Chapter 61: Su Wan's Reparation

The day Xingchen returned from the provincial capital, Su Wan was squatting in the Radix isatidis patch behind the pharmaceutical factory, weeding the soil.

Erzhuzi’s booming voice carried over from the village entrance. Leaving the weeds half-pulled, she hurried toward the road, seeing from afar that Lushang Xingchen was walking ahead with his schoolbag on his back. His shoulders were slightly slumped, lacking the straight, proud posture he had when he left.

"Xingchen, how did the competition go?" someone ran up to ask. Xingchen didn’t look back; he merely shook the red certificate in his hand, his voice muffled as though stuffed with cotton: "Second prize." Su Wan’s heart plummeted, and the blades of grass in her grip were crushed to pieces. She knew all too well that had she not swapped those ten seeds, Xingchen’s experimental data would not have had gaps and flaws, and he might well have won first prize. At dinner, Su Wan stirred the sweet potato porridge in her bowl, her chopsticks scraping against the bottom with a grating sound that grated on everyone's nerves.

Noticing she had something on her mind, her mother placed a piece of salted vegetable into her bowl. "Did you make Comrade Su Yao angry again?"

Su Wan shook her head, pushed her bowl away, and said, "Mother, I want to go find Sister Su Yao and help her out."

Her mother blinked in surprise. "Didn’t you say just the other day that you were afraid to see her?"

Su Wan gripped the hem of her shirt and stood up, pulling the patch on her cotton tunic taut. "I was in the wrong before, but now I want to make amends, or my heart won't find peace." The moonlight slanted into the courtyard, casting a thin, elongated shadow by her feet—a delicate, swaying silhouette.

The next morning, at dawn, Su Wan stuffed a corn bun into her pocket and headed toward the pharmaceutical factory.

The dew soaked the hems of her trousers, clinging to her legs with a chilling dampness, yet she walked in haste, terrified of arriving after Su Yao had already left. Just as she reached the greenhouse entrance, she spotted Xingchen squatting on the ground, flipping through his experimental logs. His notebook lay open across his knees, and the tip of his pencil circled the words "sample damaged" repeatedly, his brow deeply furrowed.

"Xingchen, busy at it?" Su Wan’s voice trembled slightly. The corn bun in her hand was squeezed out of shape, its edges thoroughly crumbled.

Xingchen looked up at her, the bloodshot veins in his eyes still unresolved. "Aunt Wan, what brings you here?"

Daring not meet his gaze, Su Wan turned her head toward Su Yao, who was hanging the Radix isatidis out to dry, and pressed forward.

"Sister Su Yao, there’s something I want to tell you." Su Wan stood three paces away from Su Yao, her shoe-toe grinding a small hollow into the earth. "I used to record work points down at the production team, and I can write. I want to help you keep the ledger for the Radix isatidis. I don't want any work points; I just want to lend a hand." As she spoke, she stared at the tip of her cloth shoes, where a worn hole exposed the fabric socks beneath.

Su Yao paused her task of turning the drying herbs. Sunlight filtered through the gaps in the canvas, casting a patchwork of light and shadow across her face.

"Keeping a ledger requires precision. There's no room for error; a single wrong number can ruin the medicine preparation." Setting her wooden rake onto the ground, her voice pitched evenly, she said, "If you truly want to do this, try it out first. If you mess up, you'll have to correct it."

Su Wan had not expected her request to be granted so easily. She jerked her head up, unable to conceal her astonishment. From the medicine cabinet, Su Yao pulled out a brand-new notebook—a lined exercise book with the red characters "In Agriculture, Learn from Dajiang" printed on the cover. "Record the plant height, number of leaves, and soil moisture every day. Show it to me in the evening, and don't miss anything."

As she took the notebook, Su Wan’s fingers brushed against Su Yao’s fingertips, and both hastily pulled back as if scalded. Clutching the notebook tightly to her chest, she turned and hurried toward the Radix isatidis patch. Moving too quickly, she nearly tripped over a rope on the ground—the very rope used to secure the canvas during the last torrential rainstorm, which had yet to be cleared away.

"Slow down, don't rush. The ground is slippery," Su Yao called out from behind her.

Without looking back, Su Wan slowed her pace, though the tips of her ears burned a bright crimson. Squatting before the first row of herbs, she fished out half a pencil stub from her pocket—a leftover from her days recording work points. The wooden barrel was chewed up with pit marks, and the lead was thoroughly blunt.

"First plant, height forty-two centimeters, seven leaves..." she murmured under her breath, measuring the height with the pencil tip, counting the leaves, and recording them stroke by stroke in the notebook.

The sun grew increasingly fierce, baking the back of her neck until it stung. A drop of sweat rolled down her forehead onto the notebook, blooming into a small ink smudge. When she tried to wipe it with her sleeve, it only smeared further, forcing her to rewrite the line beside it and cross out the blurred text.

At noon, Widow Li came over carrying a bowl of corn mush, finding Su Wan still toiling away in the field.

She curled her lip. "Wan, girl, the sun is fierce enough to peel a layer of skin off you. Aren't you afraid of getting heatstroke?"

