Chapter 14: I’ll Help You Copy!

Fu Jizhou slowed his pace as he crossed the threshold, raising his eyes to look at Wen Ru, who had already walked to the courtyard. He saw her holding a small package in one hand, limping towards his direction with her head down. Fu Jizhou’s face immediately changed.

“What happened to you?” Fu Jizhou held onto the doorframe with one hand, feeling as if his throat had been tightened. It took him a while to make a sound.

Hearing his voice, Wen Ru raised her head and waved the package in her hand at him, calling out, “Come quickly, come quickly, I can’t hold it anymore.”

Fu Jizhou hurriedly ran over, took the small package from her hand, and held it tightly in his arms. Then, bending his waist and furrowing his brows, his gaze swept over Wen Ru’s body, wanting to know where she was injured.

Seeing Fu Jizhou obediently taking the package, Wen Ru sighed in relief; that package was a bit heavy. As soon as her hand was free, Wen Ru raised her arm and casually placed it on Fu Jizhou’s shoulder, slowly leaning half of her body weight onto him. She pretended to be pitiful and said, “Support me a little, my legs are weak, I can’t stand.”

Fu Jizhou was initially startled by her bold action, but hearing her pitifully saying she was too weak to stand without support, his worry took over again. He tried his best to stand straight, wanting to be more reliable.

The two of them walked forward with difficulty. After entering the room, Wen Ru saw that there was a small table on the soft couch, so she dragged Fu Jizhou towards the arhat bed on the other side. With her whole body aching, she wanted to lie down directly on it, but there wasn’t even a soft cushion on that arhat bed.

Fu Jizhou guessed her intention and quickly held her back, asking carefully, “Can you lean here and wait for a moment? I’ll go get something to cushion you, so you’ll be more comfortable lying down.”

Hearing this, Wen Ru’s eyes curved into a smile: “You’re so thoughtful. Go quickly, go quickly. Make it thick and soft, my bones hurt.” After speaking, she let go of Fu Jizhou’s shoulder and hugged the pillar in the room, urging again, “Hurry, I can’t hold on for long, my hands and feet have no strength left.”

How could it be this serious?

Fu Jizhou felt anxious hearing this. After casually placing the package on the soft couch, he ran to the inner room with messy steps. Because Gu Fan had gone down to rest, he didn’t know where the spare quilts and cushions were kept. In the end, as if in a daze, he carried out the brocade quilt from his own bed.

When he came to the Wen residence, he was thin and weak, so the household, fearing he might catch cold, had prepared a very thick brocade quilt for him. Now, he held this thick brocade quilt in his arms, heavy and fluffy, almost covering his entire body.

Wen Ru, hugging the pillar, only saw a large bundle of quilt coming out from the inner room, with a pair of unsteady feet exposed underneath. She couldn’t help but be amused, wanting to go help, but then remembered that she was pretending to be pitiful and couldn’t undermine her own act. So she only gave him directions: “Move a bit to the right, eh, that’s right, take two steps forward, you’re there, put it down.”

Fu Jizhou put down the brocade quilt, quickly spread it out, and then went to help Wen Ru.

Wen Ru smiled and placed her hand on his shoulder again, moving towards the arhat bed while asking, “Is this a new quilt? If I lie on it or sit on it, you don’t mind, do you?”

Fu Jizhou was stunned by her question, suddenly realized something, and lowered his head to hide the blush on his face, stammering, “I… I don’t mind.”

Of course Wen Ru knew he wouldn’t mind. After spending some time with him, Wen Ru discovered that Fu Jizhou before his dark transformation was really too obedient. He would agree to whatever she said. He might be a bit weak, but he was both silly and obedient, which was quite adorable.

As soon as they reached the arhat bed, Wen Ru relaxed her entire body and fell onto the brocade quilt. The soft, fluffy texture enveloped her whole body, and she couldn’t help but sigh contentedly, “This is what living feels like.”

Fu Jizhou stood awkwardly by the arhat bed, looking at her: “Did you get into a fight with someone? Where are you hurt?”

Hearing the concerned questions, Wen Ru became animated. She turned over and lay face down on the quilt, only exposing her eyes, and began to talk about how pitiful she was. She hadn’t attended classes for half a month, and as soon as she went to class, she was punished by Liu Xiansheng and Wei Niangzi. Wei Niangzi was so fierce, tying four or five jin sandbags to her legs and making her run on the racecourse that only horses usually ran on, from the end of Chen hour until nearly Noon hour, without even giving her a sip of water.

She wouldn’t mention that she had basically alternated between running three meters and walking two meters to complete the course.

Fu Jizhou listened with a furrowed brow. How could this Wei Niangzi punish someone so severely? When he heard that she didn’t even get water to drink, he took a few quick steps to fetch the warm tea that had been placed on the soft couch and poured a cup for Wen Ru.

Wen Ru raised her face, leaned over, and said helplessly, “I can’t lift my hand.”

Fu Jizhou had to bend over and carefully feed her: “Slowly, don’t choke.”

After drinking, Wen Ru continued to complain: “Even in this state, Liu Xiansheng still wants to punish me by making me copy books, five times at that. If I don’t finish copying, she’ll report to my mother tomorrow, and mother will definitely beat me with a cane. By then, it’ll be adding injury to injury…”

Fu Jizhou listened and felt distressed. He turned to run outside: “How can they bully you like this? I’ll go tell Aunt.”

