Tea Leaves and Diamond Bracelets

Loved, Girls' Day Out, and Rice

Match Twenty-One: Loved, Girls' Day Out, and Rice:

-Ju-

I am constantly showered with love. The girls are always looking out for me. Mei and Szu call me every morning and night.

"How are you doing?" they would ask me.

"Good," I said. Aside the strange visions I have been having and Yao's odd behavior, everything has been going great. Mei keeps trying to guess what I'm going to have.

"I don't know yet," I tell her. She pouted at me this morning.

"Aww, that's not fun!" Mei complained. "Don't you have a little guess?"

"No," I said. She hung onto my arm.

"Not one guess?" she asked.

"No," I said. "What do you think I'll have?" Mei took a moment to think about.

"I don't know," she said. "What do you want to have?"

"A boy," I said. Mei looked up at me.

"Why do you say that?" she asked.

"Are you familiar with my family history?"

"Which part?"

"The baby one."

"No..."

I sat back on my couch. "Apparently every time a girl is born in my family, the man loses his fertility for some reason." I looked out the window. "It happened to my father. He tried to have a son with a long-time friend of his, but it didn't work. They couldn't figure out why she couldn't get pregnant. His sperm count was too low at the time."

"I remember hearing about that," Mei said.

"The same thing happened to my grandfather on my mother's side. Basically it's on my mother's side."

"But what about Jianjun?"

"You forgot my mom was born too."

"Oh yeah."

"To prevent it from happening to me, my father buried my umbilical chord in the backyard. He had a shaman to pray over it." I turned back to Mei.

"I was never allowed to go around that area," I said. "That's why father had it fenced off with wire and wood."

"Heh," Mei said. Szu and her family have been showering me in baby gifts. I think I'm running out of room in my house.

"Look, look," Hark said. She held up a doll house in a box. I made a strange face at the pink and white on the cover.

"Uh... Okay... Thanks, I guess," I said.

"Isn't it cute?" Hark asked. "Your baby is going to enjoy this." Szu rolled her eyes as she texted her friends on phone.

"Right..." I said. We looked up when the door opened. Lili stood in my doorway with a huge grin on his face.

"Hello, ladies," he said. I noticed the multiple boxes of toys in his arms.

"What is all of that?" I asked.

"Toys for the baby," Lili said. "Take a look at this." He set all the toys on the floor and picked up one box. I saw a plane on the front cover. Lili flashed a huge grin.

"The child will have so much fun with this plane," he said. He started to make fighter plane noises as he flew it around. Szu rolled her eyes as Hark and I looked at each other with confused looks on our faces. Lili put down that box and picked up another one. This one had a boat on the front.