Wu Chun was startled and immediately looked up at the night sky, roughly estimating the time. The sound of people talking and laughing could still be heard from down the mountain, so it shouldn’t be too late.
Are they cutting down trees this early?
Wu Chun was so worried that he didn’t even care about the pain in his body. He quickly climbed up and tried to catch up with Xu Shi Yao, even forgetting to put on his shoes. However, Xu Shi Yao’s speed was no match for him, and he wandered around the forest twice without finding him.
Wu Chun looked around anxiously and suddenly heard a loud cry, “Ghost!”
That’s him.
Wu Chun quickly ran in the direction of the voice, and just as he arrived, he saw a figure running frantically away from him. He followed the direction in which the figure had just run and finally found the place where the figure had been chopping trees. When he arrived there, he saw Xu Shi Yao standing with his hands behind his back, and all he could see was Xu Shi Yao’s back and the tight fist he was clenching.
“Xu Shi Yao,” Wu Chun whispered.
When Xu Shi Yao turned around, Wu Chun finally saw the scene in front of him.
“How could this happen?” Wu Chun hurried over. The tree that had been cut down was a small, relatively thin tree. It was cut from the trunk, and even though Xu Shi Yao arrived in time, he was unable to save the tree. At that moment, the small pine tree was split in half, with its face turned to the stars and the other part lying on the ground.
“Two years.” Xu Shi Yao’s sudden voice startled Wu Chun.
“What two years?” Wu Chun was puzzled.
“For this tree.”
“It takes two years to grow such a small tree?”
Xu Shi Yao nodded.
Wu Chun felt a bit sad. He had heard from his grandfather that after the landslide, a slope of pine trees had been planted here and that logging had been banned. However, the living environment here was harsh, with steep terrain, little water retention, and mostly rocky soil. It was not difficult for pine trees to survive here.
However, compared to the poplar trees at the foot of the mountain, the growth rate of the pine trees seemed to be much slower.
Wu Chun sighed slowly. Since Xu Shi Yao had protected this pine forest, the villagers at the foot of the mountain had only dared to cut a few branches and had not destroyed any whole trees. Even though logging had been going on for the past five years, this pine forest still existed. Who would have thought that someone would have taken action against an entire pine tree.
There are many households in the village, and if each household cuts down one tree, the entire pine mountain won’t last a year at this rate.
A feeling of helplessness suddenly surged in Wu Chun’s heart as he looked at the broken small tree. If this had been in the past, Wu Chun wouldn’t have been so sad about a single tree, but now he understood that all the vegetation here was not just about their own lives.
“Why did you come over?”
“I was worried too,” Wu Chun said with a shrug.
Xu Shi Yao lowered his head and looked at Wu Chun’s feet, which were covered in mud and had a large blister on the big toe.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Feeling Xu Shi Yao’s gaze, Wu Chun looked down at his feet and then awkwardly scratched the back of his head.
“Ktlr… atlr lr jc fwfgufcms rlaejalbc.”
Aera cbk, Qe Jtec tjvc’a gfjilhfv atf egufcms bo atf rlaejalbc, yea cbk tf ofia la. Lf kjr rb obmerfv bc gecclcu atja tf wera tjnf rmgjamtfv atf rbif bo tlr obba. C riluta qjlc mbwfr ogbw tlr obba, jcv Qe Jtec ibbxr ja We Vtl Tjb. Ktf batfg qfgrbc’r fsfr jgf ralii olzfv bc tlr obba.
“Oh, what’s the big deal? The kids in this village all walk around barefoot. I…”
Wu Chun hasn’t finished speaking yet, but he feels himself being lifted from his waist. Instinctively, Wu Chun hugs Xu Shi Yao’s neck again.
Wu Chun looks at Xu Shi Yao in surprise and asks incredulously, “What… what are you doing?”
Xu Shi Yao looked down at him and saw Wu Chun’s nervous expression, like a scared rabbit. He averted his eyes and calmly said, “There are many stones on the ground.
