Chapter 452: Braised Pork

Time: 7:57 p.m. Looking out at the faculty compound gradually quieting down outside the window, Nanling Rao Hua suddenly felt that Lu Yibei might need her.

Of course, it could also be that she needed Lu Yibei, but that wasn’t important-doing whatever came to mind was her style.

“Grandpa, is there any pork belly left from the other day?”

The old man in the living room, dozing off in front of the TV, heard his granddaughter’s call and opened his eyes a crack, mumbling, “Mm, it’s in the second drawer from the bottom of the fridge…”

“Got it.”

Nanling Rao Hua, a smile on her face, humming a little tune through her nose, walked into the kitchen and deftly tied on her apron, looking every bit like a married woman basking in the glow of love.

Soon, the sound of a kitchen knife clacking against the cutting board rang out from the kitchen.

Making braised pork was a meticulous task.

Blanching, caramelizing, slow stewing, reducing the sauce, and finally adding a touch of love-it all took about two hours from start to finish.

Two hours later, Nanling Rao Hua carried the braised pork she’d made herself up to the fifth floor, used the spare key Lu Yibei had given her, opened his door, and told a little lie.

“Yibei, are you up? You haven’t had dinner, right? My grandpa made some braised pork tonight, I heated some up for you and brought it over.”

Though the usually straightforward Nanling Rao Hua could still get shy at times.

[I suddenly wanted to see you, so I made your favorite braised pork myself.]

How could she possibly say something like that out loud?

—-

When it came to being “caught in the act,” Lu Yibei’s experience was still stuck at the level of sneaking onto the computer as a kid when Wang Meili went out, only to get caught for not finishing his homework.

So, before he could do anything, Nanling Rao Hua walked in carrying the braised pork.

He was even still holding up a chicken drumstick, about to feed it to Gu Qianqian.

When Nanling Rao Hua came in with the steaming braised pork, all three people in the room froze.

Lu Yibei covertly observed Nanling Rao Hua’s expression, his heart pounding with anxiety-he hadn’t even been this nervous the night he got his college entrance exam results.

He sneaked a glance at Gu Qianqian out of the corner of his eye, eyes widening slightly.

She was completely oblivious to the atmosphere, even stretching out her tongue-almost like a spirit-to try to reach the chicken drumstick in front of her.

Lu Yibei, “……”

Nanling Rao Hua stood at a not-too-close, not-too-far distance from Lu Yibei, holding the braised pork.

She glanced at the mountain of MockDonald Family Bucket packaging piled up on the coffee table.

She took in Lu Yibei’s bizarre posture.

Finally, her gaze landed on the “empty” chair in front of Lu Yibei, lingering for a moment. She frowned, deep in thought.

Why was there a chair placed in front of Yibei?

Gu Qianqian’s gaze shifted from the chicken drumstick just 0.1 centimeters from her lips to the braised pork, and she swallowed.

Braised pork, smells so good, want to eat!

For a moment, no one in the living room moved or spoke-the scene was filled with a strange tension.

After a while, it was Nanling Rao Hua who finally broke the silence.

She carried the braised pork toward the dining table, and as she turned, she flashed a smile at Lu Yibei, her eyes falling on the chicken drumstick in his hand, head tilted.

“What are you… doing?”

Lu Yibei looked at Nanling Rao Hua, then followed her gaze to his own bizarrely positioned right hand, the corner of his eye twitching. Whether it was a flash of inspiration or a brain freeze, he blurted out,

“I’m practicing magic tricks… Yeah, magic! Aren’t we going to the graduation dinner this weekend? I thought I’d practice a couple of tricks to perform for everyone at the dinner.”

“Magic?” Nanling Rao Hua tilted her head, her eyes skeptical.

“Yeah, magic! Look…” Lu Yibei said, suddenly thrusting the chicken drumstick forward.

To keep his girlfriend from getting suspicious, he could only apologize to Gu Qianqian!

