When Shen Luolun came out of the bath, the dining table was already laden with steaming, fragrant dishes.
"Finished? Come eat." Xiangling was serving rice, and she called to him when she saw him.
"Coming, coming!"
Shen Luolun went to the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down beside Guoba.
"Guoba, your butt's big. Scoot over."
"Lulu."
Only after Xiangling sat down did everyone start dinner.
"Xiangling, what are you making for tomorrow's Cuisine Machine Test?" Shen Luolun asked, picking up a few green beans and putting them in his mouth.
"Hmm... I want to make Adeptus' Temptation for my first dish."
"Adeptus' Temptation?"
"Mm-hmm."
"I thought you'd use Century Soup to cruise all the way to the finals. Just put the soup powder in hot water, and the soup's ready. So convenient."
"Silly, you can't make just one dish for the competition."
Century Soup really could give her a shot at winning the whole competition, but winning that way wouldn't be any fun.
Cooking competitions were supposed to be a place where a hundred flowers bloomed and a hundred schools of thought contended. If you could only make one dish well, that just proved your skills were limited to that dish and that you were far inferior to others in every other respect.
In Master Mao's words, that was a student who excelled in only one subject, a bucket with a short stave.
The girl devoted to culinary innovation didn't want to be a student who excelled in only one subject.
"What do you need me to do? You're not asking me to go onstage and be your assistant, are you? Forget it if that's what you want. I'm really slow at chopping, and I'd hold you back."
Besides that, Shen Luolun didn't like appearing in public. The homebody in his bones made being watched by the audience at a competition as unbearable as sunlight was to a vampire.
"I wouldn't mind, but someone isn't willing, and I won't force him. Just help me prepare the ingredients in advance."
Xiangling put a piece of spare rib in Guoba's bowl.
"How?"
"Give the dried abalone, sea cucumbers, and fish maw we bought at the market a quick wash, then soak them overnight in clean water."
"Easy. Is that all?"
"Of course not, but we can talk about the rest when I get to the next round."
"All right."
After they chatted for a while, the dishes on the table were nearly finished.
After dinner, Shen Luolun gathered the dishes and chopsticks and took them to the kitchen to wash, while Xiangling went back to her room to bathe.
Guoba, meanwhile, went out to catch fireflies.
Not a care in the world. How nice.
After putting the clean dishes and chopsticks back in the clean cupboard, Shen Luolun followed Xiangling's instructions and washed and soaked the ingredients for Adeptus' Temptation. It took him a little over half an hour.
With the ingredients prepared and nothing else to do, he stretched and went back to his room to write.
"Scratch, scratch-"
Writing furiously in progress.
"In the year of the dove bearing a branch, the eternal throne of the heavens arrived, and the world was made anew."
Shen Luolun, who was using his ghost brain to write, couldn't help smiling faintly.
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
The author of Before Sun and Moon was a genius!
Whenever he ran out of inspiration and got stuck, he would consult it, and inspiration would instantly gush forth in his mind like a spring, endless and inexhaustible.
He could write whatever he wanted without worrying about ideas at all.
Hehehe, it's practically an unlimited ATM.
As for whether it's a loan, who cares? As long as it works.
If only the author of Before Sun and Moon were still alive.
That prose is far better than mine, a plagiarist without any inspiration.
Maybe the author could even have created a work more marvelous than Before Sun and Moon.
What a shame the author died young. It's a great loss to Teyvat's literary world.
Heaven envies the gifted. Heaven truly envies the gifted.
Phanes: (●_●)
Ahem.
Of course, Shen Luolun didn't have the nerve to openly plagiarize Before Sun and Moon. Those were his honest thoughts.
After all, who knew if King Fa might be petty enough to eavesdrop? If he found out Shen Luolun was talking smack about Before Sun and Moon and dropped a nail in a fit of anger, Shen Luolun wouldn't even have anywhere to cry.
He swiftly poured all of today's inspiration onto the page, and once he had completed his daily task of ten thousand words, Shen Luolun let out a long sigh of relief.
