Chapter 148: Ch 148: Earning and Planning

While the rest of the village still slept, cool morning air moved through the lanes and across the fields. At the first thinning of night, a figure opened her eyes.

Clarity returned in stages. Su Wanyan sat up from the makeshift bed and stretched her upper body carefully, working stiffness from shoulders and spine that had spent the night on layered blankets and floorboards. A full minute of quiet motion passed before she looked down at the woman beside her.

Mo Xingxue lay curled on the blankets, eyes shut tight, breath even and unguarded. The tension that had lived in her face through so much of the previous day was gone; sleep had smoothed it into something peaceful. Su Wanyan watched for a moment longer than strictly necessary, then rose and stretched properly—arms overhead, back arched, the residual protest of muscles that had carried children and arguments and an entire afternoon’s weight.

Luckily I packed those thick jackets, she thought as let out a sigh of relief.

Her gaze dropped again to Mo Xingxue and to the improvised pillow currently supporting the omega’s head.

Last night had not been uninterrupted. As usual, Su Wanyan had tended Mo Yan’s needs in the dark—feeding, soothing, settling—the small rituals of care that required little more than half-sleep and practiced instinct, without rousing Mo Xingxue or Shen Guoxing.

The hardest part had been extracting herself. Mo Xingxue’s head had rested on her shoulder and arm with the complete trust of deep sleep; moving it without ending that sleep had required patience measured in millimeters.

Once free, Su Wanyan had rummaged through the luggage by phone light until she found the thick fur coats and padded jackets packed for weather that might turn. She had stacked them, wrapped the softer layers around the firmer ones, and built a bulky, yielding bolster where her arm had been.

Only then had she eased Mo Xingxue’s head onto it and confirmed, by the unbroken rhythm of breath, that the substitution had been accepted.

She nodded to herself now, a private congratulations to herself. Good job, me.

After another stretch she moved with deliberate softness to her hygiene kit, then to the bathroom. Water, toothbrush, the short list of motions that turned sleep into wakefulness.

When she emerged from the bathroom, she was fully awake. The kit went back to the luggage area. Her phone—left beside the makeshift pillow the night before—slid into her hand. She crossed the room on careful feet, opened the front door by a few degrees, and stepped out, shutting it behind her with the same controlled care so that no latch-click would travel back to the sofa or the crib or the blankets on the floor.

Outside, she drew a deep breath of rural morning air: clean, free of the density of city pollution, edged with dew and distant earth. The smile that answered nature was sincere and refreshed. Then she started toward the field where the day’s first task waited.

On the way she unlocked her phone and dialed a number she knew by heart.

"Hello, Young Lady?" The man’s voice on the other end carried the rough texture of someone pulled from sleep but already aligning himself to duty.

"Uncle." Su Wanyan’s smile was audible. "Can you bring....."

She listed what the borrowed house lacked. Mattresses—enough for adults and for the children, because one night of floor-and-blanket endurance was sufficient for a one time trial. Pillows that were actual pillows. Furniture to fill the empty geometry of the rooms: a proper table, chairs, storage that was not only luggage.

Then the details that went beyond bare function—pieces that could shape small rooms into places the children might recognize as theirs for the fortnight, colors and sizes chosen with a pediatrician’s eye for what small bodies needed and a guardian’s eye for what might make them feel warm and comfortable rather than merely housed. And items Mo Xingxue would like.

Su Wanyan did not over-explain that part. She named preferences Mo Xingxue had carried for years and trusted the staff to translate preference into objects that would arrive without fanfare.

Even if the house was borrowed, even if two weeks was all the calendar formally allowed, she wanted the interior to stop feeling like a waiting room and start feeling like a place they returned to.

Pleasantries closed the call—thanks, estimated timing, the uncle’s confirmation that the list was understood. When the line went dead Su Wanyan slipped the phone into her pocket and continued toward the field with a light bounce in her step.

I can’t wait for everything to arrive.

Already the empty rooms rearranged themselves behind her eyes: mattresses unrolled, a corner made soft for the children, something of Mo Xingxue’s taste set where morning light would find it. The borrowed house would still be borrowed. But for the span they lived in it, she intended it to forget that fact as thoroughly as possible.

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Dew clung to the grass along the path. The air held that particular early-hour stillness that made every sound—her own footsteps, a distant bird, the faint creak of a tool handle somewhere ahead—feel louder than it was. After walking for a stretch of quiet lanes and open ground, Su Wanyan reached the fields.

She had expected to be first. After all, dawn had only just begun to thin the dark; most of the village behind her was still closed and silent.

