“Are these vegetables made of gold? Why are they so expensive?” Qiu Wu muttered, staring at the prices on the delivery app and sucking in a breath of cold air.
A single piece on here could buy a whole basket at the traditional market. Did people around here simply not go to wet markets?
They indeed did not need to go.
Qiu Wu glanced toward Lu Bai’s bedroom door, reset her worldview on prices, and finally got around to ordering.
She washed the rice and put it on to boil, sliced the pork liver thinly and marinated it, and peeled and sliced the yams. Qiu Wu’s hands kept moving, and during a brief pause, she thought with a fair bit of self-satisfaction that her cooking skills had not deteriorated too much.
Ever since coming to Luodong, she rarely cooked. But after all, the foundation from her youth was solid; back during harvest seasons, she often acted as her mother’s assistant, sometimes having to prep meals for over a dozen temporary farmhands.
She wondered if Lu Bai would like it.
Looking at the steam rising from the edge of the pot, Qiu Wu thought of the woman’s shining eyes, and a small surge of eager anticipation leaped in her heart.
Lu Bai had originally been exhausted, but after Qiu Wu left, she found herself unable to sleep instead.
Under normal circumstances, she should be working right now rather than lying in bed staring at the ceiling.
However, the situation had not turned disastrous; she just needed to push the sequence of her work schedule further back.
She did not need to coordinate with anyone else. Her research was a lonely, solitary path where she alone decided the beginning and the end.
She wondered what Qiu Wu would cook.
Repositioning her weekly schedule in her mind, Lu Bai suddenly thought of Qiu Wu, who was currently in the kitchen.
Her thoughts drifted completely off course, floating away from her own hungry stomach to the top of that cooking pot in the kitchen.
She could not imagine what was inside, but she urgently wanted to know the answer.
So much so that she was temporarily unable to think about anything else.
She was not yet familiar enough with this emotion called anticipation.
Yielding to her own impulse, she sat up, got out of bed, and walked toward the kitchen.
The kitchen door was not closed. The rising steam blurred the facial features of the woman standing before the stove. She was wearing the same pajamas as her, her deep orange-brown long hair tied up, the curled ends brushing against her shoulder blades. Qiu Wu scooped a spoonful of porridge into a small bowl, tasted it, and her previously indifferent expression bloomed into a vivid smile like ink spreading across water.
Very pretty.
Lu Bai once again felt the out-of-control pounding of her heart. This time, she knew very well it was because she was looking at Qiu Wu.
Qiu Wu finished plating the porridge and the flatbread and turned around, intending to call Lu Bai, only to catch sight of the person standing at the doorway.
Lu Bai stood outside the threshold, still draped in that blanket. Her face maintained little expression, but Qiu Wu inexplicably read a hint of tenderness from it.
The tips of her ears heated up, and she laughed off her embarrassment. “You scared me. Why do you walk without making a sound?”
Lu Bai shook her head. “There was a sound.”
You were just too preoccupied staring at the pot to hear it.
She walked in. “Is it done?”
“All done. You must be hungry, right? You only ate that tiny bit for breakfast.” Seeing Lu Bai reach out to take the bowl, Qiu Wu hurriedly stopped her. “Do not burn yourself. I will get it, just go wait at the table.”
“I should help.”
“You said you should, not that you must. I am the one cooking, so what I say goes.” Qiu Wu had already figured out Lu Bai’s logic; in areas the woman was not familiar with, as long as you expressed yourself with sufficient certainty, she would choose to defer.
“This is yam and pork liver porridge, and this is yam flatbread. Dr. Xu said you should not eat anything too heavily seasoned, so I went light on the spices. Try it and see if it suits your palate.” Qiu Wu placed the bowls and plates before Lu Bai and sat down beside her.
“Okay, thank you.” Lu Bai caught the aroma of the porridge, and the foodie gremlin in her stomach began to clamor even more fiercely. Disregarding everything else, she reached out to pick up the bowl, intending to drink.
“Hn?” Fortunately, Qiu Wu had been watching her the whole time. With quick reflexes, she directly blocked her, scolding playfully, “Forgot how you burned yourself yesterday?”
