Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
“That’s what I want.” Nian Junting nodded. “If I made it look too real, you might think of me as a half-hearted man. If you got really jealous and left me, what would I do? I wanted you to discover that I was pretending at first sight, but at the same time, I wanted your heart to ache a little when you saw me with another woman.”
Luosang couldn’t think of a word to say for a long while. He had low EQ, but he was evil. “Alright, I’ll get you some food. I can’t get you any delicate cuisines from fancy restaurants, if that’s what you want. I’ll just go out and see what I can find nearby.” Luosang sighed.
“Will I be poisoned?” Nian Junting frowned. “I don’t think the foods that you can find around here are clean.”
“Why are you making it so complicated?” Luosang felt speechless. “Don’t the other patients eat those foods? None of them are poisoned. Speaking of which, you were a special forces soldier, after all. Were you allowed to be so picky during field training? Were you able to bring a Michelin starred chef when you were on missions?”
“I was different before. I ate anything back then.” Nian Junting suddenly knitted his brows, his eyes showing disgust. He frowned and said, “I became like this because this thing happened. For the rest of my life, I’ll feel sick anytime I recall it. It happened not long after I graduated from the US and came back. It was summer, Xiao Si and I and some other people went out for an investigation. We ordered a few dishes in a restaurant. I was starving, so I first started eating the cold dish in the sauce. When one of my friends reached his chopsticks toward that dish, he saw the food was covered in tiny maggots…”
Picturing that scene, Luosang suddenly wanted to throw up, too.
“So you ate a lot of maggots?” she asked.
Nian Junting closed his eyes. A deeply pained look flashed across his face as he responded, “I was starving, so I didn’t look at it carefully. Afterward, I took the dish and looked closely, then found so many tiny maggots in it. I guess every piece of vegetable in that bowl had over ten maggots on it. For a very long while after that, I didn’t dare to eat away from home. Sometimes, I had to do that for social engagements, but I never ate anything from a restaurant that was graded lower than A.”
Luosang now understood why he was always so strict about food safety. Indeed, the food served in many restaurants wasn’t clean. However, she doubted that any other person had eaten a mouthful of maggots like he had.
“Since that thing happened, I never eat in a restaurant graded lower than A. Last year, I broke my rule because I wanted to have beef noodles with you.” Nian Junting glanced at Luosang with an aggrieved look and continued, “My stomach ached after I had those beef noodles.”
“Really?” Luosang replied, “I ate in that place over ten times when I was a caregiver. My stomach never ached.”
“I didn’t lie,” Nian Junting said. His stomach ached the second day after he had the beef noodles, and both Steward Wu and Doctor Han confirmed that it was because he had the stomach flu. But still, he firmly believed that it was because of the beef noodles.
“You see, I’ve been breaking my rules and sacrificing for you since the very beginning,” he continued, looking Luosang in the eyes. Those eyes of his seemed to be asking—aren’t you touched?
“Alright, I know it now. I’ll certainly find a maggot-free restaurant for you near the hospital,” Luosang joked. When the look on Nian Junting’s face turned sullen again, she left while laughing.
She worried that Nian Junting might need her help to use the bathroom, so she quickly returned with two bowls of lanzhou stretched noodles.
“Beef noodles again.” Nian Junting glanced at the noodles.
“No, lamb noodles,” Luosang replied.
Nian Junting didn’t say anything. My woman is so into all kinds of noodles, he thought.