Nanke Yifu Chapter 5
bySeeking Chi Fu (5)
Due to his extreme pickiness, Yan Laixi usually only ate at three or four fixed restaurants when dining out, and Hotpot was not among them. If he wanted hotpot, he preferred cooking it at home.
This meant that the restaurant he and Chi Fu went to was one he had never visited before.
He had calculated everything, but failed to account for the fact that this restaurant didn’t offer a Split Pot.
Fortunately, his companion was thoughtful. Chi Fu slid the ordering tablet across the table between them and leaned slightly over the table. Seeing that they could only choose one soup base, Chi Fu asked him first: “Can you eat spicy food?”
Yan Laixi shook his head. Good, the biggest crisis was averted.
Since he couldn’t eat spicy food, Chi Fu quickly scanned the non-spicy options and asked, “Tomato, mushroom, or bone broth? Which one do you want?”
“Any is fine,” Yan Laixi said. Actually, he didn’t eat tomato hotpot either, but since he was treating, it felt impolite to make the other person accommodate him in every way.
There was a one-third chance that the unwanted result would be chosen, and in these crucial moments where being chosen was unpleasant but not fatal, the one-third often turned into one.
“Then, tomato?”
“Mhm.” Yan Laixi agreed without hesitation, subconsciously pursing his lips.
It was fine. Tomato hotpot wasn’t so bad that he couldn’t eat a single bite, unlike cooked tomatoes. It would just be a bit unpleasant.
Chi Fu had no dietary restrictions and was genuinely not picky at all. Yan Laixi watched as the items he ordered became increasingly strange. When the pig brain was added to the list, he couldn’t help but twitch at the corner of his eye.
He quickly adjusted his expression. It wasn’t his place to control what others liked to eat; it would be rude. But when he saw Chi Fu order a serving of cilantro, rudeness became unavoidable. After all, this was their first meal together, and they had only learned each other’s names today. If he were to put down his chopsticks after only two bites, or even refuse to eat at all, that would be even more impolite.
“Are you going to… boil it?” Yan Laixi asked, resting his wrist on the table and pointing a finger at the cilantro icon in the corner of the screen.
“Mhm.” Chi Fu nodded and asked, “You don’t eat cilantro?”
“It’s fine,” Yan Laixi said. “It’s not hard to pick out if it’s not chopped.”
After two sentences of internal struggle, Yan Laixi still felt he could force himself to try.
“But boiling it will affect the flavor of everything else,” Chi Fu said. “And I was thinking of tearing the leaves off and tossing them in.”
“That’s… fine too,” Yan Laixi said. “It’s not completely unacceptable.”
No, absolutely not. Cilantro smelled awful even just sitting on the table. If one sprig was added to a stir-fry, the whole dish was ruined. Boiling it would make the flavor cling to everything. Since he was eating with someone else, he couldn’t just rinse off the food before picking it up. Was he supposed to just swallow it down? He would probably throw up. Maybe he should order two extra bottles of drinks to wash it down.
“Pfft.” Chi Fu laughed out loud, scrolling back to delete the cilantro and several other items that many people couldn’t tolerate. “How bad are you at refusing people? You’re treating, not me. Why are you so nervous?”
Yan Laixi didn’t know how he had given himself away, causing Chi Fu to delete the string of items and even change the soup base to bone broth. Treating someone to a meal and having so many things he couldn’t eat made him feel like he was making the other person uncomfortable.
“It really is fine. If you want to eat it, just order it. Don’t worry about me.”
“I don’t want to eat it,” Chi Fu said. “I just wanted to test what it would take for you to refuse me.”
When he saw they could only choose one soup base and learned Yan Laixi didn’t eat spicy food, Chi Fu had initially wanted Yan Laixi to choose the base. The three options made little difference to him, but Yan Laixi said any was fine, so he chose the first one.
