Lu Liu lifted it up to look at it. The handkerchief was brightly colored—he had never seen such a flashy one before. It had a jade-colored base, embroidered with clusters of small flowers. The blossoms were tiny, with winding branches curling in from all sides toward the center, where there was a circular medallion embroidered with a pair of mandarin ducks.
When Lu Liu saw the mandarin ducks, he suddenly thought of the water ducks he had embroidered himself. Forgetting all about how expensive the handkerchief looked, he immediately turned his head to look at Li Feng.
“Da Feng, these look like mandarin ducks.”
“Oh, is that so?” Li Feng replied, wearing that same expression of my Xiao Liu is the best. “They’re not as nice as the ones you embroidered.”
Lu Liu stared at him for a moment, then couldn’t help laughing.
He felt that Li Feng had changed a little. After thinking it over carefully, he figured out what was different.
“Da Feng, you’re a bit like Brother-in-law,” he said. “The way you just praised me is exactly how Brother-in-law praises my older brother. Turns out he doesn’t mean half of what he says. Next time I see my brother, I’m telling him.”
Li Feng: “……?”
Li Feng immediately objected. “How could I be like him? I really meant it when I praised you.”
Lu Liu quietly glanced left and right. They were playing in an open clearing among the reeds. It wasn’t yet the season for gathering wild vegetables by the river, so there was no one else around—just the two of them.
Lu Liu called out, “Da Feng, look what I’m wearing.”
He was still wearing his padded jacket. He undid two of the frog buttons and pulled the collar aside, letting Li Feng see the red ribbons hidden inside his clothes. That was how Li Feng knew he had worn his dudou out today.
The dudou had water ducks embroidered on it. What Lu Liu was holding in his hand were mandarin ducks.
That really was a surprise.
Li Feng even tried to peek inside a little, but couldn’t see anything.
“Didn’t you say you’d wait until I took my clothes off?” he asked.
Lu Liu fastened his jacket again. “Your eyes were already glued on me. Whether I take them off or you take them off, it’s the same—you’re surprised either way.”
Sure enough, rare things were always the most exciting.
Li Feng went back to talking about the mandarin ducks. “I’m just a rough guy—what do I know about mandarin ducks? As long as I can recognize the ones you embroidered, that’s enough.”
Lu Liu thought the same. After all, he wasn’t going to wear the dudou outside.
He looked again at the handkerchief. Now he had two good ones—one from his older brother, and one from Li Feng.
Holding it, Lu Liu wiped his face and said, “It’s really good for crying. It’s so soft—it doesn’t hurt my eyes at all.”
Li Feng hadn’t given it to him so he could cry. He lowered his head to look at him. Lu Liu was gazing up at him, smiling broadly.
Lu Liu said, “I don’t know why, but when I look up at the kite, my eyes feel so uncomfortable. When I look up at you, I feel really at ease.”
Hearing that made Li Feng feel at ease too.
He handed the reel back to Lu Liu and let him play a bit longer. “It’s fine even if you don’t watch it closely. There aren’t any big trees nearby—it won’t snag the line.”
Li Feng lifted his head and looked at the sky. When he had been in the prefectural city before, he had felt like there was a string wound tightly around his heart—the farther he went from home, the tighter it pulled, the more it hurt.
It felt just like flying a kite. He was the kite, blown high into the sky by the wind, yet held tightly in Lu Liu’s grasp.
After playing a while longer, Lu Liu’s eyes started to sting again. Li Feng took the reel from him and asked whether he wanted to cut the kite string.
People said flying kites was a way to release bad luck. Cutting the string meant sending all that bad luck away with the kite, letting it fly far off.
Lu Liu didn’t want to cut it. He couldn’t bear to.
Speaking of bad luck, he said, “Our family is doing well. Everything’s going smoothly and prospering. We came out just to have fun—there’s no bad luck to get rid of.”
Li Feng reeled the kite back in.
Erhuang and Weifeng were racing around in the reeds. Catching a single bug was enough to keep them entertained for ages. When Li Feng and Lu Liu turned toward the river, the two dogs were still frolicking among the reeds.
Lu Liu ran back and forth along the riverbank, frolicking just like the dogs.
He often heard Li Feng talk about how he ate when he was in the mountains. They grilled food at home too, but without such open surroundings or the natural wind, it never felt the same.
Li Feng marked off a small area, carried over some gravel, and built a simple stove. He lit a fire inside, using the stones as a windbreak, and before long the flames were burning steadily.
Lu Liu went with him to the river to wash their hands. He had brought a kettle of water, so he washed with warm water. Li Feng scooped up river water instead and said it was icy cold.
