sbdcsierra Chapter 1864 Half a Month
Chapter 1864 Half a Month
Chapter 1864 Half a Month
The sea had been calm for only a few seconds, and the gray smoke had not yet dissipated when a flock of seabirds swooped down, screeching loudly on the surface of the sea, and swarmed toward the explosion site, ready to feast.
After discussing the sea for a while, everyone turned their attention back to the cargo, preparing to set up the nets again.
Ye Yaodong gave a notification to the deck, and everyone sprang into action, forgetting all about chatting.
The winch creaked and groaned as the previous batch of goods was just finished being processed, and then a new round of harvesting began.
He glanced at the calendar behind the cabin door and saw that a new page hadn't been torn off yet, so he casually grabbed one.
Today is November 8th, which happens to be the start of winter. We need to nourish ourselves. There's still lamb and beef in the ship's freezer, so I'll stew a pot of lamb to replenish my energy.
Meat and other meats are all purchased in advance, chopped, and frozen. Fresh food ships are usually replenished with vegetables and eggs, or meat if they run out of food after being at sea for too long.
"Ah Zheng, today is the Beginning of Winter. Tell the chef to stew a pot of mutton tonight to help us recover. Also, see if there's any fresh and good stuff to get and cook."
"Sure, no problem. I'm good at picking out good food. The goods have just been delivered. I'll go check them out later. Is it already the beginning of winter?"
"No rush, we'll have something nourishing tonight."
"I lose track of the days, especially after coming to sea. I only know day and night, not the month or day."
We're busy working from the moment we open our eyes; we don't care about the date. The first thing we do is listen to the weather forecast.
I've been busy all year for a few coins, and it's almost the beginning of winter.
At home, people make and eat glutinous rice balls for the start of winter. Naturally, there were also frozen glutinous rice balls and dumplings on the ship. In the evening, Ye Yaodong asked the chef to cook a large pot of them.
Even on the boat, we should still celebrate the holiday; after all, it's a festival.
The glutinous rice balls come in both savory and sweet varieties; you can choose whichever you prefer. The crew members are from all over the country, so their tastes vary.
Ye Yaodong naturally prefers savory glutinous rice balls, which are made by adding water to glutinous rice flour, kneading them into small, white, tasteless, and unfilled balls, and then adding cabbage, onions, garlic leaves, dried scallops, fresh shrimp, crab, mantis shrimp, and pork belly. They are so delicious that they can make your eyebrows fall off.
He ate a large bowl of food, then another bowl of mutton, before letting out a satisfied burp.
Only delicious food can heal a weary body and mind.
After a long day, a delicious meal can instantly make you feel less tired.
"After you've eaten, go work on the deck to digest your food, and then go to sleep later."
"I haven't finished eating yet, go and see for yourself first."
"Whether in public or in private, I always eat the slowest food."
Ye Yaodong muttered a complaint and went to help on the deck first.
It was already dark by then, with only a few fish lanterns around.
He hadn't paid much attention to the few scattered green dots on the water's surface at first, but as time went on, they seemed to gather more and more.
Everyone was focused on their work and didn't pay attention to the sea. It was only over the loudspeaker that the captain asked everyone to take a look.
What is this bright green thing?
"Noctiluca scintillans?"
"I think so? So many all of a sudden?"
Ye Yaodong looked up and saw a dense cluster of green lights around the gunwale. There weren't this many before. The green lights were gathering around the fishing boat, looking both magical and eerie.
"There are green dots of light all around the fishing boat. They've circled it up, and there are more and more of them."
"They've all surrounded the bottom of the boat in such a short time?"
"Let's scoop it up and see what it is. It should be Noctiluca scintillans, right?"
The crew member picked up a bamboo pole with a water ladle tied to it and scooped water into the concentrated green light spot.
Ye Yaodong reached in and checked. "It's a bioluminescent worm, not bioluminescent algae."
"Noctiluca scintillans? I thought they were all called luminous algae." Ah Zheng arrived late, picking his teeth with a toothpick.
"This is also called a sea ghost or a sea will-o'-the-wisp."
"If you didn't know what it was, suddenly seeing a ship like that at sea would be quite frightening," Ah Zheng continued.
"The cargo ship we encountered a few days ago, if it had been like that in the middle of the night, surrounded by glowworms, it would have been terrifying."
As Ye Yaodong spoke, he imagined a green halo suddenly appearing on the dark sea. Upon closer inspection, he discovered a ship without lights or crew...
