Chapter 383: Chapter 382 Misunderstanding
In the private room, all the dishes had been served except for Jiang Feng’s sweet and sour yam.
Since this meal was specifically arranged for Jiang Shoucheng to have his own private feast, Jiang Zaidi was just tagging along, so there weren’t many dishes, just braised pork knuckle, chopped chili fish head, “sea, land, and air” mixed fried rice, mapo tofu, chrysanthemum fish, two small bowls of porridge, and the sweet and sour yam still in the pot.
The portions of each dish weren’t particularly large; Sir Jiang had deliberately picked a smaller pork knuckle. After the afternoon’s events, Sir Jiang suddenly realized that among his four grandsons, only the ever-under-200-pounds Jiang Feng and the recently slimmed-down due to studies Jiang Ran had girlfriends. It dawned on him that the other two might indeed be too fat to find girlfriends.
Nowadays, young people think about nothing but eating. They don’t do physical work and sit around even at their jobs without exercising. These two disappointing grandsons lacked any knack for cooking and couldn’t toss around in the kitchen daily like Jiang Feng and Jiang Jiankang. Jiang Zaidi and Jiang Shoucheng were puffy and couldn’t be compared to their strong-an built father at all. With their bodies full of fat and flab, they’d probably float if they fell into a river, which truly could affect their future prospects of finding wives.
In Sir’s heart, these two grandsons might be disappointing, but they couldn’t be so disappointing that they end up not being able to find wives.
He even started pondering how to drop a hint to his eldest daughter-in-law to get her and the second daughter-in-law to start paying attention to their sons’ corpulence.
.
Jiang Zaidi and Jiang Shoucheng knew that Ji Xue and Ji Xia would likely join them for the meal soon, so they sat in the private room with reserve, waiting. They used eye contact and brief words to divvy up the pork knuckle on the table, creating a very harmonious atmosphere.
Ji Xue, leading Ji Xia, climbed the stairs and entered the private room. She nodded and smiled at Jiang Zaidi and Jiang Shoucheng, then found a seat and sat down.
In fact, Ji Xue had only seen Jiang Shoucheng and Jiang Zaidi before and had only spoken to them for the first time at the train station that afternoon, so their relationship was quite distant, and she only retained a vague impression of their faces and built.
Ji Xue glanced at Jiang Shoucheng, who she generally remembered as Jiang Feng’s cousin working in the hospital, and noticed he seemed much thinner. She remembered that the last time Sir Jiang Weiming celebrated his birthday, these two brothers looked about the same build, but now Jiang Shoucheng was visibly slimmer than Jiang Zaidi, and his clothes seemed rather ill-fitting and baggy.
“Since everyone is here, let’s eat before the food gets cold. My younger brothers will probably come up later. You guys take turns eating, right? Let’s start eating,” Jiang Shoucheng said as he picked up his chopsticks and pointed at the pork knuckle in front of him.
Jiang Zaidi, not wanting to be outdone, reached his chopsticks towards the part of the knuckle he’d set his sights on.
Ji Xia: ???
From the moment she arrived until she sat down at the dining table, Ji Xia had kept her head down, her back bowed, and was taciturn. Only now did she raise her head, counting the dishes on the table with some disbelief.
Everyone’s here?
4 people share 7 dishes and there’s so much staple food?
Could it be that… Beiping people all eat this much?
Ji Xia, who had lived in the town and village with no mobile phone, no TV at home, no friends, and seldom any contact with the outside world as if she lived in the mountains, hadn’t changed even after running away from home for almost three months, hiding in a clothing factory that provided room and board, afraid to expose her information. Her interactions with others were practically zero, leading a very sheltered life.
Seeing Ji Xia staring blankly at the mixed grain porridge on the table, Ji Xue thought she might want some porridge. In an attempt to mend their previously shattered sisterly bond, caused by Ji Xue violently dragging her home and beating her, Ji Xue proactively picked up a bowl to scoop some porridge for her sister.
Actually, Ji Xia didn’t want to drink porridge at all. She craved meat.
She couldn’t afford meat at school, didn’t have much opportunity to eat it at home, and only got to enjoy meat when visiting her grandmother’s house during holidays.
Even during the three months she ran away from home, she scrimped on her wages, hiding them away instead of spending. The meals at the all-inclusive factory where she worked lacked meat, and when meat was available, it was scraps that were poorly cooked. The succulent and aromatic meat on the table was a world apart from that meat.
