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“Thanks so much for all your help!” Shi Qingxuan says. “I’ll text you later!” She shuts the door with a huff, leaning against it – finally, finally everyone is gone. Hua Cheng and Xie Lian were the last of them. She’s really grateful for everyone’s help moving in, of course, but moving boxes wears her out a lot more than it would have a few years ago, and she knows she has to unpack everything, too. All the furniture is set up, at least. Qingxuan shoots a longing look at the sofa, but heads for the kitchen instead.
Shen Jiu and Yue Qi are in there, dutifully boxing up all the food that’s leftover. “Feng-jie,” Yue Qi asks, brow furrowed. “Can… we throw away Lian-gege’s stew? It, um…” He eyes the mostly untouched tupperware container with trepidation.
She snorts, leaning on her cane so she can ruffle his hair. “Please do. What else we got?”
“Pizza, dumplings, and salad,” Shen Jiu dutifully reports. He’s hunting for the lid for the salad, and finds it on one of the chairs before slapping it on.
“Pizza for breakfast, then!” Qingxuan chirps, and both kids look at each other with excitement. Everything gets tucked away in the fridge, and she shoos them off to get ready for bed. It’s… honestly kind of sad, how thrilled they are about the small things. She can hear them carefully deciding which stool each of them should get for the bathroom – they’re different colors – and when she peeks in because they’re taking awhile, and sees them making faces in the mirror, she gives them some extra time.
It’s official. She’s a parent now. Or, well, all she needs is the forged paperwork from Hua Cheng that Qingxuan is very much definitely not asking about, and then it will be legally official, but uh. They’re living together now.
She wonders what Ge would think.
Both kids get tucked into the bed they’re sharing. Qingxuan had tried to convince them to go for a trundle bed or bunk beds or something like that, but they had freaked out at her. Er, Shen Jiu had freaked out at her, and Yue Qi had done that horribly smiling thing he does when he wants to say no but doesn’t feel like he’s allowed to, and Qingxuan had promptly stopped pushing.
“So?” she asks, trying not to hover. “How is it?”
“It’s good,” says Yue Qi, which is exactly the answer she expected from him and really doesn’t help, kiddo!
Shen Jiu looks a little more contemplative. “...We’re gonna need more blankets soon,” he says.
She smiles. “Warmer pjs, too?” It’s just old T-shirts and some cheap sweatpants right now, but she’d like to get them some new ones. Something cute. He nods decisively. They both get a quick kiss on the head, one two, and then she’s turning off the light and leaving them to sleep. Qingxuan can hear them talking quietly from basically the moment she closes the door, but it’s fine. Nothing specific they need to be up for in the morning.
The sofa beckons her, the cheap thing that Xie Lian had picked up from god knows where, and she sinks into it with a sigh of relief. For a few minutes, she closes her eyes and relaxes. To her, it’s like clouds, a respite after a long day of movement… but she can’t rest for too long, or she’ll fall asleep.
Qinguan is a parent now. A parent!! And that means that when the kids go to sleep, she has to like, do things.
She’s not… entirely sure what things, but. Things. That’s how it works.
Looking through the ancient parenting magazines that Xie Lian brought are a good start, she thinks. They range from just a few years old to over a decade, and it brings a smile to her face. Who even uses these anymore? They don’t seem super useful, though, or maybe her brain is just kind of mush at the moment. Anything about new parents assumes like, babies, and her kiddos aren’t having boy trouble or girl trouble or school trouble or anything like that.
Hitting a section on puberty makes her stare at the wall for a little bit. Qingxuan is going to have to give them the talk. The talk??? What the hell. Can she ask someone else to do that bit.
Fortunately, the recipes are a saving grace. They’re cute. They’re kid-friendly. Qingxuan isn’t… exactly a cook, but she’s certainly no Xie Lian, and she can follow a recipe just fine. The kids had been excited about a kitchen, so maybe something simple and cheap…? What’s a good way to inaugurate a kitchen…?