Finally finished. I'm exhausted. The attendance bonus really isn't easy to earn these days.
"OK, OK, time for bed."
The cost of using his ghost brain was too high. His cortisol was elevated, and he needed eight hours of sleep to recuperate.
Just as he was about to put out the light-
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Three knocks, neither hurried nor slow.
"Who is it?"
There was a pause outside the door.
"Who do you think?"
The girl's voice came through the door, crisp with a trace of moisture, as though she had just finished bathing and even her voice was wet.
Shen Luolun froze for a moment.
Xiangling?
He crossed the floor barefoot, went to the door, and pulled it open-
His breath seemed to stop for an instant.
Xiangling stood in the doorway.
A white bath towel was wrapped loosely around her body, barely covering her important bits. Water still dripped from the ends of her hair, drop by drop, sliding along her collarbone and over the edge of the towel before disappearing into the shadows. The heat had brought a faint flush to her fair skin, rosy like a peeled lychee, delicate enough to break at a touch.
Moonlight spilled through the clouds and mist, outlining her figure in profile-the hem of the towel barely covered the tops of her thighs, leaving her slender legs bare in the cool night, their lustrous skin as though steeped in milk.
She didn't move, simply standing there and looking up at him.
Her eyelashes were wet, her pink lips slightly parted. Her breathing was shallow and light, and her breath, sweet with the scent of body wash, brushed against his chest.
Only half a step separated them.
"Xiangling, why did you come over without any clothes on?"
The young man's eyes were clear and bright, his brows slightly furrowed as he spoke with some confusion.
She had clearly come straight to his room after her bath, but why?
Could she have left her clothes here?
Xiangling: ???
She was standing in front of him wrapped in a bath towel, and he actually said she had "no clothes on"?
Apparently, that white towel was practically invisible to him.
"You-" She bit her lower lip and raised a hand to give him a gentle punch, so light it was like a tickle. "Where are your eyes?"
"How could I not be wearing anything?"
Shen Luolun realized how wrong his words had sounded and hurriedly waved his hands to correct himself.
"Oh, oh! I didn't make myself clear, sorry! I meant-why did you come over without getting dressed properly? You're only wrapped in a bath towel. Aren't you cold?"
It wasn't too cold yet, but autumn had arrived, and chilly winds blew at night. If you weren't careful, you could catch a cold.
In any case, he now dutifully put on long johns every time he went out.
"My hair isn't dry, so it's awkward to get dressed. I came to borrow your hair dryer and dry it. I'll go back once I've borrowed it." Xiangling rolled her eyes at him.
For girls, the most troublesome part of bathing was how hard it was to dry their hair.
This was an old house, without the personal belongings she kept in her own room. When her hair was wet, she could only rub it dry with a towel or wait for the cool breeze to dry it.
Both methods were far too slow. Then Xiangling suddenly remembered that a certain someone carried a storage device with him. She had seen him put quite a few things in it before: snacks, toys, books... Once, she had seen him take a hair dryer out of it, so she had come over to borrow it.
"A hair dryer, right? Let me look."
Shen Luolun made an OK sign with one hand, then returned to his room to search through his storage device.
Before long, he came back carrying a golden hair dryer.
"Here, you can use it. Remember to give it back."
"Wasn't it black? How did it turn gold? Do you like gold?"
Xiangling eyed the color of the hair dryer curiously.
"I left the black one at home and didn't bring it. This gold one is my mom's. She used to have me dry her hair every day at home, and eventually she just left it with me."
"Oh, it's Auntie Jindai's. All right."
She knew Shen Luolun's mother was especially fond of gold.
"Mm, I'll return it to you in a bit." Xiangling took the hair dryer and turned to leave.
"Wait." Shen Luolun stopped her.
"What is it?"
"Never mind, I'll help you dry it." He shook his head.
"Huh?"
(I originally wanted to update ten thousand words a day and outwork the competition, but I nearly worked myself to exhaustion.)