The Obligations of the Elderly - Chapter 5

The rice in the pot and the dishes on the table were eaten clean-truly, not a single grain of rice was left!

The appetite of young people in their growth phase is truly astonishing~

After the meal, Dong Chun started tidying up the table, while Qiu Xia rolled up his sleeves to wash the dishes ← this was a rule set by Gong Si: the person who cooks doesn’t clean up or wash dishes.

But he wasn’t idle either.

“It’s getting late. Your home is at the foot of the mountain, right? The last bus passes by my house in five minutes. You should hurry.” Checking his watch, Gong Si was ready to send Xi Liu home.

“Huh?”

“Take this.” While Xi Liu was putting on his shoes, Gong Si ran back to the kitchen. When he returned, he was holding a fish. It wasn’t as big as the one before, but still quite sizable.

Xi Liu’s eyes widened slightly. “For me?”

“Of course.” Gong Si curled his lips.

“Can I leave it here? Next time I come, you can cook it for me.” Xi Liu blinked.

“Huh?!”

“My family’s fish isn’t as tasty as yours.” Xi Liu finished putting on his shoes and stood up straight.

“It’s settled then.” Not giving Gong Si a chance to refuse, he smiled, picked up his backpack, and left.

A strange new agreement had been made-looking at the big fish in his hand, Gong Si shrugged, and after a moment, carried the fish back inside.

In the kitchen, his second brother was calmly washing dishes, while his third brother was attempting to carry eight bowls at once… Gong Si didn’t stop him, and instead walked back to the dining room, glancing at his youngest brother, Ah Ji.

Full and satisfied, with a dry diaper, the little one was now intently reaching for the pink sock on his foot.

Gong Si looked out the window-the sky was getting dark, and the temperature difference between day and night here was quite large; it was getting chilly.

Thinking this, Gong Si went back to his room, and when he returned, he was holding a pink sock. It was also hand-knitted, also soft and pink, but of a different style and clearly a bit old, as if it had been around for a long time.

Gong Si put the sock on Ah Ji’s bare foot.

Then he saw the bag his second brother had brought back… full of snacks.

He pulled out a pack of snacks and raised his voice toward the kitchen: “Qiu Xia, I’m taking a pack of your chocolate.”

“Help yourself.” came his second brother’s gentle reply.

Then Gong Si pushed open the sliding door in front of the dining table and stepped outside.

Behind this room were two doors-one leading to the main entrance, the other to the kitchen. But outside this sliding door was a courtyard.

Neat vegetable beds filled the yard, with vegetables growing everywhere. Besides vegetables, there were fruit trees. It wasn’t the season for fruit yet, so none of the trees had borne fruit, but two trees were covered in small blossoms. As the breeze stirred, a subtle fragrance lingered in the Gong Family’s courtyard.

Well… calling it a small courtyard, but in truth, it wasn’t that small at all.

Walking forward, Gong Si casually picked two ripe melons and a tomato… By the time he reached the small pond at the end of the yard, his hands were full of food.

He squatted down and placed the food on the ground.

Quietly watching the pond before him, Gong Si opened the pack of chocolate snacks he’d taken from Qiu Xia, took out a piece, and tossed it into the pond.

Then he stopped moving.

The sky was getting darker and darker. In the dark, places with water were even darker.

If you carefully observed the location of this pond in relation to the outside of the yard, you’d notice that this pond was actually the end of the stream outside.

The long, winding stream outside was blocked off by the Gong Family.

Whether this pond was originally here or dug later, the stream water ended up here.

If you put your hand in the pond, you’d probably pull it out immediately.

The water in the pond was very cold.

Almost icy cold-the deeper you went, the colder it got, a bone-chilling cold.

The stream outside was the same temperature. “The water is very cold”-that’s exactly how Lengshui Town got its name.

Lengshui Town sits at the foot of a mountain-not just any mountain, but a volcano! Fortunately, it’s a dormant volcano. In other places, this would probably be a famous hot spring town, with endless tourists coming to soak in the springs every year. But all the water in Lengshui Town is true underground water, gushing up from below. The water quality is excellent, but it’s especially cold.