She spends some time flipping through, marking a couple pages here and there, narrowing it down to just desserts – because if they mess up, at least it isn’t like, going to make them go hungry – before she carefully dogears a page for tomorrow.
It’s getting late, though, and she hadn’t actually made up her bed. Just a bare mattress awaits her, and Qingxuan is heavily considering just sleeping on that with a blanket when she opens the bed to her room.
A perfectly made bed greets her.
The green comforter is a little haphazard, pink sheets peeking out from underneath that don’t look like they’re wholly tucked around the mattress correctly, and the box that it was sitting in lays discarded on its side, ripped a little as if two small children were struggling with opening it.
Despite the hour, a smile slips onto her face, and refuses to leave. God, she loves those kids. And they hadn’t said a word when she tucked them in! Those little rascals…!
She has the best sleep she’s had in years.
Everyone’s up early the next morning – or, rather, the kids are both up, teeming with excitement, and that means Qingxuan has to get up even though she would rather go right back to bed. She slept great, and that means she wants to keep sleeping, not get up and face the day. But she made the decision to pluck these two kids off the street to join her, and that means she has to parent, gahhhh.
Pizza for breakfast is a huge hit, though they have a serious debate over whether it’s better hot or cold and as far as Qingxuan can tell, don’t have a solid conclusion, and she’s fully recovered and her usually peppy self by the time they’re done. (She doesn’t like getting up early, but once she’s up, she’s up!!) “Alright,” she says. “Who wants to hear the plan for today?”
Shen Jiu looks at her levelly, chewing on some crust. “What if I say I don’t want to?” he says.
“Theeeen I guess you don’t know, and it’s a surprise every time I tell you to do something?” Qingxuan shrugs.
Yue Qi snorts at that, which earns him a little scowl from Shen Jiu, but he’s undeterred. “I would like to know what we’re doing,” he says, voice intentionally syrupy sweet, and the smaller boy kicks him under the table for that – he kicks back and Qingxuan has to fake cough LOUDLY to get their attention again.
Kids, honestly.
“We’ll unpack and go through all the boxes this morning,” she says, because it’s basically all donated stuff from everyone else and honestly, she has no idea what most of it is. She’s pretty sure she’s clear out Xie Lian’s junkstore backroom, which is… good? Maybe? “Dumplings and salad for lunch, then we’ll head to the store to buy stuff for dinner. Questions? Objections? Suggestions?”
Shen Jiu doesn’t have any, still mulishly glaring at both of them, but Yue Qi considers things thoughtfully. “...Can I have the last piece of pepperoni pizza?” he asks. “If you want it… that’s okay.”
Before she can say that of course it is, Shen Jiu grabs the slice out of the box and plops it on Yue Qi’s plate, still fuming silently. And, well, that answers that!
Honestly, Qingxuan has a lot of fun. There’s some old battered kitchen equipment that looks like it’s seen better days, but it’s functional? Shen Jiu eyes some of it dubiously. “...Do you think Lian-gege melted this?” he asks, holding up a half-melted but still… mostly functional spatula.
“No,” says Yue Qi, snorting. “It would be completely gone if he did.”
“Yeah,” agrees Shen Jiu, dutifully putting it away, and Qingxuan has to turn away to not laugh at the two of them. They’re really so cute.
Clothes were donated as well – these from Yushi Huang, used but in solid condition – and they get to have a little fashion show, the kids trying on the clothes and displaying them eagerly. She’s glad there’s at least a solid size difference between them at this age, because it reduces the bickering over every article of clothing. Yue Qi is an indulgent older brother, yes, but even he has limits, and squabbling would noooot be fun to deal with. Fortunately, larger clothes go to Yue Qi and smaller to Shen Jiu, and that’s that.
