Lin Wenxi yawned and kicked his feet. Suddenly, he felt some cold wind blowing toward his neck and quickly shrank under his quilt. He touched the place beside him and found out that Zhao Yuan was not there.

He felt that his neck was somewhat itchy and looked down. He saw scarves, sweaters and blankets around his neck and shoulder. With these things being around, no matter how he moved around in his bed, his shoulders would still be kept warm. He smiled sweetly and rolled on the bed gleefully. He felt that there was something heavy above his feet. He sat up and saw many blankets and coats placed above his feet. Some of them had fallen to the ground just now.

Lin Wenxi was too embarrassed to sleep again. He quickly got dressed under the quilt. He lay on the bed for a while with his eyes closed and then finally made up his mind to get up. He made the bed and folded everything nicely.

He had a good sleep last night and looked energetic today. When he walked into the living room, he saw a rice cooker on the table but did not see Zhao Yuan. He looked around and finally found Zhao Yuan in the shop at the back door of the courtyard. There were a lot of guests, and Zhao Yuan was very busy.

While attending to the guests, Zhao Yuan looked back at Lin Wenxi and teased, “It looks like you’ve never slept well in recent years except for last night. I could not help but check whether you were still breathing this morning.”

“I hope that you didn’t check it with your mouth!” Lin Wenxi pretended to be upset. Zhao Yuan thought of how Lin Wenxi had slapped him during the wilderness training and snorted.

Zhao Yuan nimbly took out a bag, blew it up and put some firecrackers in it. He asked the customer why he bought these firecrackers and then stuck a pair of red double happiness characters on the front and back of the bag. He said, “There are four happy things for you—the new year, the marriage, a good harvest and a new-born child. Congratulations!”

The customer grinned from ear to ear and happily gave his money to Zhao Yuan before leaving with the firecrackers.

Lin Wenxi was so impressed that he could not help but stare at Zhao Yuan.

When the customers left, Zhao Yuan dragged Lin Wenxi all the way back into the living room and made him sit at the table. He opened the rice cooker. There was some sweet potato porridge inside. Upon seeing the orange-yellow sweet potatos, Lin Wenxi felt that his mouth was watering. When he received a bowl of porridge from Zhao Yuan, he quickly spooned some porridge into his mouth. Zhao Yuan stopped him by patting his head.

He said grumpily, “Slow down. It’s hot.”

Lin Wenxi looked up at Zhao Yuan with dissatisfaction and complained with his mouth full. “You’ve started bullying me since I came to your home.”

Zhao Yuan had never seen Lin Wenxi acting like this before. He felt naughty and squeezed Lin Wenxi’s cheeks with a hand. “Biu.” The porriage spouted from Lin Wenxi’s mouth and smeared the table.

Lin Wenxi was upset and abruptly stood up, planning to get back at Zhao Yuan. “Crash.” His bowl fell to the floor and broke with a crash. The floor was smeared with porridge too. Lin Wenxi felt awkward and somewhat annoyed. Zhao Yuan quickly found a broom and swept up the broken pieces.

When he was about to dump them into a garbage bag in a corner of the room, Lin Wenxi shouted, “Wait a minute.” He found an old newspaper and used it to wrap all the broken piece of the bowl. After that, he asked Zhao Yuan to give him some scotch tape and carefully sealed the package. After a moment of thought, he sellotaped a note to the package, which read, “Broken Ceramic Chips”, and put the package into the garbage bag.

Zhao Yuan felt confused.

“I just don’t want some scavengers to cut their hands accidentally.” Lin Wenxi explained.

Zhao Yuan felt touched and nodded his head while saying, “Your mother is really kind.”

Lin Wenxi said with his hands on his hips, “I admit that what you said just now is correct. But shouldn’t you say, ‘You’re really kind’?”

Zhao Yuan smiled and said, “Like mother, like son.”

Lin Wenxi snorted and found another bowl. He filled a bowl of porridge for himself, sat far away from Zhao Yuan and began to eat.

Zhao Yuan looked at Lin Wenxi and thought, “He acts differently now and doesn’t look like the Lin Wenxi that I know in the university.” After that, he went to take care of his business. After a while, he came back again to clean up the bowls and chopsticks.

Zhao Yuan had a busy day. At about 8:00 pm, when Lin Wenxi helped him putting all the firecrakers away, he asked, “Why are you alone at home? Where’s your family?”

“The man is busy doing business outside, and the woman is missing,” Zhao Yuan said casually.

“So you stocked these firecrackers for your shop by yourself in recent days?” Lin Wenxi was surprised and asked.

“Yes, at the beginning of each year, I’ll buy some firecrackers from a familiar wholesaler. He’ll deliver these firecrackers here, and if I can’t sell them out, he’ll take them back. He’s just an old friend of mine. We help each other in business,” said Zhao Yuan.

Lin Wenxi looked at Zhao Yuan’s shoulders and sighed secretly, “It’s not easy to do this business. He has to manage the money, ensure the safety and sell the products all by himself. But he said as if it was just a simple thing. His life is not easy.”

“You feel sad for me, don’t you?” Zhao Yuan asked with a smile.

“No. I’m feeling sad for these firecrackers in stock!” Lin Wenxi said and opened the door, letting cold air blowing into the room. The world outside was covered with snow now.