The implication was that Wu Chun could easily get hurt running barefoot.
“But aren’t you barefoot as well?” Wu Chun whispered in defence.
“I am a ghost.”
Although this time the words had a different intent than the previous ones, Wu Chun still felt uncomfortable hearing them. He grabbed the collar of Xu Shi Yao’s clothes and pretended to be angry as he asked, “Did you forget what I told you again?”
“No, I check every day.”
“Do you check things related to me?” Wu Chun joked, “I suddenly became curious about what you wrote about me on those tree barks. Let me see.”
Xu Shi Yao ignored him, so Wu Chun couldn’t sit still in his arms and begged relentlessly, “Come on, let me see. Did you write something bad about me and won’t show it to me? That must be it. You’re definitely talking bad about me behind my back.”
The restless person in his arms, Xu Shi Yao, couldn’t just kick him out. After being pestered for who knows how many times, Xu Shi Yao finally agreed to Wu Chun’s request.
“Wait until we get back.” Xu Shi Yao sounded somewhat helpless.
Hearing this, Wu Chun immediately calmed down and obediently let Xu Shi Yao carry him back. He didn’t know if it was because he was being carried, but Wu Chun felt that the way back was especially long.
Wu Chun was put down on a pine branch, but his hand still clung to Xu Shi Yao’s sleeve.
“You promised to show me; are you going to leave now?”
Wu Chun held onto Xu Shi Yao with the attitude that he wouldn’t let go until he saw what was in his hands. After a moment of stalemate, Wu Chun heard Xu Shi Yao let out a slow sigh, and soon, a familiar pale green light shone in front of his eyes, revealing three pieces of tree bark.
Wu Chun’s attention was immediately drawn to the tree bark the moment it appeared, completely unaware that Xu Shi Yao had just picked up his legs again.
As Wu Chun watched with great interest, he could clearly see that his status had been elevated in Xu Shi Yao’s eyes, which was evident in the subsequent events compared to the first time Xu Shi Yao said he was loud. Wu Chun was very pleased and felt that his hard work had not been in vain.
Some parts of the three pieces of bark were familiar to Wu Chun, while others were new to him.
“You said I looked like a rabbit.”
He couldn’t help but laugh. “Have you ever seen a rabbit? How can you remember what they look like?”
After all, rabbits were also living creatures and belonged to the world of the living.
“I’ve seen them a few times, so I remember,” Xu Shi Yao replied.
“I look like a rabbit.” Wu Chun asked as Xu Shi Yao nodded.
“Where do I look like one?” Wu Chun continued.
Xu Shi Yao fell silent.
Wu Chun shrugged his shoulders and decided not to press the issue when he saw that he wouldn’t get an answer from him. He continued to read happily and noticed that Xu ShiYao had written down some mundane things from everyday life in a similar way to how he spoke. He didn’t write down anything extra, just the most important things, and if anyone else read the contents, they would be confused. However, after spending these few days together, Wu Chun had gotten used to Xu Shi Yao’s way of speaking.
For example, “Eggplant is very sweet” was written below.
Wu Chun remembered that he had mentioned it to Xu Shi Yao to let him experience the taste of certain things from the mortal world. However, he couldn’t understand why “sweet” was used to describe eggplant.
“Eggplant is sweet?”
Could it be that ghosts have a different sense of taste than humans?
Wu Chun scratched his head in confusion and glanced at Xu Shi Yao, who was attentively massaging his legs, ignoring him.
Forget it; Wu Chun gave up asking. If Xu Shi Yao says it’s sweet, then it’s sweet. Everyone has their own interpretation of the taste of life.
In just a few days, Xu Shi Yao had written a lot of things, and Wu Chun was amazed at how much he had written. He had probably written more in these few days than he had in the past five years.
After finishing a piece of bark, Wu Chun eagerly looked at the next page and was surprised to see the sentence “Wu Chun’s Embrace”.
