Time Travel: My Comfortable Life After Going to the Countryside

The previous chapter was under review, and I don't know when it will be finished.

The air in the room was scorching hot. Chen Jie curled up in the narrow darkness under the bed, her heart pounding so hard it felt like her ribs were about to shatter.

The rough floor was cold, but the noises coming from it made her blush. She cursed inwardly, "Can't you be a little quieter? If the bed collapses, how will you sleep?"

On the bed, there was the rustling of clothes rubbing together, and the subtle yet clear creaking of the bed frame as it began to bear weight.

Every sound made Chen Jie, who was under the bed, tense up a little more, as a mixture of shame, embarrassment and jealousy clashed within her.

In the next room, Le Yao, who had been fast asleep, suddenly trembled slightly in her sleep.

A familiar yet strange warmth swept over her body without warning, bringing a brief but distinct tingling and throbbing sensation.

She groaned softly, opened her eyes groggily, and reached out to feel around. The blanket next to her, Leqi's, was empty.

Le Yao was fully awake, her cheeks burning. Had her sister gone to find Xiang Yang? And judging from her body's reaction, it seemed almost certain.

In the darkness, she glanced at Chen Jie's blanket; it was bulging. Her vague suspicions about Chen Jie were temporarily suppressed.

She hesitated for a moment, then quietly got out of bed, carefully opened the door, and went to the door of Liu Xiangyang's room.

The door was gently pushed open a crack, and Le Yao cautiously peeked in halfway. The room was dimly lit, but the shadows on the bed and the suppressed sounds were clearly discernible.

Her heart suddenly raced, her cheeks burned, and she met Liu Xiangyang's gaze in the dim light.

While maintaining the position, Liu Xiangyang beckoned to Le Yao with his finger.

Le Yao's steps seemed to be nailed to the spot, and the warm current of subtle resonance between her and her twin sister rippled once again.

Liu Xiangyang didn't stop; in fact, he became even more interested because of Le Yao's arrival.

He leaned down and whispered in Leqi's ear, "Qiqi, look who's here?"

Leqi opened her misty, watery eyes and saw Leyao standing in front of them, pouting and looking dissatisfied.

"Sister, why did you come over by yourself without calling me?"

Leqi was so embarrassed that her whole body felt hot.

Liu Xiangyang estimated that her body temperature was at least 40 degrees Celsius.

Leqi said haltingly, "I saw you... were asleep, so I didn't dare to wake you... for fear of waking... Sister Chen."

"Besides...didn't you...sense it and come over on your own?"

"Well…"

"Yaoyao, save me!"

……

The bed frame bore a weight it shouldn't have had to bear, and a cracking sound came from the foot of the bed—it broke.

"Ouch"

"uh-huh…"

Two different sounds came from under the bed at the same time.

One was a startled exclamation, the other a shout under the influence of gravity.

After Chen Jie cried out, she knew something was wrong and quickly covered her mouth, but it was too late; Liu Xiangyang and the other two had already fallen off the bed.

The crisp sound of the bed breaking and Chen Jie's suppressed gasp were like a pair of scissors, "snip" cutting through the thick, ambiguous air in the room.

Time seemed to stand still for a second.

Liu Xiangyang, Le Qi, and Le Yao on the bed froze, their three pairs of eyes filled with almost horrified bewilderment as they all looked toward the source of the sound.

Beneath the bed, Chen Jie's hand, which had been covering her mouth, froze in mid-air. Her wide-open eyes, staring at three beams of focused gaze in the dim light, were filled with the despair of utter ruin.

"Uh..." Liu Xiangyang was the first to react, his face blank for a moment before he calmed down.

He was still holding Leqi in his arms when he took a deep breath: "Godmother?"

In this context, the name seems incredibly strange.

Leqi's shock and embarrassment reached their peak. She let out a short, low cry and tried to shrink into the blanket, but found herself immobilized and could only bury her bright red face in the pillow.

Le Yao was so shocked that she took a half step back, bumped into the door frame, and opened her mouth into an "O" shape. She looked down at the bed, then at her sister and Xiang Yang who were entangled on the bed, and her brain completely shut down.

Chen Jie, who was under the bed, wished she could dig a hole and crawl into it on the spot, or just faint.

But reality was cruel, and she had no choice but to grit her teeth, endure three scorching gazes, and crawl awkwardly out from under the bed.

Dust clung to her silk pajamas, and her hair was somewhat disheveled, completely devoid of her usual composure.

She stood up, not even bothering to brush off the dust, but simply straightened her back, trying to regain some of her elder's authority, though this effort seemed pale and laughable at the moment.

She cleared her throat, but her voice was still trembling slightly: "I...I dropped something, it rolled under the bed, I'm here to look for it..." The excuse was so clumsy that even she didn't believe it.

Leqi finally lifted her head from under the pillow, tears welling up in her eyes. She was both ashamed and anxious: "Sister Chen... when... when did you..." She couldn't even finish her sentence.

Le Yao finally found her voice. She pointed at Chen Jie, then at Liu Xiangyang, and stammered, "Sister Chen, how...how could you be under the bed? You...you guys..."

All the previous doubts flashed through her mind in an instant: that familiar scent, Chen Jie's drowsiness in the early morning, her mistaken belief that Chen Jie was sleeping... A clear and shocking puzzle was completed.

"Beep"

Liu Xiangyang finally moved. He stood up, first wrapped Leqi in the blanket, and then pulled some of his scattered clothes to wrap himself up.

He walked barefoot onto the cold ground, standing in front of Chen Jie, blocking Le Yao's overly direct gaze and also relieving Chen Jie of her awkwardness. "Godmother," he called again, this time with a slightly helpless smile, "Did you find the things?"

Chen Jie's face flushed crimson, and she glared at him fiercely. Her eyes held shame and indignation, blame, and a strange sense of relief that she herself didn't realize was the result of her being caught. She didn't answer, but simply turned her face away.

Liu Xiangyang looked around at the mess in the room and the three women with different expressions—Le Qi, who was lying on the bed with her face flushed and wrapped in a quilt with only her eyes showing; Le Yao, who was staring blankly and overwhelmed with information, and Chen Jie, who was standing in the center, trying to appear calm but with her fingertips trembling slightly.

He walked to the crooked bed, tested it, and realized that the bed, with a broken leg, couldn't support his weight steadily. "The bed is unusable," he announced, then glanced at the three women. "The master bedroom bed is big enough."

This sentence is like a pebble thrown into different lakes of the heart, creating ripples that are completely different from each other.

Leqi buried her face even deeper. Leyao blinked, slowly recovering from her shock. A mixture of excitement at uncovering a secret, curiosity about what would happen next, and a touch of shyness began to arise within her.

Chen Jie froze, looking at Liu Xiangyang in disbelief with a questioning gaze: Are you crazy?

Liu Xiangyang caught her gaze, but simply shrugged, walked to her side, lowered his voice, and said in a tone only the two of them could hear, "Otherwise what? Godmother, do you think we can still pretend nothing happened?"

His breath brushed against her ear. "Can you hear me from under the bed?"

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

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