Chapter 30: Men's Affairs_1

On the way back, Erhu was carrying soy milk while Lin Yue walked briskly behind him, no longer burdened. The two chatted and laughed together. For Erhu, the weight of two buckets of soy milk was hardly anything to speak of; he seemed relaxed as if he wasn't carrying anything at all. He deliberately slowed his pace to let Lin Yue easily keep up with him.

Upon returning home, Dalang and the others, knowing that Lin Yue planned to make tofu, had already prepared the fire. Lin Yue had arranged all the other tofu-making tools before she left the house. She asked Erhu to carry the soy milk into the kitchen. Lin Yue then took out a clean off-white coarse cotton cloth bag, poured the ground soy milk into it, and squeezed and filtered it until the liquid drained. She repeated the process of adding water, stirring, and filtering three or four times before finally removing the leftover soy pulp and placing it in a wooden basin set aside.