Translator: Dj22031
Editor: Dj22031
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“Let’s not talk about the tea art class, do you know where Mr. Ling is?” Tang Bai changed the subject.
Jiang Quan turned his head and pointed to the French window behind him, “Mr. Ling is there.”
Tang Bai stood up, and saw a thin figure behind the window, it was a gentle and elegant omega, with a calm and elegant temperament, sitting at a low table, carefully making tea.
This Mr. Ling had a pair of well-maintained hands, and his movements were smooth when making tea, which looked pleasing to the eye.
The emerald green tea buds sank into the white water, and the blue waves rolled, until the tea water quickly turned translucent yellow-green.
Mr. Ling poured the brewed tea into the teapot, then poured two cups of green tea for Tang Bai and Xie Ruheng, and said warmly: “Please.”
Xie Ruheng glanced at Tang Bai calmly, seeing Tang Bai holding the tea and smelling the fragrance, while observing the color of the tea, and looking at the tossing and changing appearances of the tea leaves, he also started to study them seriously.
Tang Bai took a sip of the tea, the fragrance was sweet and the aftertaste was endless, he couldn’t help but exclaim: “Good tea!!!”
It was really good tea, Tang Bai hadn’t drunk tea as amazing as fine nectar and jade dew like this for a long time!
“This tea is both sweet and wild. Could it be that this is a peerless green tea that was bred in the mountains by absorbing the essence of the sun and the moon and fighting with weeds?!” Tang Bai trembled.
Xie Ruheng: “???”
Xie Ruheng saw that Mr. Ling, who had always been moody and indifferent, had suddenly become as happy as if meeting a bosom friend: “Yes!”
Xie Ruheng: “??????”
Mr. Ling raised his eyebrows, then he slightly explained to Tang Bai the whole process behind this cup of tea from sowing and picking to making with a look of satisfaction and even took out some of his treasured tea leaves to share with Tang Bai.
Xie Ruheng took a sip with a blank expression and didn’t feel any aftertaste after drinking the tea. Instead, a piece of tea leaf fell into his mouth, and Xie Ruheng calmly blamed the innocent tea.
Grass was a plant. And he was the weed caught between the two masters of tea art.
Seeing Xie Ruheng’s dull expression, Ling Xuanyun was worried that he had left Xie Ruheng in the cold: “Mr. Xie?”
Tang Bai turned his head blankly, saw Xie Ruheng take a sip from his teacup and sigh: “Good tea, good tea.”
Green tea tips10: Do what the other person likes, even if you don’t have a common language, you can’t belittle each other’s preferences.
Seeing Xie Ruheng concentrating on tasting tea, the two began to discuss the tea ceremony in full swing, only to hear Tang Bai say: “I advocate natural tea, you should do it from the heart, let nature take its course, and integrate tea into every aspect of life…”
This theory not only caused Mr. Ling to nod frequently, but also shocked Xie Ruheng!
So this was the mind-cultivation theory behind high-grade green tea?!
Wonderful!
Green tea tips11: The highest state of learning tea is the unity of tea and people, then everything in the world can be tea.
“Mr. Ling, I have made a rash visit this time to ask you to do me a favor…” After hearing Tang Bai’s reason for coming, Mr. Ling was silent for a while and did not immediately agree.
Glands were private parts, and the scars after removing the glands had changed from making him ashamed on seeing people to being invisible.
“It doesn’t matter if Mr. Ling doesn’t want to.”
Mr. Ling rubbed his teacup, sighed, and said softly: “Can Mr. Tang Xiao and I go to the bedroom?”
Tang Bai entered the bedroom with Mr. Ling in surprise. There was a double bed, but there were few traces of another male owner in the house.
Tang Bai looked back and saw Mr. Ling sitting in front of the dressing table, after which he took off his necklace in front of the mirror, revealing the faint scar on the back of his neck, which looked like a small pale pink centipede from a distance.
“It’s ugly.” Mr. Ling stretched out his hand to caress the scar, “Some people will use tattoos to cover this scar, but I don’t want to please others, so I don’t care about it.”
Tang Bai said cautiously: “I have some ointment for helping scars fade.”
“No need, after I learnt the art of tea, I don’t care about these things anymore.” Mr. Ling’s dressing table only had a wooden comb, without any skin care products.
Tang Bai thought for a while and said: “I read “The Book of Tea[1]“, and I was deeply impressed by a passage in it.”
Mr. Ling looked up at Tang Bai and listened to him seriously: “The tea ceremony is a kind of worship of “incompleteness”. It is a gentle temptation to achieve some kind of possible perfection in a life that we all know is impossible to be perfect.”
After a moment of silence, Mr. Ling smiled and sighed.
….
When Tang Bai and Mr. Ling came out of the bedroom, they saw Xie Ruheng surrounded by a group of children, and the light screen in the air projecting the most basic lingua franca[2].
