was still warm.

“Here.” w.a.n.g Dahu gave the other child a spoon.

Li Qingran look at him, slightly pouted and didn’t accept the spoon.

As expected of the “cold-blooded cat”, w.a.n.g Dahu smirked and shoved the spoon in between the cat’s claws, threatening, “Eat!”

Li Qingran still didn’t move, he turned and looked at his mother laying on the hospital bed.

w.a.n.g Dahu rubbed his head, “I’ve already set a portion aside, let auntie sleep more, when she wakes up she can eat.”

“I’m only going to eat one portion!”

w.a.n.g Dahu was momentarily, then he smiled and said, “Alright!”

This child was clearly starving, more than half of a whole tin of congee made its way into his stomach. w.a.n.g Dahu looked at him and felt heartbroken. After peeling three eggs, Li Qingran ate one and refused to eat any more, causing w.a.n.g Dahu to threaten him before he ate more.

All morning, w.a.n.g Dahu sat at the clinic with Li Qingran.

He only took a trip home around noon.

For lunch, grandma made thinly sliced potatoes fried with pepper and a cabbage tofu soup. The thinly sliced potatoes were fried soft, tender and fragrant. The cabbage and tofu were white and crowding in the soup bowl, looking at it made you crave some.

w.a.n.g Dahu ate a few pieces, then wasn’t polite and packed a bunch into a tin. His family’s* Ran Ran hasn’t eaten yet!

*Not exactly literal unless you count their marriage in their past life. w.a.n.g Dahu is claiming Ran Ran… because Ran Ran is his future wife…

Of course, these actions earned him much nagging, but w.a.n.g Dahu’s skin is pretty thick. He spouted a bunch of lines such as “Grandma is compa.s.sionate”, “Grandma is a reincarnated bodhisattva”, “Grandma, this is a virtue” causing the old woman to fall into a dreamlike state. Furthermore, they were people of the same village. Giving two meals didn’t cost much, so she didn’t protest any longer.

When w.a.n.g Dahu returned to the clinic, Kong Xiumei had regained consciousness. Not only that, in the room there were two additional people, a man and a woman.

He glanced around and was able to see Li Qingran sitting next to his mother.

His fists were clenched tightly, lips grimaced, face filled with rage.

w.a.n.g Dahu’s squinted.

He didn’t bother to look at the unfamiliar people and went straight to the bedside and spoke to Kong Xiumei, “h.e.l.lo auntie, I am w.a.n.g Dahu, Ran Ran’s friend!” (his future husband)*

*These are the author’s words, not mine… this time.

Kong Xiumei wiped the tears on her face, smiled reluctantly and said, “You’re the Little Tiger of the village chief’s household! I just heard Ran Ran say that this time we really should thank your family!”

“It’s no big deal, we’re all one big family, auntie!” w.a.n.g Dahu showed off his brilliant white teeth, and laughed intimately.

Translator’s Notes:

w.a.n.g Dahu continues being one smooth m*therf*cker. I have no idea what time period this takes place in actually. I feel like it’s probably 1980s right now.

I try to make this read a smidge more serious than White Lotus. The amount of run-ons makes my head hurt. There are also some weird short sentences that are used for emphasis in the original language, but when I translate, it looks either awkward, unprofessional, or both. =/ I also have to look for synonyms to keep it from being repet.i.tive. I tried a little harder on this chapter for some reason.