“You…” Ye Tianxie looked at Su Feifei. He could scarcely imagine this being her handiwork. As the daughter of Asia’s richest man, she must have grown up in the most privileged of environments, with nothing to trouble or worry her; dirty work, exhausting work, physical labor of any kind should have been utterly foreign to her. A single word from her — she wouldn’t even need to open her mouth — and someone would step in and do it all perfectly. But… everything before him now, if not Su Feifei, then who?

“Hmph!” Recalling the sour face Ye Tianxie had worn that afternoon when she called the cleaning company, Su Feifei pursed her lips in dissatisfaction. “Relax! Without your permission, how would this humble girl dare let anyone else in? I cleaned all of it myself… Ugh, it made me sweat buckets, and it ruined my favorite outfit.” Then she suddenly broke into a smile and swayed her body from side to side. “Look — is this purple top of mine pretty?”

“It’s pretty.” Ye Tianxie nodded mechanically.

“Hey! What kind of expression is that!” Faced with his obviously stiff face, Su Feifei stamped her foot in displeasure.

“You… do housework normally?” Ye Tianxie asked, probing. He swept his gaze over this house he could still hardly credit… No, it wasn’t an illusion.

“Of course. Hmph hmph! Just because my dad is Su Luo, don’t assume I’m the sort of girl who holds out her hands to be dressed and opens her mouth to be fed. When I was very small, my mother taught me to do my own things myself, and to learn cooking and housework — otherwise I’d be nothing but a vase once I married. So I always tidy my own room and never let anyone in, and the dishes I like best I make myself… Ah, I nearly forgot!”

At the mention of cooking, Su Feifei remembered something and went trotting off in her pink slippers into the kitchen Ye Tianxie hadn’t used in ages. Which had, by now, also been scrubbed spotless.

As the person who knew this house best, he understood exactly how much toil and how much difficulty it would take one person to achieve this in a single afternoon. At the very least, he was certain that the whole afternoon and half the evening he had spent in the World of Fate, she had been cleaning every corner of this place alone… And yet facing him, she offered no complaint, no reproach, no self-congratulation. Between those lively brows there was instead a faint, barely-there satisfaction.

In that moment, Ye Tianxie realized that his understanding of this girl he had known so briefly was far from sufficient. And it shifted, not a little, his understanding of rich men’s daughters.

Was she earnestly treating this place as a new… home?

He thought it silently. Only — this was plainly his house, and yet ever since she left, it had been far too long since he had found any feeling of home here.

Su Feifei came out of the kitchen carrying an exquisite tray from who knew where, and from a good distance off, an aroma drifted over that set Ye Tianxie’s mouth watering violently.

She set the tray down before him. Seeing his somewhat dazed expression, Su Feifei smiled with a touch of smugness. “This is your dinner. I should have called you long ago, but you were so engrossed in your game I didn’t. Look — this is lean pork congee I made. Hmph hmph hmph hmph, it’ll definitely be better than any lean pork congee you’ve ever eaten. And this little dish is the one I love making most and love eating most; my mother taught it to me back then, and you’ve certainly never had it. It even has a lovely name: Nine Stars Attending the Moon. Go on, try it.”

Su Feifei sat down across from him, resting her cheek on one hand, her beautiful eyes smiling as she waited for his reaction.

“You can cook?”

“Of course. I already told you, didn’t I? Hmph, honestly. You’re plainly the bodyguard my dad and I hired, and here I am cooking for you… You’re really quite blessed.”

Ye Tianxie: “…”

“Hurry up and eat. I’ll have you know, apart from my dad, nobody else has ever been worthy of eating my cooking.”

“Then why make it for me?”

“Because… even if you’re annoying sometimes, you are more or less my lifesaver.” Su Feifei said with a laugh. As for the true reason, she was at a loss about that herself.

Ye Tianxie’s house was a mess, and the junk heaped up in it had made it easy for her to work out what his eating habits were like. In his home she could find no rice, no flour, no vegetables, no fruit, no seasonings, and the kitchen had plainly gone long untouched. Fortunately, Su Luo — who knew the state of Ye Tianxie’s house and knew his own daughter — had included plenty of things she could cook with among the goods he sent over. And while making her own dinner, Su Feifei had, without quite thinking about it, made a portion for Ye Tianxie too. Faintly, she felt it was some nameless longing rising from deep inside her.

Just as now: watching him open his mouth and drink the congee she had made, she felt an indescribable satisfaction. It was a feeling both very strange and very wonderful. Just as she had insisted, however exhausting it was, on scrubbing this place clean… Somewhere beneath conscious thought, she was earnestly trying to make this place another home — a home where she need not be afraid, a home she could lean on and rely on.

“It’s very good.” Ye Tianxie set down the small bowl and said it sincerely. He felt the congee, warm at precisely the right temperature, flow down his throat into his stomach, and with it a warm, throbbing sensation stole quietly into his heart, spreading through his organs and his limbs… And in that instant, her shadow suddenly surfaced before his eyes, and he froze, his vision swimming.

“Of course. This young lady has been honing her craft since she was six. My dad has eaten nearly every delicacy in the world, but his favorite is still my cooking…” Su Feifei laughed happily, her expression turning distinctly pleased with itself.

“Yee-yaa! It smells good, it smells so good!”

Guoguo, who had been dozing lazily, was lured awake by a scent she had never smelled before. She appeared hurriedly on Ye Tianxie’s shoulder, her small nose sniffing away, and quickly followed the smell to the little bowl in his hands. The chaotic slop Ye Tianxie normally ate had never stirred the slightest interest in Guoguo, which was why her greatest interest remained lollipops. But when Su Feifei’s lean pork congee appeared, she caught at once a scent even better than a lollipop’s.

(End of Chapter 90)