However, she found that someone was already there.

A solitary figure stood at the margin of the tilled earth, posture composed, attention fixed on the work waiting across the open ground. Not a villager she had spoken to at the village, nor was it a staff member from the production. It was the indifferent man who taught them to till.

Su Wanyan’s steps faltered. As if the pause itself had weight, he looked back and caught her staring.

She assembled an awkward, wry smile and bowed from the waist, shallow and polite—the courtesy of a guest who had arrived second to a place she had assumed would be empty.

"Good morning, sir."

He nodded once. "Good morning." Then he turned to the fields again. The greeting ended there, completed with the same indifference he had shown them yesterday.

Su Wanyan straightened and moved to the tools left for the morning’s labor—the shovel and hoe. The wood of the handles was cool and faintly damp. Their weight settled into her palms with a purpose that immediately made everything behind her feel farther away. Only when she had both tools did she ask the question that had followed her since the walk home the evening before.

"Is it okay if I stack tasks?"

Jingxue looked at her. His head tilted a fraction—cool, unreadable. Confusion showed only at the edges of his eyes, a slight narrowing that asked what she meant without spending extra words on it.

Those eyes snagged her attention for a second too long.

Wow. He kind of looks like Xuexue.

The thought arrived uninvited: the same cool distance in the features, the same refined stillness, a resemblance close enough to be unsettling if she let it sit. She shook it off almost at once, privately correcting the comparison before it could become rude even inside her own head.

But Xuexue is prettier. And nicer.

She nodded to herself, filed the observation away, and forced her focus back to the practical matter in front of her. Dawn work did not require resemblances. It required a clear answer about points.

"What I meant was—if I till twice the amount that was assigned, will I get double the pay?"

The question had lived in her through the previous evening’s empty rooms and the night on layered blankets. Points meant margin. Margin meant Mo Xingxue would not have to calculate before buying a tub of ice cream. It meant Shen Guoxing could want something without watching an adult do arithmetic first.

Whether the extra labor overtaxed her was, in her private accounting, not a relevant column. Providing was the column that mattered.

Jingxue considered it in silence. The pause was long enough to suggest he was actually weighing policy rather than dismissing the request as greedy or strange. After a beat he nodded.

"Yes. You can."

Su Wanyan’s eyes lit up. The change was immediate and unguarded—bright enough, for a moment, to rival the morning that was only beginning to claim the eastern edge of the village. She nodded back, sharp with purpose, and walked to the section she had worked before. Vigor rolled off her in plain sight. The shovel drove into the soil with a grin she did not bother to hide. The first turn of earth came up dark and heavy, and she treated it like the opening of an account she intended to overfill.

This is for you three! She thought, shoving the shovel back down again with the same enthusiasm as a pirate looking for treasure.

Jingxue watched her from the edge of the field.

Isn’t she the alpha who was with Xuexue under the trees?

The recognition settled into place with analytical neatness. The posture. The silhouette. The way the two of them had occupied that clearing as if anything else was just scenery. He could still see the image if he allowed it: the omega asleep in the alpha’s lap, the careful hand in her hair.

For a while the assessment held—neutral, almost clinical. Then it frayed. He sighed, the sound barely more than breath.

What right do I have to judge anyone who might be Xuexue’s—

He did not finish the category. Lover, partner.. the person standing between her and the rest of a cruel day. The thought alone pressed on a bruise he had carried for years: anger at himself, sadness that had never found a clean place to go, and a guilt large enough to have its own gravity.

A baby left behind because fear had been louder than duty. Hands that had not stayed. A life that had continued without him while he told himself distance was safer than presence.

His fingers clenched at his sides until the knuckles ached. He forced them open. He sighed again and shook his head, as if the motion could rearrange the past into something he could stand beside without breaking.

When he looked back, Su Wanyan was already deep in the work. Her rhythm was steady—shove, pull, break, repeat—expression set toward a future measured in points and comfort and other people’s ease. She did not glance over to see whether he approved. She did not need him to. The field was a means to earn. The people still asleep in the house were the reasons to earn.

I wonder if she’ll let me ask about Xuexue.

The hope was thin, but bloomed anyway.. fragile against the older weather of everything he had failed to be. He did not know how to begin such a conversation. He did not know whether he deserved an answer. He only knew that the alpha working the soil with that unselfconscious grin was the closest living bridge he had to a face he had recognized too late and a name he had spoken in a clearing he still was not ready to enter.

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Redundant shi, but forgive me y’all. I’m just giving moments of peace before it all goes downhil—UMPH!