Chapter 6: Chapter 6 Catching Pests by Hand — Where the Sun Returns

"Ah ah! What is this hideous thing!"

Miên's scream rang out, breaking the quiet morning atmosphere of the garden. She quickly threw the bamboo basket on the ground, took a few steps back, her pale face pointed at the green vegetable patch.

Hoàng Phong quickly ran over from the other bed. He looked at Miên's trembling fingers, then laughed.

On a large, fluttering cabbage leaf, a fat, green caterpillar as long as a little finger is slowly sipping its breakfast.

"It's just a worm. It's not a poisonous snake that's why you're screaming so loudly?" Phong shook his head in frustration, walked over, calmly used two bare fingers to pluck the worm from the leaf, threw it on the ground, and gently rubbed it with the toe of his boot.

Miên shivered, the hairs stood up. "Oh my god! How dare you pick it up with your bare hands? It's disgusting!"

"Miss Mộc Miên," Phong stood up straight, clapping his hands together to brush off the dust. "You are standing on an organic farm. We do not use chemical pesticides, herbicides or any poisons. Delicious vegetables and worms also like to eat them. It's normal."

"But without medicine, will the worms eat the whole garden? There are so many of them!" Miên worriedly looked down at the mottled leaves with worm bites.

"That's right. If we don't have medicine, we have to use natural enemies, or... catch them by hand," Phong shrugged, pointing towards Miên's rattan basket. "Come on, if you want to eat clean vegetables, you have to work. Where are your gloves? Put them on and start picking worms."

Miên widened his eyes and took another step back. "No! Never! I would rather starve than ever touch that disgusting, limp creature!"

Fear of insects is an innate fear of every urban girl. Living in high-rise apartments that are periodically sprayed with insecticide, Miên is only used to seeing mosquitoes and ants. Facing an army of green worms like this is truly a psychological torture.

She remembered when she was a child, a caterpillar fell on her collar while climbing a guava tree. She cried so much that the whole neighborhood had to run out to see. Since then, her obsession with soft-bodied insects has stuck with her like an indelible psychological scar, even though more than fifteen years have passed.

"It's up to you," Phong calmly turned away. "This afternoon, Mrs. Tám went to eat in the neighboring village. I cooked rice. Today's lunch is braised fish and vegetable soup. If you don't catch worms, there will be no vegetables to eat. I will eat alone." Miên gritted her teeth. This engineer really knows how to intimidate others. She looked at her imaginary tray of rice with a pot of fragrant braised fish without a single stalk of green vegetables, her hunger overcame her fear.

She rummaged around in her apron, took out a pair of thick rubber gloves, put on an extra layer of plastic bag outside to be safe, then took a deep breath, closed her eyes and reached into the vegetable bed.

The first time she touched the plump body of a worm, even through two layers of protection, Miên still shivered with goosebumps. She screamed "Eee!", kicked the worm and flew straight into... the face of Hoàng Phong who was working diligently in the next bed.

The green worm fell onto Phong's shirt collar. He was startled and frantically stood up to shake his shirt.

"Mộc Miên! What the hell are you throwing?" Phong shouted.

"I... I'm sorry! It was so slippery it flew away!" Miên hugged her stomach and laughed, all her fear flying away when she saw the calm and calm engineer's frantic appearance.

Phong glared at her, then helplessly shook his head and laughed. From then on, every time Miên screamed because she encountered a new worm, she had a tendency to reflexively throw it away, causing Phong to continuously dodge as if playing a strange game of darts. One time, a worm flew straight into his straw hat, stuck on the brim, causing Phong to stand still, face tense, hands trembling to remove it while Miên stood three meters away, laughing mercilessly.

All that morning, the garden echoed with Miên's shrill screams mixed with Phong's helpless screams. It took Miên two hours to catch a pile of worms in a ten-meter-long vegetable bed, but in return was a basket of vegetables with holes like a honeycomb.

Near noon, while Miên was carrying a basket of vegetables to the well to wash, a sarcastic voice rang out from outside the fence.

"That's disgusting, a college student on the street returning to the village, can't do anything great, so he's sitting around looking for trouble like this?"

Miên is back. Mrs. Tu - the neighbor next door, famous as the neighborhood's loudspeaker - was craning her neck over the hibiscus fence, her eyes full of sarcasm.

Mrs. Tu has an acre of garden growing crops using industrial methods, spraying pesticides twice a week, with incredibly high productivity. She always thought that Phong's "organic agriculture" model was a crazy game of greasy young people.

