Translated by Lickymee
Edited by Ruzenor, Mithril, Bordelined
Let me tell you about the sheep at my house. It's awesome!
After coming back from Nightfall Town, my life returned to it's usual peaceful state.
Thinking rationally, I should be exploring the Southern Plains, Mount Caly and other places thoroughly
However, I really didn't feel like leaving my Xifu's side. For those who have had a girlfriend before, you should know how it feels to not even want to leave your lover alone for more than 5 seconds.
Now, I'd rather just stay and laze at home for two days straight.
What urged me back to work was simply the weather, as it was getting colder from day to day. When I woke up in the morning, it was pretty obvious that the temperature in degree celsius was down to single digits.
(E/N: °C single digits 1-9°C ~ 33,8-48,2°F)
After counting, there were 41 pieces of fur. Other than these furs, there weren't anything else that could ward off the cold in this house.
Ever since the time when I was down with a cold caused by the rain, I understood the importance of making preparations for winter. And so, my gaze fell onto the big sheep……
The big sheep was really tame, and wouldn't even wander around when it was not tied up. Thus, I placed the sheep far from the house, until the time when Xifu decided not to hunt and eat this sheep for lunch instead.
Now about the sheep, it's inevitable to link them with wool. If I could somehow get some wool from this sheep, it would be invaluable to prepare for the cold winter. And so, I started researching on how to pull the wool out……
Why not just shear the wool with the scissors, you ask? Of course, I had considered it, but the only thing holding me back was if the sheep instead had no wool to pass through the winter and died from hypothermia, I was going to be so screwed.
Although this sheep was just an animal, it was still a life after all. If it could talk, it would probably protest, saying something along the lines of: 'I pulled the cart and the cargo for the house! Don't shear my wool! I want to meet the chief!'.
(T/N: Means something like complaining)
Every time I thought of that, I couldn't bring myself to do it. I didn't even bat an eye when I was killing those 5 people, and yet here I was, unable to even shear the sheep's wool. Sigh……
But they're two totally different cases. This sheep had contributed much to this house, and those 5 people intended to harm me instead.
So I had no choice. If I couldn't shear the wool, then there was only one thing I could do——pull it out!
There was a sentence in one of Zhao Benshan's¹ skit that went something like
'Pulling out the wool of socialism'. (TLN: Apparently means something like harming the majority for your own benefits)
I didn't care about whether my house was made up of socialism, but I was still capable of pulling out sheep wool.
And so, simply put, what happened was I brought a basin filled with some water with me, and moved a bench next to the sheep. Stretching my hands into the thick, firm wool, I started grabbing and pulling it out. With every movement, pieces of loose wool were in my hands. I then tossed them into the basin of water to prevent them from flying about.
After an hour, I managed to obtain quite a lot of sheep wool. Due to the large body size of the sheep, this was actually quite a decent way to obtain wool.
Though it was a pain to process it. I had no idea if it was because I had no prior experience or something else, but the wool got really dirty. I had to wash it twice, dry it under the sun, and then wrap it up with pieces of fur.
As pulling out sheep wool became one of my daily routines, my Xifu, spurred by me, also started pulling it out.
Though compared to the sheep's wool, I could sense from her gaze that the sheep's meat held her interest more instead……
After 5 whole days, the large sheep had been harvested so much that I couldn't even get half a basin's worth of wool from it……
Ever since that fight, I was constantly plagued by recurrent nightmares, keeping me awake. The dreams consisted of bizarre sights and events that would creep you out and make you unable to talk to others about it.
There had even been an occurrence where I got shocked again from seeing my sleeping wife beside me after I woke up from another nightmare.
I was scared that one day Medusa would leave me, that the passionate werewolf would attack me, and that the 5 dead people would look for revenge……
'What happened?'
I was once again woken up by a nightmare. But as my movements were too sudden, I woke my Xifu up too.
'Nothing, nothing……'
'It's getting cold, recently……'
'Un, that's right.'
'You cold?'
She placed her hand over my chest, making my intense heartbeat slow down gradually.
'Not cold.'
Not wanting to say another word, I hugged her in my arms. It felt as if numerous things had accumulated within my heart, but I had no idea how to articulate them.