Wen Ru held him back: “Ah, don’t go. Otherwise, mother will say that I can’t bear hardships and I’m not like a girl.”

“Then what should we do?” Fu Jizhou anxiously paced back and forth, “You can’t even move now.”

“It’s okay, help me up. Once I feel better, I’ll get up and copy.” Wen Ru struggled to get up from the brocade quilt, but every time she was about to rise, her wrist would weaken, and she would fall back down. “Bring out the package I just gave you. There are books, brush, ink, paper, and inkstone I need to copy in it. I must finish copying today… Oh right, there’s also some sour milk pastry I bought for you in that package. I heard it’s especially delicious, so I bought it specially for you to try.”

Fu Jizhou refused to move, and hearing that even in this state, she still brought him pastries, he felt even more sorry for Wen Ru. Why was she so good, yet those people still punished and bullied her?

Seeing his eyes start to turn red, Wen Ru felt it was about right. She sat up from the bed with great difficulty and leaned weakly against the redwood frame by the bed: “If only someone could help me copy, that would be so good. But alas, Hua Ting certainly wouldn’t be willing. I…”

“I’ll help you copy!” Fu Jizhou stepped forward and eagerly said.

“How can that be?” Wen Ru raised her voice.

But Fu Jizhou had already taken a step ahead, bringing the package to the writing desk. He carefully took out the things, and when he saw the warm sour milk pastry wrapped in twining branch pattern oilpaper, his heart ached a little. He placed it carefully to one side before starting to prepare to help Wen Ru copy the book.

“Little Zhou Zhou, you’re too good to me. I’m so touched.” After Wen Ru finished speaking, she obediently lay on the brocade quilt, slowly massaging her sore wrists and calves.

“You can call me Ah Zhou.” Fu Jizhou had just ground the ink and dipped the brush in it, but the ink nearly spilled when he was startled by Wen Ru’s form of address.

“I won’t. I think Little Zhou Zhou is quite nice. It sounds silly when called, how cute.” Wen Ru lowered her eyelashes, secretly smiling to herself.

Hearing this, Fu Jizhou puffed his cheeks, somewhat dissatisfied, but not wanting to contradict her. He could only lower his head and silently copy the sentences from the book.

“Eh, Little Zhou Zhou, why aren’t you saying anything?” Wen Ru had massaged for a while, and her hands and feet had eased up a bit. As Wei Niangzi had said, Wen Jinyi diligently practiced horse riding daily, and over the years, her muscles and bones had been trained quite well, much healthier than her own body in the 21st century. She had been dramatically suffering during the bath earlier, but now lying on the brocade quilt, she felt as if nothing had happened.

Fu Jizhou was concentrating on copying the book and didn’t pay attention to what she was saying. He recognized most of the characters in the book, but when put together, he didn’t understand them. It was particularly difficult to copy, and he was afraid of accidentally missing a character or skipping a line.

Wen Ru called out once and got no response, feeling particularly uncomfortable. She crawled up from the brocade quilt, sat on it, and looked towards Fu Jizhou. She saw him hunched over, fully focused on copying the book, clearly not having heard what she had just said. In this situation, she naturally couldn’t complain about anything.

Turning back and lying down again, Wen Ru tossed and turned for a while, got bored, and got off the arhat bed. She sneaked up to the writing desk, watching Fu Jizhou copy the book. She saw him writing character by character, and after finishing each character, he would point at that character in the book with his hand, carefully sliding to the next character. It looked very tiring.

“Do you not understand what’s written up there?” Wen Ru couldn’t help but ask.

Fu Jizhou didn’t know when she had walked over, and was startled by her sudden voice. Then, understanding her question, he gripped the brush in his hand tightly, feeling somewhat ashamed.

The books placed in his room were mostly semi-vernacular miscellaneous books, yet he still read them very slowly. Let alone this article, where the characters seemed to not even form words when put together, yet they formed paragraphs. He couldn’t figure out the meaning and thought he should just copy it as it was.

Wen Ru noticed his mood becoming low and realized she had said something wrong, hurting his self-esteem. This article was indeed somewhat difficult; even Wen Jinyi might not fully understand it, let alone Fu Jizhou, whose living conditions in Qianzhou were unknown but probably quite poor.

“I didn’t mean it that way. I was thinking, since I’m just lying there with nothing to do, why don’t I explain the meaning to you while you copy? When I hand in the copied book tomorrow, if Liu Xiansheng asks what I copied, I won’t be completely clueless.” Wen Ru hurriedly explained.

Fu Jizhou stopped writing, looked up at her once, quickly averted his gaze, and looked down at the passage that seemed like a heavenly book to him. He responded with a stifled “Mm.”

Wen Ru raised her hand to pat his head, then turned to move a round-backed armchair from nearby. Perhaps because she had finally made up for her earlier careless words, she momentarily relaxed and forgot about the lie she had told earlier. The armchair wasn’t particularly light, but her movements in moving it were notably easy.

Fu Jizhou looked up and saw this, first stunned, then lowered his head. After a moment’s thought, he stood up and moved the chair he was sitting on to the side.

He did notice something wasn’t right, but he also discovered that Wen Ru was truly kind.