Seeing that Liam had stopped asking, the two Martinez siblings let out a breath of relief and hurried over to help him set the house up.
Mobile homes were a rather clever piece of design. Before the system was switched on, one was no bigger than a suitcase. Once opened, it expanded automatically to several times that size. Depending on the buyer’s finances, mobile homes came in different sizes and levels of comfort.
The house the two siblings lived in now was a mobile home as well, with two bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen. They assumed Liam’s would be about the same size as theirs at most.
What they did not expect was that when he started the system, a spacious two-story villa unfolded in front of them, looking utterly out of place on this desolate planet.
Benjamin’s jaw dropped. "Li... Liam, a house like this must cost tens of millions, surely?"
Liam dusted off his hands. "Ah, a bit over two hundred million silver stars. The two of you shouldn’t stay in the old house anymore. Move over here and live with me. Mine has every amenity, it’s far better than that place."
Isabella shook her head hard. "No, there’s no need for that. How could we possibly stay in your house?"
Liam turned back and frowned at the pair of them. "Carrying on like this, do you not consider me your younger brother?"
The two Martinez siblings waved their hands in a panic. "No!"
Liam nodded, satisfied. "Then stop talking nonsense and go pack your things. I’m taking the left bedroom on the second floor; the rest of the rooms are for the two of you to choose from. Oh, and the supplies outside were all bought for you. Work out how you want to organize them."
With that Liam strolled inside, and went straight up to the room he had claimed.
Benjamin and Isabella stood stock still for a long moment, then turned to look at each other. Isabella said:
"Brother, pinch me and tell me whether I’m dreaming."
Benjamin reached over and pinched his younger sister’s arm extremely hard, which made Isabella leap up with the pain. She elbowed him back without a moment’s hesitation.
Benjamin bared his teeth and made his eyes go round. "That really hurt!"
The two of them looked at the scene in front of them again. The house and the supplies were still there. So it was not a dream after all...
The three of them spent the whole afternoon busy setting the place to rights, and by evening their stomachs were growling loudly with hunger. Isabella took out three tubes of nutrient fluid out of habit, handed one to Liam, and said:
"Liam, there’s only low-grade nutrient fluid left in the house. Make do with this for tonight. I’ll go and buy the high-grade kind tomorrow."
Liam looked at the tube in her hand without reaching for it. "Put it away. Tonight we’re eating fresh food to celebrate my coming home."
Benjamin was dumbfounded. "Fresh food? Where would we get fresh food out here?"
"I bought some," Liam said. "I put it in the fridge earlier."
Isabella’s eyes lit up and she went straight to the fridge to look. Inside was star-beast and sea-beast meat, along with a good quantity of fresh vegetables and fruit. She gasped in admiration over and over. "Good heavens, how much must all this have cost?"
Liam rolled his shoulders. "Not so very much. Eating like this every day would be out of the question, but I can afford a meal like it now and then."
Benjamin and Isabella’s expressions turned complicated, and they opened their mouths to advise Liam to be more careful with his money. Then they thought better of it. They hadn’t raised him for a single day; what right had they to lecture the boy? Isabella scratched her head awkwardly.
"About that... brother Benjamin and I don’t actually know how to cook fresh food..."
Even at the height of the family’s prosperity, they hadn’t eaten fresh food often, because nobody knew how to prepare it. All they knew was how to boil vegetables and peel fruit.
Liam shrugged. "It’s fine, I know how to cook. The two of you sit down and wait to be fed."
The two Martinez siblings immediately fixed him with a look that spelled out the words we don’t believe you across both their faces.
Liam didn’t waste breath explaining. He shooed the two clumsy things out into the living room and opened the fridge to think about what to make. And just as his hand went out toward the star-beast meat, his eye landed on the smart watch.
An idea popped into his head.
Back in his previous life, when he was still a student, Liam had run a broadcasting room devoted to growing and cooking. There was no one better at this than he was. Liam switched on the smart watch at once, logged in to his Interstellar Connection account, and opened the broadcasting channel.
#No drawing today. I’m here to show you all what real cooking looks like!#
Having set the title, Liam adjusted the camera angle and hit broadcast. One minute after the room opened, nearly a hundred people had already tuned in. The comments were a solid wall of question marks.
[Huh? Has brother Sunflower switched careers and become a chef today?]
[Those hands are for drawing! They’re not going to get sliced up by a kitchen knife, are they?]
[Boohoo, brother Sunflower, please don’t do anything rash. The other day some guy livestreamed his own cooking and ended up in hospital right after eating it!]
[Hmph, unfollowing. Can’t just quietly be a painter, has to pull stunts for views and money. What a waste of my time being a fan.]
[The hell, if the guy upstairs doesn’t want to watch he can get lost. My brother’s still wildly popular without you, all right?]
The broadcasting room flooded with complaints, mixed in with cursing and the outcries of fans announcing their departure. The sudden spike in the channel’s popularity today caught the attention of the livestreaming platform. The person responsible for Liam’s channel sensed something unusual and reported it straight up the chain.
The superior took a quick look and said, "Let’s monitor it and see. If there are any signs of him using his popularity to make money the wrong way, lock the room."
Inside the broadcasting room, the resentment was rising to the heavens. Outside in the living room, Isabella craned her neck toward the kitchen and leaned over to whisper in Benjamin’s ear:
"Brother, does Liam really know how to cook? I’ve been watching him fiddle with that smart watch for a good while now."
Benjamin said worriedly, "Let’s just wait and see. If Liam sets the kitchen on fire later, we’ll charge in and save him."
Isabella nodded. "Exactly. And whatever dish Liam produces later, even if eating it sends us straight up to heaven, we still have to eat it."
The two siblings nodded at each other in perfect understanding, resolved to eat every last thing their younger brother cooked.
This was the first time anyone but Papa had cooked a meal for them. They had to treasure every bit of it.