Nanke Yifu Chapter 8

Chi Fu seasoned the prepared fish and set it aside. He cut the corn into small segments and then cross-cut them in the middle for easier eating. He put the corn and enoki mushrooms into the pot, stir-fried them with sauce, and set them aside. Next, he cut the ready-made flatbread into small diamond shapes. Once the fish was marinated enough, he put it into the oven. The side dishes would be added later, so he could prepare the shrimp first. Finally, Chi Fu held up the remaining ingredients in the shopping bag and asked Yan Laixi, “How do you plan to eat this?”

Inside was a bag of pre-cleaned squid, which Yan Laixi had specifically requested.

“Anything is fine,” Yan Laixi poked his head in and said, “This stuff is delicious even if you just wash it, toss it in the pot until it’s cooked, and pour some sauce on it.”

Chi Fu: “You should really get out of here.”

Yan Laixi couldn’t handle any spice. Chi Fu had never made completely non-spicy stir-fried squid before, so he quickly looked up a recipe online. He wasn’t sure how good it would taste, but it certainly wouldn’t be bad. After all, it couldn’t possibly be worse than “wash it, toss it in the pot until it’s cooked, and pour some sauce on it.”

When the grilled fish and squid were served, Chi Fu suddenly appeared wearing a disposable glove, holding a peeled shrimp, and feeding it to Yan Laixi. In his other hand, he held a cup of water.

To avoid dirtying his hands, Yan Laixi tilted his head back and ate directly from Chi Fu’s hand. Only after he swallowed did Chi Fu ask, “Is it spicy?”

Yan Laixi shook his head.

“That’s good.” With that, he returned to the kitchen and only came out after a long while, carrying the last two plates.

Yan Laixi looked at the plate of stir-fried shrimp and the plate of peeled shrimp that Chi Fu set down, asking, “Why is there an extra plate of peeled ones?”

“It’s for you,” Chi Fu said, pushing the plate of peeled shrimp toward Yan Laixi. “I realized the sauce was a bit spicy after I finished frying. I just tested it on you. If you scrape off the sauce and peel the shell, the meat inside isn’t spicy. I peeled them for you, so it should be fine.”

Yan Laixi felt a little embarrassed about having someone peel shrimp for him. “You really didn’t have to go to all that trouble. There’s plenty of other food.”

Chi Fu: “In times like this, you only need to say thank you.”

After speaking, he went to grab two bottles of drinks. Yan Laixi had been drinking water constantly during their last Hotpot meal, suggesting he was someone who habitually drank something while eating.

“Hurry and try it,” he urged, placing the chopsticks in Yan Laixi’s hand.

Yan Laixi held the chopsticks and pondered for a moment. The whole grilled fish hadn’t been touched, and Chi Fu had been busy cooking the entire meal by himself. It seemed rude to take the first bite. But eating only the side dishes might suggest he wasn’t interested in the main course. Since he had already tasted the shrimp, Yan Laixi decided to try the squid first.

As soon as the food was in his mouth, Chi Fu eagerly asked, “How is it?”

He couldn’t speak with food in his mouth, but Yan Laixi’s eyes answered for him.

Seeing the other person’s eyes sparkling and nodding frantically, Chi Fu also picked up his chopsticks and, before using them himself, placed a piece of grilled fish on Yan Laixi’s plate. “Try this one too. This should be even better.”

Yan Laixi swallowed the squid, picked up the piece of grilled fish, and put it in his mouth. Immediately, his eyes lit up again, and he nodded. The fish meat was very tender and could be swallowed with barely any chewing. Yan Laixi asked, “Are you secretly studying culinary arts? Your cooking is so good.”

Chi Fu dipped a piece of the cut flatbread into the grilled fish sauce and replied, “You could say that?”

“You could say that?” Yan Laixi picked up some enoki mushrooms and asked, “You studied it in high school but not college?”

“No, I studied winemaking. That counts as ‘drink’,” Chi Fu said. “I can also mix cocktails. Do you drink? Maybe you can try some sometime?”

“That’s a shame,” Yan Laixi said. “I don’t like the taste of alcohol.”

Chi Fu: “Then I’ll make you milk tea. I have many talents; I don’t just mix drinks.”

