270. Backyard Skewers
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The beauty of living in the countryside is that if you have the cash, you can have your very own villa and garden.
Although it seems like building your own place is a thing of the past now.
Grandpa’s little villa isn’t big; it’s almost like a mansion for ants. It’s got two rooms in a one-story layout, and the front yard is just a flat expanse of concrete with two trees on either side. But the backyard? Oh boy, it’s massive! It’s surrounded by a sturdy red brick wall, and there’s even a little patch along the side for growing garlic and scallions.
Most of the backyard is a barren wasteland of concrete with a few poles and cotton lines strung up as makeshift clotheslines. Back when they were kids, Lin Nan and her friends would flip the lines and pretend they were badminton nets, battling it out in epic backyard tournaments.
But now, Wu Jiaming went all the way up to the back mountain to collect firewood! Too bad it’s been raining non-stop lately, the firewood is more damp than a sponge in a swimming pool, and no matter how hard he tries, he just can’t get a spark.
Even in the countryside, once everyone got electric stoves and gas burners, nobody bothered with cooking over a fire anymore. Grandpa hasn’t used the stove for over a decade and there’s no dry firewood hanging around either.
“So we’ve been slaving away all afternoon skewering meat, and now we can’t even get a fire started?” Lin Nan plops down on a little stool under the sun, yawning as she watches an increasingly frantic Wu Jiaming.
In front of him stands a temporary stove made of bricks. He’s worried he’ll get scolded if the concrete gets singed, so he’s laid down a thick layer of sand underneath.
Beside them, Liu Xinyi can never resist a jab; while she’s glued to her game, she chimes in, “Seriously, cousin, you’re such a weakling!”
“Oh yeah? Why don’t you give it a try then?”
“I’m just a frail girl!” Liu Xinyi immediately shakes her head, feigning innocence.
Back in the day, they wouldn’t have to go through all this hassle; people used to regularly sell coal briquettes. Now, forget about them—no one even knows where Grandpa tossed that old stove long ago. Lin Nan only caught a glimpse of him using coal to boil water when she was four or five.
Wu Guodong walks out clutching a few sweet potatoes, glances at the nonexistent fire, and can only sigh. “If we can’t start a fire, we might as well just ditch the skewers and have fried food tonight.”
“Bro, if it weren’t for you saying we’re having fried food tonight, Grandpa wouldn’t have only cooked for two!” Liu Xinyi continues her playful ribbing. “If the fire won’t light, we’ll all go to bed hungry.”
Wu Jiaming turns back to his comrades trying to assemble their lives while also eyeing his grandparents, who are merrily slurping noodles not too far away, and his irritation spikes even higher.
“d*mn it! Just give me ten minutes!”
Lin Nan isn’t keen on getting involved; she already munched on skewers at Chen Yao’s place a while back.
And Chen Yao’s parents are top-notch chefs with a grill setup and smokeless charcoal—talk about a professional operation compared to Wu Jiaming’s “last-minute Lauter” attempt.
Trying to distract herself, she starts scrolling through her phone. Sadly, since Chen Yao mentioned dinner earlier today, he hasn’t replied at all.
Then it hits her—she remembers her embarrassing slip-up from last night’s shower, and her face immediately turns beet red.
Letting out a long sigh, Lin Nan scoops up Cola, who had been lazing at her feet, and buries her face in its fluffy fur, pretending to be a cat person trying to mask her embarrassment.
But while she cuddles Cola, the other cat, Sprite, isn’t having it; it starts clawing and meowing loudly at her shoes, demanding attention.
Lin Nan can’t help but wonder if Sprite has figured out that Cola is its wife now.
Why do these two cats keep getting smarter?
As dusk falls, Grandpa flips on the backyard lights, illuminating everything. Finally, Wu Jiaming manages to get a fire going—he’s not even worried about the flames charring the skewers; he hastily grabs a few chunks of pork belly and starts grilling.
Wu Guodong tosses sweet potatoes into the fire, while Liu Xinyi cozies up with a chair beside the warm flames, roasting a sausage.
But Lin Nan is still sulking a bit further away, gazing at the moon growing clearer in the night sky, feeling restless.
Just then, she receives a message from Li Na.
“Be careful.”
“Huh?”
She furrows her brows in confusion, gets up, and slips back inside to call Li Na. The call connects, but all she hears is static and chaotic buzzing.
Lin Nan suddenly feels a wave of panic.
Furrowing her brows deeper, she starts pacing around the house, but soon hears Liu Xinyi calling her from the backyard, making her temporarily push the unsettling matter aside.
But if she received a message from Li Na, does that mean Li Na is actually back?
If she’s warning her to be careful, maybe that means someone else from another world is coming, and it could very well be that they want to see her as Lilith again?
Feeling a headache coming on, Lin Nan walks to the backyard, where Liu Xinyi proudly presents a charred sausage that looks like it survived a barbecue apocalypse: “Sis, you eat first!”
“Why should I be the one to eat? Looks like you burnt it to a crisp!” Lin Nan turns her nose up. “Give it to Cola.”
Cola perks up upon hearing its name, but when it sees that terrifying sausage, it turns its head in disgust and skitters away.
“Even the cat hates it…” Liu Xinyi immediately loses her enthusiasm and tosses the sausage into the trash can.
Lin Nan isn’t exactly a grilling prodigy; she’s just waiting for Wu Jiaming and the others to finish their skewers.
Unfortunately, this group isn’t exactly racking up cooking accolades—everything is either burnt to a crisp, overcooked to inedibility, or completely raw.
“Who knows when school’s gonna start again…” Lin Nan grumbles, sliding back into her seat.
Liu Xinyi leans over, grinning. “Aren’t we supposed to do online classes? I’ve heard we need to download software from our class group.”
She’s a high school senior, and although she rarely studies, she’s surprisingly serious about the college entrance exams. “What if I manage to get into your school?”
“Yeah right, that old dump?”
“My grades aren’t that good either…” Liu Xinyi sighs dramatically, “With this situation, I’m definitely going to tank.”
Her family isn’t well-off; her mom’s a stay-at-home parent, and her dad’s a carpenter, and if her grades slip, she’s likely out of the school game entirely.
Strangely enough, while parents everywhere praise higher education, Lin Nan’s relatives think that if you don’t get into a good school, studying is just a waste of money.
Lin Nan shrugs, unsure what to say. “Who told you not to study hard during this time?”
“Then will you tutor me?”
Lin Nan shakes her head furiously.
Right before her own college entrance exams, all she could think about was studying; she hardly touched her game console the entire holiday.
Too bad back then was the peak of her life—now she can’t even recall the basics of middle school math.
After some playful bickering, Liu Xinyi runs off to roast a chicken leg, assuming her feminine privilege to scold Wu Jiaming about burning the meat.
Lin Nan rests her chin on her hands, staring at the trio a little way off, and suddenly finds herself reminiscing about that barbecue day on Chen Yao’s balcony.
If she’d known she was going to become Chen Yao’s girlfriend, she should have asked for a proper greeting gift.
What a loss!
