Chapter 48: The Snowman
The next morning, Guan Yuan woke up and saw that ice had already formed on the window. Guan Yuan breathed on the glass and, feeling playful, wrote Zhao Shenggu's name on it with his finger.
A piece of clothing was draped over Guan Yuan. Zhao Shenggu's voice came from behind: "Xiao Yuan, why did you get up without putting on clothes? Be careful you don't catch a cold."
Guan Yuan leaned directly against Zhao Shenggu. "I'm not cold at all."
What Zhao Shenggu made for breakfast was noodles with a few green vegetables. It looked very appetizing. After finishing the meal, the two took a stroll and checked on several workshops.
The workshops no longer needed Zhao Shenggu to personally handle everything. Zhao Shenggu had found a few more people in the village and trained them. Guan Yuan truly admired his brother's skill in judging people.
"This is called: do not doubt the people you use, and do not use people you doubt." Guan Yuan remembered that when he once asked him why his judgment was so accurate, that was Zhao Shenggu's answer.
Zhao Shenggu was afraid Guan Yuan would get his shoes wet, so he had been carrying him on his back the whole time. Guan Yuan was now eight years old. Although he was not heavy, carrying him for so long would still be tiring.
"Brother, why don't I get down? If my shoes get wet, I can just change them when we get back." Guan Yuan said, lying on Zhao Shenggu's back.
"It's fine, we're almost there. Why go to the trouble?" Zhao Shenggu held Guan Yuan tighter. "Besides, I like carrying Xiao Yuan. In a few more years, even if I wanted to carry you, I wouldn't be able to."
When they entered Guanjia Village, laughter and cheerful voices came from the direction of the Yue River. It turned out that people from the village had brought their children to skate on the Yue River. Guan Yuan imagined himself and Zhao Shenggu holding hands and skating together on the ice, and said to Zhao Shenggu, "Brother, let's go skating too."
Unexpectedly, this time Zhao Shenggu refused: "No, that's too dangerous. The ice on the Yue River isn't thick enough. If you fall in, it would be awful."
It was only in recent years that life in Guanjia Village had become better, and only then were adults willing to indulge the children. Back when they could not even eat their fill, who would take their children out to play in the dead of winter? Everyone stayed home enduring the winter. Since the adults did not go out, naturally they would not let the children run off to play on the Yue River by themselves.
It was only in the past two years that, after the Yue River froze, people began skating on it.
"But I see them playing just fine." Guan Yuan said.
Zhao Shenggu pressed his lips together. "No. When we get home, you can play however you want. Didn't you say you wanted to build a snowman? Let's go back and build a snowman."
Guan Yuan had no choice but to agree.
After the two returned home, the snow in the yard had piled up too deep to step in. Zhao Shenggu left the snow in the middle of the yard and cleared the rest. Then he and Guan Yuan put on leather gloves and built a snowman together.
Guan Yuan felt that whenever he was with Zhao Shenggu, he turned back into a little kid of just a few years old. Looking at the two snowmen he and Zhao Shenggu had made, both about the same size, the frustration from not being allowed to go skating just now was completely swept away.
Guan Yuan even put scarves on the two snowmen. Zhao Shenggu's hands were very skillful. At first glance, the snowmen really did look somewhat like them.
Just as the two were about to go inside, someone knocked on the courtyard gate. The knocking sounded rather urgent.
A man was seen anxiously holding a child whose lips were blue. "Shenggu, Guan Yuan, I'm your aunt's brother. I came to my sister's house to visit today, but I never expected this child to fall into an ice hole. Can you lend me some money? This child can't afford any delay."
Zhao Shenggu and Guan Yuan exchanged a glance. Their aunt's brother?
The man was Zhao Juan's brother!
Guan Yuan sneered inwardly. The child was already frozen like this, and yet the father could still use the child to beg for money. That was truly ridiculous.
Zhao Shenggu naturally understood as well. "Your child is already frozen like this, and you're not rushing him to the hospital, but coming to me for money instead. Let me give you a piece of advice—hurry up and take the child to get treated. Otherwise, if something happens, you'll be the one regretting it." After saying that, he slammed the courtyard gate shut right in front of the man's face with a loud bang.
Zhao Tiecai never expected Zhao Shenggu to shut the door so decisively. He glared hatefully, then took off his clothes to wrap the child up and carried him back.
The child had not fallen into an ice hole at all. He had only been playing with water at Zhao Juan's house and got soaked when he knocked over a basin that was sitting on the washstand. Zhao Tiecai had originally planned to make the child a bowl of ginger soup, but Zhao Juan had given him this idea instead. Now, not only had he failed to get money, but the child even seemed to have developed a fever.
Guan Yuan and Zhao Shenggu did not take this matter to heart. What they did not know was that as soon as Zhao Tiecai got back to Zhao Juan's house, he cursed her out, saying she had given him a terrible idea.
He then demanded money from Zhao Juan again, and the two siblings nearly came to blows. Later, because the child's treatment was delayed, he almost could not be saved. This also drove the relationship between Zhao Juan and her natal family to a freezing point.
Of course, Guan Yuan and Zhao Shenggu knew nothing about all this. Last year, when they took the entrance exam for junior high, the two of them tied for first place in the school and got into the best junior high in Yun County.
After the spring began, the two were going to register at the school.
The troublesome part was that this school implemented a full boarding system. Even children from the city had to live at the school. Zhao Shenggu and Guan Yuan wanted to go to the school early to see if they could arrange to be day students.
On the day of registration, Guan Yuan and Zhao Shenggu arrived at the registration office. Only after checking the class assignments did they learn that one of them was in Class One and the other in Class Three.
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