Pastoral Daily Life

Chapter 4

Lu Lingxi lay on the hospital bed for a few more days, and after various tedious examinations, he was finally able to get out of bed freely. The doctor repeatedly said that he was a miracle, recovering so well from such a serious injury, it was unbelievable. Wang Shuxiu was the happiest with the doctor’s praise, changing from her usual acrimony to clutching the doctor’s hand and thanking him incessantly, making the not-yet-married doctor blush in embarrassment.

After a few days of lack of sleep, taking care of Lu Lingxi and working the night shift, Wang Shuxiu looked a little haggard. However, this haggardness did not detract from her beauty at all but added a touch of pitifulness to it. As Lu Lingxi’s health improved, Wang Shuxiu began to tell him about the past in the hope that Lu Lingxi would remember something.

Today she was telling him about Lu Lingxi’s junior middle school life. According to Wang Shuxiu, Lu Lingxi had never liked studying since he was a child, and while he had been able to get a pass in primary school, he could barely keep up in junior middle school. He either skipped classes or got into fights every day, and dropped out of senior middle school in the second half of his junior year, never going back to school after that.

“Do you still remember the time you got into a fight with a classmate in junior middle school and were grabbed by the teacher?”

Lu Lingxi shook his head and lowered his eyes; he didn’t dare to meet Wang Shuxiu’s eyes whenever she mentioned something from the past. His eyelashes were very long and when he lowered them slightly like this, the long eyelashes seemed to cast small shadows under his eyes, fluttering lightly, almost as if scratching one’s heart.

“Forget it, forget it if you can’t remember.”

Wang Shuxiu took one look at Lu Lingxi’s expression and immediately skipped the topic. She didn’t have to make Lu Lingxi recover his memory either, she even felt that Lu Lingxi was better off like this now. If it wasn’t for the doctors saying every day that restoring his memory would be helpful to Lu Lingxi’s recovery, she wouldn’t bother talking about it.

“Are you hungry?”

Wang Shuxiu’s attention quickly shifted to another thing she had been passionate about recently, namely fattening up Lu Lingxi. She had always known that her son was good looking, after all, she had given birth to him. As long as he looked like her, he couldn’t be too bad, not to mention the fact that Lu Lingxi had picked up exactly the best she and the bastard of his father had to offer. It was just that in the past, Lu Lingxi was too rebellious and liked gothic and heavy metal styles, something she didn’t understand at all, and painted his face in such a way that his real features couldn’t be seen. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she had seen Lu Lingxi’s clean face. After the incident, Lu Lingxi’s personality changed drastically and he never painted his face like a ghost again. Wang Shuxiu looked at Lu Lingxi’s white face and the more she looked at it, the more she liked it. The only bad thing was that it was a bit too thin. Boys, especially adolescent boys, should be stronger.

“Come on, have a chicken leg.”

Lu Lingxi felt helpless. He had just had his lunch not long ago and really couldn’t eat. But before he could say no, Wang Shuxiu thought she had guessed what he was thinking and gave him a nonchalant squeeze on the face, “What? Didn’t wash your hands before eating? Little bastard, don’t make a fuss.”

Wang Shuxiu felt that washing one’s hands before eating was a hassle, it wasn’t as if the little bastard had gone out to work and gotten dirty. He hadn’t even gotten out of bed all day, to need to wash his hands. But although she thought so, she couldn’t resist Lu Lingxi’s insistence, so she was forced to adapt to Lu Lingxi’s habits. Wang Shuxiu put the shoes on Lu Lingxi’s feet and looked like she was going to help him wash his hands.

Lu Lingxi: “……”

He didn’t want to go against Wang Shuxiu’s good intentions. He touched his stomach; forget it, although it was a bit full, he could still eat another chicken leg if he tried hard.

The four-patient ward did not have a separate washroom, so you could only go out of the ward to the public washroom. Lu Lingxi was washing his hands alone in there, and before he had finished, he heard Wang Shuxiu’s scolding voice coming from the doorway.

“Little bastards, how dare you show up here!”

Lu Lingxi didn’t know who Wang Shuxiu was scolding, so he took a few quick steps and saw three oddly dressed, ragged teenagers standing in a row against the wall at the entrance to the washroom with their heads bowed, and Wang Shuxiu, holding one of her hands on her waist, was slapping them with the other.

