Chapter 32
Upon arriving at the bathhouse, Sister Yang made Yingzi follow Lin Xixi, and directly instructed Lin Xixi, “Don’t just leave after you finish washing. I still have Wu Nier here with me.”
Lin Xixi had no choice but to accompany them the whole time. When they finished washing and came out together, only Regimental Commander Zhao was waiting outside.
Lin Xixi pretended to ask casually, “Uncle, where is Little Yan Xiang?”
She thought she had asked in a calm and composed manner, but in reality, once a person has a specific desire, they will inevitably leave traces. Regimental Commander Zhao glanced at her, threw her a curt “They left,” and said nothing more.
She couldn’t get into contact with Yan Lei at all!
Lin Xixi was depressed to death.
When Yan Lei returned home, Qiao Wei had already finished scrubbing herself, and she had even washed her hair. It was the middle of summer, and after tossing and turning with Yan Lei all night, she finally felt refreshed again.
The lunchbox had been kept warm on the stove, so it hadn’t gone cold. Yan Lei brought Yan Xiang back, set down the basin, and went into the kitchen to clean up Qiao Wei’s bathwater. Qiao Wei dished out the rice into bowls and brought out the lunchbox containing the dishes, and the family was ready to eat.
After pouring out the bathwater, Yan Lei rinsed the basin by the hand-pump well, but his eyes were fixed on Qiao Wei.
After her bath, Qiao Wei, as usual, had slipped into one of his white shirts, revealing a pair of long, straight legs.
A few days ago, when she first dressed like this, Yan Lei thought it was some weird, bad habit—leaving her own clothes unworn just to wear his shirt. He also felt that his shirt was so much larger, hanging loose and long on her, and it just didn’t look right.
Now, that feeling had completely changed.
The shirt was baggy and oversized, hiding her figure. But at night, Yan Lei had traced her curves and her slender, delicate frame with his palms. Those lines were etched in his mind, and underneath the shirt, being unable to see them only made them more tantalizing to his imagination.
Not to mention her legs, which were fair and smooth.
Yan Lei stole a few extra glances and felt that the summer heat was becoming too intense, making him feel restless inside.
Qiao Wei set down the lunchbox, lifted her eyes, and saw Yan Lei’s burning gaze fixed on her legs. She lifted her lower leg to take a look.
“Did I get stove ash on me?” She looked at her lower leg and didn’t see anything, then lifted the corner of her shirt to check her thigh, but still couldn’t find it. “It’s not there? Where did I brush against something?”
Yan Lei coughed, walked over, and hung the basin on the wall, “No, you didn’t get anything on you.”
Qiao Wei muttered, “Then why are you staring at me?”
They were both under the eaves, and she squeezed past him to go to the kitchen to fetch the food.
Yan Lei cast a quick glance at Yan Xiang, who was busy moving the lunchbox around the dining table, trying to make it look neater, and said in a voice too low for the child to hear, “Your legs are beautiful.”
Qiao Wei almost choked on her own saliva. This compliment was truly… unadorned and plain.
What was even funnier was that after Yan Lei finished complimenting her, he didn’t dare to meet her eyes, only daring to look into the distance.
Qiao Wei turned around and pinned him against the wall.
“If you think they’re beautiful, then praise me loudly,” she said. “Don’t be so sneaky about it, like a thief.”
Yan Lei glanced at Yan Xiang and lowered his voice, “The child is right there. What if he hears it and starts mimicking it?”
“That’s exactly why you should let him learn,” Qiao Wei said dismissively. “Like father, like son.”
“He needs to learn how his father praises his mother, so that when he grows up, he’ll know how to praise his own wife and make her as happy as his mother.”
Yan Lei blinked.
Qiao Wei withdrew her hand from the wall, gave him a sidelong glance with a playful smile, and turned to go to the kitchen.
Yan Lei stepped out from under the eaves, stood with his hands on his hips looking at the courtyard, and didn’t know why his heart was beating so fast. This feeling was indescribably strange.
Soon, Qiao Wei came out carrying the rice bowls, and Yan Lei went over to take them from her. Qiao Wei said, “Go get the chopsticks.”