Wu Chun was taken aback, then noticed the matching question—the feeling of warmth.
During the time they had spent together, Wu Chun had learned from Xu Shi Yao’s intermittent descriptions that ghosts were cold, or, to put it another way, being close to a ghost was like falling into an icy abyss. However, it seemed that ghosts were unable to sense this feeling, as they seemed to be unable to sense any kind of feeling, only knowing that they had come from a place of coldness and darkness, but not knowing the taste of that darkness and coldness.
The question on the tree bark seemed to have been written a long time ago, and Wu Chun couldn’t help but wonder what made Xu Shi Yao doubt the warmth.
“When did you write this? What were you thinking?” Wu Chun pointed at the question and asked Xu Shi Yao timidly.
“I don’t remember.”
When Xu Shi Yao said these words, his expression was simple, as if he were telling a trivial story.
Wu Chun tried to catch some emotion from his face, but there was nothing.
After a moment, Wu Chun laughed self-deprecatingly. Perhaps the question he had just asked was also a long-standing issue that had been bothering Xu Shi Yao.
The fact that Xu Shi Yao had written it on the tree bark meant that it must have been important to him, but he had still passively forgotten about it.
Now, Wu Chun finally understood that even if one could make a record, what difference would it make? Forgetting the cause and effect of things, looking at these trivial records would probably just make one feel confused. Looking at the recorded words, one would not be able to recapture the mood of the recording.
In the end, having a memory and recording a memory are not the same thing.
Wu Chun even wondered what kind of psychological training Xu Shi Yao had to go through every day when he saw the name “Wu Chun” on the bark of the tree and repeatedly told himself “he is a friend” to hide the discomfort of meeting Wu Chun for the first time.
For Wu Chun, Xu Shi Yao became a more familiar and closer friend.
For Xu Shi Yao, Wu Chun was just an “acquaintance” that he couldn’t remember every day.
At that moment, Wu Chun suddenly understood why Xu Shi Yao’s habit of recording had become part of his daily life. He began to record every detail of his day and experiences, perhaps just to preserve the warmth he felt for himself as much as possible when his memory was reset.
Wu Chun remembered his first impression of Xu ShiYao when they first met: cold, like him, so cold that people were afraid to get close to him.
But now, Wu Chun seemed to gradually realize that underneath the icy shell, there seemed to be a burning flame.
“What is it?” Sensing that Wu Chun was not feeling well, Xu Shi Yao stopped what he was doing and looked up to ask.
“Xu Shi Yao.” Wu Chun smiled and called out.
The other person looked at him with some confusion and asked, “What’s going on?”
“Xu Shi Yao! Xu Shi Yao! Xu Shi Yao!” Wu Chun raised his voice and shouted three times. As the last word fell, Wu Chun suddenly leaned forward and hugged Xu Shi Yao again.
Wu Chun noticed that Xu Shi Yao’s body trembled slightly as he hugged him.
“It’s nothing; I just want to make you feel warm again.”
The atmosphere calmed down, and feeling the other person’s confusion, Wu Chun let go of Xu Shi Yao, opened his arms to him, and said with a smile, “Come on, Xu Shi Yao, embrace the warmth.”
Wu Chun felt the gentle yet strong embrace from the other, which was different from any other embrace they had shared before.
Yi Zhi Mao Dou:
Good evening, everyone!
Who’s cutting the onion .. dammit..
So sweet! And I’m not telling about eggplants
Thank you for your translation 💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝💝
».. and noticed that Xu ShiYao had written down..« & ».. his first impression of Xu ShiYao..« Xu Shi Yao
Yeah, it must suck to not remember what you felt back then, when you read about your “menories”.
Thx for the ch (ㅅ˘ㅂ˘)
Reminds me of a manhwa (i think?) that I read before… It’s also a human-ghost pair. And I cried a lot. Oh dear. I already feel it coming. 🥹