The husband and husband sat by the river. Lu Liu peeled the eggs, threaded them onto bamboo skewers, slit them with a small knife, brushed on a layer of oil, and slowly roasted them. Li Feng, meanwhile, went fishing.
He had brought a fishing rod that hadn’t been used in a long time—the hook was already rusty—so he switched to a bamboo hook.
“In the mountains, the rivers are deep. We walk along the banks and don’t dare go into the middle. Usually they run through narrow gaps between mountains. The water flows outward, and the first thing young hunters learn in the village is how to fish.
“Once you’re in the mountains, there’s plenty of game—but you need experience, luck, and strength to succeed. New hunters spend most of their time adjusting, turning what they’ve learned into instinct through practice. When we first go into the mountains, just to survive, we all carry fishing rods. That river is easy to find. If there’s nothing else to eat, we go there to fish and live off that for a few days. Some people are unlucky—they can’t even catch fish. When they come back down, they have to go pray to the mountain god.”
Lu Liu loved listening to this. He added firewood to the flames, carefully watching the heat, and asked, “What about you? Are you good at fishing?”
Li Feng was only so-so—he relied entirely on luck.
“Waiting gets annoying. Later on I just went to catch snakes instead.”
Lu Liu was surprised. “You look like you’re very patient.”
Li Feng nodded. “When I first went into the mountains, I was impatient. I got beaten up a lot and scared off plenty of prey before I understood how important patience was. In those years, when I wasn’t in the mountains, I’d take a fishing rod and go fish everywhere, just to practice patience. When I got fed up, I’d jump into the water to catch or spear fish. Honestly, it’s annoying—who can wait that many days?”
Lu Liu laughed. “Did you catch any?”
Li Feng shook his head. “Usually not. They’re too slippery. There are water snakes too—you might even grab one by accident.”
Lu Liu immediately stared at the water. Li Feng said, “Water snakes look stupid. They surface to breathe and hide in the cracks between rocks. Tiny heads, two little eyes staring at you. The moment you reach out, it bites.”
Lu Liu quickly withdrew his hands. “I don’t even dare catch snakes anymore. You’re really brave.”
The roasted eggs started to smell fragrant. Erhuang caught the scent and came running over, with Weifeng right behind.
Erhuang missed Li Feng terribly. Whenever Li Feng was around, it would circle him nonstop, rubbing its big head against him—sitting beside him, lying beside him, staring at him with its tail wagging back and forth.
Weifeng was closer to Lu Liu. After bringing it home, Li Feng was often away, so Lu Liu had fed Weifeng more.
Lu Liu was generous with the dogs. Once the eggs were hot, he used leaves as pads and gave each dog one egg.
He also wrapped a roasted egg for Li Feng. Li Feng wanted sauce, so Lu Liu took out a bamboo tube filled with minced mushroom-and-meat sauce, rolled the egg around in it, then skewered it and handed it to him.
Li Feng told Lu Liu to take the first bite. Lu Liu obediently did so.
It was fragrant and delicious. Roasting gave the eggs a completely different flavor—not like custard eggs or stir-fried eggs, and not like pan-fried eggs either. The outside was crisp and aromatic, the egg white springy, the yolk soft and rich.
Lu Liu poured Li Feng half a waterskin of wine. It had been heated earlier and was now just warm.
Li Feng took a sip and laughed. “How did you even have time to warm the wine?”
Lu Liu said, “I just set it on the stove for a bit. It wasn’t any trouble. Cold wine’s bad for you. The weather’s chilly—drink it warm.”
That mouthful of wine warmed Li Feng all the way to his core. He noticed it didn’t taste like the local brew and asked about it. Only then did he learn that Lu Liu had asked Da Qiang to buy good wine for him.
Lu Liu skewered another roasted egg for him and said, “During the New Year, when we hosted the feast, I heard your brothers talking about all the good wine you’d seen in the prefectural city—how you couldn’t drink it there. Being away from home is like being in the mountains—you never know what dangers you’ll run into, so you can only really drink freely once you’re back home. I remembered you saying local wine tastes bland, like drinking water no matter how much you have. So I wanted to try something different. This definitely isn’t ‘drinking freely,’ so I thought I’d buy you a jar of good wine to enjoy. Is it fragrant?”
Li Feng said only that it was fragrant, that it was satisfying. Hearing that made Lu Liu feel content.
There was a breeze by the river. Lu Liu didn’t let the fire die out. Wrapped in his padded coat and wearing his hat, he stood up now and then to pace a couple of steps.