Su Wan raised her head, her face smudged with dirt, her eyes timid. "It's fine. I'll rest once I finish this row. Almost done."

Glancing at her notebook, Widow Li suddenly chuckled. "Your handwriting is even neater than Xingchen's, though it's much too dense. Like ants marching in a line—it's crowded enough to choke you."

Flustered, Su Wan slammed the notebook shut as if guarding a deep secret, her hands trembling slightly.

Saying no more, Widow Li set down two white-flour flatbreads. "Comrade Su Yao asked me to give these to you. Eat up while they're hot, or they'll turn hard."

The flatbreads were warm. Su Wan took a bite, tears welling up in her eyes as the taste mingled fragrance with a bitter longing. She thought of the day she stole the seeds—it had been just as fine a sun. She had run home clutching those ten space-travel seeds, her heart fluttering with a mix of panic and joy, never imagining she would now be peacefully eating a flatbread given by Su Yao and helping her with her work.

Over the following days, Su Wan arrived before dawn and left only after night had fallen completely. Her ledger grew thicker by the day, every page densely filled. She recorded even the wind and sunny days, tending to the herbs with more care than she ever gave her own household accounts.

One evening, as she was packing up to head home, she noticed that the leaves on a few plants at the very edge were slightly curled, their tips yellowing unlike the vibrant green of the rest.

"What's this?" Su Wan squatted down, her fingers gently brushing the yellowed leaves. They felt cool, not quite like signs of disease. She remembered Su Yao mentioning that too much water causes root rot, while too little dries the leaves. Could it be that she had overwatered them with an extra half-ladle of water a couple of days ago?

That night, she slept restlessly. Her dreams were filled with yellowing leaves and Su Yao's disappointed gaze.

At the first crack of dawn, she raced back to the pharmaceutical factory. From afar, she saw that Su Yao was already in the field, gently using a small trowel to dig up those few yellowed plants.

"Sister Su Yao, it's my fault for not watering them right!"

Running up out of breath, Su Wan could barely form her words. "I shouldn't have poured that extra half-ladle the day before yesterday. It's all my fault."

Straightening up, Su Yao showed her the unearthed roots. "Look at this root. The whitish parts mean too much water, but the main issue is that the drainage ditch was blocked. The rainwater couldn't escape and pooled at the base of the roots."

Su Wan stared at the root fibers. The tips were indeed somewhat brownish, resembling water-soaked firewood.

"I'll go clear the ditch!" Turning around, she rushed to grab a hoe, but Su Yao stopped her.

"Write it down first. This is data too; it can serve as a reference for the future."

Startled, Su Wan quickly retrieved her notebook and pressed down especially hard as she wrote the words: "Yellowing leaves, water accumulation at the roots."

While clearing the drainage ditch, Su Wan swung the hoe with all her might, sending mud splattering all over herself until she looked like a mud monkey. Standing nearby and watching, Su Yao suddenly remarked, "The data you record is even more meticulous than Xingchen's. He always forgets to log the weather; he won't even write it down when it gets windy."

Su Wan’s hoe paused. Mud-stained face breaking into a smile, she replied, "I don't have any great skills, but my memory is decent enough. Writing these things down isn't hard."

This remark was overheard by Xingchen, who had come to deliver breakfast. He handed a corn maize bun toward Su Wan. "Aunt Wan, take a break and eat something. If you starve yourself, you won't have the strength to work."

Accepting the bun, Su Wan’s fingers brushed against his fingertips. Both froze for a fraction of a second before pulling apart.

Scratching his head, Xingchen said, "I looked at your notebook. It's better than mine. I missed several days of temperature readings."

Su Wan’s face flushed instantly, and the bun in her mouth suddenly lost all flavor.

She remembered the day she swapped the seeds, how Xingchen had squatted in the field selecting them with utmost care, holding a magnifying glass in his hand. Remembering that earnest devotion now made her heart ache. "I was in the wrong before, and I caused you trouble," she murmured, lowering her head until her voice sounded like the hum of a mosquito. "I'll do a proper job recording from now on."

Instead of replying, Xingchen pressed a brand-new pencil stub into her hand. "I have extra. Use this one; it's much better than that half-stub of yours."

It was a pencil topped with an eraser, its wooden barrel smooth and far superior to the one she had been using. Cupping the pencil stub, Su Wan rubbed her thumb across the smooth barrel, a sudden stinging sensation pricking at the bridge of her nose.

That afternoon, inspectors from the commune's agricultural technology station came by. Flipping through Su Wan’s logbook, one of them frowned. "Whose record is this? The format is all wrong; it doesn't follow the unified table."

Su Wan’s heart leapt straight into her throat, and just as she opened her mouth to explain, Su Yao spoke up. "I asked her to record it this way. Details make it easier to trace causes; standardized tables are too rigid and miss too many particulars."

The inspector said no more, simply writing the words "Detailed and solid records" on the inspection sheet.

Only after they left did Su Wan let out a breath, realizing her back was drenched with sweat.

"When you record from now on, add a column for dates and temperatures to make it more standardized," Su Yao said, drawing a new grid in her notebook. "That way, anyone looking at it will understand at a glance."