Maybe you don’t know, but I’ve always been the type to put my girlfriend first-even if it means leaving my friends half-paralyzed, so…

Eat this big drumstick!

As Lu Yibei thought this, he shoved the chicken drumstick into Gu Qianqian’s mouth while she was completely unprepared.

In that instant, he’d already come up with excuses for whatever might happen next.

If the drumstick disappeared, it was a magic trick to make it vanish.

If it didn’t disappear but hung from Gu Qianqian’s mouth, it was a levitating drumstick trick.

If Gu Qianqian’s form was revealed because of this move…

Then it was a grand transformation! Surprised? Unexpected?

As Lu Yibei forcefully stuffed the drumstick into Gu Qianqian’s mouth, in that split second, both girls’ eyes widened almost simultaneously.

One was shocked at seeing the drumstick magically disappear before her eyes.

The other was choking as the drumstick was shoved deep into her throat.

It was an awkward situation, so awkward that no one could speak, and the living room was dead silent.

A few seconds later, seeing Gu Qianqian’s face turn from white to red, then purple, her eyes rolling back as she was about to suffocate, Lu Yibei snapped back to his senses and hurriedly yanked the drumstick out of her mouth.

“Pop!” A sound like a champagne cork echoed through the living room.

“……”

Why is the systems lying again? I clearly said I love him… Gu Qianqian thought.

“Whew!” Nanling Rao Hua let out a breath, her brows gradually relaxing. “Is it really magic?”

The chicken nugget vanished into thin air before her eyes, then reappeared out of nowhere. To ordinary people, that really counted as magic-quite an impressive kind, too.

She glanced at the family bucket packaging on the table, her tone gradually finding the rhythm befitting a heroine, “So you use all these family buckets to practice magic, huh?”

“Of course!” Lu Yibei replied with certainty.

“Then…” Nanling Rao Hua’s gaze swept around the living room, a sly glint flashing in her eyes.

“Yibei, besides chicken legs, can you make anything else disappear?”

Lu Yibei sneaked a look at Gu Qianqian’s mouth, clearly lacking confidence as he said, “Probably, I guess?”

If Gu Qianqian’s mouth could fit it…

Nanling Rao Hua raised her hand and pointed at the humidifier in the corner of the living room, smiling sweetly, “Then can you try that one?”

Lu Yibei, “……”

Gu Qianqian looked at Nanling Rao Hua, then at the cylindrical humidifier about half a meter tall and thirty centimeters in diameter, her eyes wide with shock.

“No problem, I can give it a try!” Lu Yibei said seriously, walking over and picking up the humidifier.

“!!!”

No way, right? That’s way too big-how could it possibly fit in a mouth!

Watching Lu Yibei carry the humidifier, step by step toward her, Gu Qianqian’s eyes widened as she clamped her mouth shut and shook her head desperately.

Then…

Lu Yibei returned to where he’d been standing, set the humidifier on the coffee table, and, taking advantage of the moment he turned around, shot Gu Qianqian an exasperated look. Then, like a shaman performing a ritual, he danced around the humidifier twice, flailing his arms and legs, and slapped both hands on top of it with a loud “smack!”

One, two, three…

He silently counted three numbers in his heart, then looked at Nanling Rao Hua, shrugged helplessly, and said, “Sorry, I guess my magic isn’t quite up to snuff yet-I can’t make something this big disappear.”

“Pfft–!”

Watching Lu Yibei seriously attempt to make the humidifier vanish, Nanling Rao Hua couldn’t help but burst out laughing. She waved her hand, “Alright, silly, come eat already, will you?”

She’d never expected him to actually make the humidifier disappear. Lu Yibei wasn’t a professional magician, after all. With amateur tricks, making a chicken nugget vanish was already impressive enough.

Hearing this, Gu Qianqian let out a silent sigh of relief, a sense of surviving a disaster welling up inside her.

—-

In the end, Lu Yibei was forced to sit at the dining table, with Nanling Rao Hua sitting across from him, her hands propped on the table, chin resting on her palms, watching him eat with a sweet smile. The slight upward curve of her lips and the shallow dimples in her cheeks seemed to hold a bowl of rice wine, so sweet and mellow.