“Sounds good,” Yan Laixi agreed first, then added, “But I’m very picky about what I drink.”

“Such as?” Chi Fu asked.

Yan Laixi thought for a moment and said, “I basically dislike all toppings, including fruit pieces. I don’t drink matcha, I don’t drink bitter coffee, and there are various other flavors I dislike.”

It was a level of pickiness that even he couldn’t fully recall.

Chi Fu: “Maybe I should just ask you what you do like.”

“Hmm… I like… sweet but not too sweet? Oh, right, I like sour drinks. For example…” Yan Laixi searched his mind for a long time but couldn’t find a single name. He could only force out one that he hadn’t drunk in so long he wasn’t sure of the taste: “Bayberry juice, maybe?”

“You like sweet and sour? The kind that’s a bit more sour?” Chi Fu asked.

“Yes,” Yan Laixi nodded.

Just then, Yan Laixi’s phone chimed. When he picked it up to check, the little cat charm hanging on it brushed against his hand.

“Oh, right, I’ll go get your charm.”

He had specifically found it the night before and placed it on his desk. Chi Fu’s arrival that morning had been too sudden, and having just woken up, he had forgotten about it.

Yan Laixi stood up to go to the bedroom, but Chi Fu pulled him back. “Let’s eat first. I’m not leaving right away.”

“The food won’t get cold right away. I’ll just go grab it,” Yan Laixi said, only retracting his hand after Chi Fu let go. “I have a little story, too. You can listen while you eat.”

He returned quickly, holding a charm similar to the one on his phone.

Chi Fu took it and immediately attached it to his phone case. He held the phone in one hand and the charm in the palm of the other. “It’s orange, too.”

“Too?” Yan Laixi asked. He thought Chi Fu meant it was the same as his, but the one on his phone was white.

“The little dog you gave me last week was also orange,” Chi Fu put the charm and phone away and asked, “So, what’s the story? Is it about the charm?”

“Yes,” Yan Laixi said. “It’s not really a story, just a very coincidental thing.”

“Qiu Ye and I—the one who gave me the charm—we chat occasionally, and he told me this,” Yan Laixi pondered where to start. “Qiu Ye and Shiling, along with Xiaoyang and Qingzhu, are currently working on a music project together. Didn’t I tell you last time that this charm was from a friend of Qiu Ye’s? That friend is Shiling, and the charm is from the owner of a flower shop he frequents…”

“I know,” Chi Fu interrupted him. “You don’t need to repeat that. It’s too confusing; I can’t follow the connections.”

“Alright,” Yan Laixi said. If he skipped the interpersonal relationships, there wasn’t much left to the story. “If you can’t figure it out… should I just skip to the conclusion?”

“Yes, please,” Chi Fu nodded. He wanted Yan Laixi to talk more, but he truly couldn’t untangle that string of possessives.

“In short, Qiu Ye eventually discovered that the owner of the Cat Café is one half of the pair of Identical Twins they have been collaborating with for a long time,” Yan Laixi said. “Even more coincidentally, according to Shiling, the owner of that flower shop is also a pair of twins, and Xiaoyang and Qingzhu are also twins.”

Chi Fu raised an eyebrow. Although twins weren’t uncommon, the probability of this situation occurring was indeed low. “Are the people behind the other ‘possessives’ also twins?”

“I don’t know about that,” Yan Laixi said. “But I did learn another piece of very happy news.”

“What is it?”

“Xiaoyang and Qingzhu are Identical Twins, and they are both twenty-two this year,” Yan Laixi said, smiling very gently. He was genuinely happy for two people who were practically strangers.

Even Chi Fu, who didn’t know them at all, couldn’t help but be moved. It wasn’t just because Yan Laixi was happy. A miracle was happening not too far away, and even just hearing about it was enough to cause a small surprise.

Yan Laixi, after becoming familiar with someone, was not as quiet as he appeared when facing a crowd. He chatted incessantly with Chi Fu throughout the entire meal, saying whatever came to mind. Chi Fu could keep up with him on any topic and always managed to introduce the next topic perfectly when the current one was about to run dry.

While clearing the table, Chi Fu asked him, “Did you not like the corn cooked with the grilled fish?”