Xie Ruheng, who had always been taciturn, was patiently teaching these children how to read. Those children were all serious about learning, and no one was daydreaming.
“Every time Mr. Xie comes back, he will help me teach these children to read and count.” Ling Xuanyun said: “He will also prepare rewards for these children, which can fulfill the wish of the best student.”
“Lu Xiaoshan, every time Mr. Xie appreciates this child very much. Lu Xiaoshan’s wish is to learn how to drive mechas from Mr. Xie, so Mr. Xie specially assigned another homework for Lu Xiaoshan.”
“Last month, Mr. Xie bought all the children new clothes, Jiang Quan was the happiest, since he is a little omega who loves beauty and looking beautiful, Mr. Tang Xiao may not have noticed, because Jiang Quan’s parents specially dressed him up like a beta.”
“They were thinner before they came to me, they had not been able to eat meat for several months, and some children’s families are so poor that they can’t even open their mouths. Their only meal a day is at my place, where they can eat two big bowls at a time.”
“These children will leave after staying with me for half a year to go to school, but some families are really poor, and after a few years of schooling, the children in the family will drop out of school to help out.”
“Drop out of school to help out?” Tang Bai asked: “How can such a young child help the family if he doesn’t study?”
“There are many ways, for example, the mining area employs child labor, and ten-year-old children can earn seven or eight star coins a day in the mining area, which is a lot for them. For such a little star coin, there are all kinds of people mining in the mining area, children, the elderly, the disabled, and even omegas.”
Seeing Tang Bai’s unbelievable eyes, Mr. Ling said softly: “Mr. Tang Xiao may not believe it. In the slums, except for the omegas in the red light district, there are many omegas who want to have a normal career who would get this surgery done, such as those going to work in a mining area.”
Tang Bai was stunned for a moment, and asked: “Can’t you use inhibitors?”
“Inhibitors are very expensive, Mr. Tang Xiao, one costs 1,000 star coins, and with the financial strength of omega who is going to the mining area to work hard for only 20 star coins a day, and after working hard in the mining area day and night without food or drink for a month who can only earn 600 star coins, how can they afford it?”
“Gland removal surgery is once and for all, and it’s still very cheap, only one hundred star coins, why is it so cheap? Because they don’t need a good surgical procedure and post-operative care, some omegas are so distressed by the money that they don’t even want to take anesthesia.”
“Actually, another part of the reason for the cost of gland removal surgery being low is related to the red light district. Some omegas will go to the red light district to do odd jobs after undergoing gland removal surgery in order to subsidize their families. Yeah, I’m not kidding, because they really need the money….”
….
Xie Ruheng checked Lu Xiaoshan’s homework before realizing that it was late, and it was time for these children to go home. He didn’t know since when Tang Bai had come out, and he had left Tang Bai standing in the cold.
“You’re fine…” Tang Bai gently pulled the corner of Xie Ruheng’s clothes when Xie Ruheng tried to make amends just now, only to hear Tang Bai whisper: “Brother Xie, I want to support all the children here to study all the way to university.”
The pitch-black phoenix eyes were slightly surprised.
“It’s not just here, I…I also want all the children in the slums to go to school, I want everyone to have enough food and wear new clothes…” Tang Bai choked up in the middle of speaking , “I also want to contract inhibitors for all the omegas and find them a normal job, not the kind that is so exploitative like in the mining area…”
Those amber eyes were already red, and the tip of his nose was also red. Tang Bai buried his face in Xie Ruheng’s shoulder, and said sadly: “How can there be such a bullying job? It only gives 20 coins to work all day….”
The fabric on his shoulder was already wet with tears, this realization made Xie Ruheng’s heart feel as if it was slightly stung by something.
He carefully put his hands on Tang Bai’s slightly trembling back. Xie Ruheng could smell the soft and clean milky smell on Tang Bai’s body, so Xie Ruheng softened his voice and said softly in a childlike tone: “Okay, let’s just do it.”
Tang Bai lay on Xie Ruheng’s shoulder for a while, until the wave of sadness in his heart subsided, then he raised his face embarrassedly, and found that the children around him were staring at him with wide eyes…
Tang Bai: “…”
“Brother Xiao Xie, why is the pretty brother crying?”
“Did brother Xiao Xie bully the pretty brother?”
“Brother Xiao Xie just said that he likes Brother Tang Bai. He won’t bully brother Tang Bai!”
“But my father likes little dad, and he still bullies him!”
Tang Bai: “……”
Tang Bai felt that he had just suffered another social death.
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[1] The Book of Tea: A Japanese Harmony of Art, Culture, and the Simple Life by Okakura Kakuzō is a long essay linking the role of chadō to the aesthetic and cultural aspects of Japanese life and protesting Western caricatures of “the East”.
[2] A shared language of communication used by people who are speakers of different languages or a Universal Language.
OMG THAT LAST CHILD IS ICONIC WTF HAHAHAHAHA