DIDKNWGEWAFEM

Chapter 13: Letter To Home

The Northwestern wind is desolate. Zhongli Luo is quietly sitting alone on some mountain’s top looking far into the distance, the rolling gusts containing bits of dust and whizzing past her ears…

A person suddenly clapped her on the shoulder. Zhongli Luo turns her head to see a pitch-black man before her, smiling to reveal a mouth full of big white teeth.

“Good little brother Zhong, you got nothing better to do than to stare at something all by yourself?”

This is one of countless times Zhongli Luo’s corrected him. “That… my surname is two characters, Zhongli.”

“Okay, Brother Zhong.”

Zhongli Luo is exceedingly helpless in this. This person is named Tan Jun, her roommate. He’s alright in other aspects, he just shoots his mouth off a bit and is overly familiar, as if he doesn’t sense rejection from anyone.

“What are you doing here, Brother Tan?”

Hearing that, Tan Jun casually sat down next to her and beamed. “We got our wages today. Those reckless brats took the money and vanished into thin air to who-knows-where. When I want to find someone to talk and drink with, I can’t, so I gotta run off to find you.”

Zhongli Luo knows that he’s talking about a few brothers he’s acquainted with; as for where they’ve gone, she can also guess, and he’d gone so far as to rush over here to tell her about a vulgar pickling-room [1] incident like this. She tilts her head, not throwing her own word in.

Noticing that Zhongli Luo is indifferent and uncaring of other’s affairs, Tan Jun is unexpectedly not angry, and continues talking without prying. “Ah, my little wife at home looks gentle and soft, but she’s actually a vat of vinegar ready to drown me in it at any time. If she knew I’d gone off to tease other girls, she’d definitely be so heartbroken that the big girl’d go back to her parents’ home and not come back. She’s a daughter of Zhu Xiucai’s family [2] at the village’s gate. Marrying me is enough to be wronged about, how can I not hurt her a bit? Anyways, you’re in that period of being a 16-ish young guy who hasn’t gotten a wife, what’re you being such a prude for? Where you spend that bit of money won’t be witnessed. C’mon, tell your big bro. Do you have a lover back home and are waiting a few years to earn a little military merit before you go back and marry her?”

Hearing this guy getting more excessive the more he talked, Zhongli Luo hurriedly shook her head. “I don’t.”

Tan Jun stared, then inexplicably gave a wily smile. He pats Zhongli Luo’s shoulder. “Brother, if you’re telling me the truth, looking at how you are, you’re actually still an inexperienced hatchling, right? Here, are you shy? No wonder you can get up so early in the morning full of energy and be bold and fierce, it’s frustration, not-“

“Shut up!” Zhongli Luo cuts him off. At such shameful words – even if she doesn’t regard herself as acting much like a girl, she is still a girl in the end – her thin-skinned face immediately turns red.

Tan Jun acted like he’d never heard it and kept on blathering. “But I heard recently that there’s a few new girls in South Lane; fifteen or sixteen-year olds, nice and delicate with that youthfulness and charm. This is the age girls would love someone pretty and fair-skinned like you, and if you go, you probably wouldn’t need any money.”

His voice had barely stopped when he turned his head to look, and… hey, that guy’s suddenly gone without a trace?

Zhongli Luo couldn’t take it anymore and straight-up left. Ah, the people here are mostly of the same sort; once they get a bit familiar with you, they start to have no filter, and will chat about the heavens, the earth, and beauties. Usually she’ll hear the others chat about some haphazard subjects from time to time, but actually running up to talk to her directly about them? What words did she have to throw in about that?