He had confirmed every ingredient with Yan Laixi when shopping, ensuring there was nothing he wouldn’t eat.

“Huh?” Yan Laixi was carrying a plate toward the kitchen. He stopped, looked back at Chi Fu, and then continued walking to the kitchen. “No, I liked it.”

Chi Fu: “But you didn’t eat a single piece of corn.”

“Ah…”

He had been so focused on talking that he forgot there was one thing he hadn’t tried.

It was too late to lie now. Yan Laixi said, “I find it hard to bite. I generally don’t eat things that are troublesome to eat. For example, the shrimp—if you hadn’t peeled it for me, I probably wouldn’t have eaten it even if it wasn’t spicy.”

“The shrimp is one thing, but the corn was cut into such small pieces. Is that still hard to bite?” Chi Fu asked. “What is your definition of troublesome to eat?”

“Things that easily dirty my mouth,” Yan Laixi said.

He had only been formally interacting with Chi Fu for two days, so he still wanted to maintain some image. Corn might not look graceful to eat. Even if he remembered to eat a couple of pieces, he would only eat them carefully, holding a napkin and maintaining his composure.

“Then let me stay for dinner,” Chi Fu said, half-testing and half-asking. “I’ll stir-fry corn kernels and shrimp for you tonight?”

“Sounds good. There’s shredded cheese in the fridge. Can we make cheesy baked corn?” Yan Laixi said. “But skip the shrimp.”

“We can do that.” Chi Fu was so happy that the time he could spend at Yan Laixi’s house had been extended that he was practically radiating little flowers. He didn’t forget the second half of the request. “Why skip the shrimp? Don’t want to go out and buy more?”

“No,” Yan Laixi put the used plates in the sink. Adhering to the principle of “cook but don’t wash dishes,” he took charge of the cleanup. “It’s because I don’t eat shrimp meat.”

“Huh?” Chi Fu didn’t understand.

Yan Laixi explained while washing the dishes, raising his voice slightly over the running water. “I mean, I’ll eat shrimp with the shell on, though I don’t eat it much because I don’t like peeling it. I’ll eat it prepared almost any way. But I won’t eat frozen shrimp meat, not a single bite.”

“What about shrimp paste?” Chi Fu asked.

Yan Laixi: “I didn’t use to eat it, but I can accept it now.”

Chi Fu felt that if he wanted to perfectly master what Yan Laixi ate and didn’t eat, the only way was to keep asking Yan Laixi himself and commit it to memory.

“Then tonight we can…” Halfway through his sentence, his phone played a specific notification sound. Chi Fu told Yan Laixi to wait a few minutes and went aside to check his phone.

The update time for Nanke’s serialized novel had arrived. No one could delay his reading, not even Nanke himself.

Well, actually, Yan Laixi didn’t need him to do anything right now. If the other person called him, Chi Fu would gladly put down his phone and look at it later.

When he reluctantly pressed the lock button, Yan Laixi had finished washing the dishes and came out of the kitchen.

“What’s wrong?” Yan Laixi asked. “Is something going on?”

Chi Fu looked at the author himself and suddenly thought of a serious question. “Am I delaying your update? Will there still be something to read tomorrow?”

Yan Laixi was stunned for a moment, then looked at the clock. He understood everything, and his mood was a bit complicated. “You’re in my house… right next to me, reading the novel I wrote?”

“Yes.” Chi Fu didn’t notice Yan Laixi’s slightly twitching expression; he was only concerned about whether he would see the little red dot indicating an update tomorrow. “You won’t be skipping an update tomorrow, will you?”

“No, I have drafts saved,” Yan Laixi said. He still couldn’t quite accept someone reading his work right next to him in private. It felt awkward, and he wanted to end the topic quickly, but Chi Fu wouldn’t let him.

He had drafts saved. The next parts were already written, stored on Yan Laixi’s computer, on the desk in the bedroom, within a distance he could see from where he sat. Truly close at hand.

Chi Fu grabbed Yan Laixi’s forearm and pleaded playfully, “Nanke, Great Nanke, good brother, can you let me read ahead? Please, please?”

Great Nanke refused flatly: “No.”

