"Irene, we have been together for ten years, don't you still understand what I mean?" Zeno's slightly painful voice came.
As soon as Rosen left the wooden ladder, he heard Zeno's obscene voice.
"Zeno, I know how you feel, but I'm sorry, we are not suitable." Irene said in a low voice.
Hearing Irene's reply, Rosen breathed a sigh of relief. Fortunately, no matter how hard Zeno stalked her, she didn't fall. If one day Zeno suddenly and legitimately became their adoptive father, Rosen would go crazy.
of.
When he walks down the street after that, someone will probably point at him and taunt him: "Look, the child of the wretched uncle Zeno is out!"
Once he thought about this situation, Rosen's face began to twitch. Of course, his predecessor did not have such thoughts, because his predecessor was relatively simple and could not imagine such a complicated situation.
"Irene, I beg you, don't reject me, okay? You should understand my love for you." Zeno's voice was a little crazy.
"Zeno, please stop, I will call someone if you do this again!" Irene still lowered her voice, but there was some sullenness in her voice.
Rosen, who was just thinking about the future, heard the sound of something changing coming from the kitchen, and suddenly became nervous: "There's something going on!"
He immediately stopped hiding and walked quickly to the kitchen.
Swish, swish, swish.
Because the roof is made of thatch, thatch is scattered and accumulated on the ground all year round, and it can also be used to prevent moisture. Therefore, Rosen made a certain noise after speeding up his pace.
The sound in the kitchen stopped suddenly, and Zeno hurried out of the kitchen, almost colliding with Rosen. If the latter hadn't gotten out of the way with a quick reaction, Zeno would have knocked him down.
"Rosen, why did you get out of bed? Why don't you lie down for a while?" Zeno asked towards the darkness in front of him. He found that he could not see where Rosen was.
"I'm so hungry. I want to eat the midnight snack prepared by Aunt Eileen."
Rosen's voice came from beside Zeno, making him jump again. Zeno even suspected that Rosen was standing here just now.
And from this position, you can just see the kitchen. Zeno suddenly felt guilty. He, a single and wretched uncle, really had to explain his relationship with Irene. It was difficult to explain his relationship with Irene. When the children were young, they could get away with it, but they could easily get away with it.
As the children grow up, they will probably start to look coldly on him.
Rosen didn't say anything more and went directly into the kitchen. Irene was cooking a pot of mung beans. The fragrance of the mung beans in the pot made Rosen very appetizing, and at the same time his stomach growled.
There is not a lot of mung beans in the family. The yield of this crop is considerable and it is a life-saving straw for the poor, so Irene prepared a lot. Before cooking, she soaked it in clean water for half an hour to make each mung bean swell.
It will only become warm and fragrant after being boiled in water. Eileen has obviously just soaked the mung beans for enough time, and it has not been boiled for ten minutes.
"The late-night snack is mung beans." Rosen thought it would be something else, but mung beans can indeed satisfy his hunger. Judging from Rosen's experience traveling through multiple worlds, the starch content of mung beans is enough to replenish his lost energy.
"It's not cooked enough, why don't you drink some soup to make the base first?" Irene held a spoon and stirred the mung bean soup in the pot at a steady speed to form a vortex. She served Rosen a bowl of soup first.
Taking the mung bean soup from Irene, it was a little hot to the touch. The steam was steaming from the soup bowl, and the fatigue on his body was somewhat weakened. Rosen blew on the soup noodles, drank up the soup in one mouthful, and then exhaled the hot breath from his mouth.
The feeling of something in the stomach was soothing. Rosen only felt warm in the stomach, and his energy level also increased a lot.
He looked up at the broken window in the kitchen. The cold wind blew in from the window, raising the bangs on Irene's bright moon-white face. The bangs were like fluffy waves in the sea of clouds. They were very layered and beautiful.
There is a mature beauty in Eileen's pretty face.
Eileen's background was not good. According to her, her parents died from the invasion of demons when she was ten years old. At that time, her parents hid her on the second floor and pushed down the wooden stairs to save her life.
.
Erin went through a period of depression after that. The death of her parents made her taciturn. Later, when she saw the children in the orphanage, she felt the same way and realized that they were all children who had lost their parents due to the invasion of demons.
