【Gentle yet resilient husband uke × steady, reliable, devoted seme】
Yin Sheng lost his mother on the day his younger brother was born.
But he believed his mother hadn’t left him. She had become his younger brother, so he had to care for him just as their mother had cared for him.
When Yin Sheng was twelve, the Hu people conquered the Han. After his father died, Yin Sheng carried his younger brother and joined the refugees fleeing south. They had to cross a river to reach the south, but the river lay beyond the mountains, and mountain after mountain stretched before them. Yin Sheng refused to give up. He carried his brother over one mountain after another until at last he saw the river.
After crossing the river, Yin Sheng took his brother to stay with relatives. But instead of a warm meal, he was greeted with two blows to the head. When he opened his eyes again, his brother was gone, and he had been sold to an old bachelor. Yin Sheng escaped to search for his brother, and just as he was about to be caught, a young man rescued him.
The young man was named Hong Ming.
Hong Ming helped him find his brother. Perhaps to repay him, Yin Sheng went home with Hong Ming. Days flowed by like a stream. Yin Sheng watched his younger brother grow up, and one peaceful morning, the three of them saw Hong Ming’s blind mother off. Hand in hand, they did their best to make a good life together.
Just as things seemed about to improve, a flood washed away all their hopes.
Yin Sheng and Hong Ming didn’t cry or make a fuss. They leaned against each other and watched the stars all night. The next day, they took Yin Sheng’s younger brother to the city to make a living.
“As long as we’re together, we have a home.”
“Our lives will keep getting better.”
They could no longer make a living from three mu of farmland. After much thought, Yin Sheng decided to sell pickled vegetables.
Radishes, Chinese chives, and mustard tubers…
Sour, sweet, spicy, and salty…
Just as life was beginning to have some flavor, Hong Ming was seized and sent to the battlefield. Yin Sheng cried for three days and nights, then got up and went back to making pickles. From jars to vats, from a roadside stall to opening his first pickle shop, his younger brother grew taller, and their life grew better.
But Yin Sheng never changed.
He still often wore the clothes Hong Ming had sewn for him by hand, and waited with his younger brother beneath the big tree by the ferry for Hong Ming to return.
【Reader’s guide】
1. The historical setting is loosely based on the early Eastern Jin dynasty, not intended as rigorous historical research.
2. No children. Both are virgins. Happy ending, no angst. A short story, expected to be 150,000–200,000 Chinese characters. Focuses on the slow flow of everyday life, ordinary people’s lives, and the development and sales techniques of pickled vegetables.
Theme: Work hard at life and never give up