Lu Lingxi: “……”

Wang Shuxiu looked like a queen. “You little bastards, why don’t you ask around and find out who I, Wang Shuxiu, am! You dare to run away after leaving Lu Lingxi alone in the hospital when something happened, huh? Run, huh? Now you dare to come over here again, you think I won’t take care of you, do you?”

The teenager in the lead looked up sheepishly, “Auntie, I…”

This “Auntie” stirred the hornet’s nest again. Wang Shuxiu willow eyebrows rose up as she sneered, “Auntie?”

The second teenager was smart enough to change his words immediately, “Sister, we were wrong.”

The third teenager looked up to follow suit and admit his mistake, but saw Lu Lingxi. He was so used to Lu Lingxi’s painted face that he was a little afraid to recognise the current Lu Lingxi, hesitating to say hello.

s

The other two teenagers looked over along with him and were simultaneously shocked by Lu Lingxi’s appearance.

“Mom.” Lu Lingxi stood quietly beside Wang Shuxiu. Wang Shuxiu was not used to hearing him call her “Mother”, and Lu Lingxi also intentionally wanted to separate himself from his past life, so after Wang Shuxiu mentioned it once, he never addressed her as “Mother” again. After greeting Wang Shuxiu, Lu Lingxi turned his eyes to the three people standing against the wall. Judging from their age, they seemed to be friends of this body’s original owner, but their outfits were really too strange.

The three teenagers: “……”

It was Lu Lingxi who looked strange.

Wang Shuxiu compared her son to the other three little bastards and once again felt that Lu Lingxi’s amnesia was not a bad thing. Although she scolded fiercely, she also knew that it was thanks to these three Lu Lingxi had been brought to the hospital in time and it was also the three of them who called to inform her, so she let it go after scolding them a few times. However, Wang Shuxiu forced them to clean their faces and comb their hair in the washroom before they went to the ward.

She had been rolling in society for many years and she knew exactly the contempt that occasionally flashed in the eyes of the ward families when they met her. She didn’t care, but she didn’t want Lu Lingxi to be looked down upon in the same way as she was. Now that Lu Lingxi had lost his memory, he had managed to reverse his image of a punk in the eyes of the public, and she didn’t want it to be ruined by these three little bastards. There was no way to dye their hair black, but their faces had to be washed clean.

Wang Shuxiu supervised as the three teenagers washed their faces over and over again until their skin was almost rubbed raw. Finally the paint was washed off their faces to reveal their original appearance. Ten minutes later, the three of them, wet and obedient, were herded by Wang Shuxiu to Lu Lingxi’s ward.

Lu Lingxi: “……”

After having washed away the vivid colours from their faces, all three looked very clean. One of the teenagers, who was presumably the closest to Lu Lingxi, was the first to speak up, “Lao San (Old Third), we’re sorry.” He had just found out about Lu Lingxi’s rather serious injuries and memory loss; he didn’t expect that the consequences would be so serious.

The young man who spoke up was called Yi Hang. He was Lu Lingxi’s neighbour and the oldest of the four. The teenager who had acted the smartest earlier was Zheng Tan, three months older than Lu Lingxi. The remaining teenager was called Bai Yuan, and he was a month younger than Lu Lingxi. The four of them used to be junior middle school classmates and were together since they were young. Later, when they graduated from junior middle school and dropped out of senior middle school together, the four of them were inseparable and so close that they could wear the same pair of pants.

When Lu Lingxi had an accident, they sent Lu Lingxi to the hospital and then notified Wang Shuxiu. They didn’t dare to go home for the next few days and were hiding outside. A few days ago, Yi Hang heard that all the people they fought with that day had been arrested, so they panicked and discussed coming to the hospital to see Lu Lingxi before going to the surrounding cities to hide. As a result, they were arrested by the police before they could reach the hospital and were only released last night after a few days in jail. They rested for the night and made an appointment to see Lu Lingxi the next day, not expecting that Lu Lingxi had actually lost his memory.

When Yi Hang told Lu Lingxi all that, his expression became more and more guilty. Lu Lingxi didn’t know what to say. What Yi Hang was talking about was like a story from another world to him. Fighting and brawling, being arrested by the police, was completely beyond his imagination. Although Lu Lingxi had probably guessed from the police’s appearance to Wang Shuxiu’s intermittent narration that this body’s lifestyle was not very peaceful, he really didn’t expect the original owner of this body to be such a punk.