It was one thing for him to read the already updated parts on his own phone in the living room while Yan Laixi washed dishes. But reading the unpublished parts on his computer, possibly even right next to him, felt to Yan Laixi like agreeing to run naked in the street.

“Fine,” Chi Fu didn’t press the issue after being refused. If he read it today, he wouldn’t have anything to read tomorrow. If he couldn’t read it today, he could read it tomorrow. One day didn’t make a difference.

Seeing that Chi Fu wasn’t insistent, Yan Laixi breathed a sigh of relief. Since it had been brought up, he asked Chi Fu, “Which of my novels do you like?”

“Many,” Chi Fu said. “I like most of them. As long as it comes from your pen, I even enjoy genres I wouldn’t normally read.”

Yan Laixi: “Then your absolute favorite?”

“My absolute favorite… if I had to choose, it would be the first one I read. In terms of sheer quality, there are two or three others that are comparable, but perhaps because that was the first time I got to know you, it feels especially unique,” Chi Fu said, sitting cross-legged on the sofa and hugging a cushion. “However, I can definitely pick out the one I like the least.”

“Oh?”

Yan Laixi thought the answer would be one of his earlier works, but Chi Fu’s answer completely exceeded his expectations.

Chi Fu said, “Flying Mirror Separation.”

Yan Laixi thought for a moment and asked, “Is it because the overall tone of that book is quite depressing?”

“It’s related, but no,” Chi Fu explained. “It’s because I felt you weren’t happy when you wrote it.”

If someone disliked one of his books and asked him to guess the reason, Yan Laixi might guess they thought his writing was poor, that it was boring, that they disliked the subject matter, or that there were unacceptable plots or concepts. But no matter what, he would never have thought the reason might be that they felt he was unhappy while writing it.

Or rather, although text can certainly reflect a person’s state of mind, he never thought that, without deliberate effort, his mood while writing would be detected by the reader.

“Why do you think that?” Yan Laixi asked.

“I’m not entirely sure,” Chi Fu said. “I just felt like you were very sad, like the protagonist who already knows the predetermined ending.”

Yan Laixi also took off his slippers and sat beside him, hugging his knees. For the first time, he spoke to someone about the beginning of this work. “When I first started writing my first novel, I just wanted to use words to record something.”

“To record my Dream.”

“At the time, I didn’t think writing would become a job that could support me, and I didn’t even think anyone would read it. I only posted it to prevent the words I wrote from being lost if some accident happened.”

“My Anomaly is the Dream. Overly real, beautiful Dreams.”

“But Dreams always end, and the people in the Dream and I always have to part. The me in the Dream didn’t know that this separation was just waking up from the Dream, nor did I know that I could see that person again just by falling asleep.”

“So, even though they were beautiful Dreams, honestly, they weren’t very pleasant.” Yan Laixi paused, then continued, “I originally thought it would be better if I could become lucid in the Dream. If I was lucid, I wouldn’t be sad about the separation.”

“Until one day, I actually had a lucid Dream.”

“It wasn’t until that day that I realized that being lucid in the Dream made it even sadder.”

“I knew I could see him again as long as I fell asleep, but I also knew we would definitely part. The separation overshadowed the reunion. The more beautiful the Dream, the more I couldn’t help but think about what the scene of separation would look like.”

“Flying Mirror Separation was that lucid Dream of mine.”

Chi Fu was silent for a moment, then asked, “Did the person in the Dream also have the character ‘Feng’ in their name?”

“Yes,” Yan Laixi nodded. “His name was Feng Su.”

Raindrops began to patter outside the window. Driven by an impulse, Chi Fu asked, “Was he… your lover?”

“Huh?” Yan Laixi thought he was asking about their relationship in the Dream. He said, “Not necessarily. Just like the novels I write, sometimes he’s a lover, sometimes a friend, sometimes a relative, and sometimes just a special person.”

This statement meant that, at least for now, Yan Laixi had not confused the Dream with reality, and he did not yet believe that his relationship with the person in the Dream should affect his relationships with others in reality, such as… a Romantic Relationship.

In that case…

Chi Fu secretly pinched himself, driving the inexplicable and unrealistic thoughts out of his head.