Mrs. Tu is over sixty this year, her skin is tanned and weathered, her hands are calloused from decades of holding spray bottles. She is not a malicious person, simply a pragmatic farmer who believes in what she has seen and heard: spraying pesticides will produce good green vegetables, high yields, and a lot of money to sell. To her, Phong's philosophy of "natural farming" is nothing more than a luxury joke for those with plenty of time.

"Hello Mrs. Tu," Phong said calmly. "I'm growing clean vegetables, don't use chemicals, so I have to catch worms manually."

"Clean vegetables and dirty vegetable rolls," Ms. Tu pouted. "Look at your bunch of vegetables with holes in them, even if they were fed to a pig, they would criticize you. Listen to me, go to the dealer and buy a bottle of Black Skull brand insecticide and spray it once. The worm shells are all dead and the vegetables are thriving again. But if you do this crap of flies, when will you get your money back?"

Hearing that, Miên's blood suddenly rushed up. She dropped the vegetable basket onto the beam.

"Mrs. Tu," Miên stepped close to the fence, hands on her hips. "You spray that Black Skull spray, the worms die, but what happens to people who eat it? Do you dare to pull off the tops of vegetables in your garden and eat them raw? As for my vegetables, they have holes in them, but I confidently cut them off and eat them on the spot for you to see!"

Having said that, Miên plucked a leaf of green cabbage that had a few holes in it but was still fresh, brought it to her mouth and chewed greedily. The strong, pungent smell of fresh vegetables rushed to her nose, making her wince, but she still tried to chew and swallow for prestige.

Mrs. Tu was stunned and speechless before the city girl's sharp rebuttal. Her eyes narrowed, looking at Miên from head to toe as if reevaluating the person in front of her. In that brief moment, there seemed to be a slight wavering in the stubborn eyes of the experienced woman, but she quickly regained her usual careless look. She mumbled a few words, "You crazy thing", then turned around and went into the house.

Hoàng Phong stood behind, stifling a laugh when he saw the corners of Miên's eyes watering because of the pungent taste of raw cabbage leaves.

"Very brave," Phong gave Miên a mug of filtered water. "But next time you want to prove it, wash it before eating it. The worm just crawled through there."

"Ouch!" Miên covered her mouth, hurriedly ran to the corner of the garden, spluttered, drank the entire mug of water and rinsed her mouth continuously.

Phong looked at her pathetic appearance, couldn't help it anymore, and burst out laughing. Warm laughter echoed in the sunny yard.

Miên turned around and glared at him, but then she also laughed.

"What are you laughing at? What about vegetables with holes in them? I will definitely find a way to sell all of these vegetables for you to see! In the city, clean vegetables with holes in them are a rare commodity!" Miên declared eloquently, wiping the water from the corner of his mouth.

That afternoon, the two of them sat down to eat under the shade of the gourd trellis in front of the yard. The meal was frugal with only braised fish, vegetable soup cooked with dried shrimp, and a plate of cucumbers dipped in fish sauce. Miên grumbled while eating because her hands were still a bit itchy after a morning of fighting with insects, but she ate surprisingly well, downing the entire bowl of vegetable soup that she had just caught the worms herself.

"Is it delicious?" Phong asked, his eyes following every expression on her face.

"Delicious," Miên nodded without hesitation. "It's strange, it tastes much better when you make it yourself, even if it's just a bowl of normal vegetable soup."

Phong crossed his arms across his chest and looked at the little girl in front of him. Her eyes were bright and arrogant but no longer had the coldness of the first day. She is starting to get into the rhythm of life here, stubbornly but extremely adorable.

"Okay, Marketing Director," Phong smirked. "Wait and see what magic you will perform at the countryside market this weekend."

Miên's face was full of confidence, even though she couldn't figure out what the specific plan was. But looking at Phong's trusting and teasing eyes, she felt a burst of enthusiasm rising, a feeling she had long lost since the days she sat in the university lecture hall, passionately drawing the first campaign ideas in her life with a pure heart, never dulled by the office machine.

That afternoon, when the sunlight began to soften, Miên sat on the porch, her hands still stained with green stains from mustard leaves, quietly sketching a few lines of ideas in an old notebook. She doesn't know exactly what she will do at the weekend market, but something in her, the instinct of someone who has lived and died with a creative profession, is gradually awakening again after a long period of sleep.