Not Even One Day of Rest
The moment Sun Miao started to speak, she was interrupted by the excited Lemon Tea Boss: “What, you’re going to tell the students where you’re setting up your stall? That’s not okay! I was still planning to bring that cat slave of mine to eat Yangyu potato cake tomorrow. If you let it slip to the students, wouldn’t the people in the group chat tear me apart? Besides, I’m not going to be the culprit, don’t ask me to tell them.”
She rambled on and on, clearly terrified that Sun Miao would ask her to pass on the location of the stall this time, which would lead to the old customers not being able to get a single bite.
At that time, she, the Lemon Tea Boss, would no longer be the little angel who occasionally posts CP1 pictures in the group, but a traitor who betrayed the organization and committed heinous crimes.
Sun Miao smiled: “I’m not asking you to say that. Isn’t the plum rain season coming up in a while?”
The Lemon Tea Boss responded with a sound: “Yeah.”
“It rains every day during the plum rain season, so it’s not convenient to set up a stall. I plan to take a break during the plum rain season. The student party has been looking for me all this time. When the time comes, I hope they don’t come out looking for me during the plum rain season, that would really be a waste of their effort.”
The Lemon Tea Boss was silent for a while, then was the first to raise a doubt: “Wait, you’re not planning to set up your stall for the entire plum rain season?”
“Yeah.”
Sun Miao answered very quickly. The other end fell into silence again. After a long while, Sun Miao heard a deep breath from the other side of the phone, followed immediately by the Lemon Tea Boss’s roar: “Don’t do something like this! You’re not setting up your stall for a single day during the plum rain season?! How can you be so willful?! Do the people in the group know? Huh? There are also times during the plum rain season when it doesn’t rain or rains less, you can come out and set up your stall then!”
“……”
This time it was Sun Miao’s turn to be silent. She didn’t know what to say either. Even the System wasn’t this much of a Zhou Bapi2; it was the foodies who gave Sun Miao a bigger headache.
Sun Miao laughed it off and changed the subject: “Then remember to tell the student party, okay~ See you tomorrow.”
After speaking, she didn’t care what the Lemon Tea Boss’s reaction was and hung up the phone with great speed. The System timely reminded her: 【Because Host’s food cart has been temporarily confiscated by the police station, a new food cart has now been issued. In order not to arouse suspicion, it has been sent via postal delivery and is expected to arrive in three minutes. Please be ready to receive it.】
“……” Wait, although she did say she was going to set up her stall tomorrow, the System’s actions were a bit too fast. And she had just thought after hanging up the phone, without a vehicle she probably couldn’t set up tomorrow. If it really didn’t work out, she would just rest for a day and go see how the others were doing with their stalls tomorrow.
As a result, before she could even start fantasizing, the System had delivered the vehicle to her door.
“You really won’t let me rest for even a day.”
【Host did not set up the stall today either. This was an unexpected incident and is not counted as Host’s rest. If you do not set up the stall again tomorrow…】
“If I don’t set up the stall tomorrow, what do you plan to do?”
Although the System spoke very formally and seriously, Sun Miao’s level of understanding of the System let her know that it definitely couldn’t pull any new tricks. Sure enough, the System was silent for a moment and could only threaten her: 【Then Host will need to make up for one day after the seven-day stall period is over.】
It just, really had no deterrent effect at all.
However, Sun Miao still didn’t plan to make it up later, because after that would be the plum rain season, and she really didn’t want to set up a stall in the rain.
“Set up the stall, then set up the stall.”
Sun Miao sensed a bit of laziness in herself. It seemed that after getting together with Su Ruixi, she had developed this bit of a slacking mentality. However, this matter couldn’t be blamed on Su Ruixi; it was entirely due to Sun Miao’s own lack of willpower, wanting to laze around with Su Ruixi all day long.
This is not good, not good.
Even if they were the dearest of lovers, they had to give each other independent space, and also give themselves independent space.
Sun Miao made up her mind to work hard before the plum rain season.