The other person agreed readily, not seeming unwilling, but Chi Fu noticed Yan Laixi pursed his lips. He didn’t think much of it then, but the more he ordered, the more something felt off.
The restaurant they chose served most items in very small portions so that solo diners could enjoy a variety of ingredients. Chi Fu noticed that besides the most common meat rolls and slices, Yan Laixi only ordered fish tofu and tripe. When he scrolled to vegetables and bean products, Yan Laixi didn’t even glance at them.
Yan Laixi had suggested hotpot. Usually, the person suggesting the meal wouldn’t choose a place where they disliked the food. This meant he had chosen an option he thought both of them could enjoy, yet there were still many things he absolutely didn’t want to eat.
Was he picky? If he was this picky, hotpot was indeed a good choice for eating with someone he had just met. This also explained why Yan Laixi, who didn’t seem like someone willing to make decisions, had immediately suggested hotpot after being asked if he had any dietary restrictions. Did he perhaps genuinely dislike the tomato soup base too?
Chi Fu had asked Yan Laixi if there was anything he didn’t eat or couldn’t accept, and Yan Laixi told him not to worry about him. This response confirmed it—he was picky.
If his behavior at the book signing—not stopping something that made him uncomfortable—was for the sake of his image, now they were just having a private meal, and he was the one paying. If he truly disliked something but was too embarrassed to say so, his personality was far too yielding.
Chi Fu decided to test how far he could push before Yan Laixi would stop him. If his guess was right, asking directly would only result in Yan Laixi saying it was fine. If he was wrong, he could just pretend he had a sudden craving for something exotic.
He deliberately chose items he knew many people couldn’t accept, especially those that were psychologically jarring, like bullfrog and pig brain. When he ordered the pig brain, he saw Yan Laixi’s eye twitch, but it was only a twitch. He quickly regained his normal expression and said nothing.
Plan A failed, so Chi Fu changed tactics and began ordering things that easily tainted the flavor of the broth. Cilantro was the absolute first choice.
This worked.
“Are you going to… boil it?” Yan Laixi asked him, his tone conflicted, clearly showing he was one of those people who absolutely couldn’t stand cilantro.
“Mhm.” Chi Fu nodded, asking the obvious, “You don’t eat cilantro?”
“It’s fine, it’s not hard to pick out if it’s not chopped,” Yan Laixi said.
He said it lightly, but Chi Fu knew other people who hated cilantro. Some would refuse to eat a whole pot of food if half a sprig was added, even if their own bowl had no cilantro leaves in it, because they could still smell the flavor. This was not something you could just pick out.
“But boiling it will affect the flavor of everything else,” Chi Fu said, almost deliberately provoking him. “And I was thinking of tearing the leaves off and tossing them in.”
“That’s… fine too. It’s not completely unacceptable.”
“Pfft.”
His face clearly said it was completely unacceptable.
Chi Fu stopped teasing him. With Yan Laixi’s personality, he probably wouldn’t struggle until he was in unbearable pain, even if Chi Fu threw him into the pot to boil. He deleted the random items he had ordered and changed the soup base: “How bad are you at refusing people? You’re treating, not me. Why are you so nervous?”
Even though he had clearly been exposed, Yan Laixi insisted, “It really is fine. If you want to eat it, just order it. Don’t worry about me.”
“I don’t want to eat it. I just wanted to test what it would take for you to refuse me,” Chi Fu said, then asked Yan Laixi, “Does this make you unhappy?”
He asked, but he wasn’t worried about Yan Laixi getting angry. Given Yan Laixi’s personality, he wasn’t worried that Chi Fu was just making an excuse to make him feel better about accepting the change. Chi Fu finished deleting the items and put the tablet back to reorder: “Being picky isn’t embarrassing. And I’m not picky, so it’s not like I won’t eat what you like. Just say what you don’t like.”
“No,” Yan Laixi answered his question first, then said, “I’m too picky. If we only ate what I like, you wouldn’t have many options.”