"Hahaha, you're quite the imagination. It does seem to be true. If you had seen a ghost ship and these ghost insects in the middle of the night, it would have been really scary. You would have thought you encountered something evil."
"Red tides also have this stuff, but their red tides are not poisonous."
Ye Yaodong threw the bioluminescent worms back into the sea and said, "Don't worry about them. The fishing boat is moving, so they'll only gather for a while and then disperse. I'll go tell the captain."
Since he had nothing better to do, he went to inform the cabin before returning to his rest pod to read some magazines and go to sleep.
Time seems to stand still in the mountains, and it is the same at sea.
Nothing new or unexpected happened. For several days in a row, Ye Yaodong routinely hauled his nets, seeing more fish each day than he would see in his entire life.
The only thing that's not boring is that I have a friend around, someone I can chat with, joke around, and have some company.
It wasn't until half a month later, when he received a letter from home, that he instantly perked up, his face beaming with joy.
"I have a letter for me? That's great. Go back and you'll have a letter for me when you come back."
Ye Yaodong happily accepted the slightly crumpled envelope. The childish handwriting on it was clearly Ye Xiaoxi's.
Holding the thick book, I have no idea how many words I wrote. I don't even know if I wrote this many words in an essay.
Ah Zheng leaned over and said sourly, "Why are you writing letters again? Don't you need to study anymore? All you do is write letters every day, even sending them all the way from the sea. Can't you wait until you get home to say what you want to say?"
"Go away, I know you're so sour, you don't need to say it in front of me, it smells like lemons."
"What lemon flavor? I'm a lemon spirit! Who wrote this this time? Your wife? She's so old, and she's still sticky. I think she's seventy or eighty years old, and all her teeth have fallen out. Can she still be this sticky?"
As he spoke, he followed behind Ye Yaodong, craning his neck curiously to see what was written.
He doesn't receive any letters, but he can read other people's letters. Other people's letters are definitely more interesting than his own, especially those written by his wife.
Ye Yaodong entered the cabin and found him right behind him. "Don't you have anything to do?"
"No, can I see your letter?"
"This is privacy, don't you understand? How can you just look at this like that?"
"What privacy? I've seen every inch of you, what difference does one letter make?"
Ye Yaodong's face darkened, and he kicked him, saying, "What kind of bullshit are you spouting? How disgusting! Get lost!"
Ah Zheng took the kick solidly but wasn't annoyed. He just chuckled and said, "We grew up together, wearing open-crotch pants since we were little. We've watched each other grow up, so what's so disgusting about it?"
"Get lost, you disgusting bastard, don't interfere with my reading of the letter."
"Who wrote this to you? Is your wife so dependent on you that she wrote you a letter after only being gone for half a month?"
Ye Yaodong rolled his eyes at him, "You can tell at a glance that this handwriting was written by my daughter."
"She's quite filial; she even wrote you a letter. When I go back home for the New Year, I'll ask my daughter to write me a letter and send it to the factory."
"These kinds of things should be done voluntarily by the child, not by you forcing them to do them. If you force them to do it, then it loses its meaning and interest. What fun can there be in writing when you're forced to?"
"Oh shit……"
Ye Yaodong opened the envelope. Inside were five sheets of paper. Three of them started with "Dad," one with "Adong," and the other with "Uncle."
"Oh ho, just like last time, this time there's one more letter, one more person wrote to me, one for each of us."
He glanced at it and saw that the words on the cover were written by Ye Xiaoxi; she must have snatched it and written them.
He took the first one, which was signed "Your precious little Jiujiu," and looked at it first. There was also a stick figure with a smiling face drawn in the corner.
"A letter from a green apple, bringing joy to you and me... What is this thing?"
Ye Yaodong stared blankly at the beginning of the letter. "There are new tricks to writing a letter?"
"Wow, your daughter's quite something! She even rhymed in her letter!"
"Don't peek."
He turned his body to the side as a precaution, to avoid being seen naked. He could only look after he had finished looking.
“Dad, I miss you. I wrote you a letter as soon as you left. I also asked my eldest brother to write one, my second brother to write one, and my sister to write one. The twins also wrote a few words and wrote a piece of paper with my sister.”
“Mom said that since you just left, I don’t need to write letters. So I had to call them all to write letters too, so that we would have more letters and enough weight to send them.”
Ye Yaodong smiled as he read the message, and then wrote a long, detailed account of his thoughts about him, his daily life, his teachers, his classmates, his family, and also, incidentally, his brother's complaints.
