Work Text:
Li Lianhua woke up from the sound of the quad starting up and roaring away.
He opened his eyes, sat up, and found himself almost alone in the house.
Fox Spirit was there, of course, sleeping on the woven mat in front of the bed, and Wenjing the cat was sitting in the rafters underneath the freshly thatched roof, almost directly above the dog
Di Feisheng and Fang Duobing had spent almost a month redoing that very roof, time that Li Lianhua used to plant an entire herb garden and re-organise the old apothecary chest that had belonged to some traditional Moluo-cun healer who had perished in the Jinfeng factory disaster, like almost everybody of working age in this village at the time.
Now, freed from temporary plastic sheets and half-hearted drywall, the house was its original airy, natural self again, with a wood-burning kitchen hearth augmented with a double induction hob and an airfryer, space under the eaves for drying herbs and climbing cats, and porches for hanging out and chatting, drinking or reading. It had a bed platform that would keep snakes at bay, and a house altar that was, at present, still empty.
Various people had arrived during the summer to help revive the three quarters dead village where only a few old people had survived before, and while there were enough houses for every one, one of the problems they soon faced was getting here, and back again.
Li Lianhua fished his linen trousers and tee-shirt from underneath a nearby stool, then stood, and pulled them on. This place was lonely and secluded, but not quite so secluded that he would walk around naked in a house with walls that were either airy slats, or entirely optional.
Moluo-cun wasn’t so much actively hidden as passively inaccessible; the village had only ever been connected to the outside world by random dirt roads, which had fallen into total disrepair during the twenty or so years since the incident -- what with Jinfeng’s utter neglect and criminal greed, you couldn’t really call it a chemical accident.
But that was in the past now, and the surviving younger descendants of the original inhabitants -- the brothers Zhang Ping and Gu Qingzhang, called Shulin, first and foremost among them -- asked to look forwards and think of possibilities, not pain and revenge. They had had their revenge; Jingfeng Pharmaceuticals had been exposed and dissolved, and the last of their funds chased down through the interference of Di Feisheng’s old nemesis in Shanghai.
Now, towards the future. Next year, Shulin would hire a steamroller and a work crew to revive the roads; this year, everybody used the all-terrain quads and trikes that had turned up accidentally a few towns away. They had belonged to a company that had offered off-road rides in the mountains and jungles for tourists, and that had gone bankrupt during the pandemic; the vehicles had sat around, slowly decaying, until Zhang Ping had heard about them and enlisted the help of Lao Hong to restore them.
Lao Hong was an ancient survivor from the original population, a mechanic who had been too old for regular work even twenty years ago when the incident happened, and in charge of all the vehicles in the village.
He had to be at least ninety, Li Lianhua would guess from his stories of repairing Jeeps in the nineteen-sixties, but was bright-eyes and sprightly and ageless in a wiry way, as if he was really one of the ancient Daoist sages that cultivated to immortality. Lao Hong, however, had never cultivated anything in his life, except maybe the internal combustion engine; he had looked at the hoard of sad neglected quads and trikes with joy and proceeded to restore them all, once they had been brought to his workshop in Moluo-cun on the back of several very sturdy trucks.
That was why their household had a quad which Di Feisheng and Fang Duobing, apparently, had just left on.
There was a note beside the coffee maker that Li Lianhua found when stepped over the sleepy dog and made a beeline for the coffee; there was some still left in the pot, kept warm by the plate underneath.
Gone to town to buy more chopsticks -- back by noon, the note said.
These days, none of them just vanished on the others any more. They had a few agreements in place that left them to move more freely, actually, and have less arguments.
Li Lianhua poured himself some coffee and stepped outside, onto the east porch which had the best morning sun. By now, the sun was high enough that the thatched eaves were already providing shadows for the interior of the house. Last night had been rather active, and Li Lianhua was still pleasantly exhausted. He had no idea where his guys go the energy to get up and ride into town already.
Slowly, he stepped out onto the wooden boards beyond the eaves of the house, and into the hot late August sun.
The village was spread before him -- rice fields and herb gardens that had come alive again for the first time this year, a group of donkeys grazing between the houses, young goats and half-feral chickens that went everywhere. There was the Holy Tree of the village, declared off limits for the time being by Shulin and Zhang Ping, until such time they would feel it right to gather in its shade again and celebrate the seasonal turning points. Not yet. As yet, there was not enough life here again. As yet, only the wild birds and half-feral cats dared sit in the Holy Tree’s branches.
Fox Spirit came up behind him and leaned against his leg.
