Chapter 24
Qiao Wei was actually feeling quite restless too.
She and Yan Lei were already sleeping in the same bed, they were legally married, and they even had a child together—well, although she had just taken in a ready-made kid, becoming a mother painlessly.
In short, when it came to the chemistry between men and women, the feeling could strike at any moment.
Given the conditions created by the transmigration deity, and since they were both mature adults, there was no need to act coy. When the two of them had been holding hands earlier, they had already reached a tacit understanding, sharing a mutual expectation for tonight.
Qiao Wei was reading “little cloth dolls adventure” to Yan Xiang. Yan Xiang was listening with great interest, but Qiao Wei’s mind was drifting.
In the gaps between turning pages, she looked up out the window. Yan Lei was sitting on a small bamboo chair, holding his book almost as high as his head, and she couldn’t tell if he was actually reading or just pretending.
Qiao Wei suppressed a laugh and called out to him, “Come inside and read, it’s already dark outside.”
Yan Lei gave an “oh” and came inside with his book. Since they were all reading, the family of three gathered in one room to save electricity.
But two of the three people had their minds drifting; only Yan Xiang was earnestly listening to his mother read.
This restlessness and budding desire lasted right up until Qiao Wei went to the toilet with a flashlight before bed, at which point it came to an abrupt halt.
She came out of the toilet and hurried back to the room.
Yan Lei was shirtless, wiping his body with a towel by the hand-pump well, his gaze burning with heat as he looked at her.
But Qiao Wei had a subtle expression, hesitating to speak. In the end, she said nothing and quickly walked into the room.
Yan Lei even called out to her, “Do you want me to mix a basin of warm water for you?”
Qiao Wei replied from inside the room, “No need.”
Did that mean she wasn’t going to wash up?
She was the type of person who loved cleanliness the most. Why wasn’t she washing up today? Yan Lei felt a little uneasy. Had he misunderstood?
But the atmosphere at dusk had clearly been so good, with warmth in their palms and their gazes.
He wrung out the towel and went inside, only for Qiao Wei to squeeze past him as she headed back out.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
Qiao Wei said, “To wash something.”
“…?” Yan Lei asked, “Wash what? Let me do it.”
Qiao Wei refused outright, “No need, just a small item. Go inside.”
In the pitch dark, it looked like she was holding some tiny object in her hand, clutched in her palm. It indeed wasn’t very big.
Yan Lei didn’t argue with her and went back into the room.
He lay on the kang bed, waiting for her.
There was a faint sound of splashing water in the yard. After a long while, Qiao Wei finally came in.
“I’m turning off the light,” she said.
“Go ahead.”
The room plunged into darkness.
There was the rustling sound of clothes being changed, and soon Qiao Wei climbed onto the kang bed in the dark.
The two of them lay side by side.
“Can we install a light in the toilet?”
“Sure.”
“Install the pull cord just outside the door. That way, when using the toilet at night, you can pull the cord to turn on the light as soon as you open the door, and pull it off when you come back.”
“Sure.”
No one spoke, and the room fell silent.
After a brief moment, Yan Lei rolled over and pressed down on her.
The man’s scent enveloped her, every part of his body hard, his vitality like a raging fire.
Qiao Wei closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and enjoyed this for a moment.
Fiery vitality.
However, when the man began to nuzzle her neck, she bit her lip and pressed against his shoulders. “No…”
Yan Lei froze, thinking he was being rejected just like before.
But Qiao Wei immediately explained, “My aunt is here.”
“…?” Yan Lei was confused. “You still have an aunt? Where is she? In town?”
It turned out that “aunt” wasn’t used as slang for periods yet. Qiao Wei changed her wording: “It’s my period, menstruation. You know what menstruation is, right?”
As a married man and a father, he at least knew a little about women’s matters.
Yan Lei was incredibly depressed. “How could that have come now?”
“That’s not something I can control,” Qiao Wei said, feeling quite innocent.
She tried her best to hold back her laughter, but Yan Lei still noticed the vibration in her abdomen.
He was already depressed enough, and yet she was laughing.
…
So, she had actually agreed, right? It wasn’t a rejection just now. It was just that they couldn’t.
Qiao Wei wrapped her arms around Yan Lei’s shoulders, patted his back reassuringly, and then tried to push him off.
But her body was slender and soft, and Yan Lei felt like he could completely envelop her. He didn’t want to get off; instead, he buried his face in the crook of her neck.
Her scent fascinated him.
Qiao Wei didn’t push him away again.
She closed her eyes, embraced him, and accepted his touch.
