Jiang Feng struggled to his feet from the ground.
This looked like a storage room, perhaps backstage at a theater. Dresses, suits, lamps, telephones, shelves, oil paintings, and other old or broken props were piled together.
Jiang Huiqin held a bulging cloth bundle wrapped tightly in her arms.
"Huiqin, I really don't understand. What was there to dislike about that wedding dress? I was going to surprise you, but you've really spoiled the mood!"
"I disliked everything about it. We were taking wedding photos—photos of me getting married. I should be the one deciding what I wear!"
"You want to wear that red jacket-like bridal outfit? Make our wedding look feudal, ignorant, and ridiculous?" Li Mingyi raised his voice. "I'll be wearing a Western suit while you wear a phoenix crown. Don't you think that's absurd? Huiqin, both of us received a modern education. Why are you as old-fashioned as those pedantic old scholars in your family?"
"Ridiculous? You think it's ridiculous?" Jiang Huiqin looked up at him, her once-exquisite makeup streaked by tears.
She untied the bundle in her hands, revealing the neatly folded bridal outfit within. She took out the outer jacket, shook it open, held it up, and pointed at it, trembling all over with rage.
"You think it's ridiculous? Li Mingyi, I spent four years embroidering it. I spent a full four years on this bridal outfit! My mother died in childbirth when she gave birth to me. I had no mother, and my sister-in-law had passed away too. No one taught me how to embroider bridal clothes, so I had to figure it out myself. I ruined so many pieces, and this is the only good one."
"You think it's ugly, ridiculous, and not as pretty as the wedding dress made by that tailor you found in Paris, is that it? But I embroidered this myself! Girls are supposed to wear bridal clothes they embroidered themselves when they get married! Let me tell you, don't lecture me about feudalism and progress. I attended a girls' school. I didn't study the impressive physics and chemistry you learned. We learned how to support our husbands, raise children, and manage the household. I am feudal. I am old-fashioned."
Sobbing, Jiang Huiqin folded the jacket and put it back. She picked up the cloth bundle and strode outside.
"Go find yourself some progressive, free woman to take photos and marry! I'm not taking these pictures today!"
Jiang Feng hurried after her.
"Miss Jiang, have you made up your mind? About these photographs—" Seeing Jiang Huiqin come downstairs, the photographer hurried over with a smile.
"I'm not taking them. He can take them with whoever he likes." Jiang Huiqin wiped the tears from her face and walked straight out of the photo studio.
Fortunately, Jiang Huiqin was not running this time, or Jiang Feng's backside would have suffered again.
His great-aunt's temper really was something else, though Li Mingyi had it coming.
Calling his fiancée feudal, old-fashioned, and ridiculous—did he not want a wife anymore?
As she walked, Jiang Huiqin stopped in front of a wonton stall.
"A small bowl of wontons, no scallions." Jiang Huiqin found a table, set the cloth bundle beside her, counted out several coins, and handed them to the stall owner.
The wonton stall stood at the mouth of an alley. Its owner was a middle-aged man with a slight hunchback. There were only three small tables, all uneven and pockmarked. The tabletops were greasy, and their edges were full of splinters.
The stall owner took the money, grabbed a greasy, filthy rag, and casually wiped Jiang Huiqin's table before tossing it onto the table beside him. Without washing his hands, he grabbed a small handful of pre-wrapped wontons from a bamboo basket and tossed them into the boiling pot.
Before long, a bowl of wontons was ready.
After dripping in two drops of sesame oil and adding nothing else, the stall owner brought the bowl, which had three chips in its rim, before Jiang Huiqin.
The wontons looked terrible. Their wrappers were thick, the filling was scant, and they had not been sealed properly; more than half had fallen apart in the bowl. Jiang Huiqin was not thinking about the wontons anyway. She kept turning back to look, but did not see the person she wanted to see.
Many people passed along the bluestone-paved street: gentlemen in long gowns, laborers in short shirts, youths dressed as students, rickshaw pullers, and beautiful women in qipaos.
But there was no Li Mingyi.
Jiang Huiqin tilted her head and stared blankly at the street. As she watched, tears began to fall. After silently crying for a while, she turned back in a huff and tried one of the now-cold wontons before her.