Facing the apologetic eyes of the three people opposite, Lu Lingxi shook his head, “It’s okay, I forgot all about it.”

When he said this, Yi Hang and the others were visibly relieved. In order to liven up the atmosphere, Zheng Tan said with a smile, “Lao San can forget everything else, but when you get rich, don’t forget your brothers.”

Yi Hang slapped Zheng Tan and said to Lu Lingxi, “Don’t listen to Zheng Tan, what about getting rich or not, Lao San, you should get well.”

Lu Lingxi was quite uncomfortable with the name “Lao San”, but considering that the other party was a friend of this body and he was now Lu Lingxi, he had to naturally learn to adapt to the original owner’s life.

“I know.” Lu Lingxi nodded politely. Although he tried hard to talk similar to the way the other teenagers talked, his years of upbringing were deeply rooted and decent manners were almost engraved in his bones.

Yi Hang and the others were obviously not used to the current Lu Lingxi. Originally they thought they would hug and be best buddies as always when they met, but Lu Lingxi did not remember anything, and what was even more odd was that his speech had changed from his usual rudeness to elegance. If everything was normal, Yi Hang would have slapped Lu Lingxi, “Pretend if you want to pretend.” But with the current Lu Lingxi, he couldn’t slap him in any way.

s

After an afternoon of whispering, once they left the hospital, Zheng Tan was the first to shout out.

“I almost died of suffocation this afternoon. Is Lao San possessed, didn’t he used to hate this kind of well-behaved and quiet look? Look at him now, Lao Tzu (I (arrogant)) has to think carefully before talking to him, just in case it scares him.”

Yi Hang glared at him discontentedly, “Who’s possessed? Don’t you know that Lao San has lost his memory?”

“That’s why it’s so strange, he’s changed too much!”

Bai Yuan muttered, “I do think that Third Brother is fine now. Second Brother, don’t you like that girl from Fengcheng No. 1 High School? She didn’t look at us before, now we can push Third Brother in front of her, no problem.” (Yi Hang and Zheng Tan are older than Lu Lingxi, so they refer to him as Lao San. Bai Yuan is younger, so he calls him Third (elder) Brother).

“Fuck off! If she really likes Lao San, what will I have?”

They bumped their shoulders into each other and left the hospital. Lu Lingxi was standing in front of the window watching their backs, his eyes flashing with a hint of envy. He could feel the restraint of Yi Hang and the others during the afternoon chat. He had been trying to fit in with them but didn’t seem to be successful. He wondered if Yi Hang and Zheng Tan would think he had become weird and thus he would lose these few friends.

Not long after Yi Hang and the others left, Wang Shuxiu also rushed off to work. Lu Lingxi was alone again, tet-a-tet with the chlorophytum in front of him. After watering the chlorophytum last time and getting a little plant heart, Lu Lingxi asked around the next day to find out that the chlorophytum was raised by the patient in Bed 17. When he tried to tell the patient in Bed 17 that he wanted to take care of the chlorophytum, the guy said with a smile that he had forgotten that he had such a pot and readily gave it to him. After carefully experimenting with the white panel that was invisible to everyone but him, Lu Lingxi opened it every day when he was alone to study the chlorophytum. He soon discovered that he did not get a plant heart every time he watered the chlorophytum, he had to water it when it needed water. After he watered it when the chlorophytum did not need watering, he was even deducted a heart plant.

This experience made Lu Lingxi realise that taking care of flowers and plants was not as simple as he thought. In the past, when he was at the Lu family’s house, when he had nothing else to do, he would occasionally go to the garden to watch the gardeners water the plants and cut the branches. At that time, he thought it was very simple, but when he started taking care of this chlorophytum himself, he realised that even such a simple thing as watering had a lesson to learn.

Due to his previous health problems, the doctor had been restricting Lu Lingxi’s movements, so his research on the white panel could only be carried out around the chlorophytum on the windowsill. Now that he could finally move around freely, Lu Lingxi decided that he would have to find some other plants to look at as soon as possible. He wondered if the panel could only show this chlorophytum or if other plants were also available? He thought a bit and quickly came up with the idea of the large-leaved golden pothos on the ground floor of the inpatient department.