As for Gu Qianqian, she could only watch Lu Yibei from afar, pitifully, as he finished off an entire bowl-about a pound and a half-of braised pork, leaving not a scrap behind.

Envy and jealousy mixed with a hint of resentment-just a little, not too much, for fear of being found out.

Unlike Gu Qianqian, who loved braised pork deeply, Lu Yibei actually didn’t like it at all.

After forcing down more than a pound of fatty pork, he felt as if the blood in his veins was turning into lard.

Seeing Lu Yibei’s “satisfied” expression, Nanling Rao Hua raised an eyebrow, “Well? My grandpa’s cooking hasn’t gotten worse, right?”

Though she was the one who cooked the braised pork, her skills were genuinely inherited from her grandpa, so calling it his cooking wasn’t wrong.

Lu Yibei gave a thumbs-up and nodded in affirmation, “Not at all-if anything, it’s even better now. I guess time has just made the old man’s skills more and more refined.”

“Yeah, still a bit short of state banquet level, but not by much.”

Although this bowl of braised pork was cloyingly sweet at first bite and bitterly salty in the aftertaste, and a few pieces-perhaps to aid digestion-still had some pig bristles left on purpose, making it clear it wasn’t made by Nanling’s old man.

But when your girlfriend cooks for you, even if it’s a nuclear reactor, you have to grit your teeth and eat it, then shower her with rainbow praise.

—-

Nanling Rao Hua hadn’t remembered wrong-Lu Yibei really did like braised pork.

Even now, she remembered the first time she visited her grandpa’s house. Both families gathered for a meal, and young Lu Yibei pulled the bowl of braised pork in front of himself and declared loudly, “Braised pork is my absolute favorite dish! Nobody try to take it from me today.”

Back then, he looked like a dazzling savior.

But memories can be deceiving.

In truth, Lu Yibei never liked braised pork.

If it hadn’t been for that first meeting with Nanling Rao Hua, when he saw her nearly in tears as Wang Meili tried to put a piece of braised pork in her bowl, he wouldn’t have shown off and claimed the dish for himself.

And later on, without even realizing it, Lu Yibei turned all the things Nanling Rao Hua didn’t like to eat into his own “favorite” delicacies.

Nanling Rao Hua “supervised” Yibei as he finished the braised pork, then chatted a while longer about some funny things from high school, before standing up and straightening her skirt.

“I should get going. If I don’t, Grandpa will start to worry.”

“You’re at my place, what’s there for the old man to worry about? Why not just stay over tonight?” Yibei said, his words full of obvious provocation.

He knew Nanling Rao Hua wouldn’t stay. As they grew older, she hadn’t stayed over at his place for a long time. After all, the old man of Nanling wasn’t at ease, not wanting an unexpected great-grandchild to disturb his devoted research life.

“In your dreams!” Nanling Rao Hua rolled her eyes, then pointed at the empty bowl on the table. “I’m leaving now. Remember to wash the dishes later.”

With that, she turned and walked toward the door.

But just as she opened the door to leave, her steps suddenly paused for a moment. Her gaze seemed to unintentionally sweep over the “empty” chair in the living room, and she frowned slightly.

Yibei noticed her gaze lingering for a long time in the direction of Gu Qianqian, and he silently cursed, quickly stepping forward to block her view.

“Ah-Hua, is there something else?” Yibei asked affectionately. “You don’t really want to stay, do you? If you do, the old man will break all my legs tomorrow morning.”

Nanling Rao Hua withdrew her gaze, put one hand on her hip, and tugged Yibei’s ear with the other, pouting, “As long as you know!”

“Of course I know.” Yibei broke free from Nanling Rao Hua’s delicate hand, rubbing his ear. “So, should I walk you downstairs?”

“No need!” Nanling Rao Hua gave Yibei’s chest a light punch with her pink fist. “It’s just two floors, I can go down myself.”