Her tears fell even harder.
Jiang Feng wanted to hand her some tissues.
After she had cried for some time, Li Mingyi finally found her, frantic enough to be on the verge of breaking out in mouth sores.
"Huiqin, why did you come here to eat wontons?" The moment Li Mingyi opened his mouth, Jiang Feng wanted to cover it.
Romance should have been an innate skill for teenage boys. How had it become like a congenital deficiency with this guy, as if he had never unlocked the talent at all?
Jiang Huiqin looked at him, her face full of grievance. "Weren't you going to find that free, democratic, progressive life partner of yours? What are you doing looking for someone as feudal, old-fashioned, and ridiculous as me?"
"Who said I was going to find some free, democratic, progressive person? Huiqin, can you be reasonable?"
My dear great-uncle, I'm begging you, stop talking!
Watching from the side, Jiang Feng practically wanted to stuff the wontons on the table into Li Mingyi's mouth to shut him up. Hadn't he been so smooth with all those sweet nothings last night? Why was he being so stubborn and hardheaded today?
"Then go find someone else who's reasonable!" Jiang Huiqin turned away, looking into her bowl as tears as big as beans splashed into the wonton soup.
The two fell silent for a while.
"Don't cry." Li Mingyi took out a handkerchief and gently wiped the tears from Jiang Huiqin's face. "Your eyes will swell from crying, and the photos won't look good later."
"Who wants to take photos? Didn't you say the clothes I embroidered were ugly?" Jiang Huiqin said softly.
"You look beautiful in anything. To me, you're the most beautiful person in the world."
"More beautiful than Ruan Yuling?"
"A thousand times more beautiful than Ruan Yuling!"
"Liar." Jiang Huiqin smiled through her tears.
Li Mingyi took Jiang Huiqin's hand and headed toward the photo studio.
The girl's hand tightly gripped the boy's, as though she were afraid he would run away.
The next second, Jiang Feng returned to his room.
He checked his phone. Only five minutes had passed.
"Ding! Congratulations, player. You have discovered a new function. The game is about to update."
"The game is updating. Current progress: 0%."
Jiang Feng: ...
Here it came again—the suffocatingly slow update.
Still, aside from the nauseatingly sweet romance and lovey-dovey daily life in Jiang Huiqin's memories, there had also been a dish made by Jiang Chengde.
Clear Soup with Bird's Nest Slices!
Jiang Feng had watched the entire preparation process from every angle, without missing a single detail.
Unfortunately, Jiang Huiqin had run off too early, so he had not seen the final plating and pouring of the soup.
Jiang Feng sat on the bed and tried his best to recall how Clear Soup with Bird's Nest Slices had been made in Jiang Huiqin's memories.
No, it was too difficult.
He had only watched it once. The ingredients and preparation methods were easy enough to identify, but without tasting it, learning the heat control and seasoning through sight alone was simply too difficult for Jiang Feng. Not to mention the essence of the dish—the clear soup.
Jiang Feng had only smelled it. He did not even know what ingredients had gone into making the broth.
If he had possessed the ability to identify ingredients just by smelling them, Old Master would not have smacked him on the head with the bottom of a wok when he was learning to cook as a child.
Once he accepted that he could not learn Clear Soup with Bird's Nest Slices, and finding himself completely unable to sleep after watching the memory, Jiang Feng simply went downstairs to take a walk.
Ever since school began, he had rarely had any free time. Wouldn't it be a waste to spend it sleeping?
Ji Yue was still downstairs drawing. Jiang Feng had spent most of a day in Jiang Huiqin's memories, but only a few minutes had passed in reality. Seeing him come downstairs, Ji Yue looked somewhat surprised.
"Not sleeping anymore?"
"No. I'm going out for a walk."
At this hour, the food street was at its quietest.
The lingering heat of the Indian summer remained. The sun baked him dizzy as he walked, leaving him with no appetite at all.
Jiang Feng was considering something.
Something that, if Wang Xiulian and Jiang Jiankang found out about it, might earn him a double beating, followed by kneeling on the knife rack with a pressure cooker balanced overhead.
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