Exceptionally, deathly cold-the kind that could freeze a person to death~

So, a hot spring town was out of the question, and the town remained sparsely populated as always.
However, the water in Lengshui Town is indeed exceptionally delicious. The water that comes straight from the tap is natural mineral water-ice-cold mineral water at that! And this water stays cold all year round. Refrigerator manufacturers have no business in Lengshui Town; if you dig a well at home and place a vat above it, that becomes Lengshui Town’s natural refrigerator. Every household does this, and the fish Gong Si cooked earlier was taken from this kind of “water vat refrigerator.”

Yet, despite being so cold, the water never freezes.

Winters in Lengshui Town are extremely cold, with heavy snowstorms, but even then, the streams along the roads never freeze, and residents never have to worry about their pipes freezing and bursting. The pond at Gong Si’s home never freezes either.

It’s quite a mysterious thing.

Gong Si quietly stared at the surface of the pond. After a while, he tossed in another piece of chocolate.

The water rippled in circles from the spot where the chocolate landed.

The ripples spread outward, and just as they were about to fade away, suddenly-

It’s here!

Gong Si stood up and took a step back.

But he was a bit too slow. A black figure shot up from beneath the water, and the droplets it brought up splashed hard onto Gong Si.

“So cold!”

“Big Head, don’t you want chocolate anymore? Why do you always do this!” Gong Si wiped the water off his face, but when he looked down and saw the creature in the pond, he couldn’t bring himself to say anything harsh.

There was a big fish in the pond.

If your night vision were good enough, you could see its full appearance:

It was a mass of darkness, barely discernible as fish-shaped. Its head was enormous and round, with two eyes the size of adult fists set far apart on either side, so far apart that you’d worry it could never see what’s in front of it.

The roundness of its head was almost comical, but trust me, you wouldn’t laugh when you saw it. Because the huge mouth above and below that round head, filled with sharp teeth, would send chills all over your body.

This fish had the kind of big teeth only carnivores possess!

Its fins were short but large, and right now they were propped up on the edge of the pond like a seal. Its tail, the same color as the water, was huge-almost as long as its body-and floated in the water like a blooming flower, or a cloud of mist.

It was definitely a strange fish.

A terrifying-looking strange fish.

But at this moment, it looked a bit funny.

It was using its round head to balance another fish.

No one knew how it found the balance point, but the other fish, only slightly smaller than itself, was perched steadily on its head, like a hat or a ball.

Seeing Gong Si, the strange fish opened its mouth and called out silently, then leapt up, tossing the big fish on its head onto the bank at Gong Si’s feet.

Not only that, it took the opportunity to rub its round head against Gong Si’s pant leg.

And just like that-all the clothes on Gong Si that weren’t wet before were now soaked.

Gong Si: …

“You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you? I’ve told you so many times, you’re definitely doing it on purpose, right?” Gong Si flicked the round head with his finger, but the big head kept nuzzling up to him, seeking affection. As he flicked, his movements gradually turned into stroking, then into rubbing.

Rubbing the wet, icy-cold fish head, Gong Si couldn’t help but laugh.

He squatted down, opened a bag of chocolate snacks, and the big fish cooperatively opened its huge mouth. Gong Si tossed the chocolates in, one by one, into that gaping maw.

“Eat slowly, let me check if you have any cavities… You can’t just eat chocolate, you need to eat some vegetables too. I picked some tomatoes for you, you like those too…”

In the now pitch-black courtyard, the boy and the strange fish “chatted.”

Inside the house, Dong Chun and Qiu Xia had already cleared the dining table, sat on the sofa, and turned on the TV.

“The game’s about to start. Why isn’t big brother back yet?” Dong Chun looked at his second brother.

Qiu Xia smiled gently. “Maybe Big Head hasn’t finished eating yet? It seems to have grown bigger…”

“That’s right! Big Head has been eating a lot lately!”

“But the fish Big Head catches have been getting bigger too.”

“Yeah, yeah! Not only bigger, but they taste amazing! Ahhh~ I wonder if Big Head caught any new fish this time~ Second brother, can you ask big brother to cook again tomorrow?”

…

The two remaining Gong Family brothers chatted inside the house.

As for Ah Ji…

He had already tired himself out and fallen asleep.

Snoring softly, the little baby slept soundly.