That's when I came up with the idea of adoption. It turns out that Irene had also stayed in an orphanage for a while, and had a good relationship with the old director. She helped adopt a few children and gave them a sense of family.
After interpreting the original memory, Rosen could not allow Irene to suffer Zeno's murderous attack. After all, the age difference between the two was more than ten years, and Zeno, an old man, just thought that Irene was easy to bully and wanted to eat young grass.
Maybe Rosen in the past was not able to protect Irene, nor could he consider these things, but this is no longer difficult for Rosen now, because he has a mature soul in his body.
When Zeno is close to Irene, it is not difficult to find opportunities to stumble him.
"Uncle Zeno, do you plan to spend the night at our house tonight?" Rosen suddenly put down the soup bowl in his hand and asked.
"Recently, I heard that minotaurs are invading villages more and more. Forgetting the safety of Irene and the children, I decided to live with you from now on to protect your safety." Zeno said righteously.
In fact, if something happened, Zeno might not be willing to die for the sake of the children. He would probably take Irene's hand and run away. Rosen couldn't believe Zeno's sense of justice.
"Uncle Zeno, let's repair the kitchen window later, otherwise I'm afraid something might run in at night." Yang Chen pointed to the broken window and said.
This kind of tinkering work used to be done by Johnson alone, but with Zeno, Johnson no longer needs to do it.
As the backbone of the entire family, it makes sense to repair the windows, and it makes sense to leave the cleaning and other tasks to him in the future, too, right?
Rosen even thought about many obligations that had to be done by the men in the family. Of course, compared with Zeno, Rosen and the others could only be considered boys. When there were adult men, letting thirteen or fourteen-year-old children do the work,
Is it reasonable?
In short, in Rosen's perception, Zeno has been confirmed.
A hot pot of mung bean soup was brought to the second floor by Zeno.
"Children, it's time for supper." Zeno did not feel that he was being commanded, or that simple commands could show his love for the children.
After Jenny put away the tarot cards, Zeno placed the hot soup pot on the table and shook his hand to let the burned hand come into contact with more cold air.
There were only four stools at the table on the second floor. After the four Rosen children sat down, Irene and Zeno had no choice but to stand.
When Zeno filled the bowls of mung bean soup for the children and was about to serve a portion to Irene, Rosen said: "Uncle Zeno, Aunt Irene doesn't have a place to sit. Go downstairs and bring up a chair."
?”
Zeno hesitated for a moment, not because he was thinking about what Rosen said, why he didn't get two chairs but one, but because he was just about to serve soup to Irene and close the distance between them, and now he was suddenly
Interrupted, a little depressed.
"Okay, I'll move the stool." Zeno smiled, went downstairs, and quickly brought up a stool.
Zeno, who was out of breath, finally understood why Rosen only mentioned one stool, because moving one stool up the stairs already made him out of breath, and moving two stools at the same time would probably send him away directly. After all, the stairs are almost 90 degrees vertical, and not
Too stable.
Zeno didn't want to go down to move the stool anymore, so he could only stand and drink the soup.
Rosen drank mung bean soup to regain his strength. By the way, when the soup bowl in Aunt Irene's hand was empty, he consciously helped her fill it up. This is called filial piety, and it also gave Zeno no chance to be courteous.
What a filial son!
Zeno finally understood that Rosen was targeting him, and he immediately felt a little disgusted with this child.
However, as an adult and a gentleman, it was not convenient for Zeno to cause trouble for children, as that would only lower his status in Irene's heart.
"Have the children gone to bed?" asked Zeno's voice.
Next to her, Eileen was holding the last lit candle.
"There are beds next to the children, you can sleep there." Irene said, she was a little sleepy and yawned.
She felt reassured by letting Zeno sleep next to the children, and would be able to protect them if something went wrong.
But Zeno obviously didn't think so in his heart. What he really wanted in his heart was of course to sleep in the same bed with Irene.
It was impossible for him to say this unless he wanted to be thrown from the upstairs by Irene.
"Well, the children are too crowded to sleep, so I'd better lie down over there." Zeno pointed to the position outside Eileen's room. There was a bamboo woven recliner there, which was only two inches away from Eileen's bed.
It's less than 30 meters away, just separated by a wooden wall.
Even if he could only fall asleep smelling Erin's body fragrance, he felt much better than sleeping with the children.