They end up with a discard box full of everything that doesn’t work out as they go. Duplicates of cooking supplies or stuff that’s just… not gonna work, like, she realizes that maybe the sparking toaster just needs love and care but love and care in a household not with small children, Xie Lian. Clothes that don’t fit, as well as some they just plain don’t like – they don’t like the superhero T-shirts, though Qingxuan plans on setting those aside and seeing if they actually like them after they watch a few movies together.
After lunch, it’s time to trundle off to the store. There’s one within walking distance, though they certainly are… slow. The kids are used to it at this point, darting ahead and coming back as Qingxuan makes her way behind them. “You can buy one thing each,” she promises them.
Yue Qi frowns a little. “We’re only getting three things?” he asks. He doesn’t say it, but Qingxuan has the distinct impression that he thinks she’s being stupid.
She ruffles his hair. “No, no. I’ve got a list.” Well, a mental one at least. Hopefully she doesn’t forget anything! “But you two can both pick out something you want that’s not on the list.”
That’s certainly exciting, and the two dart a little ways ahead to have a serious talk with each other, keeping quiet so that she can’t hear. It’s really cute. She thinks of Ge when she looks at them, and for everything he did… it makes her nostalgic. Enough time has passed that it’s sad fondness instead of pain.
When they reach the entrance, the kids fall back to her side even if it clearly makes them antsy, and they make their way through the parking lot. “I’ll push!” they both insist when they reach the shopping carts.
“I think Yue Qi should push,” Qingxuan says with a smile. “Maybe when you’re a little taller, Shen Jiu.” He eyes her and she thinks she may regret the comment later, but for now, he just huffs at her.
She remembers when she thought he was the sweetest little angel, but turns out he was just an exceptional actor. This version is better.
For now, they stick with the basics. Rice. Veggies that will last awhile, like carrots and potatoes and stuff, since she has zeroooo idea about cooking specifics and doesn’t want to waste money. Pasta noodles, canned sauce, ramen… honestly, she feels like she’s buying for herself in university again? Except then she kinda just bought whatever she wanted, and now she has to actually look at the specific prices and amount per gram and she might need to start coupon cutting. She was young enough that when her brother was doing that, when he was taking care of her, that responsibility never fell on her – she’s not sure how.
Qingxuan makes a mental note to chat with Xie Lian later on how to do this kind of thing, and just does her best for now.
Shen Jiu decides to pick out a box of sugary cereal, some chocolate peanut butter mix that actually looks like, really good and reallyyyy unhealthy. Yue Qi opts for popcorn, and when Qingxuan tells him to pick something else because they’re definitely buying popcorn, he goes for some salt and vinegar chips instead. They run off down a different aisle while she’s examining the oatmeal, trying to figure out which one will be the best price while not tasting like absolute shit.
She doesn’t think too much of it, finally deciding on one and tossing it in. Qingxuan can push the cart, dropping her cane in it and trying to figure out the proper application of pressing her weight on it without sending it shooting away from her, and is so focused on that that she doesn’t realize the kids aren’t in the next aisle until she’s halfway down it. Uh…?
Qingxuan is starting to wonder if maybe she should actually be a lot more stranger danger focused. Are kids more likely to get plucked up in a grocery market than off the street?? “Uh, Yue Qi?” she calls out. “Shen Jiu?” What’s a good mix of ‘get back here RIGHT now’ that also doesn’t tell everyone around her that she’s freaking the hell out?
“Coming!” calls Yue Qi’s voice, thankfully, and the two run over from slightly further down. Yue Qi is frowning immediately, pulling out her cane to hand it to her. “No, no, you said I push!”
Shen Jiu holds something behind his back, and Qingxuan raises an eyebrow at it. “Shen Jiu…?” She figured he would be more discreet if he were trying to swipe something, so…?
He huffs, and pulls out a packet of stickers. They’re very cute, butterflies and flowers, sparkly and bright. “For you,” he says. “We wanna decorate your cane. It’s ugly.”
Qingxuan is too busy being delighted over her boys to be offended. “Toss it in,” she says, grinning so hard her face is gonna hurt later.