Yan Lei went to the kitchen to get the chopsticks, and the family of three sat down in the small courtyard. The aroma of food filled the air, and the white smoke from the mosquito coil curled upwards.
Yan Lei swallowed the food in his mouth and shot a glance at Qiao Wei. Qiao Wei also looked at him.
Yan Lei looked at Yan Xiang again. Yan Xiang was eating with great relish.
Yan Lei stopped his chopsticks, “Xiangxiang!”
Yan Xiang looked up, “Hmm?”
“Is Mom beautiful or not?” Yan Lei asked with a smile.
With a grain of rice still stuck to the corner of his mouth, Yan Xiang said without hesitation, “Beautiful!”
Yan Lei said, “Then praise Mom loudly. Don’t just tell me.”
Yan Xiang followed suit and immediately said loudly to his mother, “Mom, you’re really beautiful!”
Qiao Wei laughed so hard she had to cover her mouth to keep from spitting out her rice, “I know, thank you, baby!”
After saying this, she looked at Yan Lei with a smile.
Yan Lei put on a straight face and solemnly instructed Yan Xiang, “In the future, whenever you think Mom is beautiful, praise her loudly. Mom likes being praised, and Mom will be happy when she is praised.”
The child immediately took the lesson to heart, “Okay! I got it!”
Who doesn’t like being praised? Yan Xiang loved being praised the most, he understood!
It was a night filled with laughter.
After Qiao Wei finished coaxing Yan Xiang to sleep, she came out and saw that the desk lamp in the study on the west side was still on, and Yan Lei was still reading.
Qiao Wei pressed down on Yan Lei’s shoulder and leaned in, “How much have you read? Oh, less than a third left?”
There were few entertainment options, so people were more focused when they did something. Yan Lei read books every night after dinner, and he read quite quickly.
Yan Lei didn’t even look at her, simply turning the page, “I’m telling you, once I finish reading this, it must be gotten rid of.”
“Uh-huh!” Qiao Wei nodded, indicating she absolutely wouldn’t object, but she leaned her face even closer, “So… is it good?”
Her voice was right by his ear, her breath entering his ear, feeling ticklish.
Yan Lei rubbed his ear and became serious, “Whether it’s good or not is one thing, and whether it’s correct or not is another.”
Qiao Wei nodded with a smile, “Uh-huh!”
Yan Lei paused, reorganizing his words, “We cannot say that incorrect things are good.”
Qiao Wei’s smile deepened, “Uh-huh!”
She even gave Yan Lei a thumbs-up, then turned and went back to the bedroom.
Yan Lei sat at the desk, lost in thought. He had a feeling he had been manipulated, but he didn’t know how.
He laid the book flat, wanting to read a bit more, but his ears twitched as he heard the rustling sounds from the bedroom. Qiao Wei had laid down.
Immediately, his heart became restless, and he couldn’t read anymore. Yan Lei turned off the desk lamp and went into the room as well.
As soon as he laid down, he reached out to pull Qiao Wei into his arms, but he grasped only empty space.
Qiao Wei had anticipated him and had rolled away.
“Stop it!” she scolded in a low voice, “If you keep messing around, I won’t be able to get up tomorrow morning, and I won’t be able to make breakfast for you.”
In just a few short days, Yan Lei was no longer the man who would just smoke in silence when rejected. He scooted over and still pulled Qiao Wei into his arms, “If you can’t get up, then don’t make it. I’ll go eat at the Battalion Headquarters. You take Xiangxiang to the Residential Compound to eat. If you get up too late and there’s no breakfast at the Residential Compound either, you guys can go to the Supply and Marketing Cooperative and buy biscuits to eat.”
Qiao Wei chuckled and chided, “How can you have biscuits for breakfast?”
You can’t just fob off a child with biscuits for breakfast; the child is still growing.
Yan Lei disagreed, “Why not? Just let Xiangxiang eat biscuits in the morning, and make the other kids jealous to death.”
Qiao Wei realized, biscuits were a luxury item at this time.
Her heart skipped a beat, and she asked, “Can we get milk around here?”
Yan Lei was restless, “Why get that?”