After a few steps, as if suddenly remembering something, she stopped and turned back. “Oh right, are you free tomorrow?”

“Let’s go book the place for the graduation dinner together, okay?”

“Tomorrow…” Yibei scratched the back of his head. “I’m not free tomorrow! I have a basketball game, and after that I’m going to the internet cafe to play games.”

“How about the day after? Aren’t you going to dance practice then? I’ll pick you up early, and then we can go together.”

“Alright! It’s a deal!” Nanling Rao Hua didn’t think anything of it, gave Yibei a sweet smile, and then skipped lightly down the stairs.

“It’s a deal!”

Watching Nanling Rao Hua leave, Yibei let out a silent sigh.

Sorry, Ah-Hua……

—-

“Bang!”

The door closed.

Nanling Rao Hua walked to the stairwell on the fourth floor and stopped.

She looked back at the door to Yibei’s home, not moving forward for a long time.

Time ticked by, and as the voice-activated light went out, darkness swallowed her figure.

“Sigh–!”

After a long while, a long sigh sounded, turning the light back on.

Nanling Rao Hua steadied herself, then started down the stairs.

—-

Not long after Nanling Rao Hua left.

Yibei slumped on the sofa, like an old cat that had just been neutered, with no worldly desires left.

While Yibei was zoning out and digesting, Gu Qianqian gazed longingly at the braised pork on the table, now just a bit of sauce left, her face full of bitterness.

How could they eat it so clean? Even a bit of meat scraps would have been nice!

Braised pork was one of her 365 favorite dishes.

Back when she worked part-time washing dishes at a restaurant, she could eat three pounds of rice just mixing it with the leftover meat scraps from the braised pork pot.

“Um, can I have a taste?” Tempted by the food, Gu Qianqian finally mustered all her courage and asked Yibei.

Yibei lifted his eyelids, followed Gu Qianqian’s gaze to the empty bowl with braised pork sauce on the table, and said weakly, “I advise you not to try it. You’ll regret it.”

“If you don’t let me try, how do you know I’ll regret it!” Gu Qianqian complained.

Yibei rolled his eyes at Gu Qianqian, too lazy to argue, got up and brought over the bowl, dipped a bit of sauce with his chopsticks, and with a look that seemed to say “you’re already dead,” held the chopsticks to her mouth.

“Hehe!” Gu Qianqian leaned forward, her little mouth sucking on the chopsticks.

“Slurp~!”

In an instant, the light faded from her eyes, her pupils quaked.

As the braised pork sauce entered her mouth, a bizarre taste exploded violently between her lips and teeth,

as if countless sharp-fanged claws were born in her mouth, covered in bitter burnt caramel and mingled grease, rampaging down her esophagus and into her stomach.

Finally, like a massive bomb, it exploded in her stomach, blossoming into a brilliant nightmare.

“Gag–gag–!”

After two dry heaves, Gu Qianqian nearly threw up 3.14 buckets out of the five buckets of fried chicken she’d eaten.

If I’ve done something wrong, let Calamity punish me…

Wait, no, she is Calamity! Gu Qianqian thought.

—-

The turmoil in her belly gradually calmed. Awakened from a nightmare, Gu Qianqian looked up at Lu Yibei, but all she saw was his tall, imposing figure walking toward the bedroom.

No wonder he’s one of the factors that could destroy the world-he actually ate that stuff! Gu Qianqian thought.

Before long, Lu Yibei, who had left, returned, now holding a blanket in his hand.

Expressionless, he moved Gu Qianqian, chair and all, next to the sofa, laid her down, gently covered her with the blanket, and then tossed out a flat “Good night!”

“Pa!”

With the sound of the remote switch, the living room was plunged into darkness.

—-

“Click!”

After closing the bedroom door and locking it, Lu Yibei sprang into action.

Locking the door, dragging the nightstand to block it, hanging a water cup on the doorknob… the whole process was smooth and practiced.

