Xifu and HusbandTranslated by Lickymee
Edited by Ruzenor, Joe, Anivyl
TLN: Life’s been a b.i.t.c.h, thus such slow updates. Also, I know a lot of you don’t read the footnotes, but this chapter has a lot of important ones, so please do it.
I wasn’t the type of person who wished to have an exciting life everyday.
When I started forming my outlook on life, my dream was to inherit the job of my mother who was a honest public servant.
Unfortunately, I was a useless son who couldn’t even achieve that kind of dream.
Still, it was the same here. All I wanted to do was to lead a simple life. Never mind owning a large manor, as long as I was fed and clothed, I would be content.
After all, there was no known way of me returning to where I was, so I might as well enjoy my life here.
When I first recovered from being sick, it felt really good. If I knew how to do a somersault, I would have already did it twice as a celebration.
Through being sick, I was made aware of the limitations of this world’s medical standard. Based on the technological advances of Nightfall Town, there were many illnesses that couldn’t be treated.
Though you can never ignore one of the elements of this world, which was magic. So maybe there was a magic that could cure illnesses……
Still, I couldn’t be sure that if something such as healing magic existed in this world.
It was wrong to keep thinking that this world was like an online game or an anime.
However, at least I am certain of one thing: Medusa doesn’t know any magic that could heal diseases.
If she knew one, then she wouldn’t need to keep on chewing herbal medicines for me to eat.
To eat something that had been chewed on was embarra.s.sing and disgusting, but still, I persevered for a whole week.
Didn’t Traditional Chinese medicine have scorpions and even centipedes? As long as it heals diseases, it would still have to be ingested.
Still, it was fine as long as I was cured. I don’t know if she was able to fall sick or not, but for my health’s sake, I do have to maintain the hygiene around the house.
For example, the animal pelts have to be aired out, in the sun, from time to time.
The days pa.s.sed by normally, though I think of it as a good thing. Because you see, the word ‘平安¹’(ping an) and the word ‘平淡²’(ping tan) has the word ‘平’’(ping) in it.
When I woke up in the morning, I would water the palm-sized farm. Then, I would venture into the forest and find some fruits to fill my stomach with for breakfast.
After she has woken up, we would read books together in order for me to learn the language. Then, I would fry some meat for lunch, then accompany her as she basked under the hot noon sun.
When the sun had slightly set in the afternoon, we would keep ourselves busy by packing things up or cleaning the cave, because we didn’t have anything else to do anyways.
On the days when she feeds, she would be eating till late into the night. However, when she wasn’t,we would pa.s.s the time freely.
Still, we had controlled the number of times we did that.
Because even if I am a healthy 20 years old male, my body couldn’t possibly take that much of a burden.
Yet, even if I was leading such a simple life, there were still many problems that arose.
“We are a family, right?”
I asked, while seated next to her.
“Un, yes.”
“Then, you are the wife?”
“Un……”
“Then I…am the husband?”
“Un……What do you want to say.”
I don’t even know myself!
For a man, the greatest moment of his life should be when he is intending to shoulder the responsibilities of being a family man.
Yet, why the h.e.l.l am I beating around the bush for!? And why is it that, when I could finally manage to say a sentence fluently, we couldn’t understand each other?!
“What I want to ask is……How should I refer to you as?”
“Refer to me as?”
“Eh, it’s like, I can call you Wife, and you can call me Husband, like that……”
“Oh. Do you want me to call you Husband?”
Yup, she must be acting dumb with me.
Previously, when we were in Nightfall Town, she explained our relations.h.i.+p to others so easily.
And, why do I get the feeling that she was secretly laughing at me in her heart? Is she bullying me for my s.h.i.+tty amount of vocabulary or what?
All I wanted was to have a t.i.tle that we could call each other with. It would be much more convenient for both of us when we were out in the public.
“Un, yes……”
“Husband.”
“Yes, just like that……”
“Husband.”
“Puhahahaha!”
