Chapter 6 Gratitude of an Ungrateful Female Lead 6 – Call Me Great King

When there were a lot of kids, bumps and bruises, squabbles, and all kinds of accidents were unavoidable.

Zhou He took over childcare across the board, hoping it would put the parents more at ease. That way, they could work more efficiently and devote themselves more fully when helping the Xie Family.

You ask how one person could possibly watch that many children?

Zhou He felt it really wasn’t that hard. She simply handed each of them a Golden Cudgel, and just like that, she had a whole string of little tails following behind her.

She cradled a whole jar of lollipops in her arms. Of course, she didn’t hand them out to every child. She made it clear instead that they would be rewards for the well-behaved ones.

Honestly, it wasn’t much different from herding sheep.

Watching one was watching. Watching a whole flock was still watching.

Of course, if you were minding children, you couldn’t let them turn into a scattered mob, or they’d be in chaos in no time.

There had to be structure. There had to be rules.

Zhou He had been out of the world of childhood for many years already, and she had no idea what kids nowadays liked or what they played with.

Ah, forget considering their preferences. Otherwise one would like Peppa Pig, another would like Ultraman, and before long they’d be fighting.

“Big Sister, I want a lollipop too.”

Zhou He said, “Don’t call me Big Sister. Call me Great King.”

“No, I want to be Great King.”

Zhou He said, “Then can you provide lollipops and Golden Cudgels for everyone? Or remote-control cars and Barbie dolls? And lots and lots of snacks and toys too?”

“I can’t…”

“But I can, so I get to be Great King.” Zhou He coaxed. “But if you become my little followers and do well, then as Great King, I might be willing to give you the positions of Second King and Third King. So, are you going to acknowledge me as Great King?”

“Yes, yes, yes!”

Zhou He said, “Then what should you call me?”

“Great King!” the little brats shouted in unison.

See? Kids could still be managed.

Xie Qingjia happened to be passing by them just then, and saw Zhou He getting a whole crowd of little brats to call her Great King.

Their eyes met.

Xie Qingjia: “…”

Zhou He: “…”

Blinking, Zhou He turned around and pretended she hadn’t seen him.

Being called Great King in front of a bunch of little brats was one thing. But having Xie Qingjia see it made her feel strangely embarrassed.

The little brats, of course, had no idea how awkward she felt. They just kept crowding around her and chanting, “Great King, Great King, why aren’t you talking?”

Thanks a lot! Their Great King had already gone into shutdown!

Zhou He decided to change locations so she wouldn’t run into him again.

Walking in front, she raised an arm and shouted, “My children, follow Great King to patrol the mountain¹!”

“We’re patrolling the mountain, patrolling the mountain~”

Zhou He said, “No, no, that’s not how it should go.”

She remembered there was a song called something like The Great King Orders Me to Patrol the Mountain. She took out her phone to look it up, then hummed along with the lyrics.

She sang one line, and the little brats sang one line after her.

At first the children sang in a complete mess, which was one thing, but you really couldn’t underestimate a kid’s ability to imitate. The tune itself was catchy to begin with, and before long, they were singing it pretty well on their own.

Zhou He led the children around the front and back of the house. With their own built-in BGM boosting the atmosphere, they were unbelievably high-profile and swaggering.

Had she made a terrible decision? This was even more socially mortifying.

Whatever. As long as Xie Qingjia didn’t see it, she could pretend nothing had happened.

And so the parents and guests were treated to a grand sight: while they worked, a long line of children roared past them, each with a Golden Cudgel in the left hand and a lollipop in the right, happy as could be.

Kids naturally followed the crowd. Those who hadn’t joined at first gradually started falling in during the mountain patrol. The group steadily grew larger, and the tail behind Zhou He kept getting longer and longer.

Even the “Second Great King” personally appointed by Zhou He would actively arrange the children in order by height.

The children walked by in a neat line from tallest to shortest, and honestly, it was quite a pleasing sight.

—

When people in town passed away, most families still chose burial.

Today, Xie Qingjia was up on the mountain behind Uncle Xie’s house with the other young and middle-aged men from town, setting the tombstone and preparing the grave at the burial plot that had long been reserved for Grandma.

The place where they were working was on the back hill where Uncle Xie’s house stood. From up high, the view stretched far.

The long mountain-patrol procession below, along with their loud, ringing singing, was impossible not to notice.

While he worked, Xie Qingjia kept looking down the mountain for quite a while. The man beside him followed his gaze toward the extremely conspicuous long line below and asked with a laugh, “The one leading them, that’s your Zhou He, right?”

“Yes.”

“Education really does make a difference. Those hard-to-handle little brats actually listen to her.” The man clicked his tongue in amazement.

“You’re laughing at me. They don’t teach this sort of thing in school.” Xie Qingjia smiled as well.

“True enough.”

Xie Qingjia let out a soft sigh. “She’s only doing it because she wants to help me.”

He knew it well. In those years, Zhou He had already had more than enough of taking care of her younger brother. She didn’t like children at all, so how could she possibly go play with them of her own accord?

The man mulled over Xie Qingjia’s words, then patted him on the shoulder. “Good deeds bring good rewards. Your good fortune is still ahead of you, kid.”

“You’ve got that wrong,” Xie Qingjia said, no longer looking down the mountain as he turned back to work. “I’ve always been pretty fortunate. Things are pretty good now too.”

“Oh? Hahaha… right, right, right, right. Everything’s good, everything’s good.”

–

Zhou He led the children from downstairs to upstairs, from one end of the street to the other, and even took them all over both the mountain and the foot of it while carefully avoiding wherever Xie Qingjia might be.

After a while, she felt that all this walking wasn’t really sustainable. So she led the children to watch the adults at work instead.

