To her great puzzlement, his maternal grandmother was very elderly in age but she still did not live in the manor.
Their vehicle drove out of the mountain areas and turned into a nearby little town that could not be considered prosperous. There, they saw the elderly lady who lived alone in a small, two-level home. Her age was approaching one century and her vision was blurry from age, but her mind was clear.
While Shi Yi sat beside the rocking chair, talking with and keeping Grandmother company, Zhousheng Chen spent the entire time patiently inspecting all the appliances and various installations. He even needed to personally check the shower head to determine if any of the spray holes had become clogged.
“Even the most patient person, when attending to an elderly person of no blood relation, will lose their patience. No matter how many people are assigned to this place, it is unavoidable that there will be times of inattentiveness, so it is best to personally inspect everything,” he explained lightly to Shi Yi, who had come over to observe him performing manual labour.
Shi Yi nodded in agreement. “There will always be lax moments by the caregivers if they are not that person’s own children.”
He smiled, “Are you empathizing?”
She told him, “There was a time when my mom and my [maternal] uncles all took turns caring for my [maternal] grandmother because they found out that the caregiver would never chat with Grandma and did not give her adequate time out in the sunshine. Those are all little things, but as a son or a daughter, they’re things you would consider.”
As she watched him, she could not help wondering, was he also this patient when he was in the laboratory?
When Zhousheng Chen had finished his inspection of the bathroom, he turned on the faucet and washed his hands.
Her eyes were fixed keenly upon him, and she discovered that his palm seemed to have a scar on it. “Your hand, was it injured before?”
With an “mm”, he answered, “It’s very normal.”
By “normal,” he, of course, was referring to the small risks that were always present when one was working in a laboratory. Shi Yi pressed her lips together. Her heart twinged slightly, but at the same time, she felt that that was his occupation and there really was not much she should say.
Seeing that his inspection work was nearly complete, she left the bathroom and went back to continue chatting with Grandmother.
Zhousheng Chen’s head was lowered as he carried on meticulously washing his hands, but he could not hold back a smile as he shook his head slightly.
When Shi Yi had returned to Grandmother’s side, the elderly lady fumbled and felt for her hand and slipped a strand of jadeite beads onto it.
Grandmother clasped her hand and gently patted it with her own. Before she could take a closer look, she heard Grandmother start to speak.
“I bore a daughter who forever shall carry the fault of having done an injustice to the Zhousheng family.” Grandmother’s enunciation was somewhat unclear, so Shi Yi bent over at the waist to be closer and listened with some difficulty. “Eldest Young Master, ah, he should not have taken her as his wife. If he had known about her and Second Young Master, then he should not have taken her as his wife.”
Shi Yi listened in bewilderment and surmised that the “Eldest Young Master” Grandmother was referring to was not Zhousheng Chen but rather, his father.
Grandmother heaved a heavy sigh.
Then, with her hand holding a circle of 108 jadeite prayer beads, she quietly began reciting Buddhist sutras.
Zhousheng Chen happened to step out at that moment, and when he saw the circle of eighteen jadeite prayer beads on her wrist, surprise flashed briefly in his eyes before quickly disappearing. During the return journey, he told her the origin of those eighteen prayer beads. “It has a circumference of twenty-eight centimetres. There are eighteen jadeite beads in total.” His hand slid down the length of the string beneath the coral guru bead. “Rose-colored tourmaline was used for the carving, and there are also beads of coral and pearl.[4]”