The latecomer who fought and grabbed

"You haven't left yet?"

Lin Shuyang had left quickly and returned just as quickly.

Cheng Yue stepped forward and asked, feigning nonchalance, "Is Mr. Ji seriously ill?"

Lin Shuyang hadn't intended to answer, but when he met those inexplicably earnest eyes, he reconsidered. "Gastric bleeding. The usual domineering CEO ailment, that's all."

Compared with serious illnesses like leukemia, gastric bleeding was indeed relatively mild. Of course, even the smallest ailment shouldn't be taken lightly.

But he'd thrown up blood. Surely that meant it was serious.

Cheng Yue's long lashes trembled slightly, his lips pressed tightly together.

Lin Shuyang had already reached his car when Cheng Yue called him back.

"Sorry, would you mind telling me which hospital Mr. Ji is in?"

Lin Shuyang turned, his puzzled gaze sweeping over him as a faint wariness settled around him. "Why do you want to know?"

They weren't friends or family and had only met a few times. Surely that didn't warrant a hospital visit.

Cheng Yue forced a stiff smile and bit the bullet. "Mr. Ji helped me out before. Since he's sick, it's only right that I visit him."

He was an openhearted person who knew exactly whom he liked and disliked. Whatever had happened between them, he really did owe Ji Huaijin for the Rottweiler incident.

Without Ji Huaijin stepping in, that matter would never have been resolved so efficiently.

The more Cheng Yue thought about it, the more confident he became. He straightened his back, ready to stand up to official scrutiny.

Lin Shuyang: "..."

His explanation was sound. On second thought, Lin Shuyang agreed, and besides, he didn't think a mere security guard posed any danger.

Withdrawing his assessing gaze, Lin Shuyang slipped back into his usual devil-may-care manner and lazily gave him the hospital's name.

"All right, I'm off. See you around, little unlucky guy."

Lin Shuyang waved with a mischievous grin, stepped on the gas, and drove away.

Cheng Yue lowered his brows. "..."

No wonder they were friends. They were equally infuriating!

The next day, Cheng Yue got up bright and early, hopped on a shared bike, and plunged into the market.

The early bird got the fresh vegetables. It wasn't even eight, and the market was already packed. Chewing on a fried dough stick he'd bought before coming in, Cheng Yue deftly snatched the last Chinese yam from an old man's hands.

Before the old man could start cursing, he slipped smoothly to the side, scanned the payment code, and left.

The empty-handed old man was left bristling and glaring.

Now that people were better off materially, they'd begun enriching their inner lives. Fishing enthusiasts, for example, paid to go deep-sea fishing on boats.

After returning with a full haul, they would head to the market to sell their fish, enjoying the satisfaction of helping others.

"What are you doing? I saw that first! Are you blind?"

"Have you paid for it? If you haven't, anyone can buy it!"

The fisherman was a young man. He wanted to stop the battle but feared they'd drop his fish and kill it, so he could only flounder helplessly as he tried to persuade the two women spraying each other with spit.

"Don't fight over it! Oh, come on, my fish!"

Cheng Yue stood outside the crowd, watching the show at his leisure. Seeing that the war of words was about to become an actual war, he finished his soy milk in one long gulp.

While no one was looking, he made quick work of it. Using his height to his advantage, he aimed for the nearly dead fish flailing through the air and scooped it up with swift, unerring precision.

"Twenty each, right?"

The seller hadn't yet caught up. At the question, he nodded blankly. "Right."

Beep.

"I've sent the payment. Check it."

The smooth sequence of moves caught the women completely off guard. They didn't come to their senses until Cheng Yue had hopped onto a bus.

"That's my fish!"

How did a latecomer get the fish? By fighting and grabbing for it, naturally.

Steam hissed through the vent, rising in white wisps, while crystal-clear droplets clung to the transparent lid.

The fish lay on a plate in the steamer, its mouth slightly open and its eyes bulging. It looked as though it had passed away peacefully.

Cheng Yue, the ruthless executioner, deftly mixed the sauce. When the time was about right, he lifted the lid and poured it evenly over the fish's intact corpse.

Unlike the fish, which had died with its eyes wide open, Cheng Yue sniffed the air in satisfaction and even offered a critique. "Mm, not bad. You didn't end up in my hands for nothing."

He turned the heat down and replaced the lid, letting the sauce reduce a little more so the flavor would soak in. Then he turned and picked up a ladle to taste the soup in the clay pot beside it.

The reason he knew how to cook went back to his childhood. Cheng Yue had grown up in a small mountain village. Back then, although every household had enough to eat, they couldn't afford meat with every meal.

Some better-off families could occasionally treat themselves to something nicer, but Cheng Yue couldn't. Apart from the radish-and-pork dumplings at New Year and the stir-fried shredded pork at the New Year's Eve dinner, he never got any meat.

He still remembered eating green beans and eggplant day after day every summer, followed by endless cabbage and radishes in winter. The only occasional chances to eat meat came at banquets.

A growing boy could eat his father out of house and home, and twelve or thirteen was precisely the age for growth spurts. Children's tables had always been the same: by the time a dish made it to the table, the plate was already empty.

(This applied only to mountain villages in certain remote areas. In places with better economic conditions, situations like this are rare nowadays.)

It was manageable if everyone at the table was a child, but if there were adults, there was simply no competing with them. Cheng Yue clearly remembered watching the woman carrying the dishes with eager eyes.

At last, she reached their table with a plate of glistening pig's head meat and peanuts. His body, starved of fat, instinctively made his mouth water.

The moment the plate was set down, Cheng Yue raised his chopsticks to take some. Suddenly, a hand appeared in his line of sight. The next instant, the woman sitting in the corner was holding the plate and tipping its contents into the red plastic bag in her hand.

In that instant, Cheng Yue felt all the strength drain out of him.

Everyone else at the table was a child, and adult authority weighed heavily on their minds. Hungry as they were for it, none of them dared say a word.

That banquet left him feeling terribly stifled. Cheng Yue suppressed the turbulent emotions inside him, but when he came home and saw the mess strewn everywhere, he couldn't hold back anymore. He shouted at the figure watering the vegetable patch in the yard.

"Stop watering! Stop! I don't want eggplant, and I don't want any more green beans! Don't you understand?"

Remembering how that woman had not only bagged the meat but openly pocketed the steamed buns handed out to them, Cheng Yue's hurt rapidly reached its breaking point.

"You gave them a cash gift, so why didn't you go? If you'd gone..."

I wouldn't have had to go without even a single piece of meat.

Cheng Yue's voice trembled, and suddenly he couldn't get another word out.

That night, he hid in his room and refused to eat. Around midnight, when he was too hungry to bear it anymore, he went to the kitchen to find something to eat.

The emotions he'd held in all day finally broke loose when he saw the bowl of stir-fried garlic scapes and shredded pork on the chopping board, covered with an upturned plate. He stood there blankly, letting large tears fall to the floor and shatter.

Moonlight flowed like water through the old wooden window, spilling over the boy crouched on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. It also illuminated the stooped, silver-haired figure in another room.

Later, Cheng Yue used his silver tongue to coax the head cook for their village's banquet committee, who was also the boss, into letting him help out in his spare time.

Whenever he wasn't at school and had time to spare, he went to work. He also used the opportunity to hover around the head cook and pick up a few tricks, eventually developing the cooking skills he had today.