His palms were calloused and very rough. As they slid over her, the prickly sensation made her shiver.
The two long-deprived souls held each other tightly.
Neither made a sound; only their breathing could be heard in the darkness.
Qiao Wei let Yan Lei touch her skin, while also exploring his body.
She took off his tank top, and he took off her small top. In the pitch black, they could see nothing, relying solely on their palms to trace their shapes.
The rise and fall of muscles and her slender waist pressed together tightly without any gap.
Until his palms grew more forceful and his breathing grew heavier, she held his hand down and whispered, “We can’t…”
Yan Lei also knew they couldn’t. He buried himself in the crook of her neck to steady his breathing, then lifted his head to tentatively kiss her cheek.
She didn’t turn her face away in disgust like she used to.
Encouraged, Yan Lei boldly kissed her again, kissing her cheek, her ear, and sucking on her earlobe.
That was Qiao Wei’s sensitive spot. It had been in the past, and even in a different world, it still was.
Qiao Wei let out a soft moan. If this continued, she wouldn’t be able to take it. She turned her head to break free.
But Yan Lei had found pleasure in it, and he relentlessly pursued her.
Unable to dodge, Qiao Wei simply cupped the back of his head, leaned in, and blocked his lips.
For a moment, Yan Lei felt as if a freezing spell had been cast on him; he didn’t dare move a muscle.
Qiao Wei released his lips, her palm rubbing the back of his neck.
There were no memories of kissing him in her mind. Perhaps they had been filtered out and washed away by selective memory, or perhaps… there really had been none.
She remembered reading a literary work once where a husband serving in the military came home to visit his family. When he wanted to kiss his wife at night, his wife slapped him across the face and angrily scolded him for being a hooligan. That story wasn’t even about the sixties or seventies; she recalled it being about the eighties or nineties, set in a very remote rural village.
Whether it was due to the era or the region,
with closed minds, it was normal for couples not to kiss.
In any case, the man didn’t seem to dare to move. Did he think they had just accidentally bumped lips earlier?
Qiao Wei tilted her head up slightly and touched his lips again.
If she really wanted to tease him, she should have used her tongue. But Qiao Wei was, after all, an impostor. She was afraid of taking too big a step and revealing a flaw that would arouse suspicion, so she didn’t dare.
She could only gently touch his lips with hers, brushing against them.
Frozen one moment, the spell was broken the next.
In the darkness, the man pressed down on her like a mountain, pursuing her lips and nibbling at them, clumsy and green.
Qiao Wei was giggling at his antics.
The man paused, trying to control his strength, and gradually got the hang of it.
Qiao Wei stopped laughing too and closed her eyes.
Qiao Wei didn’t remember how she fell asleep. She only recalled Yan Lei constantly demanding her lips, endlessly, like a child tasting candy for the very first time.
When she was half-asleep and dazed, he even said, “Why didn’t you put down a pad…”
She was too sleepy for her brain to function. What pad?
In her daze, she heard Yan Lei get out of bed, open the wardrobe, and then get back into bed. He wrapped his arm around her waist, lifted her up, and slipped something under her.
She didn’t remember what happened after that. In short, she fell asleep being held tightly in his embrace.
On the same night, Lin Xixi was not having such an easy time.
As soon as Regimental Commander Zhao got home, he found an opportunity to drag Lin Xixi to the corner of the yard. Holding up the lunchbox, he asked, “What is this?”
Lin Xixi’s heart skipped a beat. But she wasn’t actually a young girl; she was someone with years on her, after all, having lived with her in-laws for so many years. She could spin lies without even blinking. “Isn’t this the lunchbox I gave to Regimental Commander Yan this morning? He asked you to bring it back.”
Her expression was so calm that Regimental Commander Zhao almost thought he had misunderstood.
On second thought, something was wrong. He questioned, “Why did you send biscuits to Little Yan?”
“My aunt told me,” Lin Xixi said, her eyes wide with a look of innocence. “My aunt said Regimental Commander Yan is quite pitiful. The wife he married doesn’t even make him breakfast day in and day out, so he has to eat at the Cafeteria every single day. Since we made flatbread, I figured I’d bring some to Regimental Commander Yan. After all, we’re neighbors, and aren’t he and you comrades-in-arms, Uncle? Aunt said you two have a great relationship.”
Regimental Commander Zhao scoffed, “You sure are generous.”
It wasn’t that Regimental Commander Zhao was stingy, but in an era of tight supplies, buying grain, oil, and non-staple foods required not only coupons but also a non-staple food booklet. Under such conditions, a large family like his really couldn’t afford to be so generous.