Qiao Wei told him, “Milk is very nutritious. It’s best for a child to have at least one egg and one cup of milk every day.”
She paused, and added, very much in line with the characteristics of the era, “Only then can they have a healthy body. A healthy body is the capital of the revolution—this is what the Great Leader said.”
Yan Lei couldn’t recall what the Great Leader had said at that moment. Instead, feeling the smoothness in his palms, he couldn’t help but think of the description of a woman’s skin in the book he had just been reading— “like milk.”
“Qiao Wei…” He nibbled on the back of Qiao Wei’s neck and couldn’t help but whisper, “Your skin… is like milk.”
Qiao Wei grabbed the neckline of her camisole and bit down on it!
Oh my god, these cheesy love words!
Although cheesy, it was a huge step forward. She absolutely couldn’t laugh at him; she had to encourage him more.
After forcing back her laughter, Qiao Wei asked Yan Lei with a straight face, “Then do you like it?”
How could he not like it?
Yan Lei buried his face in the crook of her neck, “Hmm.”
Qiao Wei kicked him, “Speak!”
Yan Lei then said, “I like it.”
The voice was low, as if he still felt ashamed and unaccustomed to expressing affection like this.
People of this era, really.
She turned over to face Yan Lei, nose to nose, “Your skin is the color of wheat.”
Wheat made Yan Lei think of the countryside, but her voice was sweet and clingy, not sounding like she was disgusted. Yan Lei hesitated for a moment and asked tentatively, “Then… do you like it?”
Qiao Wei wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his lips, “I like it.”
She pinched his firm arm, “I also like this, it’s really strong.”
Her hand slid to the man’s hard chest and pressed it, “This too…”
Before the word “like” could be spoken, her lips were blocked, and she could only make “mm-mm” sounds.
Honestly, what’s the rush? She hadn’t finished speaking yet.
Since she couldn’t speak with her mouth, Qiao Wei could only express how much she liked his firm abs with the heat of her palms.
After all, she was still on her period, so after messing around for a while, they had to settle down.
But Yan Lei held her and wouldn’t let go.
Qiao Wei patted his hand and muttered, “Aren’t you hot?”
“Not hot. You’re cool, and it’s comfortable to hold you,” he said. It seemed that because they had previously said “I like you” to each other, he didn’t feel as much shame about saying “I like” anymore. He paused, and then actually said in a low voice, “I like skin against skin.”
Both of them had taken off their tops, maximizing the skin-to-skin contact. It had been like this yesterday and the day before as well.
Qiao Wei suddenly realized, “Skin hunger?”
“What?” He didn’t understand.
“It’s just…” Qiao Wei asked, “When you were little, did your mom and dad or other family members often hug you?”
“No.”
“Would they kiss you?”
“Who would go around kissing a boy for no reason?”
“That’s skin hunger,” Qiao Wei said. “Humans instinctively have a need to be soothed. In childhood, this is generally fulfilled by parents. Parents often hugging and kissing their children, or at least patting their heads or touching their faces, can satisfy this need. In adulthood, it is generally completed between husband and wife through kissing, hugging, caressing, and… and marital relations.”
“Children who rarely receive hugs and kisses from their parents in childhood will need to be soothed more than others when they grow up. This need is called skin hunger.”
“So that’s how it is. You know so much,” Yan Lei said.
He paused and murmured repeatedly in a low voice, “So that’s how it is.”
He suddenly hugged Qiao Wei tight, very tight, but said nothing.
Qiao Wei understood very well.
She had read the original text. The rural family Yan Lei came from, the children who survived were just the ones left over. Adults rarely hugged or kissed children; they were left to fend for themselves and grew up wild.
What was worse, this need of Yan Lei’s had not been relieved in his marriage, but had actually worsened.
He held her, very tightly, and said nothing.
But it was as if everything had been said.
He was deeply resenting her.
Why didn’t she kiss him earlier? Why didn’t she hug him earlier?
Since she understood everything, why did she treat him like that?
Qiao Wei sighed softly, feeling helpless.
She reached out and hugged him back tightly.
She even wrapped her legs around him, holding him as tightly as possible.
In the darkness, she heard the man let out a long, comfortable sigh.