“Breakfast?” Li Lianhua asked her, finishing up the last sip of his coffee. She yipped enthusiastically, so he went in to feed the dog and the cat, and put the ingredients for congee into the rice cooker. Now his impatient and hungry boyfriends were gone for the morning, Li Lianhua could afford to slowly make a breakfast food that would take time and, with his luck, might still go wrong.
Moluo-cun had electricity now -- mostly photovoltaics scattered on all the roofs and some rather unexpected spots, plus diesel generators for emergencies, if the big batteries ran out during a longer rainstorm. The terms of ‘emergency’ were very well defined, and rice cookers definitely did not fall under it; Zhang Ping’s satellite internet that all the newcomers and helpers shared, though, most certainly did. Technology had been arriving all summer, and Zhang Ping and Mowen had a blast installing it all and explaining to the old village inhabitants how it all worked.
Not everybody was as open and tech-savvy as Lao Hong.
***
Shortly after noon, Li Lianhua was sitting on the south porch, shaded from the merciless midday sun that was nevertheless making the photovoltaics hum with joy, eating the congee that finally had come out to his satisfaction, and watching a dancing competition on his computer. There was enough power at this time of day for such frivolous uses.
From the mountain pass, the roar of an engine was getting louder and louder, and soon, Li Lianhua could smell the exhaust fumes of the quad. For this peaceful place, these stinky things were a bit of an eyesore (nose-sore?), but Shulin had decided to compromise for mobility, and Lao Hong was happy as a clam about them.
However, when the engine had shut off by the west porch which served as the main entrance where they parked the thing, something much, much worse assailed his sense of smell.
Rotten onions. Turpentine. Old socks, strong cheese, burnt caramel, cat pee and stale blood.
“You absolute beauties!” Li Lianhua exclaimed, jumping up to meet them by the door, “you have actually found me a durian!”
Even though the large, spiny fruit Fang Duobing was carrying was stinking to high heavens, Li Lianhua leaned over it to kiss his younger boyfriend soundly; then, he turned to kiss Di Feisheng as well, for no better reason than that he hadn’t kissed him today at all yet.
During their travels in spring, they had seen durians in the markets in Thailand, but had always decided that it wasn’t worth stinking up the Lotus Bus with.
But here, in this airy tropical house, no smell would linger for too long; Li Lianhua could have his durian and experiment with all the recipes he had read for the strange ingredient. The City was just beyond durian territory; they might be sold in specialized shops, but not anywhere that the three of them had shopped regularly, last winter. Moluo-cun was just on the edge of the durian growing range, and Zhang Ping had told them he had seen some, occasionally, in the markets of nearby towns.
But now, his two lovely men had brought an actual specimen home to Li Lianhua.
Di Feisheng, ever practical, pushed him aside and fetched a large doubly-closed ziplock bag.
“We need to put that in here until you decide what to do with it,” he declared. “I want to be able to sleep tonight without waking up needing to puke.”
Carefully, Fang Duobing sank the spiky thing into the bag that Di Feisheng was holding open, and Li Lianhua closed the double zipper.
Immediately, the smell started dissipating in the well-ventilated house.
Li Lianhua leaned in to kiss each of them again.
“Did I tell you lately how much I love you?” he asked, looking into Di Feisheng’s sweet, beautiful eyes, and Fang Duobing’s laughing ones.
“For a durian?” Fang Duobing giggled.
“Nope,” Li Lianhua said. “For thinking of me in the market, and for bringing the stinky thing in your -- other stinky thing, just so I may experiment with it and later say that I have used durian in a dish.”
“Love is stored in the nasty things you put up with to make your person happy?” Di Feisheng said with a little smile. “Yeah, well, we’re not doing it every day. But you can have it once.”
Li Lianhua nodded. He wouldn’t ask the impossible -- and he wouldn’t want that stink around more than once, either.
“I have fresh coffee,” he said. “And congee -- it’s a bit late in the day, but the stuff turned out quite well.”
“We brought ice cream, too,” Fang Duobing said, eagerly, “so we can have iced coffee.”
“How many batches did you have to toss?” Di Feisheng said, darkly but fondly.
Li Lianhua decided not to answer that.
“Come on, let’s have lunch, then. After that, we can decide what to do with the rest of the day. The summer will be over soon enough.”
They had promised last year’s employers and clients they would be in the City, with their bus, and all three of them in working order, by the Mid Autumn Festival at the latest.
But for now, there would be a few last weeks of freedom, and room for stinky things.