The rest of the shopping trip goes pretty smoothly – she does not explain the chocolate, even though the kids try to shoot out guesses as to why, insisting she tell them if they get it correct. They don’t, so Qingxuan doesn’t even have to lie. Nope, it’s not for oatmeal, though she guesses they can use some if they want. No, not cookies. No, they can’t just eat them out of the bag, that’s what your chocolate cereal is for, Shen Jiu!
Carrying the bags means they go more slowly, because despite what they insist the kids can’t carry everything and the stuff slows them down too, but honestly? Qingxuan doesn’t mind. It’s a nice day out. Birds chirping, sun shining, all that cliche stuff. It’s warm and it feels good.
It’s nice to feel hopeful about the future.
They put everything away, with Qingxuan tucking away the chocolate chips and sugar away on the highest shelf she can reach, juuuuust in case, and then she sends them off to do whatever they want with the box of donated activities. There’s half-used coloring books. Puzzles that probably have all their pieces, but they can try to make their own if there’s a missing one, she guesses? A few stuffed toys and stuff in case they want to play make believe (they don’t seem the type, but she could be completely wrong).
Qingxuan’s got a bit of time before dinner, so she sits down to try to tackle all her messages. Great, forgeries are coming within the week – she’s not asking questions. She can try to figure out school with them once those arrive. Both kids are eager to learn, though she’s not sure how well they’ll do… Shen Jiu, at least, seems pretty hostile to other kids. She’ll have to really emphasize the no biting rule.
With one final text to Xie Lian asking about cutting coupons, she heads back into the kitchen to make pasta. Really, really simple pasta. Elbow macaroni. Pasta sauce. Frozen Veggies, and just a sprinkle of mozzarella cheese. Something Ge would have made her when they were kids, and given all the cheese to her, none for himself.
Almost two decades later, she does the same.
Shen Jiu and Yue Qi had apparently decided to color, and come trundling in with coloring books to show off as they eat. They’re pretty well done, solidly inside the lines and all that, and Qingxuan promises that she’ll cut them out and hang them up.
“After we’ve done the other side,” says Yue Qi, nodding slightly.
“Of course, of course,” she says. Is thinking about how cute your kids are all day normal?? Qingxuan’s pretty sure she won’t be singing the same tune once they really start acting up, but the excited high of the move is going to keep them going for a while.
There’s no complaints about dinner, and they all wash up as a team to put the dishes away. When the last plate is dried and put nicely in the cupboard, Qingxuan props her hands on her hips and looks at them with a grin. “So.”
“So…?” echoes Shen Jiu, both of them seemingly torn between confusion and excitement.
“So! Who wants to make dessert?” She grins, and their eyes light up.
“Liar!” Shen Jiu accuses, pinching her arm, which he gets a gentle whack on the head for because ow??? She’s GOTTA break him of that habit. “You said we weren’t making cookies!”
“We’re not!” she announces. “We’re making something different.”
Yue Qi frowns thoughtfully. “Cake…?” he suggests, mulling it over. “Brownies…?”
Okay, those actually would’ve been solid ideas, too. Maybe once she’s figured out the oven. “It’s a surprise! You’ll just have to do what I say!” She nods. “Now, get out the butter and peanut butter.”
Cooking, well… happens. It happens?
Mixing the peanut butter and butter doesn’t go super well, since Qingxuan probably should have softened it and completely forgot, aaand they don’t have like a… mixer or whatever that’s called, so it’s all by hand. Yue Qi tries as hard as he can with his little arms until they get sore, and then Shen Jiu tries as hard as he can with his even littler arms, and then when they pass it to Qingxuan she does not even try.
“Let’s just use the microwave,” she says, since they already know from earlier that it won’t blow up or anything.
Shen Jiu frowns heavily at her. “You couldn’t have done that before?” He flops his arms at her.
