Chapter 2: Dad Doesn’t Love Me Anymore

The carefree days of early childhood always flew by.

In the blink of an eye, the pearl of Songjiatai, Song Daya, was three years old.

During this time, aside from speaking a bit more smoothly than other children, having a sharper mind, and being difficult for adults to fool, Song Daya showed nothing out of the ordinary.

Mostly, Song Daya simply didn’t dare to.

For a three-year-old toddler, behaving as she did now would at most earn her praise for being precocious.

But if she opened her mouth and began spouting the wisdom accumulated from her past life, people wouldn’t call her precocious; they would call her a monster.

She would be burned to death!

So, Song Daya’s strategy was crystal clear: lay low, lay low smartly, lay low without making a sound, and quietly forge a wonderful life and a peaceful world of her own.

Taking it slow was the fastest way.

Speaking of which, the snowfall last winter had been exceptionally heavy. Two children in the neighboring village had died, and one in their own, which scared Mei-shi half to death.

All through the winter, Mei-shi kept constant watch over Song Daya, terrified out of her wits by the slightest headache or fever.

She carried her in her arms or on her back whenever she could, doing her utmost to keep Song Daya’s feet off the ground so she wouldn’t catch a chill.

Not until spring passed and summer arrived, when the weather finally stabilized, did Mei-shi let Song Daya down.

As a result, Song Daya was like wheat sprouts in the field; after being bottled up through an entire winter and spring, she was bursting with energy.

The most direct proof of this was that she woke up earlier than the family’s chickens.

“Dad, get up!” Song Daya shouted at Song Dalang. “You promised you’d take me out to play today!”

That word for “me” actually sounded a bit like the word for “play.”

Unfortunately, Song Daya had been hopeless with dialects in her previous life, and after pondering it for so long, she still hadn’t figured out which region’s dialect this was.

Naturally, she hadn’t been able to figure out where in the world she had landed either.

But Song Daya wasn’t panicking.

If one road was blocked, she would just take another.

When one call failed to wake her father, Song Daya crawled over right beside her father’s head and yelled at the top of her lungs, “Daaad!”

In a humble household with few beds, Song Daya had always slept with her parents.

Besides, Song Dalang was still in mourning^[1]. At night, the most he could do was hold his wife and nothing else, so Song Daya was never put in an awkward spot.

Song Dalang opened his eyes groggily. Seeing that the sky was still dark, he said, “Da’ya, the chickens haven’t even crowed yet. Why don’t you sleep a little longer?”

“No, I can’t sleep!” Song Daya shook her head firmly.

“Da’ya, your dad was worn out from working in the fields yesterday. Let your dad sleep a little longer, all right?” Mei-shi, woken by the noise, got up to coax her as well.

“If I let Dad sleep a little longer, can he take me to play in the village later?” Song Daya asked.

Poor thing; in all the time she had been alive, she had never even set foot outside their small courtyard.

She had long wanted to see this world!

“That won’t do,” Mei-shi refused without a second thought. “You’re still little. You can’t go anywhere. Just stay home and play like a good girl.”

In this era, medicine was primitive and raising children was difficult. Even catching a cold could be deadly, which was why Mei-shi watched Song Daya so closely.

Song Daya understood.

Still, they couldn’t keep her shut in the house every single day, could they?

“Even the chickens can go peck around in the vegetable patch…” Song Daya plopped down beside her father’s head, pouting as she grumbled, “I can’t even go past the brushwood gate…”

She sounded so pitiful that Mei-shi couldn’t help letting out a laugh.

Song Dalang gave up on sleeping too. Throwing back the quilt, he sat up, rubbed Song Daya’s round face, and said, “Dad will take you out to play!”

Unfortunately, human calculations fall short of heaven’s design. The father and daughter had just finished breakfast and were about to leave when a crash of thunder echoed from the sky, and rain began pouring down at once.

“…” Song Daya’s mouth crumpled, and looking up at heaven, she nearly cried.

Now she really had no choice but to play inside.

The Song family’s house had rammed-earth walls topped with thatch, and the ground both inside and outside was made of dirt tamped down rock-hard.

Song Daya sat in the central room, watching raindrops smash into the courtyard, kicking up little dusty bubbles that instantly burst, pooling into trickling streams of muddy water.

