The Road Home

Chapter 9

Time passed in a flash. The Spring Festival[1] would soon be upon them.

When Lu Yanchen gave her the photograph of the passport to book the plane ticket, he had not provided many details and only stated that it was not convenient at the moment to get the boy's hukou booklet and birth certificate. Therefore, Gui Xiao also only vaguely brushed over this part when she was talking to her younger cousin's wife, the person who was helping her out with this. These last few years, this cousin's wife had gotten quite a bit of charitable donations from Gui Xiao to provide financial aid to remote mountainous areas, and hence had a good relationship with many of the key schools that provided volunteer teachers and teaching support to poorer areas.

Helping Gui Xiao to get an admission spot to a school could be considered her repayment to Gui Xiao and was utterly an act of kindness that cost her nothing.

The only thing was that this gave Gui Xiao's cousin a chance to laugh at Gui Xiao, saying she had gone to Inner Mongolia to relax and rest but had ended up bringing back a hukou-less kid. Not only had she helped the kid solve the problem of finding a place to go to school, but even the spot on the forms for the boy's permanent address had been filled in with the address of her own home. He said with a grin, "Big Cuz, were it not for the fact that you're a girl and don't fit the criteria, I really would have thought that this was your illegitimate son whom you had left in Inner Mongolia."

Now that he mentioned it, it really did seem that way.

Her cousin's wife had solved the matter of using proper channels to get the boy into a school as an out-of-region student, but she still stressed the point that the household registration certificate was essential. It could be provided later, but they could not go without it.

Gui Xiao reasoned that since it could be provided later, it was not urgent at this moment, so they could let the Lunar New Year period pass first and then worry about it.

On the day that everything was taken care of, Gui Xiao was very happy and took the boy out to eat at the most expensive Western restaurant, even tricking him into taking a couple of sips of red wine. She, on the other hand, needed to drive and had not consumed a single drop of alcohol.

On the way back, the boy, whose face was so red it was like rouge had been applied to his cheeks, asked her, "Was it expensive to transfer schools?"

"It didn't cost money." After paying the parking fee, Gui Xiao drove out of the parking garage and answered, "It was done through proper procedures."

The boy appeared as if a load had been lifted from his mind. "When I was coming here, my dad told me, if it was expensive, I just wouldn't go to school. He was worried Uncle Lu would secretly pay for it."

The child prattled on, his many words coming rapidly. Everything he said was about Lu Yanchen, most of which he had heard from his father.

When their car drove onto the North Second Ring Road, Qin Xiaonan was narrating how Lu Yanchen had crossed districts to catch a person, leading a team in pursuit for two days and two nights and passing over five snow-capped mountains. Even the paws of the military dogs had been covered in blood, but still he had kept chase... When they reached the West Second Ring Road, he was recounting how, at an altitude of more than five thousand metres, where life was basically forbidden, Lu Yanchen had forged his way out on foot for more than ten kilometres while carrying on his back a townsman who had passed out from lack of oxygen... When their car was stuck in traffic on Chang'an Avenue, the topic transitioned over to how, because his mission was urgent, in circumstances with utterly no meteorological data or guidance from someone on the ground, when there lacked even a target to aim at, he had executed a parachute jump...