Love from the Male Protagonist’s Harem

Chapter 52-Faith [Buried Memories] Part 1

Translated by Snowfall77

 

 

 

 

The stars might’ve twinkled above, but down below the night was a black abyss.

Memories were shifting and blurry.  Yet they had one clear throughline—the girl’s smile slowly fading until every trace of it was gone.

Autumn turned to winter, heralded by flurries of snow.  And since there’d been no harvest, the famine only grew more severe.

The only family in Nanming village with any surplus food was the tyrannical Zhu family, and they weren’t particularly prone to charity.

Xia Ge unwillingly recalled when Doudou and herself were secretly squatting in a household’s woodshed, their eyes dark with hunger, unable to find even tree leaves as a last resort.

Death seemed to be breathing down Xia Ge’s neck, it was so close to her……

Perhaps Doudou was more used to starvation than Xia Ge, who’d only just lately turned beggar.  Because Doudou could still move, and Xia Ge could not.

“Doudou……am I dying?”  Xia Ge’s voice was low and raspy, one hand being held by Doudou.  In the sharp chill, Doudou’s palms were both ice-cold and gentle.

Xia Ge supposed……

Death came for everyone eventually.  But like Lord Sima had written, that death could either be ‘heavier than Mount Tai or lighter than a feather.’  Xia Ge was a lone, suffering beggar.  What worth did her current life really have?

Her vision was dark and she knew she was about to die.  There was no despair in that knowledge, just some regret.

She wouldn’t get the chance to open a shop, hear it filled with the hubbub of crowds, maybe reorganize some economic systems, see some currency circulate ……finally make it big.  Nope, she was just going to die from starvation while living as a child beggar.  It was really, uh, rather pitiful.

Of course, even if she’d been given the opportunities, whether or not she would’ve had the ability was a whole ‘nother question.

Still, when it was all said and done, at least she’d had one thing in the clear.  The god of wealth had been gracious enough to let her take Doudou to the swamp and dig up water chestnuts.  No point in being greedy for more.

Choosing to view it that way, Xia Ge let her little regrets go.

And though she had no sense of belonging in this world, she also didn’t feel like she dying in a foreign land.  Whatever happened next, she was open-minded to it.

Maybe she’d die and go back to her modern world.

Maybe she’d never actually crossed over to anywhere, and everything in front of her right now was simply an absurd dream that she’d wake up from when she ‘died.’

That sounded……very good.

Though it was a pity about young Doudou.

Shuangshuang……whatever soul had inhabited this body before must have been a very important person to Doudou.

Xia was sorry……sorry that she’d borrowed Doudou’s friend’s body.  Sorry she’d failed to take good care of the body or Doudou.  Xia Ge knew herself to be too useless.  She tried to count the good things she’d done for Doudou and the only thing she could remember was those water chestnuts.

Hearing the question ‘am I dying,’ Doudou pressed her lips thin, saying not a word, just gripping Xia Ge’s hand with her own hands as cold as the frost around them.

“Doudou,” Xia Ge found her own raspy voice funny and gave a pained chuckle, “If I foolishly die, promise me that, in the future……when you’re flourishing, you’ll burn two water chestnuts for me.”

Lips pursing even tighter, Doudou kept clasping at Xia Ge’s hand, thinking she could somehow make it warm.

But it was cold.

No matter how tightly Doudou held it, it stayed cold.

Xia Ge wryly pondered the vicissitudes of life.  Living a life of nothing but cold and hunger in a stupid book.  Truly, a colossal fuck-up.  No wonder Shaoling Ye sat in front of his destroyed hut,  lamenting and writing poetry, wishing for tens of thousands of mansions to eternally shelter the poor of the world.

Unfortunately, she didn’t live in such an ideal realm.  All she could was sigh and go: “Ah, I seem to be starving to death.”

About to lose consciousness, Xia Ge finally heard the taciturn Doudou speak, the girl’s tone desperate, yet resolute.

“You are not going to die.”

Doudou’s grip on Xia Ge’s hand slowly loosened, her voice soft: “Wait here for me, Shuangshuang.  Be good and wait for me to come back.”

——What do you think you’re going to go do?

Xia Ge tried to tug at Doudou’s jacket, but she was too weak, Doudou easily pushing her hand away.

——Where are you going?

——Don’t go……come back!

The last thing Xia Ge saw before she fainted was Doudou’s back, clothed in thin hemp and her bare feet, pushing aside a gate.

——It was very windy and cold.

The next second, Xia Ge passed out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

重于泰山zhòngyú Tài Shān

heavier than Mt Tai (idiom); fig.
extremely serious matter

轻于鸿毛qīngyúhóngmáo

light as a goose feather (idiom); trifling / unimportant

 

 

It means that although everyone dies, some people die heavier than Mount Tai, and some people are lighter than a feather.
It is often used to describe the disparity in the value of life.

From Sima Qian’s “Book of Pao Ren’an” in the Western Han Dynasty,

https://zhidao.baidu.com/question/250792737.html

 

 

 

“The Thatched Cottage is Broken by the Autumn Wind” is an ancient poem written by the great Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu during his stay in the Thatched .
This poem narrates the author’s painful experience that the hut was destroyed by the autumn wind and the whole family was drenched in the rain.
It expresses his inner feelings and reflects the poet’s lofty ideological realm of worrying about the country and the people.

 

‘There are tens of thousands of mansions and mansions in the Ande , sheltering all the cold people all over the world with joy , and the wind and rain are as safe as a mountain.’