Chapter 154: Ch 154: Helping and Children

"Is she going to be okay?"

Su Wanyan asked it under her breath, eyes fixed on the figure working the open fields. Mo Xingxue moved along the tilled ground with quick, precise hands—seeds placed, spacing checked, with no wasted motion. Competence was not the question, Su Wanyan knew exactly how capable her Xuexue was. But knowing did nothing to quiet the itch in her feet.

Maybe I should go help.

She shifted her weight, one step already forming, when—

"If another guest helps a guest with their task," a staff member said beside her, tone mild and pointed, "it counts as failing the task."

Su Wanyan stopped cold. From farther out in the field, Mo Xingxue lifted her head as if she had heard the exchange through pure instinct and sent a single warning glance across the distance, as if to say, Don’t you dare.

Su Wanyan nodded fast, almost tripping over herself to show she understood. Only then did Mo Xingxue look back down again and continued working without further comment.

Su Wanyan turned her face away as if the soil and the seeds and the steady rhythm of Mo Xingxue’s hands were something she could simply choose not to see. The crew nearest to her could not quite swallow their fond laughter. The omega had barely begun, and already the alpha on the sideline was reacting as though a novel heroine had been forced into hard labor for a single meal.

The barrage, of course, also had their opinions.

[Su Wanyan, babe, calm down TvT!]

[Stawp, they’re literally so cutee!]

[I love how the staff are just letting her be, LMAO!] 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

[GET THE MARRIAGE CERTIFICATES RIGHT NEOW!]

[She’s so cute—I can’t..... WHEN IS IT MY TURN???]

Su Wanyan risked another look. In her private, catastrophizing vision, every bend and reach registered as struggle. She covered her eyes with both hands and started walking—nowhere in particular, just movement to burn off the helplessness—and walked straight into a staff member coming the other way with a full watering can intended for Mo Xingxue’s section.

Water surged on impact. The middle and lower half of Su Wanyan’s shirt took the worst of it.

Her hands left her face at once. "Oh, gosh—I’m so sorry." The apology was immediate and sincere; she had not seen anyone until they collided.

"No, no! Don’t be, Teacher Su!" The staff member waved her free hand, panicked in the opposite direction. "I wasn’t looking where I was heading. That’s why I bumped into you. I’m sorry—"

They apologized over each other in a brief, useless loop until both were satisfied that neither was hurt. The only lasting problem was Su Wanyan’s shirt was drenched. Su Wanyan returned to her place at the edge of the field without accounting for one critical detail: the shirt was white, and thin. Wet fabric clung. The lines of muscle underneath—six-pack included—became, for anyone watching, suddenly and thoroughly visible.

The barrage immediately abandoned restraint.

[Oh, damn!]

[SCREENSHOT! SOMEONE TAKE A SCREENSHOT!]

[I-I’M ON IT IT, BOSS!]

[Su Wanyan is only for Mo Xingxue?? Damn, caught your greedy ahh, Mo Xingxue (translation: SHARE HER WITH ME, PLEASEEE!)]

[OHOHOHOHO? WHAT A FEAST FOR THE EYES!]

[Damn, those are perfectly good buns right there.... Yum!]

[Welp, time to go to the bathroom, folks.]

[For what, exactly?]

[...You don’t need to know.]

While the chat went sideways, two more figures reached the field.

"A pleasant day to you all."

Gu Chengze approached the staff with his usual arrogant look intact. The only difference sat on his face: bandages, neat and undeniable, a public record of the previous day’s outcome. Behind him, Lin Xuanyu rubbed at his eyes, still half-claimed by sleep.

"Good morning, everyone." He sounded like he was fighting a yawn with every syllable.

Gu Chengze turned at the sound. The arrogance in his expression softened on contact. "This is why I told you to rest longer." Frank. Fond underneath, whether he intended the fondness to show or not.

Lin Xuanyu shook his head at once. "No." Firm despite the sleep still clinging to his voice. "Even if I can’t help much, I’ll stay by your side while you do your task." He tugged lightly at the hem of Gu Chengze’s sleeve as if the contact itself were part of the promise.

Gu Chengze’s mouth curved. He pressed the smile down almost immediately, rebuilding the cooler public face—but a faint flush and the leftover lift at the corner of his lips betrayed how thoroughly the insistence had pleased him.

Around them, the awkwardness was palpable. Guests and crew alike found somewhere else to look. Su Wanyan did not bother with subtlety. She watched the pair for a beat with a distinctly lukewarm gaze, found the entire pink-tinted performance insufferable, and turned away.

