Melody Zachary personally cooked an elaborate dinner, a table full of hometown dishes, which Oliver Shaw ate with relish, even though Mia Foster wasn’t quite accustomed to them.
The northern palate tends toward saltiness, while Melody’s hometown dishes are sweet, with every ingredient inseparable from one seasoning, "sugar." She also prepared Crystal Shrimp Dumplings, enthusiastically serving two to Mia Foster. With such warm hospitality, Mia felt obliged to eat them even though she didn’t like them.
As a result, she could barely swallow half a Crystal Shrimp Dumpling, which kept tumbling around in her mouth.
The mixture of ground meat and shrimp wasn’t fresh and flavorful but rather sickeningly sweet like honey. The taste was indescribable. A bowl of egg drop soup was in front of her, served by her future mother-in-law Melody, and even though Mia knew it was also sweet, she had no choice but to gulp down the remaining half of the dumpling with the soup.
Seeing Mia finish a whole dumpling, Melody enthusiastically added two more to her plate and then placed the rest of the half-tray into her husband’s bone plate, "Husband, eat more, you used to love these."
"Hmph, I thought you had forgotten!" Oliver grunted coldly, but still picked up a Crystal Shrimp Dumpling and popped the whole thing into his mouth, making it clear that he enjoyed the taste.
Melody giggled softly, leaning on her husband’s arm. Women from Southriver naturally spoke in gentle and soft tones, and now that she was cooing, it sounded even more meltingly sweet.
"Husband, if you like them, I’ll make them for you every day. You’ve been busy in the past few years, hardly eating at home, and Felix doesn’t like them—I can’t finish them all by myself..."
"Is that so?" Oliver took another dumpling and smirked affectionately at his wife just before eating it.
Mia paused in her eating and watched the couple interact across the table. If she hadn’t heard that girl call Oliver "Dad" with her own ears, she would never believe that a man who doted on his wife so much could have an affair.
"Mmm, as long as you like them, husband, I’ll make them every day," Melody said, nodding while holding her husband’s arm, looking blissfully like a contented little woman.
Oliver’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he frowned in feigned displeasure, "Alright, eat up before it gets cold and loses its taste."
"Yes, husband, eat up,"
Melody transferred the dumplings from her own bone plate to her husband’s. Noticing Mia with her chopsticks still, Felix glanced over nonchalantly, "What’s wrong?"
Staring at the dumplings on her bone plate, Mia looked slightly troubled, "I can’t eat any more," she said.
"Give them to me," said Felix without a second thought, grabbing the dumpling and stuffing it into his mouth. Across the table, Melody looked at her son as if she had seen something terrifying, "Husband, look, Felix is eating a shrimp dumpling!"
"What’s the fuss about!" Oliver glanced over before continuing his meal, but Melody still watched her son with surprise. Mia was puzzled; Felix was just helping her out by eating a dumpling; it didn’t seem like something to make such a big fuss over.
What she didn’t know was that since he was a child, Felix detested the Crystal Shrimp Dumplings made by his mother. The dumplings he ate at restaurants were salty, while his mother’s were sickeningly sweet, like they were drenched in honey. Few men have a sweet tooth—of course, his father was an exception, always enjoying them with relish, which was something he could never take pleasure in.
After dinner, Mia sat for a while before getting up to leave. Melody still insisted on persuading her to stay, prattling on about how it had been so long since the engagement but Mia had never stayed over...
Mia still declined on the pretext of work. Although she was engaged to Felix, she wasn’t quite comfortable spending the night at his house.