It was past three in the afternoon at the Ren Residence.
Dad brought the last dish out of the kitchen and called loudly, "Come on, come on, time to eat."
In the cramped living room, Ren Ye called to Huang Wei, Gu Nian, and Xu Peng, "All right, enough chatting. Let's eat."
"I'm seriously about to pass out from hunger." Gu Nian made no affected show of declining, simply jumping to her feet and gazing at the table with stars in her eyes. "What a spread! Uncle, your cooking rivals a five-star hotel chef's."
"What chef? It's just a few home-cooked dishes." Dad wasn't good at expressing himself and simply kept urging them, "Make yourselves at home. Sit, sit. Oh, right, Captain Huang, would you like a drink?"
"Sure." Huang Wei nodded slowly. "Let's have a little."
"All right, I'll join you." Dad took off his apron and retrieved two bottles of Feitian Moutai from the small liquor cabinet.
Ren Qingning looked surprised. "Wow, feeling generous today, aren't you? You're bringing out the liquor you couldn't even bear to drink at New Year's?"
"We have guests, don't we?" Dad smiled a little bashfully and began pouring drinks for Huang Wei and the others.
Those two bottles had sat at home for over ten years. Dad had told the siblings that a good friend had given them to him. In reality, those were the years when both children needed tutoring. Short on money, he had desperately wanted to write columns for a publisher as a side job.
Steeling himself, he had gritted his teeth and bought two bottles of Moutai, then waited outside the publisher's office for an entire afternoon. But the person in charge hadn't given them a second glance, merely saying from inside his car, "Nobody reads those columns.