Chapter 62: The Voice from Paris

The surrounding farmers wore expressions of amusement, most of their faces bearing mischievous grins much like Pierre's.

The only one who stood apart from them was Henry, standing alone at the very end, wearing a yellowed "captain's hat" whose original black and white colors were barely discernible.

During this month, people wearing captain's hats could be seen everywhere in the alleys and streets of Provence; it was the "trendy item" of that era, though this particular hat of Henry's had clearly seen better years.

Henry kept making small restless gestures, pacing back and forth with anxiety.

Whenever someone warned him with a look, he would quiet down for a few brief seconds, only to quickly resume pacing about anxiously.

Mr. Ronan was being played by these damn fellows!

......

Seeing that Ronan remained motionless, Pierre took the hollow steel pipe from Fabian's hand and gestured with it in the air.

"Do you know how to use this thing?"

Ronan pushed aside the steel pipe in Pierre's hand, glanced at him, and said,

"A three-year-old child knows how to use it. Who wouldn't know how to stick it into the ground?"

He strode toward the spot where the other tools were placed.

"The next step is to measure out equidistant planting points, not this thing."

Thank goodness system knowledge had prevented him from losing face in front of this group of Provençal farmers.

"That's right!" Henry shouted out loud, finally daring to speak.

He glared fiercely around at the pranksters.

The great Mr. Ronan has seen right through your little trick!

"You actually know your stuff?" With the prank foiled, Pierre showed no sign of anger whatsoever; on the contrary, he looked pleasantly surprised.

He had previously assumed Ronan was merely a city boy who was decent at driving a tractor, never expecting that Ronan actually understood cultivation!

"Do agricultural shows in Paris cover all of that?" Pierre asked Ronan, who was rummaging through the ground for measuring tools.

Ronan had once mentioned during a drinking session that all his agricultural knowledge came from television.

Without raising his head, Ronan replied,

"I've loved watching TV since I was a child."

"Paris isn't completely useless after all—" Pierre said, stroking his thick beard.

......

The prank was merely a small interlude.

Although Ronan subsequently demonstrated his measuring skills and once again won everyone's approval and astonishment, the farmers had a standard collaborative workflow, and the measuring work didn't fall to Ronan; there were other, more important tasks waiting for him.

Pierre continued to play the role of the pathfinder, using the measuring tool to leave marks on the land.

Ronan finally understood why Pierre was the best farmer in the village of Lourmarin; the fellow worked at an extremely fast pace, and the two people holding hollow steel pipes following right behind him, punching holes in rotation, could barely keep up with him.

Behind the two people with steel pipes was Théo, forming a one-man branch-planting crew. He carried a large bundle of grapevine cuttings, planting one into every hole as soon as it was punched.

Not far behind him, Henry and another farmer moved quickly through the fields, solely responsible for supplying the vines and ensuring that Théo always had grapevine cuttings in hand.

At the very rear of everyone, Ronan and another young lad handled the soil-filling work.

The preceding steps could all be fast-paced, but only this step had to be slowed down. The grapevine cuttings were only as long as chopsticks, and the buds were even smaller than a fingernail; moving too quickly would injure them.

"Don't rush, take your time." The person sharing Ronan's task was named Cornell, a plump young man with blue-green eyes.

He told Ronan that when he first planted grapevine cuttings, he had also been tricked by Pierre and his gang.

Clearly, the two of them were companions in shared misery.

"I couldn't speed up even if I wanted to—" Ronan barely managed to free one hand to block the sun. "Damn it, I should have worn some protective gear. Why is it this hot already in March?"

Cornell chuckled a couple of times.

"This is Provence, where the sun shines for over 300 days a year, not Paris."

......

"That kid doesn't seem like a Parisian." Fabian pointed his chin in a certain direction.

Led by the experienced Pierre, the three people in charge of marking and punching holes had finished their work for the day early and were smoking in a shady spot.

"Indeed he doesn't. I've never seen such a hardworking and uncomplaining Parisian," Pierre said, puffing on a cigarette.

Everyone who came to help had taken appropriate protective measures; some wore sun-protection hats, others wore homemade anti-smoke masks... whereas Ronan brought a dog.

Looking back across the entire day, apart from the fact that Ronan had eaten nearly two people's worth of bread and cheese at noon—which was worth mentioning—no other faults could be found with him.

"Not just hardworking and uncomplaining." Fabian took a sip of iced beer. "Although I don't know any other Parisians, I know Parisians aren't like this."

Ronan had only moved to Provence for a little over two months, and the preceding months were the agricultural off-season. The farmers only knew that he loved to drink and was quite wealthy, but they didn't know much about his disposition or his ways of handling matters.

He could tell that Ronan genuinely liked crops and understood them, rather than treating it as a passing whim.

"If you don't know any Parisians, how can you judge that Ronan isn't like one?" Pierre asked, posing an extremely convoluted question.

Fabian took another sip of beer, shrugged his shoulders while jutting his chin forward, and turned down the corners of his mouth.

"He isn't annoying at all, and he has a great sense of boundaries."

This was another way of expressing a shrug, indicating that the speaker felt extreme aversion toward the subject matter.

Pierre laughed heartily and stubbed out his cigarette.

"Let's go. Go rescue our Parisian friend; he's about to be roasted half to death."

Fabian raised both hands high and waved them rapidly toward the direction of Ronan and Cornell.

"We're coming to help you—"

......

That night.

Ronan didn't even have the energy to stay for dinner at Fabian's house and insisted on going home to rest.

Doing farm work was far too physically demanding, even more exhausting than digging for truffles in the forest for a whole day.

And back then, there hadn't been a blazing sun beating directly down on his head and back.

Just as he had lain down for a moment, the phone rang.

Ronan realized that this definitely wasn't a call from any friend in Provence; those people wouldn't call anyone during the most important dinner hour, which was the most sacred time of the day.

Nor was it a call from his parents. Ever since the market incident, Luo Tianhai had harbored lingering dissatisfaction toward Ronan, which made Feng Zhen hesitant to initiate a call to him either.

Ronan sat up and looked at the incessantly ringing telephone.

"Then who could that be?"

......

"Hey, my friend, it's over twenty degrees Celsius over your way by now, right?"

The voice on the other end of the line carried a well-articulated Parisian accent.

Hearing the familiar Parisian accent after a long absence made Ronan feel a deep sense of warmth. Even though he didn't know who the caller was, he politely answered "yes" first before asking in return,

"Who is this?"

"Thor," the person on the other end replied enthusiastically.

Thor was Ronan's high school classmate, the kind they weren't very close with, having only spoken on the phone once after learning that Ronan was moving to Provence to live.

Ronan had given his Provençal landline number to other high school classmates he was on good terms with, so it wasn't strange that Thor had his new number.

"Hello, Thor. Is there something you need?" Ronan asked with considerable surprise.

"Are you going to be home during the May Day holiday?" Thor asked in a very cheerful tone.

"I should be." Ronan had no travel plans; within a radius of hundreds of kilometers, everywhere he looked was already scenery.

Ronan heard the sound of Thor clapping with excitement over the phone.

"Oh, that's wonderful. I'm considering coming to Provence for a trip during May Day."

After a tiny pause, Thor continued to ask,

"Can I... come visit you?"

"Ah?" Ronan panicked and looked around his surroundings.

Do you mean to say that my house—which, aside from the kitchen and dining areas, could well be described as having bare walls—is about to have a guest?

And that's just a little over a month from now??