I Am This Type of Woman

23

The sun was sinking in the west and night was approaching, the three members of Ban family climbed up the mountain with a few loyal servants. This mountain was not too far from the hamlet, but because it's been haunted these recent years noone dared to go there at night.

"Elder Sister, do you think here....." Ban Heng got very close to Ban Hua and whispered, "there is really something really unclean here...."

The mountain was lush with grass and trees, and the ground was covered by fallen leaves, there's swishing sound when stepped on.

"Elder Sister, it's getting cold here," Ban Heng hugged his shoulders and pulled the corner of Ban Hua's dress, "Why don't we come back tomorrow at noon?"

"Almost nightfall, of course it's cold." Ban Hua looked around, because of the dense trees the forest looked a bit sinister, every now and then there were sounds of some unknown birds.

"Come this way" Ban Hua looked at her brother who was cowering behind himself, and her father who was looking left and right every so often.

She pulled his sleeve out of Ban Heng's hand and said to him, "Walk properly."

Ban Heng felt insecure when his hand was empty, so he moved next to Ban Huai and pulled the corner of his coat.

Father and son looked at each other, then tugged on each other's sleeves.

"Father, Little Brother Heng, remember this place," After they found the suitable place, Ban Hua ordered Ban Heng to dig a hole, "I will draw a map for you when we get back. If you can't remember it later, just follow the map."

"Don't we still have you if we can't remember?" After digging for long time, Ban Heng had only dug a shallow hole that's not quite ten cun deep 1 "When we have no money, we all live a hard life together, when we have money, we will spend it together. As someone can remember it, why should Father and I have to?"

"Then ...... what if I can't remember either?"
Ban Hua saw him digging for so long without much result, she pulled him aside with a face full of disdain, "Go away, let me do it."

He moved to the side, "Why don't we bury it in a few more places, we surely can remember one of them. Besides, with your drawing skills, even if I were to look at the map, I wouldn't be able to find the place."

"What's wrong with my drawing skills?" Ban Hua looked at him askance, "if you can, then you do it"

"I can't either."

"If you can't, then shut up. A grown man talks so much, how will you get a wife?" Ban Hua shook off the soil on her clothing, threw a box the size of an adult's palm in the pit, sprinkled a layer of soil and then a few pieces of gravel on top, repeated soil and stones this way until finally the pit was full. She also put a piece of grassy soil on the top, then stepped on it.

"Sister, why not put it all inside?" Ban Heng followed behind Ban Hua and watched her dug another hole in a different place, "Too troublesome."

"Have you heard of 'a crafty rabbit and three caves?" 2 Ban Hua panted, "Either you shut up now, or you dig."

Ban Heng silently took a small hoe and started digging on a place around ten paces away, before long his hoe had hit a huge rock, the hoe bounced back with such force that he fell on his butt.

"Ai," Ban Huai, who was digging a hole in another small corner saw this, he shook his head with emotion, "Our Ban family is really inferior from one generation to the next."

Ban Heng silently wiped his face. In this family only Grandmother was qualified to say such thing, Father ...... well a little self-confidence for a man was fine.