My Pretty Sweetheart (Arianna)
Chapter 897

As expected in rural areas, the man's house only had a single room. The walls of the house was a little black, probably because of the smoke from the fireplace.

The sole light source was an incandescent roof lamp used in villages during the nineties. For the sake of saving electricity, the light was only about fifteen watts and was dim. There were pots, bowls and ladles placed in a heap, all next to a tent that had been set up with sacks. Dust had fallen around it and there was rain water seeping in. Layers of gray, damp soil were piled up on top of the tent. They looked dark, and it seemed as if there were bugs growing out if it.

The middle-aged man took out two bowls of food from a black wooden cabinet and placed them in front of us.

Since there was no way to communicate verbally, the man gesticulated a few times. Perhaps he was asking us to eat.

Naomi stared at the chili- filled dishes with a stunned expression and asked, "What kind of dish is this?"

"This is pickled melon. It's hot here, but this helps to relieve the heat, and it's a good appetizer. Try it!" Tina grew up in the southwest region, so she knew a thing or two about food around the area.

We had starved for a whole day, so we ate after giving our thanks. The melon was sour to the tongue, and a little spicy as well.

We hadn't been able to eat much in the past few days, but it was a blessing to finally satisfy our hunger.

After we finished eating, we saw the father and daughter sitting beside each other, looking at us. There was curiosity in their eyes, but they seemed mostly scared.

Naomi knew that they didn't speak our language, so she gestured with her hands and spoke some English.

They seemed to understand, then. Originally, we had planned to call our families with phones from the village.

They were puzzled by that, however, as if they didn't know what a phone looked like at all.

We could only wait until tomorrow to ask the other villagers. The five of us stayed under the broken roof and rested for the night. After all, it was better than staying in the mountains. The next day came.

The man was awake. He was in the yard, climbing up a tree to pick some mangoes.

The little girl picked up the mangoes after him, which had softened after falling down from the trees.

Every time she picked one up, she looked back at us and smiled brightly, as if she were passing on her happiness to us.

"I guess being rich or poor doesn't define one's happiness, huh?" Tina said. Her thin, small figure made her look a little forlorn.

Naomi put her hand against the door frame and raised her eyebrows. "Why? Remember something bad?"

Tina shrugged. "No, it's just that after all we'd been through, I realized something. Our lives are our own, right? Why should we care about what others do?"

"That's against the word of God!" Dahlia retorted as she stopped praying.

Naomi held her forehead and muttered, "God this, God that. You don't tire of it?"

Dahlia didn't seem to hear what she had said. She went straight to the yard, picking up the mangoes on the ground with the little girl.

Although the two of them couldn't understand each other well, they could at least gesticulate

between them.

Since we wanted to get home as soon as possible, Naomi took me to look for villagers who had phones with them in the village.

There were very few people without phones in the 21st century. When we found a family, Naomi used some signs to communicate with them, and asked to borrow their phones to make a call.

Still, after gesturing for a long time, they still couldn't understand what we were trying to say. In the end, we could only leave bitterly.

Rainie and Tina encountered the same thing too. Depressed, we sat together. Rainie said, "If this doesn't work, how about we move on? Maybe we can reach a town. We might meet some people from home!"

"Fat chance, and no one knows how long it'll take to get there. To make matters worse, we're here illegally. If we're found out, the police will detain us." Naomi sighed and sat cross-legged on the ground. "What's wrong with being detained?" Dahlia said, "If we're taken away, there'll be someone who understands English. We can tell them about our situation, and we'll get a chance to go home."