And he noticed that she had given quite a lot of flatbread this morning, enough to fill a grown man’s stomach.
His sister’s family had always struggled financially, and he had to send money every month to help them out. How did they raise a daughter who was so spendthrift, giving things away without even blinking?
But Lin Xixi’s expression was too calm, lacking any of the guilt of someone who had done wrong. Instead, she took the lunchbox, met Regimental Commander Zhao’s gaze, and asked, “Uncle, why did you pull me over here? What did you want to say to me?”
Regimental Commander Zhao found himself unable to say it.
If he had misunderstood and spoken out of turn, where would the young girl hide her face? What if she couldn’t take it and jumped into the river? That would be no laughing matter.
Regimental Commander Zhao cleared his throat and said, “Mind your own business. It’s always you women who love to stick your noses into other people’s affairs. Meddling like this, how embarrassing is it for Regimental Commander Yan’s wife? It makes her look like a lazy wife and makes you look diligent.”
Lin Xixi said, “Regimental Commander Yan’s wife doesn’t even make breakfast,”
“so isn’t she just a lazy wife?”
Lin Xixi looked down on lazy wives the most.
She especially loathed how the lazier a wife was, the better her life often seemed to be—cherished by her husband, pampered by her mother-in-law, with no one in the family daring to provoke her.
Unlike her, who had been hardworking and virtuous her entire life, only to be despised by her in-laws for her rural background and lack of education.
In this life, she was definitely going to become a high-ranking official’s wife!
Lin Xixi wanted to be an official’s wife so badly her eyes turned red with desire. Once she became an official’s wife, she would definitely ride in a sedan right in front of those in-laws who had mistreated her, flaunting it to blind their eyes.
Ptu!
That night, as Regimental Commander Zhao got onto the kang bed, he grumbled to his wife, “Stop gossiping with Xixi. She’s a perfectly good young girl; don’t let her learn to act like a middle-aged woman.”
Sister Yang kicked him. “What middle-aged woman? What’s wrong with middle-aged women? Women hold up half the sky, the Chairman said so! What, do you look down on women? Do you dare disobey the highest instructions!”
Junzi and Wu Nier were both sleeping on the same kang bed with them, and the two children giggled.
Regimental Commander Zhao stiffened his neck. “Go to sleep! Whoever doesn’t sleep, I’ll beat them up in a bit.”
The two kids quickly closed their eyes and pretended to sleep. Junzi even pretended to snore, thinking his acting was very realistic.
Sister Yang patted the two little ones again, coaxing them to sleep.
Once the two children were asleep, she finally asked her husband, “What gossip did I share with Xixi that made you scold me?”
Regimental Commander Zhao said, “Just the matters of Little Yan’s household. Don’t go talking nonsense.”
He told her about Lin Xixi giving the flatbread to Yan Lei.
Sister Yang slapped his arm. “So this is my fault? I was wondering why there wasn’t enough flatbread this morning. Right, Xixi wanted to scoop an extra bowl of flour from the start!”
Sister Yang finally figured it out.
“A grown girl can’t be kept at home. Your niece is yearning for love, and you’re blaming it on me?”
“You better manage her well. Little Yan is a married man.”
Regimental Commander Zhao was a bit unsure. “I thought so too at first, but it doesn’t look like it. When I talked to Xixi about this, she wasn’t shy at all. It really doesn’t seem like it. If she liked Little Yan, how could she not feel embarrassed? A seventeen or eighteen-year-old girl couldn’t fake that. Maybe we’re just overthinking it.”
Since the uncle put it that way, the aunt couldn’t very well throw mud at her husband’s niece. How could a young girl withstand having dirt thrown at her? It wasn’t uncommon for them to get desperate and jump into rivers, wells, or drink pesticide.
Sister Yang could only say, “True.”
Neither of the couple spoke. The room was quiet, and they could hear the breathing of the two little ones.
But both Regimental Commander Zhao and Sister Yang kept their eyes open.
What they said was one thing, but how they felt in their hearts was another.
After a while, Sister Yang whispered, “Keep a good lookout in the Military Unit. Hurry up and pick a suitable match for Xixi.”
“Mhm.”
“Find someone handsome. Young girls all like good-looking ones.”
“Good looks can’t put food on the table… Ow, don’t pinch me, hiss—alright, alright, I got it.”
Sister Yang let go and scolded him, “Pay more attention. Having such a big niece staying with us, if any nasty rumors get out, we won’t be able to face your eldest sister.”
“I know, I know,” Regimental Commander Zhao promised. “I’ll take a good look.”