He’d done this kind of thing countless times in his dream memories, so he was very skilled at it.

Although doing all this felt a bit like he was mentally ill, but…

I’ve already got split personalities, and an extra nineteen years of memories in my head-are you talking to me about mental illness?

Lu Yibei thought as he placed the toilet plunger within reach, climbed onto the bed, pulled the covers over himself, and fished out his backup phone from under the pillow to send a message to one of his few friends-Su Mi.

Lu Yibei: “Su Mi, are you asleep?”

Su Mi: “It’s so early! Sleep my ass, of course I’m having fun! Get online and play games with me!”

Seeing Su Mi’s reply, Lu Yibei nodded slightly. This was the Su Mi he knew-a scatterbrained internet addict, completely different from the one in his dream memories.

That burly, bear-like guy doing embroidery was like a black bear spirit turning into a eunuch-the image was just too bizarre.

Lu Yibei: “Something came up today, next time for sure! I’m reaching out because I need a favor-urgent help!”

Su Mi: “Just say it! [Brothers for life.jpg]”

Lu Yibei: “I remember your dad works at a law firm, right? I have someone’s ID number here-can you ask him to help check some basic personal info?”

Su Mi: “Uh… Old Lu, you know that’s illegal, right?”

Lu Yibei: “Of course I know you can’t just look up someone’s personal info, but if I sue her, doesn’t that make it legit?”

This was Lu Yibei’s reason for getting Gu Qianqian’s ID number-he wanted to confirm whether “Gu Qianqian” was a real person or just a hallucination brought on by his dreams.

Su Mi: “???”

Indeed, when suing someone, if you don’t have their identity info, you can authorize a lawyer-with a law license and a firm’s investigation letter or introduction-to apply to the relevant authorities for a search.

Of course, this is limited to name, gender, birth date, birthplace, residence, family members, etc. As for personal property, loan, or communication info, that’s off-limits.

Su Mi: “But seriously, what are you suing her for?”

Lu Yibei: “Illegal home invasion! Listen, a girl just climbed through my window and broke into my house. I think there’s something really off about her! I want to check her out, mainly to confirm if she’s actually alive.”

Su Mi: “[Scared.jpg] If she’s not alive, is she a ghost? Old Lu, don’t freak me out in the middle of the night, okay?”

Lu Yibei: “Not gonna lie, I might’ve really run into a ghost.”

Feeling sorry for her pitiful look was one thing, but you still had to be cautious.

She was only staying one night, but being careful couldn’t hurt! Lu Yibei thought secretly.

Time slipped by as he waited for a reply.

A few minutes later, Lu Yibei finally got a new message from Su Mi.

Su Mi: “Old Lu, I just asked my dad. He said he’ll help you out tomorrow at work.”

Lu Yibei: “Then help me thank Uncle first. And don’t tell Ah-Hua about this! [Kiss.jpg]”

Su Mi: “Don’t gross me out, I’m not done yet! My dad just lectured me, told me to hang out with you less, and said you should go see a psychiatrist when you get a chance.”

Lu Yibei: “You might not believe it, but I actually went to the hospital for a checkup today.”

Su Mi: “So what did they say?”

Lu Yibei: “The doctor said I have split personalities, maybe even a latent psycho killer.”

Su Mi: “???”

A long pause.

Su Mi: “Old Lu, take care of yourself. When you’re better, I’ll come see you. [Respect.jpg]”

Lu Yibei, “……”

The little boat of friendship capsized just like that, the sound of waves “splashing” in his ears.

“Bzzzz–!”

His phone vibrated twice, buzzing.

Lu Yibei glanced at his phone-it was a message from Su Mi.

Su Mi: “Just kidding, Old Lu. How about I sneak out tomorrow and keep you company?”

The little boat of friendship flipped over… hey! It floated right back up again.

Lu Yibei: “The day after tomorrow. I’m going with Ah-Hua to book a place for our graduation dinner, I’ll call you to join us then.”

Su Mi: “OKK!”