“But you never gave me anything else to eat,” said Yan Huan. Back when she was at the hospital, her stomach was too weak to handle anything other than soup. However, even after getting better, her meal for the next two months had consisted of soup and soup only. She had grown sick and tired of soup.”
Delighted, Ye Shuyun asked, “Do you want to eat something else, Huanhuan?”
“Yes,” nodded Yan Huan. No one could stand living on soup for two months.
“In that case, would you tell Mom what you want to eat?” asked Ye Shuyun. She would prepare absolutely anything she named, even if it was human meat. She would start recovering fully once she started eating proper meals.
“I want to eat your dumplings,” said Yan Huan as she laid down, reminiscing the memories of the past.
“Sure, sure,” Ye Shuyun shot up. “I’ll make them right now. Vegan dumplings, right?”
“Meat dumplings,” said Yan Huan, unclenching her fist, her fingers quivering from numbness.
“But I thought you always ate vegan dumplings?” As far as she remembered, Yan Huan only ate vegan dumplings. Her son was the one that ate the meat dumplings.
“Lu Yi liked meat dumplings,” Yan Huan folded her hands together. “I want to eat them for him.”
Ye Shuyun felt a tingling sensation at her nose, and she had to turn away to stop herself from crying. Her son’s life was worth living, she thought. At least there was one person who remembered him, remembered what he liked to eat, what he liked to drink. His shadow and soul lived on within her.
Ye Shuyun opened the door and commanded the nanny to buy some vegetables for her to make the dumplings.
An hour later, she set a plate of dumplings on the table.
Half of them had vegetable fillings, while the other half had meat.
“Your stomach is still weak, so don’t overeat,” advised Ye Shuyun. She had been on a soup diet for the past two months, and her stomach had grown accustomed to it, so eating meat dumplings all of a sudden might make her uncomfortable. That was why she made more vegetable dumplings than meat dumplings.
“You can eat more when your stomach had fully recovered.”
Yan Huan had no objections either. She picked up a dumpling with her chopsticks and put it into her mouth. It happened to be a meat dumpling.
In fact, Ye Shuyun’s meat dumplings were a lot tastier than her vegetable dumplings. The tender pork filling was savory and not cloying, leaving a fragrant aftertaste with every bite.
She ate the dumplings in small bites, the meat dumpling that had been Lu Yi’s favorite. It was very tasty. Why did she balk at eating them in the past? Even she could not remember.
She had forgotten a lot of things, but also started remembering new things, like the taste of the meat dumpling. It was a new taste for her.
Did Lu Yi feel the same way when he ate these dumplings?
If that’s the case, she will eat more in the future. She will help him eat what he no longer had the chance to eat, finish what he had left undone, and live the life he could not live.
She picked up another one, which unfortunately turned out to be a vegetable one. She quickly finished it so that she could eat more meat dumplings, but the next few dumplings all had vegetable fillings. When she finally reached another meat dumpling, she felt satisfaction, not just at her taste buds but also within her heart.
All of Ye Shuyun’s worries had gone away at the sight of Yan Huan’s good appetite.
She ruffled her hair.
“Take it easy, there’s a lot more. You can eat as many as you want.”
Yan Huan smiled at her and continued eating. What Ye Shuyun didn’t know was that she was eating fast only because she wanted to find another meat dumpling.
From that day onward, Yan Huan stopped drinking soup. By now, she had tasted every type of soup there ever was. Some were tasty, some not so tasty, and some had odd tastes.
She began eating proper meals, eating both what she liked and didn’t like. She got stronger by the day, and her weight was increasing gradually. Even so, she didn’t put on much weight, because the damage to her body had already been done.
Of course, no one suspected her of being suicidal anymore. A suicidal person wouldn’t eat three proper meals a day and grow healthier by the day. Or was she trying to self-harm after regaining her strength?
Perhaps someone else would, but not Yan Huan.
“What happened to you?” asked Luo Lin as she sat down. She gave Yan Huan’s cheeks a squeeze. “What a waste to not show this pitiful sight to your fans.”
Yan Huan only smiled. Her smile these days always seemed a little lost.
“Try drinking only soup for two months, and you’ll see how thin you can get,” she said. She hadn’t had any main courses in two months. Even though the soup was nutritious, weight loss was inevitable.
Soup was soup, not rice. No matter how good the soup was, it could not replace rice.
“No thank you. I’m not that courageous,” said Luo Lin. She would rather die of obesity than to put herself through such misery. “Here’s Lin Lang’s performance reports for the past few months.”
Luo Lin had come to talk about work and nothing else. No floods, no Lu Yi. Only work.
“The cloak-and-dagger film turned out to be a hit. A few of our budding actors have garnered quite a bit of attention. Do you have plans for a New Year film?” asked Luo Lin. “We haven’t put up anything new in a year. Everyone’s waiting for your next film after the massive success of White Fox. With your current popularity and solid fan base, we could easily make ten billion at the box office with a New Year film.”
There was a year of time to prepare too.
It was a good opportunity. She had to consider what kind of movie would suit the public’s taste. The success of a movie did not depend on its budget, production time, or publicity. Box office performance was all that mattered.
The reviews would obviously be positive if the film was a box office hit.
The audience wasn’t stupid, and no one liked being taken as a fool either.
