Chapter 13 (1/2)

Chapter 13: Thank the heavens for letting me have a lifetime of fate with this boy.

Xiao Di’s courage was small. As a kid, he was too scared to sleep alone in a room and would definitely run over and squeeze into my bed. Thus, mother bought a bunk bed and put it in my room.

However, even though we were in the same room, he was still scared. When he sleeping on the bottom bunk, he said, “Sis, do you think there would be something under bed ah?” So I swapped places with him. As a result, when he slept on the top bunk, he said, “Sis, I feel like there’s something on the ceiling ah?”

At night when we took him out, he would only dare to walk after holding your hand and you had to talk to him the entire way too.

“Sister, sing a song.”

“Sing what?”

“I’ll teach you!” And then he started to sing, “Two little dolls, phoning each other, h.e.l.lo h.e.l.lo h.e.l.lo, where are you? Ai ai ai, I’m at kindergarten.”

After he taught me, I sang it to him.

This was Xiao Di’s first year in kindergarten.

During our childhood, I went down to the countryside with Xiao Di. In the summer evening, we sat on the corridor of the second floor to enjoy the cool. Xiao Di asked me, “Sis, what is that?”

“Red clouds ah.”*

*[Red clouds at sunset]

“Then what about that long white strip?”

“It’s probably left from a plane that flew past.”

“Sis, the sky turned black ah, do you know where the Big Dipper the teacher was talking about is?”

I chose the brightest star that was a bit to the North and pointed at it. He said, “Oh, Big Dipper Big Dipper!”

At that time, he was only five or six and I was only thirteen. He didn’t understand anything and I only half understood but yet we were always happy.

When he was still small, Xiao Di went to a friend’s hose to play. However, he was chased home crying by his friend’s dog.

The second day, he waited outside our house. When that dog pa.s.sed by or hose, he chased it shouting loudly to demonstrate his strength.

He said, “On his territory, he shouted at me, on my territory, he doesn’t dare shout, hmph hmph!”

Say, what’s the point in haggling with a dog and the main point is, he was using the same technique the dog used to haggle back with.

When this child was ten or so, boys the same age were interested in cartoons and games but at this small age, he was interested in fis.h.i.+ng. Whenever he came back to China, he would go fis.h.i.+ng with the uncle next door. Once I was reading on the balcony and I could hear him running up the stairs, “Sis, I caught a fis.h.!.+” He ran towards me whilst his nose bled……I asked why is your nose bleeding?

He wiped it and stupidly smiled, “Too excited.”

The first time this delicate and pretty boy had a nosebleed wasn’t because he saw a beautiful girl but because he had caught a fish the size of a thumb……

Xiao Di was born in the year of the dog. In my mind, although he is a bit naughty, he is mainly kind and obedient, like a loyal dog. However, people around us, including my parents, relatives his own cla.s.smates and my friends, even the people we’ve only met a few times, all say that Xiao Di is arrogant and runs wild.

I didn’t understand, “Perhaps it’s a sister looking at a little brother so it’s different?”

Xu Wei Yu laughed, “Towards you, your little bro is like a Pekingese but to outsiders, he’s definitely a wolfhound! He’ll bite whoever he doesn’t see eye to eye with. When you use that online phrase, ‘whoever he stares becomes pregnant’ on your little brother, it becomes ‘whoever he bites gets rabies‘。“

“……”

I remember last year when he came back for Chinese New Year, I took him to my high school cla.s.smate reunion (in the first few days he was back, he followed me to everything). My friend asked him, “Little brother, is the food overseas expensive?”