She placed a small child-sized spoon into Lu Bai’s bowl. “Blow on it until it cools before eating. You can only take this much at a time, eat slowly, and the same goes for the flatbread.”
“Okay.” Lu Bai was very receptive to such clear-cut commands, feeling no dissatisfaction whatsoever about being directed. She put the bowl down and used the spoon to scoop up tiny bites at a time.
A small bowl of porridge and two small pieces of flatbread took her over half an hour to finish.
Qiu Wu propped her chin in her hand and watched her the entire time. Watching someone eat should theoretically be a boring task, but Lu Bai was a feast for the eyes, and her table manners were quite refined. Watching her eat was genuinely a pleasant experience.
It was just like watching the crops in the fields unfurl their leaves and grow vigorously after a long-awaited nourishing rain.
“I am done eating.” Lu Bai swallowed the last bite of flatbread, looked at the empty bowl, and seemed somewhat unsatisfied.
Though the flavor was not as rich as the spicy hot pot from the previous night, it possessed a comforting sweetness she had never tasted before.
“All right, Dr. Xu said you need to eat small, frequent meals, so breakfast stops here. What do you want for lunch?” Seeing Lu Bai looking longingly at the empty bowl, Qiu Wu felt a mix of pity and amusement.
Lu Bai thought for a few seconds, pulled out her phone, and flipped to the photo she had sent earlier. “This, jianbing guozi. Can I?”
Qiu Wu gathered the bowls and plates while pondering aloud, “Yes, but you can only have a modified light version. This chicken tender is too salty so you cannot have it, this crispy wonton wrapper is full of oil and hard to digest, and we cannot use too much sauce either.”
“Mm.” Although Lu Bai did not completely understand everything Qiu Wu was referring to, she currently had absolute trust in Qiu Wu’s culinary skills. “If you make it, it should be delicious.”
Qiu Wu could not help laughing. “You sure know how to sweet-talk.”
Lu Bai looked at her in confusion, licked her lips, and stated objectively, “Not sweet, there is no flavor.”
Qiu Wu: “Your tongue is quite pink.”
She turned around, carrying the dishes in one hand while pressing a hand over her heart as she fled in defeat.
Lu Bai brushed her teeth and originally intended to go back to sleep. Fearing that sleeping immediately would disrupt her digestion, Qiu Wu kept her chatting for nearly an hour before finally letting her go to bed.
Calling it a chat was a stretch, as Lu Bai’s daily routine really did not leave much room for casual conversation. Almost every stage of the woman’s life was a repetition of the exact same schedule for years on end: elementary school, studying, skipping grades, middle school, studying, skipping grades, skipping all the way through to her Ph.D. graduation, finally merging those two separate terms into the word work. Listening to it made Qiu Wu furrow her brows repeatedly.
How could anyone grow up without a family life, without a social circle, and without any form of entertainment, existing entirely as if she were born solely to conduct those researches?
She was starting to believe the rumors that Lu Wen and Lu Bai did not get along.
If there was even a shred of familial affection, which aunt would bear to let her niece live a life like this?
Lu Bai, on the other hand, was quite interested in the stories Qiu Wu shared. University clubs, her childhood farm, the subtle differences between Luoxi and Luodong dialects; all of that information was entirely foreign to Lu Bai.
Her own life had not been a bed of roses, but compared to Lu Bai, she at least lived the life of a real human.
She had loves and hatreds, desires, human warmth, and emotional ups and downs.
Unlike Lu Bai, who spent the vast majority of her time cooped up with cold machines.
No wonder she was so detached from worldly affairs.
A tumult of emotions stirred within Qiu Wu’s chest, eventually crystallizing into an unirkish sense of responsibility.
Putting aside whether robots could think like humans for the moment, she was at least going to make sure Lu Bai started living a normal human life first.
Lu Bai, who had originally intended to go to sleep, was ultimately pushed back into her room by Qiu Wu. As she was being tucked into the covers, the woman was still asking, “So, did your team win that relay race?”
Qiu Wu tapped her index finger against her lips. “Shh.”