Even if she was to have porridge, she didn’t want the mixed grain porridge; she wanted the other kind with the visible bits of meat—the preserved egg and lean pork porridge.
But considering her currently fractured relationship with her sister, Ji Xia stayed quiet, bowed her head, and seemed to acquiesce.
Ji Xia picked up a spoon, scooped up a spoonful of mixed grain porridge, and brought it to her mouth, sadly eyeing the meaty dishes on the table.
She was well aware that she was only there to freeload a meal, so she resisted the urge to pick up her chopsticks and gulped down the entire spoonful of mixed grain porridge.
Sweet.
It was still very glutinous.
Smooth.
It tasted much better than the canned eight-treasure porridge Pingping had bought for her from the supermarket during the New Year.
Delicious.
One bite, two bites.
One spoonful, two spoonfuls.
Ji Xia had never had such delicious eight-treasure porridge before, and she had never imagined that there could be a porridge in the world that tasted better than meat and snacks.
It even tasted better than the chicken stew that Grandma made during the New Year.
As she ate, Ji Xia was no longer satisfied with slowly scooping with a spoon—drinking porridge this way was just too inefficient. Ji Xia put down the spoon, picked up the small bowl, and started to gulp down the eight-treasure porridge.
However, Ji Xia’s wolfing down the porridge was absolutely refined when compared to Jiang Shoucheng who had not tasted meat or even the flavor of sour and spicy shredded potatoes for half a month at the same table.
Ji Xue, who was closely watching Ji Xia’s actions while eating, saw her starting to drink porridge from the bowl and remembered how Ji Xia loved candy as a child, needing to keep a piece in her mouth even while sleeping. Before she even entered primary school, she already had three cavities. Crying and screaming during tooth extraction, Ji Xue thought that Ji Xia must really love Jiang Feng’s eight-treasure porridge.
After Ji Xia finished a bowl of eight-treasure porridge, Ji Xue took Ji Xia’s bowl and scooped another bowl for her.
Ji Xia was resentful.
Indeed, this was the most delicious porridge she had ever tasted, and for the first time, she found a porridge that tasted better than meat, but she really wanted to eat meat.
Especially in a situation where the table was full of meat, the various enticing scents of meat infiltrated her nostrils, making her particularly crave meat.
That plate with the shiny, thick sauce, having been largely carved up, and the skin and meat all exposed, was shimmering as it seemed to beckon to Ji Xia—the pork knuckle looked very delicious.
And there was that plate of bright red, emanating a spicy aroma, even the soup at the bottom was red, also largely divided up, with the white fish meat lying open on the plate still steaming—the chopped chili fish head seemed incredibly tasty without even needing a glimpse, a single whiff was enough to tell.
Not to mention the chrysanthemum fish placed in the middle of the table. Although Ji Xia couldn’t tell at all what kind of meat it was from its appearance, such a dish, fried to a golden brown and topped with a sauce, was what truly captivated Ji Xia the most.
All children love fried foods like fried chicken, and Ji Xia, being just a 16-year-old minor, was no exception. Although she had never had any fried food other than the fried meatballs her Grandma made during the New Year, this innate preference was unchangeable.
Sang Ming did the plating for the chrysanthemum fish. Although Ji Xia did not know what he was thinking when plating this time—definitely not a fish-like thought process. Not just Ji Xia, even Ji Xue, if she didn’t know the name of the dish was chrysanthemum fish, would not have recognized it as fish flesh with Sang Ming’s peculiar plating style.
Ji Xue handed the second bowl of eight-treasure porridge to Ji Xia.
Ji Xia looked at the eight-treasure porridge in front of her, her head hung even lower.
“If you like it, drink a couple more bowls,” Ji Xue said with concern, trying to mend the ruptured sisterly bond.
Ji Xia’s body still bore the marks where Ji Xue and their mother had lashed her with bamboo in a fit of anger, and Ji Xue was the kind that would regret right after hitting. She wasn’t good with words, so she could only continually guess at Ji Xia’s thoughts and then take certain actions to try to repair their sisterly relationship.
Ji Xia picked up the bowl and began to drink the porridge.
Her sister never understood her, never had!
She wanted to eat meat.