We let out a loud laugh together. Why is it so funny anyways? The way she said ‘Husband’, was as if she was practicing her p.r.o.nunciations.
Do I have to call her ‘Wife, wife’ too? Would our future conversations become something like this: ‘Wife, do you want to eat?’ ‘Husband, I’m not hungry.’?
What the h.e.l.l?! At least it should have been said as ‘Oh mine wife, art thee fill’d with pangs of hunger³?’.
d.a.m.n it, this world’s language is rubbis.h.!.+ Doesn’t it have a word that’s more intimate than ‘wife’?
My guess would be that there was such a word, but Medusa wouldn’t know about it After all, she had never been married.
Whenever Medusa was in heat, she would capture a male to satisfy her needs.
It was only later, in Nightfall Town, that I understood that all those men were all “single-use products”.
After all, no sane man would abandon their own homes to stay in Medusa’s cave.
Still, there was the problem of what to call each other.
Logically speaking, there was no real need to worry about such pet names, because there was only two of us in the home, which means there was only one partner to converse with.
However, I was the type who views t.i.tles and names as something that is very important. As such, no matter what, I insisted on deciding on a form of addressing each other..
As my language abilities were poor, my way of solving it was using the opposite way.
I’ll just use another language to say it.
Because I didn’t know how to call her ‘Darling⁴’ in the language of this world, I’ll just resort to using Chinese instead.
After all, this way of addressing each other would only be used between the two of us. It even had the feeling of a sweet couple sending small, secret codes to each other.(Why didn’t I feel embarra.s.sed at all back then?)
“I’ll just call you Xifu er⁵.”
“Ah? Xu…foo?”
“Xifu er~it means wife.”
“Eh……Xifu,er?”
Once again, I understood something else, this world’s language didn’t have erization⁶.
“This is the language I used in the past. Read, it’s fine, right?”
“Oh, I am……Xifu, er?”
“No, not right. This means, you, are ‘my xifu’.”
“I am, ‘my xifu?”
I tried to hold in my laughter, but still failed anyways.
I am my xifu, and also your xifu.
So who the h.e.l.l is whose xifu now!?
“No no, you are, my, ‘xifu’. That means that you are my wife.”.
“Ah, I got it~xifu er~”
That’s why I said, who is whose xifu now!?
“And then me, I am your hubby⁷.”
“What?Hub?”
“Hubby, which means husband. I am your husband.”
“Oh……Hub, bee.”
“Yes. Eh, you can call me ‘hubby’.”
“Hubby, are you eating?”
“That’s right……”
“Hubby, are you eating?”
Do you really want to eat or are you just practicing how to p.r.o.nounce it?!
In a nutsh.e.l.l, the problem regarding how we would address each other had been solved.
Though it was funny sometimes, because she was behaving like a child who just learnt something new, repeating it over and over again.
Although Medusa is a monster, she had an unexpectedly strong learning capability. With just a day’s work, we were already capable of calling each other Xifu and Hubby.
With this, conversing with her should be more comfortable now, as there would at least be some kind of family warmth in our words now..
Oh, home. My home sweet home. It was the most important goal of my life.
The warmth of a home does not lie in the number of children, grandchildren in it nor how posh the house is..
I have never believed in the proverb ‘An impoverished couple faces a thousand sorrows’. Because, for a family to be unstable due to poverty, one can only say that the family’s willpower is too weak .
For two person to be holding hands, even after going through tons of trials, it would truly show their willpower.
And although I wanted to walk beside her until we some day reach that point in life, the ordeals in this world are very life-threatening……
The first time both of us came face-to-face with real, life-threatening danger, happened on the 45th day.
I still remembered clearly—— how that day’s gloomy weather changed into a sunny one.
While drying the animal pelts outside, I heard the sound of humans.
Although I couldn’t clearly hear their conversation, it was clear that they were approaching our home.
One of the common sense of life was that, by the time you sensed danger, it had already touched the tip of your nose.