“Sorry, didn’t think of that!” And it goes a little bit smoother after that.
Adding in all the other ingredients goes fine until it’s time to add in the powdered sugar, which somehow gets… everywhere. It was the bag, Qingxuan decides. She doesn’t know who decided to put things like flour and powdered sugar and stuff in bags, but whoever it was is an idiot. It’s wayyyy too easy to have fall over and. Well. Get everywhere.
It gets on the counter and spills over on the floor and even kinda gets on their clothes cause they were right there and on the poor kids’ hair, since they were short enough for it to get on their heads (more Shen Jiu than Yue Qi).
“I hate you,” says Shen Jiu, rubbing at his hair.
“I don’t like sugar when it’s powdered,” mumbles Yue Qi, making a face as he tries to rub it off his tongue with his teeth.
Qingxuan pats at her clothing, sending up puffs of sugar into the air. “It’s, uh… a good thing we needed to clean up and take a break soon, anyway. Let’s finish the next step and then wash up.”
The next step being, of course, making peanut butter balls with their hands. This, they love, and the difference between each person’s is very, very visible. Yue Qi’s actually manage to be neat and a proper size. He squints at the picture from the magazine of the finished product, and his look almost picture perfect. (The almost seems to pain him. Qingxuan has to stop him from trying to redo them all.) Shen Jiu’s are simply huge, not a surprise given his excitement for sweets, and Qingxuan’s are a bit misshapen but they get the job done, so it’s fine!
“Okay, they gotta sit in the freezer for a bit, so you two go take a shower or something and I’ll clean up the kitchen.” Cause at least for her, the mess is confined to her clothes.
They go easily enough, Yue Qi grabbing Shen Jiu’s hand and tugging him along, tracking sugar as they go. It could be worse…
She sweeps up, and wipes everything down, ditching the dishes in the sink for later, and changes into her pajamas. When she comes out, the boys are in the kitchen with damp hair, Shen Jiu standing on a chair to wash the dishes and passing each one to Yue Qi to dry. “You’re so cute,” she says, and then she checks behind both of their ears.
“What are you checking for?” asks Yue Qi, glancing at her. “We washed. I promise.”
“My brother always checked my ears after my bath,” she says. “I don’t know. You just do.” She doesn’t remember her parents doing it, but that means nothing. Maybe it was just a Ge quirk, maybe not. Both boys don’t seem willing to press on the brother topic – she imagines to them, given how they’ve grown up, the thought of losing a brother is difficult to picture, though she’s certainly spared them the gory details – so they move along after that.
Once the dishes are done, Yue Qi helps move the chair over so that Shen Jiu can get down the chocolate chips from the cupboard. He’s not… quite tall enough. Qingxuan hides her smile as the boy strains for it. “I think I should try, Xiao Jiu,” says Yue Qi, and Shen Jiu lets out the moooost long suffering sigh in the whole world.
“Fiiiiine,” and he clambers down and holds the chair for Yue Qi, who still has to stretch but manages to get the chocolate chips. This is good for her to know! If she wants to hide something/keep it away from them, sadly, she can’t just put it up there. Maybe in her drawers or something…?
She takes over melting the chocolate while they retrieve the peanut butter balls from the freezer. There’s no baking trays or anything like that – forgot about them – so they’re all just sitting on plates. One slips off as Yue Qi carries two plates over, and he freezes, the plates wobbling on his hands. He looks petrified.
Qingxuan does not make a big deal out of it. Absolutely not. She doesn’t know everything that makes these kids tick, why some things set them off and not others, but she knows to Not Make A Big Deal. “Five second rule!” she yells, and Shen Jiu jerks and grabs it. “Made it.”
Yue Qi relaxes, and Shen Jiu and Qingxuan Do Not Look At Him as they double check the peanut butter ball, and decide it’s fine enough to return to the plate. It’s just a little squashed. “Now,” she says, “Stick the toothpicks in them and dip them in the chocolate. We’ll have to stick them in the fridge for a bit, and they’ll be good!” She hesitates, glancing at Shen Jiu’s rather large ones. “Maybe… you should use two or three toothpicks, Xiao Jiu.” He frowns at her but nods.