Lin Wenxi breathed on his hands to warm them and then rubbed them against each other. He saw a groove left by a bicycle stretch into the alley. Several children were building snowmen over there. They had made several snowmen, but none of them had eyes. They had just dug two holes on the face of each snowman.

Lin Wenxi suddenly muttered, “It’ll be great if I have some marbles now.”

Zhao Yuan had never expected Lin Wenxi, who was about to turn 18, to be interested in playing such a childish game. Despite that, he still went to look for his marbles. Every boy who grew up in a village played marbles. So did Zhao Yuan. Nevertheless, when he grew up, he put his marbles away. When Zhao Yuan went into his bedroom and saw the nicely folded quilt, he nodded with satisfaction and said, “Tut-tut, you’ll make a good wife.” Upon hearing that, Lin Wenxi pinched his arm hardly. Zhao Yuan squatted down and took out a rusty iron box from under his desk. When he opened it, Lin Wenxi was excited. He looked at the colorful marbles in a daze, as he somehow felt that he had seen these marbles before.

Nevertheless, he could not remember where he had seen these marble in the past. He guessed that he had probably seen them in a dream.

“Hey, is there anything wrong with you?” Zhao Yuan pushed Lin Wenxi and asked. He grabbed a handful of marbles and gave them to Lin Wenxi while saying, “Is that enough? Don’t lose all of them to the children outside.”

、

“Do you have black ones?” asked Lin Wenxi.

Zhao Yuan opened the quilt and poured the marbles onto it. Lin Wenxi was displeased upon seeing Zhao Yuan ruin his nicely-fold quilt like that.

There were about a hundred colorful marbles, but none of them were black. Lin Wenxi was slightly disappointed and sighed. Upon seeing that, Zhao Yuan immediately ran out.

Lin Wenxi even did not have enough time to stop him. When he came to the door, he could only see a line of footprints stretch into the alley. There was a street on the other end of the alley.

After quite a long time, Zhao Yuan still did not come back. Lin Wenxi could not help but come out with the door left unlocked.

He received a call from Hong Xuan and then another call from his mother. After talking with them on the phone, he suddenly found out that he was lost. He dialed Zhao Yuan’s number, but the next moment, he thought, “No, I can’t call him. He’ll definitely laugh at me for getting lost at my hometown.” He put his cellphone away and planned to find the right way by himself. Suddenly, he bumped into another person. He looked up and saw Zhao Yuan’s confused face.

He shrugged his shoulders and pretended to take it easy. Zhao Yuan grinned and asked, “Are you lost?”

“Who’s lost? Did you get lost?” Lin Wenxi retorted.

“Oh, yeah, I’m lost. Can you lead the way for me?” Zhao Yuan could not hide the smile on his face.

“You!” Lin Wenxi was upset. He stamped his feet and lowered his head to look down at Zhao Yuan feet. He silently followed Zhao Yuan. Soon enough, they went back to Zhao Yuan’s home.

“Why does a person clever as you will do stupid things sometimes?” Zhao Yuan could not help but sigh. He squatted down beside the children who were busy building snowmen and put two black marbles into the two holes in the face of a snowman. With these two marbles, the snowman looked lifelike.

The children were excited upon seeing that and begged Zhao Yuan to give “eyes” to the other snowmen. When Zhao Yuan finished giving eyes to all the snowmen, he gave the remaining marbles to the children.

Lin Wenxi looked at the happy children and then he noticed the beads of sweat on Zhao Yuan’s neck. He twitched his nose and thought, “He must’ve been running all the way to buy these black marbles. He disappeared for more than half an hour. He must’ve run down several streets.”

They made a few more snowmen together with the children. Lin Wenxi wrote a character “Xi” with his finger on the back of a snowman, and a character “Yuan” on the back of another snowman standing nearby. The two snowmen stood side by side under the moonlight. Lin Wenxi looked at them in a daze.

“Why do I feel that the one on the left looks much more handsome than the one on the right?” Zhao Yuan put an arm around Lin Wenxi’s shoulders and asked.

“I think so, too.” Lin Wenxi felt relaxed with his neck leaning against Zhao Yuan’s arm. This feeling somehow reminded him of his happy time back in the courtyard where he had lived during his childhood.

After a while, a little girl put a red paper bag on the lower part of the snowman with a “Xi” character on its back to make a skirt for it, while saying, “She’s the wife.” Lin Wenxi’s cheeks flushed red with embarrassment. He beat Zhao Yuan hardly and ran toward the house.

“Do you blame me for that? You made this snowman by yourself. You built it in your image. It looks slender…” Zhao Yuan shouted and chased after Lin Wenxi. Lin Wenxi stopped at the door and looked at the lantern thoughtfully.

He wondered, “Why does Zhao Yuan make this lantern glow all the time? It’s alright to turn it on at night. But why didn’t he turn it off during the day? It has been on for about twenty hours by now.”

“Why do you waste electricity like that? Why didn’t you turn it off?” Lin Wenxi said while looking for the switch.

“This lantern has no switch,” Zhao Yuan said slowly.

“Why?”

“Uhm… we just want to make it glow all the time.”

“Oh…” Lin Wenxi seemed to believe Zhao Yuan’s words without doubt. After a moment, he asked, “Where’s your mother? Why didn’t I see her?”

Zhao Yuan felt a sharp pain in his chest upon hearing that.