“I can tell,” Chi Fu said. If he wasn’t that picky, Chi Fu wouldn’t have guessed he disliked the tomato base. “So you were just going to completely ignore whether you could eat this meal? Other things aside, you weren’t even going to stop me from ordering the soup base or the cilantro?”
“I did stop you,” Yan Laixi mumbled softly.
“You call that stopping me?”
Although he wasn’t as stunning as Yan Laixi, Chi Fu considered himself good-looking—at the very least, he wasn’t fierce, ugly, or scary. He was also young and not a stuffy person, so he shouldn’t remind Yan Laixi of some intimidating elder or teacher.
So what was making Yan Laixi so tense during this meal?
“Big Brother, how old are you?” Chi Fu asked jokingly. “Even a three-year-old can tell the difference between ‘don’t put that in’ and ‘I can pick it out myself,’ right?”
Yan Laixi didn’t correct the overly familiar address, nor did he argue further. Instead, he said, “You really are younger than me.”
Hearing that Chi Fu was just testing him, Yan Laixi not only wasn’t upset but felt relieved, as he truly disliked the tomato base and couldn’t stand cilantro.
He wasn’t embarrassed to admit he was picky. If he only avoided two or three things, or only one or two categories like other people, Yan Laixi would have told Chi Fu right when they started ordering.
The things Yan Laixi didn’t eat could be divided into two categories: this and that. The problem was the sheer volume. Although hotpot mostly avoided this issue except for the soup base and cilantro, he had already rejected the spicy option and felt embarrassed to be picky again. Since he had said any was fine, rejecting the tomato base felt like he was messing with the other person. As for the cilantro, since it was already tomato base, a little extra unpleasantness wouldn’t hurt.
When Chi Fu jokingly called him Big Brother, Yan Laixi felt a bit awkward about the title, but his attention quickly shifted to the other issue.
“How did we get sidetracked?” Chi Fu said. “I’m definitely younger than you. Based on my birthday, I’m not even twenty yet, so calling you Big Brother is fine, right?”
“…Maybe not,” Yan Laixi said, then changed his mind two seconds later. “If you want to call me that, it’s fine.”
It was just a title, not an insult. If Chi Fu wanted to use it, he could. He would get used to hearing it.
“Do I look scary?” Chi Fu suddenly asked him.
“Huh?” Yan Laixi didn’t immediately grasp the connection between the sentences.
“Me.” Chi Fu pointed to himself. “Do I look like I’m going to eat someone if I get upset?”
Yan Laixi shook his head.
Not only was Chi Fu not scary, but his face and demeanor actually made him look a little cute in Yan Laixi’s eyes.
Chi Fu asked, “Then why are you afraid of me?”
Yan Laixi was confused: “I’m not afraid of you.”
“Then why are you always so timid?” Chi Fu said. “You won’t say what you don’t like to eat, and you said you didn’t want me to call you that, then immediately changed your mind.”
“There’s no need,” Yan Laixi said. “It’s not a big deal. I can handle it.”
The former was mainly because this was his first, and likely only, time eating with Chi Fu, and he had initiated the invitation, partly to thank the other person for helping him. The latter was genuinely irrelevant; although it felt a little strange at first, he didn’t dislike it.
“There is a need,” Chi Fu said. “If you don’t like something, you need to clearly express it. You think this time it’s not a big deal and say nothing, so the other person doesn’t know. Next time, they might push it further. Take the fan interaction time, for example. At first, it was just talking or taking a photo. Later, some people wanted to play little games. At first, some things might have just made you feel a little awkward, and you said nothing. Then some things made you clearly uncomfortable, but you still said nothing and hid it so well that no one could tell you disliked it. The other person didn’t know, so they might continue planning things in that direction, which led to today’s situation.”
“They didn’t mean any harm,” Yan Laixi said.