The muddy trickles snaked across the courtyard, gathering into puddles of all sizes.

It made Song Daya itch to jump right in.

But in front of her mother, that was out of the question.

Song Daya could only snuff out the thought, obediently waiting it out until dark before going to sleep.

The rain lasted a long time, not stopping until the middle of the night.

When they got up the next morning, the puddles in the courtyard had turned into mud pits.

Song Dalang had to go to the fields to check on things.

“The rain was so heavy yesterday, water must have gathered in the fields. I might have to drain some out,” Song Dalang said, bowl in hand, slurping his porridge.

“Wait a bit, then. I’ll clean up the pots and bowls and go with you,” Mei-shi said.

Hearing this, Song Daya picked up her bowl, drank the porridge down in a few gulps, and went over to wrap her arms around her father’s leg.

“Daddy, I want to go too! Take me with you!”

“No,” Mei-shi said, reaching out to pull her daughter away. “Your dad is going to the fields to work, not to play. Don’t go making trouble!”

“I’ll just take one look and won’t do anything else!” Song Daya skirted around her father’s legs to dodge her mother, not forgetting to plead her case. “Just one look! Can’t I even do that?”

If they didn’t let her out for some fresh air soon, she was going to go crazy from being cooped up!

“No! The ground is still wet, and every step will sink into mud!” Mei-shi still wouldn’t agree.

“Then how about you carry me, Daddy?” Knowing her mother wasn’t so easily fooled, Song Daya clung tight to her father. “I’m not heavy at all. It definitely wouldn’t be any trouble for my daddy. Right, Daddy?”

Song Dalang teased his daughter, “Even your daddy has to listen to your mother, you know…”

Song Daya’s little face fell at once.

“You’ve changed, Daddy!”

“How have I changed?”

“You don’t love me anymore!”

“Pfft!”

Both Song Dalang and Mei-shi burst out laughing.

Even Old Mother Wu cracked a rare smile.

“You definitely can’t go outside. It just finished raining, the road is slick, and it’d be big trouble if you fell.” Song Dalang eyed his daughter’s expression, deliberately drawing out his words. “However, having a look right by the doorway should be fine…”

Sure enough, Song Daya’s eyes lit up. “The doorway it is, then!”

Expanding her territory by even an inch was still a victory.

Song Dalang set down his bowl and waded barefoot through the muddy ground, carrying Song Daya over to the brushwood gate and opening it so she could see outside.

There wasn’t actually much to see outside Song Dalang’s house, just a vegetable patch and a vast stretch of fields. They had looked at it countless times and never found anything special.

But in Song Daya’s eyes, it was entirely different.

It was early summer, and the leaves and grass had drunk their fill of water. Glossy and lush green, they were at their very prettiest.

Thanks to the rain, a thin mist had also drifted up, adding a touch of hazy beauty.

Ah, the pristine countryside, here I come!

Yet before Song Daya could even finish brewing her praises, her father was already about to carry her back.

“All right, it’s too damp out here. Back inside we go.”

“Wait a second!” Song Daya refused to pass up any chance to run wild. “Daddy, we finally made it outside. Can’t you put me down to walk a couple of steps? Just two steps!”

Song Dalang’s heart completely melted under his daughter’s pleading gaze.

And so, between listening to his wife and making his daughter happy, Song Dalang decisively chose the latter.

“Just walk around by the doorway. Don’t go far,” Song Dalang whispered to his daughter, pointing back toward the house.

Song Daya nodded, showing that she understood completely!

With that, Song Dalang set his daughter down, thinking that she was wearing straw sandals anyway and they could easily be washed if they got dirty.

Once her feet touched the ground, Song Daya took a tentative step forward. Sure enough, barely two steps in, her feet were caked with mud.

The fresh mud was soft and squishy, wrapping around her feet with a ticklish sensation. Song Daya couldn’t help beaming, grinning so widely her eyes crinkled shut.

Mid-giggle, her very next step landed right in a mud pit.

The road outside was uneven. At a glance, the mud pits seemed to have crusted over, making it impossible to tell how deep they were until someone actually stepped in.

It just so happened that the mud pit Song Daya stepped into was a deep one, swallowing her entire right leg in one go.

To rescue herself, Song Daya thrust her left leg in as well, thinking that would help pull her right leg free.

And then, she was thoroughly stuck in the mud.