Lu Bai obediently closed her mouth, though the look in her eyes carried profound incomprehension.
Humming a tune, Qiu Wu tucked the blanket securely around her. “To find out what happens next, please listen to the next installment.”
After settling Lu Bai in and going back to her own room to sleep for three hours, Qiu Wu was woken up by her own alarm clock.
The consequences of staying up late last night were slowly manifesting. Shaking her dizzy head, she got out of bed and began preparing lunch.
Just as she was mixing the batter for the jianbing, Lu Bai’s voice came from nearby. “Can I help?”
She turned her head and saw Lu Bai standing at the doorway, seemingly waiting for permission before entering the kitchen.
Qiu Wu wanted to say she could move faster on her own, but seeing Lu Bai’s expectant gaze, she ultimately couldn’t bring herself to refuse. “Then you can help me prep the vegetables.”
“Look, hold the knife like this, cut it in half first and then slice it, moving your hand back as you cut. Since you have not cooked before, you must go very slowly and be careful not to cut your fingers.” She demonstrated how to cut vegetables for Lu Bai.
“Mm, let me try.” Lu Bai watched with utmost concentration as Qiu Wu transformed half a tomato into neat slices, took the knife with absolute confidence, and moved to cut the other half.
Qiu Wu was more nervous than she was, staring intently at the woman’s fair hands while her own hands hovered in readiness, prepared to rush in and save her at a moment’s notice.
Unexpectedly, as a kitchen novice, Lu Bai’s grip on the knife was terrifyingly steady. Those well-proportioned, slender hands seemed naturally adapted to all kinds of tools, and with rhythmic, decisive strokes devoid of any hesitation, she finished processing the remaining half of the tomato in the blink of an eye.
“It is a shame you are not going to be a chef with hands like those.” Qiu Wu picked up two tomato slices whose thicknesses appeared identical to the naked eye and praised her sincerely.
“I only know how to cut tomatoes, I could not be a chef.” Lu Bai stated matter-of-factly.
“You are already amazing. When I was first learning to cook, every time I made a meal, my mom said she could taste the flavor of blood.” Qiu Wu laughed.
“But you cut them very well, too.”
“That was just from when I was a kid. Cooking comes with practice. Come on, the pan is hot, I will teach you how to spread the jianbing.”
As expected, the jianbing Lu Bai spread turned out large and round. With her assistance, the two of them sat down for an early lunch: tomato and beef meatball soup alongside Qiu Wu’s self-developed, soft, and light version of jianbing guozi.
Lu Bai received a small bowl of meatball soup and two small pieces of jianbing, with Qiu Wu thoughtfully adding two poached eggs on top.
“Consider this a reward for helping me cook.” She joked.
Lu Bai had already grown accustomed to the cooling step before eating and no longer needed Qiu Wu’s reminders. She finished a piece of jianbing with the soup and sliced off a small portion of a poached egg.
Qiu Wu had mastered the heat control perfectly; the interior of the poached egg yolk still possessed a slightly runny, semi-set center. When it was freshly removed from the pan, a layer of fine white sugar had been sprinkled over it, melted by the residual heat of the egg into a faint, delicate sweetness.
“Delicious.” Lu Bai looked at Qiu Wu. “Can I help out again for dinner?”
“Sure.” Qiu Wu couldn’t help laughing. “You like cooking that much?”
“No,” Lu Bai shook her head, saying earnestly, “It is probably because of you. I want to help you.”
In her view, cooking was no different from work, as both involved operating tools to produce a finished product.
Yet when she worked, no one continuously praised her or gave her rewards.
She genuinely felt fulfilled by this.
An intensity even stronger than the feeling of achieving an experimental goal.
Qiu Wu quietly watched her for three seconds and set down the spoon in her hand.
Lu Bai noticed that the tips of her girlfriend’s orange-brown long hair, exposed amidst her hair, were gradually flushing with a lovely, faint pink.
Qiu Wu plucked the other poached egg straight out of Lu Bai’s bowl, lowered her head to take a huge bite, and mumbled indistinctly, “Throwing out direct curveballs while someone is trying to eat gets you a docked egg.”