“They truly didn’t mean any harm, and most of them are very good people,” Chi Fu said. “Like the girl standing in front of me today. She immediately stepped aside when I said I had an emergency. She didn’t consider whether it was worth it to give up her prime spot—which she got by waking up early and queuing since entry—and leave before her carefully prepared interaction was over, all for a stranger with an emergency that might only save ten seconds. She didn’t even need to hear my excuse.”
“She is a very good person, but that doesn’t mean she is a saint, and just because she has no ill intent doesn’t mean you have to accept everything she does,” Chi Fu said. He didn’t know why this time, which should have been spent enjoying what might be the only private moment with his favorite author, had turned into him earnestly advising Yan Laixi to learn how to refuse, but since he had started, he had to continue. “Everyone has a different personality, and their views on many things are naturally different. It’s completely normal for you to dislike something they find fun. And what happened today was genuinely a bit much. Anyone sitting there would have been startled by her actions.”
“You can express your feelings subtly, or in a joking way,” Chi Fu said. “Actually, it’s fine to just say you don’t like it directly, as long as your attitude is good—though I doubt you’d ever have a bad attitude. Most people should understand.”
“I know,” Yan Laixi listened patiently to his long speech, waited three seconds, and only spoke when he confirmed there was nothing more. “But they spend money and energy just to see me for those few dozen seconds, that one minute. They might have carefully prepared those interactions beforehand, or suddenly thought of them and remembered until they stood in front of me. In short, they are important expressions of goodwill. I don’t want to… prevent their ideas from being realized because of my personal reasons.”
“Think about it,” Yan Laixi said, resting his chin on his hand and thinking for a few seconds. “If you accidentally saw something you thought your best friend would definitely love, and they had to be there in person to get it, but your friend has said they don’t like going out, so you have to give up. Wouldn’t you feel regretful?”
Chi Fu: “I can choose something I think he would definitely like and can get without having to leave the house.”
“But they aren’t the same thing,” Yan Laixi said. “Wouldn’t you feel regretful about the first thing?”
“No,” Chi Fu answered decisively. “My thinking that he would definitely like it doesn’t mean he actually will, but his dislike of going out is certain. If I ask him to come, I will definitely make him unhappy before I can possibly make him happy. Making him unhappy so that he might be happy—that’s not right, is it?”
Yan Laixi: “That’s true, but I would still feel regretful because I couldn’t bring it directly to him.”
“You feel regretful because you couldn’t bring it directly to him, which means you also wouldn’t choose to make him go out, right?” Chi Fu changed the subject. “Then, will you blame me? I interrupted her today.”
“Why would I?” Yan Laixi waved his hands repeatedly. “You clearly saw I was uncomfortable and were trying to help me.”
“See? It’s the same result, but you don’t think it’s wrong when I do it. You’re just used to finding fault with yourself. But have you ever considered if they truly want you to be like this? As your loyal reader, I certainly don’t,” Chi Fu said, pointing at the bubbling hotpot. “Just like today, you don’t like tomato hotpot. If I didn’t know and ordered it anyway, I might feel a little regretful afterward, a little embarrassed for making you eat something you dislike.”
“But if we kept eating hotpot together occasionally, and I never knew, and I often, or even always, ordered tomato hotpot,” Chi Fu made a gesture of stabbing himself. “When I finally found out you don’t eat tomato hotpot, I’d probably want to beat myself up.”
“They had no ill intent, but because you disliked something and didn’t say anything, you inadvertently made them do something bad,” Chi Fu said. “I’m one of them. Even if you didn’t necessarily remember me before today, I’ve been to every one of your book signings. At least every time I come to see you, I hope to see a happy you, and I hope your smile isn’t something you have to force onto your face when I stand across from you.”
“That’s true… I will find a way to express it, if there’s a way that won’t make them unhappy. But,” Yan Laixi said, “You can remove the ‘not necessarily’ part. Even though we haven’t talked much before today, I’ve always remembered you, from the first time you stood across from me, I remember you at every event.”