Chapter 19.1 - Blanket (1/2)

Translator: Superbulat

After listening to Tang Huan’s accusations against Dong Minghua and Jiang Yuzhu, the frown on Song Mo’s face deepened, but thinking of how well Dong Minghua had treated his niece all these years, he was hesitant to believe it. “You might be overthinking things. Uncle heard that the birth mother of Minghua’s biaomei 1 had died young. After her father married his second wife, her family no longer has room for her. That was why she went to stay at the Dong house. Minghua has always been a kind-hearted boy, so it was only natural that he would look after his cousin. Jinzhi, you’ve known Minghua for such a long time. Don’t doubt him over trivial matters; otherwise, how will you spend the rest of your lives together?”

“Uncle, it is very common for maternal cousins to get married,” Tang Huan snorted. “Even if Dong Minghua truly treats Jiang Yuzhu as his cousin, doesn’t he know that he should avoid doing things that would arouse suspicion? Even in front of me, they dared to act so intimately with each other. Who knows what they’d do behind my back… Don’t talk about him for now. Let’s say, Uncle, if you’re on a date with your fiancée and your biaomei pops out of nowhere to hold your arm, will you let her touch you?”

Would he?

He most definitely wouldn’t. Besides, if he was meeting up with his fiancée and his relatives happened to run into him, they would usually keep their distance from the couple and only tease him when he returned home, right?

Song Mo could not refute, but when he saw the little smug expression on his niece’s face, as if she had expected him to lose this argument, he couldn’t help but say, “Minghua’s cousin was indeed acting inappropriately. Perhaps you can talk to Minghua privately about this. If Minghua knows that you are upset, he will stay away from his cousin.” Women were naturally more sensitive, whereas men were more careless. If no one reminded them, they would probably never know what they had done wrong.

“I’m not doing that!”

Tang Huan glared at Song Mo. “He doesn’t have a place for me in his heart! If he does, I wouldn’t have to remind him about something like this. Uncle, I’m telling you now, I will not marry him even if I die! I know that you are used to living alone, and you think it’s troublesome to take care of me, so you want to marry me off sooner. Then you can go back to your thatched hut right now! I am not a child. I’ve got hands and feet. I am capable of doing laundry, cooking, and farming. I can survive without you. You don’t have to try so hard to get rid of me!”

She was scolding while crying. Her voice was already trembling as she neared the end of her sentence. Then she stormed off to the west room, leaving Song Mo dazed.

Was this still his gentle and soft-spoken niece?

How could she say such a thing about him?

She was his niece. Everything he did was for her own good. Why would he find it troublesome to take care of her?

Song Mo shook his head and smiled bitterly. After he cleaned up the stove, he went over to persuade her again. She said that she was not a child anymore, but half an hour ago, she was following him every step of the way to help him in moving his belongings, but now because of a quarrel, she wanted to chase her second uncle away. This girl really…

When he entered the house, he saw her upper body lying on the bed stove and her face buried in her arms as she cried.

Looking at her trembling shoulders, Song Mo couldn’t bear to anger her anymore. His niece had never been so upset before. Since she didn’t want to talk about Dong Minghua, he would not bring him up again. He would observe Dong Minghua himself. If Dong Minghua was really as fickle as his niece claimed, he would not have mercy on him!

“Jinzhi, Jinzhi, don’t cry anymore. Uncle is stupid and bad with words. Okay, okay, Uncle will leave it up to you. You can marry if you want, and if you don’t want, we can break off the engagement. Uncle will find you someone a thousand times better than him after three years. Is that alright?” The girl had been a crybaby since she was a child. Even when she tripped and fell, she would throw herself into his arms and cry with tears and snot all over him, as if she had been wronged. In coaxing his niece, Song Mo was quite experienced.

This Song Mo was so good at coaxing!

Tang Huan cooperatively stopped crying, but she still refused to get up.

Song Mo had to hold her shoulders to lift her. “Okay, that’s enough. If you cry any longer, you might go blind. I had already admitted my mistake. What else do you want? Do you really want Uncle to move out?”

Tang Huan jumped into his arms. “No, you can’t leave!”

Song Mo smiled and patted her. “Because Jinzhi won’t let Uncle go, Uncle won’t go. Okay, go wash your face now. Uncle will continue to cook.”

Tang Huan nodded and said in a muffled voice, “Uncle is so nice to me.”

She turned away shyly, not looking at him. Song Mo patted her head and went out.

After dinner, Song Mo asked Tang Huan to return to her room. He fed the two pigs in the pigpen, boiled a large pot of water, and washed the wooden bathtub before carrying it into the west room. While adding water into the tub, he said, “After having a nice soak, get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow we will start afresh. Don’t think about the past anymore, understand?”

Tang Huan sat cross-legged on the bed stove and made a gentle “mhm” sound, but her heart slowly sank. To be taken care of by Song Mo in such a meticulous way, she felt lucky at first, but now he even filled the bath water for her nonchalantly. He clearly didn’t treat her as a woman!

Wasn’t her second uncle adopted from the street? Why was he more real than a real uncle!

Song Mo didn’t know what she was thinking. Before he closed the door, he told her to go straight to bed after the bath. He would empty the bathtub for her tomorrow morning. The tub was quite large. If she had to pour away the water in the tub herself, he wasn’t sure how many trips she would have to make.

Even after Song Mo’s footsteps had faded, Tang Huan was still staring at the bathtub aggrievedly.

She had looked in the mirror before. Jinzhi looked exactly like she did when she was sixteen. On top of her original good looks, since Father Song couldn’t bear to let his daughter work in the fields, instead of having sun-tanned skin like most of the village girls, her skin was fair and tender. When she walked down the street, there was no man who didn’t sneak a peek at her. Jinzhi was a reserved person who didn’t like to go out; otherwise, she would have been long chosen by the big and prestigious families already, and the Dong family wouldn’t have stood a chance. The Dong family was the wealthiest in Baishui Village, but in town, there were far wealthier families everywhere.

Such a great beauty, Song Mo really never desired for her?

Jinzhi was probably too well-behaved.

Then let her show Song Mo the difference between a niece and a woman!

Tang Huan took off her clothes and had a satisfying bath.

It was already dark outside. After hearing no more sounds coming from the west room, he took a bucket of cold water to the backyard, briefly wiped his body, and locked the front and back gates before returning to the east room to sleep.

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表妹 (biaomei): Cousin sister