Chapter 2
The second car soon arrived.
The door opened.
Shen Fan got out first.
Black T-shirt, cargo pants, baseball cap.
Having a face that graced countless major magazine covers did nothing to stop the award-winning actress from bending over and hauling woven plastic sacks out of the trunk.
One.
Two.
Three.
The fourth got stuck.
She braced a foot on the door frame and gave it a mighty tug.
“Out!”
The sack hit the ground on command.
I stood in respectful awe.
She didn’t look as if she’d come for a family reality show.
She looked as if she’d just returned from helping with the harvest back home.
Then her mother poked her head out.
“Fanfan!”
“Yeah!”
“Get those two containers of braised pork bones out of the red sack first! Don’t let them go bad in there!”
“Got it!”
“Little Lu can’t eat spicy food, right? I packed a separate box for her.”
Lu Ling stared. “You brought some for me too?”
“For everyone!”
Shen Fan’s mother slapped the trunk.
“Director, camera crew, makeup artists—I counted heads.”
The director was stunned. “How did you know how many crew members we have?”
“I asked beforehand.”
She turned and called again.
“Big girl!”
Shen Fan had just shouldered two sacks.
“What now?”
“Is that young girl the one who brought her grandma?”
Everyone turned toward me at once.
I straightened instinctively.
Shen Fan’s mother waved to me across half the courtyard.
“Sweetheart, does your grandma have high blood sugar?”
“Um… it’s f-fine.”
“Then she still shouldn’t eat too many sticky bean buns!”
“Okay.”
“I brought sugar-free ones for her!”
With that, she ducked back into the car to rummage around.
I was overwhelmed by the attention.
We’d only just met.
I’d already been provisionally registered as a member of the Northeast.
Comments raced across the screen.
[Northeastern moms: If you’re in my line of sight, you count as one of my children.]
[The Lus pack love by the weekday. The Shens pack it by the sack.]
[Shen Fan is SO the eldest daughter, hahaha. One “Big girl!” from her mom and she starts working on reflex.]
[Did she just carry the director’s suitcase inside while she was at it?]
Yes.
And she hadn’t merely carried it.
She’d also complained that he was standing in the way.
“Hey, move over a bit.
“Don’t trip up the older folks.”
Then she headed into the courtyard with a twenty-eight-inch suitcase in each hand.
Passing Lu Ling, she picked up another one as well.
Lu Ling hurriedly reached for it.
“It’s okay. I can do it.”
Shen Fan glanced down at her chopstick-thin wrist.
“You take the small one.
“This one’s heavy.”
Her tone was perfectly natural.
As natural as if they’d known each other for eight hundred years.
Lu Ling stopped insisting.
She took a pack of wet wipes from her bag and pressed it into Shen Fan’s hand.
“Wipe your hands.”
Shen Fan inspected it.
“Scented?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Then I’ll pass.”
She wiped her hands on her trousers.
“More stuff to carry in a minute.”
Lu Ling was speechless.
Standing beside them, I suddenly understood why the show had invited me.
The pampered heiress from Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai.
The Northeast’s eldest daughter.
They really did need an ordinary Chinese person to fill out the map.