Chopping firewood, building stoves, cutting vegetables, cooking… they went from one task to the next. If she understood it, she explained it to the children one by one, focusing on how professional the adults were, how serious they were, and of course how hard they were working. If she didn’t understand something, she just interviewed the person doing it.

If a child’s parent wasn’t helping at the Xie Family’s place, the child would still start boasting, saying this person at their home was great at this and that person worked very hard too, and so on.

“My children have all recognized how hard Mommy and Daddy work. Very good. Each of you gets one potato chip as a reward.”

The children rushed forward to collect them.

Sigh, some kids had piles and piles of snacks at home and wouldn’t touch them, yet they were dead set on the pitiful little amount in Zhou He’s hands.

“Then tonight when you go home, should you tell Mommy and Daddy they’ve worked hard and thank them for everything they do for the family? Should we behave a little better?”

“Yes!” x20

Zhou He had only thrown out those words casually to soothe the children, but they took them very seriously. That very day, when they went home, they were especially well-behaved and especially obedient. They even told their parents a lot of heartfelt words of gratitude. As a result, when the parents came again the next day, their moods were visibly better, and they all praised Zhou He one after another. They all said that after spending just half a day playing with her, their own mischievous kids had suddenly become unusually sensible.

Xu Meijuan and Father Xie also received basketfuls of praise.

But that is a story for later, so let us leave it aside for now. For the moment, Zhou He was leading the children past the stoves, where the firewood in the fireboxes was burning fiercely.

She couldn’t help sighing in admiration. “With such a good fire going, it’d be a real shame not to roast sweet potatoes.”

Did that truckload of supplies she brought back yesterday include sweet potatoes? Apparently not. Sigh, what a miscalculation.

Who would have thought one of the children’s mothers overheard her? Very enthusiastically, she said to Zhou He, “If you want sweet potatoes, that’s easy. I’ve got a whole lot in my field. I’ll bring some over tomorrow when I come.”

Zhou He: “!!!”

She had been worrying about how to wear out this gang of little troublemakers and their excessive energy, so she quickly said, “If it’s convenient, could you just point out the field to us? We’ll dig them up ourselves.”

So after the mountain patrol was over, Great King led her children to the sweet potato field for the autumn harvest. This activity consumed an extraordinary amount of energy and could keep them occupied right up until dark.

Only then did she lead the wilted children, along with the spoils of victory, out of the sweet potato field.

Truthfully, it had been a long time since she’d done any farm work herself, and she was exhausted too. But how could the Great King embarrass herself in front of the kids? She hoisted a sack of sweet potatoes weighing several dozen jin² straight onto her shoulder.

Aside from the one on her shoulder, each child was carrying some in their hands as well. It was probably enough to eat for several days.

The sky gradually darkened, and she was afraid the children might get lost in the fields. She still had to keep the group in order. Thankfully, the Second Great King was pretty capable too and helped a lot.

Unlike on the way there, Zhou He was walking at the very back.

As it grew darker and darker, a figure appeared at the end of the narrow path through the fields and slowly approached their group. At first she couldn’t make him out clearly, but then she realized it was Xie Qingjia.

He passed by the long line of children and walked over to her side. Only then did Zhou He notice that he was still wearing the clothes he’d worked in.

“What are you doing here?”

Xie Qingjia took the sack from her shoulder. “We finished up over there. I saw you still hadn’t gone back, so I came to check on you.”

She had no idea which child started it, but the children immediately broke into a chorus of teasing noises. Some of them even exaggeratedly covered their eyes with their filthy little hands that had just been digging up sweet potatoes.

Zhou He said, “What are you all doing?”

Her Second Great King said, “You can’t watch other people being in love. You’ll get styes³.”

Speechless…

Zhou He laughed and scolded them, “You little brats, watch where you’re going!”

Xie Qingjia couldn’t help laughing too. He carried the sweet potatoes in one hand, then used the other free hand to take hers.

“It’s dark. Let’s go home.”

With so many sweet potatoes brought back, there was no chance to eat dinner before the feast started.

As usual, there still weren’t enough seats, so the two of them found a stool behind the house to rest on. Each of them held a large bowl, though this time they weren’t filled as high as they had been at noon. Zhou He had gone to serve the food herself.

Neither of them started eating right away even with the bowls in their hands. They were so tired that they actually had no appetite.

Zhou He asked, “How’s the progress on the mountain? Are you still going tomorrow?”

“It’s basically all been taken care of. We can just go again when Grandma goes up the mountain.”

“Then after dinner, go wash up first. Can you find a place for me to lance the blisters on your hands?”

Xie Qingjia curled his fingers slightly. “You noticed?”

Zhou He glared at him. “I’m not stupid. You held my hand just now, remember?”

She couldn’t very well blame him for working too hard. After all, he was fixing up Grandma’s grave, and this was probably the last thing he could do for her. So the best she could probably do was make sure his support was taken care of.

Xie Qingjia smiled. “You’re not stupid. I am.”

“Hmph. And dumb.”

“Right, and dumb.”

“And an idiot!”

“Yes, and an idiot.”

Zhou He was still laughing when she heard him say, “Then why are you still with someone as stupid, dumb, and idiotic as me? Hey, isn’t there a saying that birds of a feather flock together⁴?”

Zhou He: “…”

She said, “Of course not. You’re dumb, so being with you means I get to bully you. Let me tell you, I’m a very, very bad woman.”

“Someone said today that I’m blessed. I think he was right.”

“Hm?”

Xie Qingjia said, “Isn’t there a saying that the worse a woman is, the prettier she is? So just how bad are you?”

Zhou He: “…”

Xie Qingjia, I really misjudged you before.

Translator’s Notes