Pei Yu also wrote him a letter, which was rare for them. In fact, the three siblings wrote it together, and there were three fingerprints at the end, but no one knew what that meant.
The message basically told him to be careful, come back safely, and if he saw her father, to show him the back of the letter.
Ye Yaodong flipped it over and found that there was indeed a message written on the back, addressed to A Guang. It was quite thoughtful of him.
He didn't read the rest of the message carefully, since it wasn't written for him.
Twins tend to be more erratic.
"Uncle, Xiao Zuo broke the Ultraman toy you bought me..."
"Xiao You shamelessly claims to be the older brother at school every day, when I'm clearly the older brother..."
He laughed as he read, then flipped through two more letters from his two sons. They looked like they were being forced into writing, almost identical to the previous letter, and showed no sincerity whatsoever.
Lin Xiuqing's content looked much more normal.
"...As soon as you left, your daughter wanted to write to you. I told her it wasn't necessary since you'd just left, but she insisted. She's never this enthusiastic about writing essays. She even wanted others to write with her, saying that since we'd have to pay postage anyway, it would be cheaper to write a thicker one..."
The rest are just daily chores, such as keeping warm at sea and getting back as soon as possible.
Ye Yaodong looked at the papers over and over again, a smile constantly on his face.
He received the letter less than a month after he went to sea, which means that the letter was sent from Shanghai as soon as he left. It would take at least a week for the letter to arrive in Zhoushan, and another week for the fishing boat to arrive. During that time, unloading the cargo would also take a long time.
The timing was also well-managed; just as the first Vanguard ship returned, they received the letter from the guardhouse.
Meanwhile, Ye Xiaoxi picked up her pen again and started writing a letter at home.
Lin Xiuqing sat on the sofa watching her so enthusiastic, and couldn't help but complain.
"Normally, writing a diary entry, weekly journal, or essay is like the death of you, you're constantly pulling your hair out, but now you're so enthusiastic about writing letters?"
Ye Xiaoxi didn't even look up, her pen swaying as she wrote. "That's different. This is a letter to Dad. I can write whatever I want. A diary is different from an essay. That has a purpose; it's homework assigned by the teacher. Can you be happy doing homework? Of course, you'll be happy writing what you want to write."
"They're spouting fallacies, yet they still go on and on at length."
“It’s different. Diaries and essays need to be made up, but the letters I write to my dad don’t need to be made up. They are all from the bottom of my heart.”
"That's all bullshit."
"I wonder if Dad received my first letter? It's been so long, more than 20 days." Ye Xiaoxi bit the pen cap and looked ahead with worry.
"It's been so long, you should have received it by now, right? Wait until your father replies before you write to him."
“That would be too slow. By the time I receive his letter, he’ll probably be back already. What’s the point of writing a letter then? I’ll have already seen him in person.”
"Then you'll save yourself the trouble. If you send this letter to him, it might take a month, and by then he'll be back, and you'll have wasted a stamp."
Ye Xiaoxi retorted, "Dad said that if all goes well, we can receive it in about half a month, but it also depends on whether the receiving ship is on time. It may take a few days, but we will definitely receive it in three weeks."
"I don't care."
"So I just sent a letter half a month ago, and now I'm writing another one, which is exactly half a month later. That way, when Dad writes back to me, I'll also write him a letter. When I receive his letter, he'll also receive mine."
"You really are your father's daughter."
Ye Xiaoxi said proudly, "Of course, everyone says I look more and more like my dad."
“But your father is a boy. If you look like a boy, you won’t be good-looking,” Pei Zuo said bluntly.
Pei You added, "No, you're just not as pretty as your aunt, or as pretty as my mother or my sister. You're just a little uglier than them."
Ye Xiaoxi clenched her fists, gritted her teeth, and slammed her pen on the table. "You two shut up, it's none of your business."
"That's the truth."
"I think you're asking for a beating. Come here and get yours."
"No, we're not stupid."
"If you dare to hit me, the two of us can take you on."
Pei Yu comforted her from the side, "Sister, those two have no taste. You look great now that you've lost weight. Your eyes have become bigger, and you even have double eyelids. Your eyelashes are long, and your mouth is small. You're so cute. And your nose is high. You look like your uncle. You perfectly inherited your uncle and aunt's features."
Ye Xiaoxi said happily, "You have a good eye. I think so too."
(End of this chapter)