I really wanted to tell her about Nightfall Town, and things about my past. Yet, it was as if there was an invisible wall between us. One that wouldn't let us hear each other no matter how hard we called for each other.
No matter where, humans were bound to have stress. There wasn't a single human alive that lived without a worry, I dare say. Although one could run away, his problems, just like cockroaches, would only multiply.
Other than working, there was no way I could release my tension here. From hunting to sewing, I did almost anything one could think of. After compiling the wool together, it seemed to be just enough to make a blanket.
And so, by using the sewing kit I obtained, I once again became a good househusband.
As I started sewing, a thought went through my head. Could this blanket be considered a 'marriage blanket'? If I had red dates, peanuts, longans and lotus seeds on hand, I would have followed tradition and stuffed them into the sides of the blanket, which is said to wish the newlyweds to give birth to a child soon².(TLN:Check footnotes for more info.)
Talking about children, would I have a child in the future? If I really had one, would it look more like me or like her?
Hold on, if she was to really give birth, would she give birth to a human, a snake, or lay an egg instead?!
Giggling at my own thoughts, I shook my head and placed the wool on the freshly-sewn fur.
'What are you doing?
'Uhh, how do I say it……like this.'
As I didn't know what a blanket was called, I told her with my actions as usual.
Placing a layer of wool on the fur, and then placing another layer of fur on top of it, I covered my body just like how you would with a blanket.
'Just like this, won't feel cold.'
'Eh?'
'How is it? Isn't hubby awesome?'
'Hehe.'
Suddenly, she blew onto the wool. As the dried sheep wool was very small and dispersed, coupled with her immensely large lung capacity, the small pieces of wool immediately flew everywhere and some stuck onto my body.
How could my Xifu be so cheeky!
Maybe cause I was just too tired, I merely played along with her.
'Oh, my Xifu. *cough* I'm too old, and can't move anymore……'
'Hahahaha'
I placed the wool under my nose like a mustache, and acted like an old man.
'*cough* Even while I'm so old, do you still love me?'
'Hahahaha'
She couldn't stop laughing as her tail even started swinging up and down repeatedly. We continuously threw the wool into the air, and watched as they floated down like snow. It had flown about everywhere covering the insides of the cave, and stuck onto our bodies.
Amidst the white, snowy scene, I had closely observed every facial muscle of her move as she laughed happily.
As I didn't have a camera, I had to imprint these small, daily, happy events into my memory forever.
After messing around for a little while more, I started to have a coughing fit. It could be that I had got some of the wool into my throat.
I quickly coerced her to help gather the wool scattered about everywhere because of us messing around earlier, the anticipated coziness of the blanket I made could have been lowered due to the seemingly large amount of disappeared wool……
By the time I could sew the wool together, Big Sheep's wool looked like it could be pulled again.
To be honest, I had no idea on how to do needlework. My generation which was born in the early 90's had to take the brunt of the bad economy so most of our daily living skills were learnt out of necessity.
When I living alone working, I had only myself to rely on. Despite having close to zero culinary skills, I still had to force myself to cook. Who in the right mind would blow their hard-earned money to eat out in restaurants?
Still, skills such as sewing blankets weren't those that you could expect someone to have.
When I showed Xifu my completed wool blanket, whenever I grabbed one side of the blanket, the wool filling would fall to the other side.
Could this be what you call a concentration of failures……
(TLN: Some untranslatable pun here. I don't really get it anyways…… so I made some random sentence. So here is it: 这叫什么，这叫传说中的"滚包")
And so, that's why there are some things that you can't complete with actions alone. You have to have the appropriate skills for it. Although I failed at making the woolen blanket this time, our lives still haven't. With that, the preparations for the coming winter continued……
Footnotes:
1. Zhao Benshan is a Chinese skit, sitcom actor, director, and entrepreneur.
2. In Chinese traditions, red dates(红枣/Hóngzǎo), peanuts(花生/Huāshēng), longan(桂圆/Guìyuán), and lotus seeds(莲子/Liánzǐ) are normally given to newlyweds as each of the items has a letter that can form the word 枣生桂子(Zǎo shēng guìzǐ), which actually makes no sense, but rhymes with 早生贵子(Zǎoshēng guìzǐ), which means giving birth to a child soon. Practically wishing a couple to have sex and get a kid ASAP.