The Reborn Sidekick Rejected The Male Lead-Chapter 396 - 385

The front yard of the house had a well, and Jiang Nanzhou used a bucket tied with a rope to test it and, surprisingly, there was still water.

Looking at the water filled with fallen leaves, Jiang Nanzhou laughed, "I remember when I was a child, my grandmother often used this well to cool watermelons, and the water was very sweet."

"It hasn’t dried up yet, can it still be used?"

"It should be usable, I’ll clean it up and give it a try."

While Jiang Nanzhou was cleaning up the well, Lu Jingqiu pushed Xiao Cheng to the kitchen, tidied up a bit, and there were quite a few large iron pots that hadn’t been used for many years, plus a smaller one.

The clay stoves were still usable, it’s just that the iron pots were seriously rusted and needed to be seasoned again.

Jiang Nanzhou bought a piece of pork fat and scrubbed the pot over ten times, rendering the oil.

The iron pot was of good quality, and still looked quite new and shiny.

Since they invited guests for a barbecue, the kitchen’s main task was just to boil water.

However, as they would stay here for half a day, Lu Jingqiu also tidied up one of the bedrooms.

So the children could rest.

The day they had guests over, the couple arrived at noon, and they bought a lot of ingredients in the morning, mainly meat, pork, mutton, beef, and also chicken wings and two fishes.

The barbecue gear was rented from the farmers market.

Around six o’clock, friends started arriving one after the other.

Lih Huakun came with his partner, Li Qi with his wife and child—their child was already three years old, and the wife worked at the office. Cheng Yi and his wife, along with two children, a six-year-old daughter and another child who was only five months older than Xiao Cheng, and Zhang Wenhong had one child at home already five, and his wife was currently pregnant, working at the agricultural machinery factory.

Lu Jingqiu had met all the male comrades before, while some of the women it was the first time.

Li Qi’s wife was quite a talker. Cheng Yi’s wife’s words carried a hint of pride, in contrast to Zhang Wenhong’s chatty nature; his wife seemed rather reserved.

They had all heard about Lu Jingqiu, and as it was the first meeting, everyone was quite curious.

While the men were grilling meat, Li Qi’s wife chatted with the few of them, "Among them, Wenhong is the eldest, Huakun the youngest. Nanzhou usually is the loneliest, and after each of them married one after another, only he and Huakun remained single. We thought Huakun would marry before Nanzhou, but it turned out the other way around."

Cheng Yi’s wife said, "Yeah, before, Nanzhou hadn’t really dated anyone. Many young ladies admired him, but it’s a pity he was dismissive. They all thought he wasn’t too keen on marriage, but who would have guessed he just hadn’t met the one. Jingqiu, how long do you plan to stay here?"

"For the summer vacation."

Zhang Wenhong’s wife smiled, "You two are also part of the trend, both studying, and with the long-distance relationship. It will be a few more years, right?"

Lu Jingqiu nodded, "Yes, another year or two."

Cheng Yi’s wife said, "Nanzhou has prospects, after graduation the place he’ll be assigned to won’t be bad, Jingqiu, will you follow him? I heard you study fine arts. Are you planning on being an art teacher in the future?"

Lu Jingqiu smiled and said, "I’m not sure yet, it depends on the school assignment."

Lu Jingqiu didn’t quite like the way Cheng Yi’s wife looked at people, always with a sense of superiority.

After that, she didn’t talk much, just listened to the sisters-in-law share their child-rearing experiences together with Cheng Hong.

The men, on the other hand, seemed quite happy and intermittently burst into loud laughter, as if they had returned to their student days.

Since the kids were too young, Lih Huakun specially went out to a restaurant and bought a few servings of egg soup for the children to eat.

Those five or six years old could also have some meat and vegetables. Lu Jingqiu specially prepared potato slices for them; they tasted great when roasted, so the little ones, drinking porridge and eating potatoes, could fill their bellies nicely.

The gathering ended around nine o’clock.

After seeing off their friends at the door, the two of them also took Xiao Cheng back to the courtyard.

"How was it, did you connect with a few sisters-in-law?"

"It was alright, they were all quite enthusiastic. Maybe because it was the first meeting, they didn’t know what to talk about."

Jiang Nanzhou smiled, put his arm around her shoulder, and said, "Getting acquainted is good enough, in case we come here in the future, can’t have you not knowing anyone."

"Yeah. The sisters-in-law are nice, I’ll visit them more often in the future when we can chat."

Jiang Nanzhou could tell there were some wives she didn’t like. When it comes to making friends, if you don’t like someone, just keep your distance, and there’s no need to force it.

The next day, the two of them had nothing else to do, so they went back to the house to tidy up everything from yesterday.

Since the weather had cooled down, they took the child to the city or nearby fun places to stroll around.

Anyway, they hardly stayed at home.

Nanzhou said he wanted to take the child out more often to visit different places and meet people, to broaden the child’s horizons and intelligence.

This was the first time Lu Jingqiu had heard such a thing and found it rather mystical, but she didn’t stop him from educating the child as a father.

In these two months, whenever their father came home, they stayed with him in the big courtyard. Occasionally, when the grandfather went fishing with old friends and the weather was nice, the family of three would join him.

Sometimes, Lu Jingqiu would also free up her own time to go shopping with Wang Xiuya.

In the blink of an eye, two months had almost passed.

They were also getting ready to return to West City.

When they were leaving, it was still the grandfather and Aunt Zhang who followed them, and Jiang Nanzhou drove them back.

It took them a day, from morning until late at night, arriving at their home after ten o’clock.

Fortunately, it was summer, and Yiyi had been staying there the whole time. She had been gone for over a month, and the little girl had kept the front and back yards very clean.

Everyone kept praising her for being diligent.

"Sister-in-law Jingqiu, I knew you guys would be coming back soon. I just cleaned the front and back yards the day before yesterday. How about Xiao Cheng, is he asleep?"

Lu Jingqiu carried the child out of the car and said, "The little guy’s asleep."

"My, he’s gotten darker and fatter in just two months."

Lu Jingqiu laughed. How couldn’t he be darker? The whole family had been running outside in the hot summer weather every day, and you’ll get darker no matter how much sunscreen you apply.

At night, after a whole day on the road, everyone was too tired to talk much and went to their rooms to rest.

Usually, her husband would get up at night to prepare milk for the child when he woke up, but tonight Lu Jingqiu specifically instructed that she would look after the child and let Jiang Nanzhou get a good night’s sleep.

Jiang Nanzhou nodded, truly exhausted, and ended up snoring that night.

Now, Xiao Cheng would need to use the bathroom once in the middle of the night and then drink a bottle of milk in the early morning, waking up around six.

Lu Jingqiu had planned to get up at six as well.

But Nanzhou got up and took the child out of the room, letting her sleep until around eight or nine.

When she came downstairs, she found Jiang Nanzhou in the living room playing with Xiao Cheng.

"Awake?"

"Why didn’t you call me?"

"There’s nothing to do today; sleep as much as you want. I can look after the child."

Lu Jingqiu shook her head, "No need to sleep more; I have to go inform my besties that I’m back."

Jiang Nanzhou watched her happy expression and smiled helplessly, walking over to her and saying, "You can go out, but you can’t skip breakfast. Aunt Zhang made taro and small rice balls."

"Ah, Aunt Zhang is making something so complicated just after I returned. She must have gotten up very early."

"It’s the taro balls that Yiyi brought from Wei Jincheng’s place, just steamed. Aunt Zhang thought to make this for us to eat."

"Mmm, I’ll go and try it."