TTLJDFL chapter 9

Li Jin’s face was expressionless, but inside he was actually quite shocked.
He thought, the words he had just said to the young man were originally meant as a casual joke, but now didn’t they turn into blatant teasing?

Li Jin, on the surface, appears gentle and modest, but in reality, it’s very hard to truly connect with him.

How should I put it, he is a good-hearted person; if you ask him for help, as long as it’s not something particularly difficult, he will help.

But really getting into his heart is indeed very difficult.

Back in his previous life when Li Jin was still in college, because of his outstanding looks and excellent grades, the heart of the campus beauty was entirely on him.

But this guy would just say no when he wanted to say no.

The campus beauty was a persistent girl. Even though Li Jin explicitly told her ‘no dating,’ she still insisted on chasing after him, this untouchable high-class flower. In the end, eight years as classmates couldn’t warm Li Jin’s heart, and the campus beauty eventually gave up.

Later, Li Jin joined the school’s affiliated hospital, and another male doctor in the same department also showed interest in him.

—”Back then, everyone knew about the campus beauty chasing you, Li Jin. Are you… gay? Or should we give it a shot?”

Li Jin: “…………?”

In the end, of course, he still hadn’t tried it. Li Jin’s principles and bottom line were never easily changed, and until now there hadn’t been an exception.

So in summary, Li Jin wouldn’t easily accept someone as a friend, and therefore he wouldn’t do anything that could be misunderstood.

Friends can joke around in harmless ways, but cannot touch emotions.

Li Jin thought, he had only met the young man for the first day, and previous physical contact could still be explained as the relationship between a patient and a doctor.

But how can a doctor flirt with a patient!

Li Zhuzi looked at Li Jin’s calm face, which seemed about to break, and grinned.

He laughed and said, “Don’t worry about your sister-in-law, she’s just being petty, the typical woman’s view.
Think of these things as a thank-you for treating my leg, we brothers don’t talk about money.”

Back when Li Jin’s family was struggling to make ends meet, Li Zhuzi had also sent them some rice, and his wife had been very unhappy about it at the time.

Their family had a lot of people, and many mouths to feed, so they used rice sparingly, and the porridge they cooked couldn’t be any thinner.

Yet her husband actually gave Li Jin a bag of rice—how could that be tolerated? Li Zhuzi’s wife was outright furious.

Li Zhuzi thought Li Jin’s bad mood was because he had remembered this matter.

He hurriedly tried to explain.

Li Jin silently sighed in his heart. He couldn’t be polite at this moment, so he took Li Zhuzi’s gift and, after thanking him, started to head back.

When they returned, the child was indeed already crying for food.

The young man tried to soothe him in his arms, but it was of no use.

Li Jin quickly heated some goat’s milk, diluted it with water, and fed it to the child little by little.

In the midsummer evening setting, a teenager was sitting on a wooden bed with a small baby in his arms portraying a beautiful scenery while the husband was slowly feeding milk to the baby.

The family looked calm and incredibly happy.

But in reality, it only looked calm; feeding a child milk is never an easy task.

At this time, there were no pacifiers or bottles, so Li Jin had to feed the child spoonful by spoonful.

The child didn’t drink a single mouthful and even spit it out.

Qin Muwen looked at Li Jin, feeling extremely worried. ——So that look wasn’t really gentle or affectionate at all; it was entirely fear that Li Jin might suddenly get aggressive and hit someone.

Qin Muwen knew that Li Jin already looked down on the identity of ‘Ge’er,’ and now not only was he a ‘Ge’er,’ but even the child was… Qin Muwen was really very concerned.

But when Li Jin saw the child spit up milk, he just frowned. He put down the bowl and found some fairly soft fabric from the things he had taken from Li Daniu.

Then he gently tied it to the child’s collar, so if it got dirty, it would dirty the cloth first, not the clothes.

After feeding the child, Li Jin was really so hungry that his chest stuck to his back.

He had been busy all day, and actually, he had only eaten one scallion pancake.

But out of responsibility and duty, Li Jin chose to take care of the two little ones at home first, and then casually cook some noodles for himself.

Later, Li Zhuzi gave Li Jin another bag of noodles and said, “Inside are noodles that have been kneaded and cut, as well as some cabbage buns. It’s best not to let your husband go to the fields these days, otherwise it could leave lingering health problems, making it difficult to have children in the future.”

Li Jin boiled water and cooked a bowl of noodles for himself. After thinking for a moment, he also made a fried egg for the young boy.

He saw that there was still a small piece of yellow crystalline stuff in Li Zhuzi’s bag, broke off a bit and tasted it—it’s sugar. He casually put the sugar into the boy’s bowl.

He carried the bowl to the low table by the bed, watching the boy hold the child who’s already dozing off after just finishing eating, and said, ‘Once he falls asleep, lay him down, and have some more soup.’

As soon as he finished speaking, Li Jin paused.

But the boy’s face was already red.

Li Jin: “………” He really didn’t mean it. When will the whole ‘drinking soup’ joke be over!

Kids are so playful. Even though they’re almost asleep, the moment you put them on the bed, they open their mouths wide and start crying.