Qingxuan can’t remember ever having this much fun cooking.
Ge just cooked to eat, just to survive – he never had any passion for it. Ming Yi… She swallows around the lump in her throat. Ming Yi liked the end results, but not the journey. Xie Lian loves to cook, but the less said about that, the better.
This, with the boys… They delight in carefully pressing their peanut butter balls into the bowls of melted chocolate, trying to get them as coated as possible. Shen Jiu sticks his finger in the chocolate and Yue Qi takes the opportunity to poke his nose with a chocolate finger of his own, and Shen Jiu goes cross-eyed but ends up eating that chocolate, too. It’s fun, and Qingxuan is happy.
When they’re all done, they get put in the fridge. “Right,” she says. “We’ll let those sit for a bit, and we’ll watch a movie.”
Qingxuan sets up a hotspot on her phone and they browse through the ancient iPad they’ve got to pick something off of Netflix. They land on some animated movie about a wolf shapeshifter she’s never seen before, and she sends the kids off to pile as many blankets as they want on the sofa while she makes popcorn.
They make… a lot of blanket trips, nearly tripping over them as they drag their comforter and her comforter and every blanket they can find to pile up on the couch, and it’ll be a pain to deal with later (god, and she has to see how much sugar they tracked into the bathroom, too…) but it’s alright. They get a giant bowl of popcorn to split, three little plates with their desserts, and a glass of milk each to wash down the sweetness.
Yue Qi is in the middle, Shen Jiu to his left and Qingxuan to his right, and they all take a bite together before they start.
“We need to eat these every day,” says Shen Jiu, nodding decisively. “Every single day.” He takes another bite out of his large one — he’s gnawing on it like a rabbit.
“It’s really sweet,” Yue Qi says, chewing thoughtfully. He takes one more, his dessert nice and bite-sized, before setting his plate on the coffee table and pushing it towards Shen Jiu. “Feng-jie, why are they called Buckeyes?”
“They look like the seed of a buckeye tree,” Qingxuan says. Hers are kinda falling apart, so she eats them carefully over her plate.
“What’s a buckeye tree?” asks Shen Jiu.
“A… tree that has seeds that look like these?” Qingxuan waves her half-eaten buckeye in the air, and Shen Jiu snorts.
They start the movie.
Qingxuan steadily eats hers, washing it down with milk, because damn, rich. Yue Qi doesn’t eat any more, and instead seems to singlehandedly demolish the popcorn. Shen Jiu eats all of his and the rest of Yue Qi’s and yet miraculously doesn’t have a massive sugar rush. The movie sucks them in, an anime movie about a wolf shifter family, and despite turning it on for the kids Qingxuan finds herself glued to the screen. The time passes like it’s nothing.
One of the wolves falls into the water, nearly drowning, and Qingxuan lets out a little gasp – but she’s the only one. Confused, she tears her eyes away from the screen…
They fell asleep.
Yue Qi has nodded off, head slipping to the side, hands still loosely holding onto the iPad and not letting it fall. Shen Jiu has curled into his side, and Yue Qi’s cheek rests on the smaller boy’s head. They’re both completely asleep, utterly exhausted from the long day of unpacking and shopping and cooking.
Carefully, Qingxuan tugs the iPad from Yue Qi’s hands. She pauses the movie and sets it aside, before arranging the blankets a little more comfortably around them. Maybe she should wake them… but she doesn’t have the heart to do it.
Maybe, just maybe, she’s not so bad at this parent thing after all. For all his faults… well, she did learn from the best, after all. Qingxuan presses a light kiss to each sleeping boy’s head, and gets up to turn out the lights.
It helps that she has such good kids to work with, she thinks, and flicks the switch.