Her attention went back where it belonged, Mo Xingxue who was working under rules that would not let an alpha with a wet shirt and a helpless heart do anything except stand at the edge and cheer.

"You can do it, Xuexue!"

+-+-+-+-+-+

The morning strengthened by degrees. Heat that had been only a suggestion at first light settled into something gentler but persistent, the kind that made continuous work announce itself in the shoulders and along the spine.

Gu Chengze had begun his own section.

Unlike the day before—when every turn of the soil seemed to produce another stone, large or small, as if the ground itself had taken sides—the work today went cleanly. The blade bit, the earth opened, the row advanced. He was not as fast as Su Wanyan and never would be on pure rhythm alone, but the pace was respectable. Decent enough that his expression held less of yesterday’s insulted fury and more of a man reclaiming control over a task that had briefly humiliated him.

A short distance away, Lin Xuanyu watched without offering help he was not allowed to give. The smile on his face was dark and absorbed, the private enjoyment of an omega who found the sight of this particular alpha at labor more compelling than the labor itself.

A few minutes later the remaining two omegas reached the field.

Song Meiyu arrived first. She went straight to Qin Yuran’s side without ceremony and held out a bottle of water. Qin Yuran took it, tipped it back, and drained it in a continuous pull, the kind of gratitude that did not require words when thirst had already done the talking. Song Meiyu only waited until the bottle came down empty, then stayed where she was—present and steady.

On the far side of the worked ground, Han Jiho approached Zhao Yichen at a lazier pace. Zhao was deep in the row, sweat already finding the usual paths, when a shadow and a hand interrupted the rhythm. Han Jiho held out a cap.

"Here. The heat must be irritating your eyes."

The tone was the usual dry near-monotone. But warmth sat underneath it anyway.

Zhao Yichen turned, surprise plain. He remembered I have astigmatism? The detail was small enough that most people never remembered it. He pressed his lips together, accepted the cap, settled it into place, and returned to the soil with a renewed strength in his arms.

Farther along the seed line, Mo Xingxue wiped her brow with the back of her wrist. A frown had formed in her delicate face.

It’s hot.

The morning sun had stopped being gentle. She exhaled once, privately. I should have brought an umbrella, she thought, I should buy one. The vow to buy one next time formed and settled; for now there was only endurance and the remaining packets in her hands.

I’ll just get through it.

She had barely finished the thought when a shadow closed over her.

She looked up. Su Wanyan stood close enough that her body cut the direct light, shoulders angled to make a moving shelter of herself, expression already halfway into apology.

"Sorry. I’ll bring a sun hat and an umbrella next time." Plans stacked behind the words—correction, prevention, the familiar refusal to let a discomfort stand unaddressed if she could name a tool against it.

Mo Xingxue blinked at the guilt on that face and could not hold the laugh that rose. "What are you saying?" She glanced down again, fingers returning to the seed and the soil. "This was my poor judgment. Don’t worry about it."

A seed settled into place. Then, she heard Su Wanyan sigh.

"Yeah. But still—I won’t let you suffer grievances like this."

Firm and serious. The kind of declaration that did not need volume to give impact, but the conviction behind it.

Mo Xingxue did not have to look to know the conviction on Su Wanyan’s face. A helpless, tender smile pulled at her mouth. She nodded once, accepted the promise the way she accepted most of Su Wanyan’s care—without argument, and without fully admitting how much the shade itself already meant.

Around them the four pairs settled into a stretch of ordinary morning: water shared, caps adjusted, bodies used as shelter, rows advancing under rules that still forbade the wrong kind of help.

Then the native villagers arrived at the field’s edge in a small, hurried cluster.

"We’re so sorry we’re late, boss." One of the men bowed toward Jingxue, the others following a half-beat behind.

Jingxue turned and raised a single eyebrow—an invitation to explain that did not waste breath on the invitation itself.

The men looked at each other. Awkwardness passed between them. One exhaled, gathered what courage fatigue had left him, and spoke, voice unsteady with panic and the residue of a long night or a longer morning.

"Well.. it’s about our kids."

At the word, Su Wanyan’s attention snapped sideways. She had been listening from the margin without fully intending to; ’children’ pulled her fully into the exchange. Whatever had delayed the village’s own workers had a face now, and it was young—and the alpha who had spent the dawn earning points for the people under her own roof was suddenly very interested in the rest of the sentence.

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Was supposed to release this last night, but I was so sleepy LMAO!