Chapter 93: Watch

Chapter 93: Chapter 93: Watch

Seeing this, Wei Shu picked up his backpack and followed them to the lawn, domineeringly choosing a spot right in the center to sit down.

Mr. and Mrs. Wei were also observing the mother and daughter. Judging from their accents, they weren’t Beijing locals, but the woman seemed highly educated. Besides speaking in their regional dialect, the mother and daughter would occasionally slip in a few sentences of Mandarin.

The little girl looked to be a year or two younger than Wei Shu. She was lively and active, genuinely chubby and adorable, looking just like a soft, fluffy marshmallow. The mother possessed breathtaking beauty—a sharp beauty laced with a strong sense of resilience, yet when she smiled, it was as warm as melting icebergs.

The lawn was soft, the green grass lush and thick, just tall enough to cover their shoes. It was Tuantuan’s first time playing on such terrain. Before she could run more than a few steps, she took a major tumble, ending up with grass blades sticking to her hair.

Deng Yuyuan didn’t have time to tell her to slow down before the child had already dirtied her clothes from the fall. She simply clapped her hands to draw the fallen Tuantuan’s attention. "Get up and keep playing. Pat your clothes and brush off the grass."

Tuantuan didn’t get up. Her big eyes sparkling, she giggled and said to her mother, "Mom, look at Tuantuan! Tuantuan will show you something amazing!"

With that said, Tuantuan tucked her head against the lawn, her little feet struggling to push against the ground, and clumsily did a somersault. She patted her head, shaking off some dirt and grass blades. "How about it, Mom? Isn’t Tuantuan awesome!"

"What an adorable little mud loach," Deng Yuyuan thought. "Oh well. Since things have already come to this, I might as well let the child keep playing."

"Tuantuan, you can’t do somersaults here. Look, aren’t you all dirty now?" Deng Yuyuan took out a handkerchief and wiped the little girl’s face. With their current makeshift living conditions, even washing the child clean had become a hassle. Deng Yuyuan carefully inspected Tuantuan’s exposed skin. Seeing that the red rash hadn’t worsened, she quietly breathed a sigh of relief.

Tuantuan was blankly waiting for her mother to finish the inspection when Deng Yuyuan suddenly tackled her and started tickling both her armpits.

"It tickles! Mom!" Tuantuan burst into laughter, her eyes curving into two crescent moons. Her little hands and feet couldn’t help but curl up in pure joy. The little cub didn’t struggle in the slightest. Tuantuan absolutely loved any affectionate behavior from her mother!

Wei Shu confusedly touched his own armpits, not understanding what was so funny about this behavior.

With lightning speed, Mr. Wei mimicked Deng Yuyuan and tickled his son. The corners of Wei Shu’s mouth had just begun to curve up when he stopped himself with immense self-control. Humiliated and angry, he swatted at his father’s hand like a furious little beast. Mr. Wei retracted his hand, silently sighing in his heart. He and his wife couldn’t help but shoot many more glances at the heartwarming scene of the affectionate mother and daughter across from them. Why were other people’s children so well-behaved and adorable?

Wei’s mother checked her watch; an hour had already passed. Was her young son really planning to just stare wistfully at someone else’s child all day long? Wait, there seemed to be a change. With her sharp eyes, Wei’s mother noticed that Wei Shu was slowly inching his way toward the little girl, dragging his backpack along. Who knew how long it would take those two pitiful little butt cheeks to scoot all the way over there?

"Little Shu, do you want to go play with the little girl?" Wei’s mother asked her son.

Wei Shu shook his head. "Boys need to be reserved."

Wei’s mother slowly stood up. "Alright, you sit here for now. Your dad and I are going to sit under the pavilion for a while."

"Go bask in the sun by yourself, you silly boy," she thought.

Wei Shu nodded absentmindedly. He watched Tuantuan bounce and jump around Deng Yuyuan, before her brows drooped as she clung affectionately to her mother’s embrace. Being alone on the lawn was indeed missing a lot of fun, so Deng Yuyuan was currently encouraging Tuantuan to go find other children to play with.

Tuantuan looked around, in the midst of picking a playmate she liked, when a sudden flash of light caught the corner of her eye. She followed the direction of the light and saw a little boy sitting all by himself in the middle of the lawn. He was wearing a blue backpack and had a strange, quirky thing on his wrist that would emit light from time to time. Since arriving in Beijing, Tuantuan had seen this kind of thing on the wrists of many adults, but this was the first time she had seen a child wearing one. Their shared status as children gave her the courage to go straight over and ask.

She walked over curiously, tilting her head and staring intently at the watch on Wei Shu’s wrist. "Big brother, what’s this?"

Without even looking at her, Wei Shu lowered his head and said, "This is a super expensive and extremely hard-to-get imported watch my mom bought for me. She had to ask a lot of people for favors just to buy it!"

Only he knew that he had already turned red from the tips of his ears all the way down to his neck. His mind was a complete blank, causing him to speak incoherently. His reply sounded as if he possessed some inexplicable sense of superiority, and Wei Shu regretted it the moment the words left his mouth.

"...If you like it, I’ll give it to you," Wei Shu hurriedly added. He only dared to keep his head down, staring at Tuantuan’s mud-stained little cloth shoes.

Tuantuan shook her head. She understood that this was something very precious to the big brother, so of course, she couldn’t accept it. However—Tuantuan was also a little defiant! She crouched down, bringing her eyes close to the watch, and began pressing her fingernails here and there on her own wrist.

Wei Shu didn’t dare to move a muscle. He stared stiffly at her bent little head, not knowing what secret task she was up to.

"Tuantuan has one too!" Tuantuan proudly stretched out her hand, showing Wei Shu her newly made watch. The small, raised patches of skin were crookedly linked together to form the rough shape of a watch.

"Yours doesn’t count," Wei Shu replied honestly. As he spoke, he took off his own watch, intending to put it on Tuantuan. With this movement, his eyes finally dared to glance upward a little.

The moment their hands were about to touch, Tuantuan suddenly stepped back. "Why doesn’t it count?"

She refused to accept this. She was going to find her mother to judge the matter!

In her anxiousness, Tuantuan tripped and fell again while running toward her mother. Deng Yuyuan showed no reaction, but Wei’s mother in the distance stood up in a panic instead. "Did those two kids get into a fight?"

"Don’t panic, let’s observe a bit longer," Mr. Wei comforted his wife. "Look, her mother hasn’t reacted at all. Kids are spontaneous and do whatever pops into their heads. She might just have something to show her mom."

Tuantuan scrambled to her feet. Since she was dressed rather thickly and the grass wasn’t hard, the fall didn’t hurt. She excitedly presented her freshly made "watch" for her mother to see.

Deng Yuyuan first plucked the grass blades from her hair. "Don’t rush when you’re walking or running. It’ll be bad if you get hurt from a fall. You’ll have to get shots and take medicine again, and it might hurt. Mom hopes that Tuantuan won’t just be a little girl who can bravely stand up on her own after falling down, but also one who takes steady steps to avoid falling in the first place."

It wasn’t until Tuantuan nodded and said she understood that Deng Yuyuan looked down at her hand. A crooked "watch" formed by her skin rash snaked around Tuantuan’s wrist.

Tuantuan chattered as she explained, "This is the watch Tuantuan made for herself! Except that it doesn’t move, it’s just like the imported watch!"