It’s as if they know whether adults care about them or not.

Just as Li Jin was about to take the child, Qin Muwen quickly picked up the child and said, “I’ll hold him for a while. You quickly finish your meal, or the noodles will stick together.”

Li Jin thought, there was no other choice.

Qin Muwen had been quietly observing Li Jin’s expressions, and he noticed that Li Jin only frowned when the child soiled his clothes or his swaddling.

After that, his expression hardly changed, as if he did not mind the child’s status as a ger. On the contrary, because this was his own biological child, Li Jin cared for him with great attentiveness.

—Even neglecting his own meals to hold the child.

Qin Muwen’s heart was completely at ease.

He stayed in the village for two years and had seen quite a few filthy things.

For example, at the end of the village, there was a very poor family, but they had six children.

The man of the family would wait until everyone was asleep at night, secretly cover the youngest girl with a quilt to suffocate her to death, pretending that she had suffocated herself.

This was all done to send the girl to a rich man in town as a ghost bride for his deceased son, in exchange for ten taels of silver.

The daughter-in-law of that family was a fierce woman. After discovering this matter, she made a scene in the village every day, making everyone in the village aware of it.

But what truly chilled Qin Muwen’s heart was that most people in the village thought, ‘It’s just a girl, and who knows if she can even be raised; getting ten taels of silver is already pretty good. Don’t you still have five others at home?’

Very few people sympathized with the woman who had lost her child.

Qin Muwen had always worried that Li Jin was thinking of using his own child for this dirty trade.

Seeing that the child was a boy, Qin Muwen became even more worried.

But now, watching Li Jin finish his meal and then hold the child in his arms, gently stroking the child’s back, Qin Muwen thought that Li Jin definitely wouldn’t do such a thing.

Li Jin said, “There’s an egg in the bowl, and it’s not hot anymore. Eat it while it’s still warm.”

After giving birth, pregnant women pay attention to drinking soup and eating small, frequent meals.

Li Jin thought that the boy had only been drinking soup before, and now he was probably getting hungry, which was why they gave him an egg.

Qin Muwen held the bowl in his hand; the bottom of the bowl was no longer hot. He took the spoon and sipped the soup first.

It was sweet, and Qin Muwen’s eyes lit up. He had liked eating sweets at home before.

But after marrying Li Jin, he hardly ever ate them.

In ancient times, sugar-making techniques were not very advanced, and sweet cabbage was generally used to make sugar, since sugarcane in the north was not sweet. The current capital, still in the capital city, had not yet developed to the point of making sugar from sugarcane.

Even thirty jin of sweet cabbage might not yield a single jin of sugar.

Li Jin took in Qin Muwen’s expression in its entirety.

“Do you like eating sugar?”

Qin Muwen quickly put down the spoon, nodded, and then rapidly shook his head.

Li Jin continued to hold the child, saying nothing.

But in his heart, he already had a clear idea.

The young boy only carefully bit into the poached egg after drinking half of the soup.

Inside, the yolk was soft yet didn’t break apart in the soup, melting immediately in the mouth.

Li Jin’s skill at making fried eggs is really impressive, which shows that this older single young man must have done it quite often before.

After finishing the meal, Qin Muwen listened to Li Jin drawing water and washing dishes outside, and an inexplicable sense of peace filled his heart. If… if Li Jin could always be like this, it would be wonderful.

Qin Muwen looked at the child who had already fallen asleep beside his pillow and whispered softly, “Am I being too greedy?”

After washing the dishes, Li Jin took a shower with cold water. He was deliberately training his body and no longer cared whether the water was cold or hot.

However, he waited until the moisture on his body had mostly dried before entering the room.

At this time, the young boy was already asleep, with a kerosene lamp on the table emitting a slender, flickering light.

The boy himself did not know how he had moved to the inner side of the bed. Clearly uncomfortable, he still tried to occupy only a tiny bit of space.

He thought that Li Jin seemed to really like kids too, so he left the child between them instead of hiding him away by the wall where he was leaning.

That was pretty much a big show of trust.

Looking at the child, Li Jin remembered to cook some rice porridge, since kids can easily wake up in the middle of the night, and when they do, they’ll cry and demand to eat.

Rice porridge is tricky to cook, so it had to be started now so that by midnight the rice would be soft enough for the child to digest.

With the kid in the middle, sharing the same bed didn’t seem that hard to accept after all.

Qin Muwen has always been a light sleeper, but as a doctor, Li Jin is an even lighter sleeper.

When the child woke up, Li Jin picked him up, and Qin Muwen, still groggy, felt someone stroking his head.

So he fell back asleep before fully waking up.

Early the next morning, when Qin Muwen got up, he saw Li Jin wearing only an undershirt, the strap of his clothing held in the child’s hand, exposing a section of his chest.

Li Jin had not noticed that he was awake, holding the child with one hand while feeding him goat milk porridge with the other.

When Li Jin put the child down, he just happened to lock eyes with Qin Muwen.

Li Jin: “…………”

This is indecent!

What kind of doctor exposes their chest to a patient???​