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Looking across his small field, now contained only to least visible corner of the La clan estate, proud of the work that he'd spent all afternoon doing, fresh tomato and sweet potato seeds planted. Maomao had given them access to the large field just beyond the pleasure district, but Junjie liked to have a personal allotment he could tend to now he was spending more time in the capital.
He wondered through the gardens he came across an all too familiar scene. Can't they go one day without making everyone deal with this? His Junjie's younger brother, that is to say Lahan, was on the other end of En'en's nagging, again. He stood next to Yao, who was watching from in front of the annex. "What's it this time?" He asked.
"En'en's cooking has put us over budget apparently." Yao sighed uncharacteristically. They must've been going at it for a while, Junjie observed, it wasn't often Yao was so outwardly exasperated. She'd probably tried to calm the two of them down to little effect.
Turning his attention to other two, En'en continuing to lay into Lahan. "How on earth do you expect Lady Yao to maintain her splendour with some petty rations. I provided you a list of ingredients for good reason."
"Well Lady En'en, I happen to think Yao is plenty splendours. I fail to believe another full pallet of hasma would have much of an effect."
En'en grumbled and argued back is attention could only be kept for so long before it settled only on En'en and not on the argument she was involved in, admiring her insistence, sticking to her guns in the heat of the battle against his brother. She was dressed well, wanting to make her mistress stand out as she could while still dressing well, her understated cool never failing to wash over him,
"What about Junjie's food?" The woman he was daydreaming about both mentioning his name and now staring at him caught him by surprise, a questioning hum escaping him as his brain scrambled to figure out where in the conversation he'd zoned out of had ended up. "You've got the means to grow food. Can we use it?"
He didn't think before beginning to answer "Of cou-"
"Absolutely not!" Lahan complained. "Those are vital profits!"
"Yeah? And how much of those profits are going towards the one who spends the time in the fields growing them?" Junjie's knees could have given out there and then as his weight seemed to turn to lead with the care he was being shown. "Frankly he's being taken advantage of."
His brother's eyes, slanted and twitching, showed of a look of annoyance Lahan rarely showed outwardly to this degree. It was eating into his profits after all. "Well, one might say that an inexperienced bachelor would being taken advantage of right now by someone playing with his exposed heartstrings."
En'en flinched before returning with yet another attack, not bothering to defend herself, though Junjie never quite manage to process the previous statement, trying to jump in with a "Hey." that was ignored by the sparring duo. "Well, one might say, that the same issue might be befalling my mistress!" Lahan flinching himself before the two locked eyes again, the fight continuing between their glares.
Yao seemingly finally had enough and approached the pair of them while Junjie began staring off into the middle distance. Was this to be his life from now on? Couldn't he return to his quiet life over at the farm. The farm… he pondered on it for a bit, realising he didn't immediately consider it 'home'. He turned his head back to the woman who was exercising a technique commonly used by her colleague on his younger brother's toes, and thought maybe it was due some reconsideration.