The Dried-Fish Seller and the Stonecutter

Cui Yang is a cured-fish peddler with remarkable skill. He supplies fine goods to Zhenpinzhai, a large merchant shop in town, so he has no trouble selling his wares and has a modest fortune. Yet he always likes to shoulder a load of cured fish and head into the mountains. Some people call him foolish. He has an easy, profitable supply business, but chooses the hard work of a traveling peddler instead. Cui Yang doesn't explain. There's someone he has always remembered: the older boy from the stonemason's family next door when he was little. The boy was very good to him. He played with him, gave him tasty treats, took the blame for him when he was naughty, and took a beating in his place when he got into trouble. Unfortunately, a turn of events ten years ago forced him to leave his hometown. When he came back ten years later, the older boy's family was nowhere to be found, and someone else had long since taken over their old home. He managed to track down one or two neighbors from back then, but they were very reticent about the family. So Cui Yang shoulders his load and searches village by village. Lu Feng is a stonemason, young, strong, and handsome. He should be the man every girl in the surrounding villages dreams of marrying. Unfortunately, his family is poor, and they're outsiders with no land or home of their own. They can only rent a house from someone else. His father died young, and his mother's health is poor. Years of hard labor ruined her eyesight, and he has no money to get her treatment. That summer, he meets a cured-fish peddler. The peddler is handsome and delicate, with a pair of lively, beautiful deer-like eyes that are always sneaking glances at him. He follows Lu Feng back to the village, brings delicious food to his home, and asks him to help find a house. He says the village has auspicious feng shui and he wants to move his cured-fish workshop there. As Lu Feng helps the peddler, those lively deer eyes grow brighter and brighter. They always give him the strange feeling that there was once a pair of beautiful eyes like them following him around in his memories. But he can't remember. He's lost all his childhood memories. Cui Yang: It's okay. If you can't remember, don't worry about it. I'll make sure you have a good life, get Auntie the eye treatment she needs, and make sure nobody looks down on you again. Then you'll marry a beautiful wife... No!!! Cui Yang feels his heart ache. Do you really have to marry someone else as your wife? Lu Feng (smiling): If I don't marry someone else, can I marry you? Cui Yang (dumbfounded): Really? Lu Feng: Really! Reading guide: 1v1, Lu Feng (seme) and Cui Yang (uke) A slice-of-life story about ordinary people. As sweet as ever, with some melodrama. Perfect bedtime reading. Theme: Create a beautiful life.