Just as she made up her mind, a call came from the postal express, saying that it had been delivered to the door and asking her to sign for it. Sun Miao knew it was the food cart, so she went over from the garage side. As soon as the roller door opened, she saw a small cart outside.
The deliveryman gave the form to Sun Miao. Sun Miao proposed to inspect it first before signing and also asked the deliveryman to help unpack it.
The deliveryman agreed, but it was indeed a bit difficult for him to move it alone, so Sun Miao and he together unloaded the food cart from the small cart’s cargo bed, and then together they pushed the food cart down from the small cart’s ramp. It made a bit of noise when it landed, causing the System to scream in Sun Miao’s mind: 【Be careful!】
Sun Miao was a little surprised: “The things inside this food cart are already put in?”
【No, it’s just an empty shell.】
“Then what are you so worried about!”
Sun Miao was speechless. After a brief inspection and finding no problems, she signed the form and watched the deliveryman drive away. She turned around and drove the food cart into the garage, only to see Su Ruixi standing at the side door, her face full of disbelief.
From her expression and eyes, Sun Miao read one sentence: Wait, you’re this impatient to go set up your stall?!
This really had nothing to do with her! It was all the System’s doing!
But she hadn’t completely laid her cards on the table with Su Ruixi yet and couldn’t speak about the System at all, so she could only silently carry the pot3. She tried to muddle through and get by4, but she didn’t succeed and was grabbed by Su Ruixi and asked: “Are you going to set up your stall tomorrow?”
“Yes, the food cart has already arrived.”
Su Ruixi took a deep breath, her tone neither salty nor bland: “Where did you find this merchant? Their speed is quite fast. The vehicle just went in this morning, and by this time it’s already made and delivered. Have you gotten all your equipment sorted out? If you bought it online, the pots might not arrive for another two days.”
“No need, it all came fully equipped. I just need to transfer the money directly.”
“Is that so? This merchant is really quite good.”
Although Su Ruixi was clearly saying the merchant was quite good, the meaning between the lines made Sun Miao feel as if she wanted to do away with the merchant right now.
In order not to create a conflict between her closest lover and the System, Sun Miao immediately asked: “Susu-jie, are you hungry? I’ll go cook right now. Do you want to come and help me?”
Her way of changing the subject was a bit clumsy, but Su Ruixi’s indulgence towards Sun Miao made up for it. Besides, setting up the stall was what Sun Miao wanted to do, and it didn’t have much to do with the merchant. She was just annoyed that after something like this had happened, Sun Miao wouldn’t even rest for a single day before going to set up her stall.
Now that she was asking Su Ruixi if she wanted to help, Su Ruixi could only nod her head: “Okay, what do you want me to do?”
There was a limited number of things Su Ruixi could do, and Sun Miao couldn’t possibly let Su Ruixi do the more troublesome tasks. At most, it was just cooking the rice and picking over the vegetable leaves. Actually, Su Ruixi’s skill at picking vegetables wasn’t very good, and she was a bit of a nitpicker5; any leaves that didn’t look good were thrown away without exception.
If Sun Miao were living on her own, she would absolutely not be so wasteful6. When she first entered society, she had even resorted to picking up discarded vegetable leaves from the market to eat. Many of the vegetables Su Ruixi picked off were actually still edible.
But since she was asking Su Ruixi to help, she couldn’t stand by her side nagging and making demands; that kind of behavior was particularly annoying. Sun Miao didn’t like it when others stood by giving unsolicited advice while she was working, so she wouldn’t do such a thing herself.
She even praised her after Su Ruixi finished picking: “Susu-jie is getting better and better, the vegetables are picked very cleanly. Susu-jie, pay attention to your skincare, don’t let your hands get wrinkled.”
Su Ruixi had always thought Sun Miao’s hands were very beautiful, but Sun Miao preferred Su Ruixi’s hands even more. Their hands were two extremes. Sun Miao’s belonged to the roughest batch, while Su Ruixi’s belonged to the most delicate and smooth batch.
Just by looking at their hands, you could tell that Su Ruixi had never done much manual labor since she was young. The lines on her palms were also clean, and the only thick callus on her hand was in the spot where she held a pen for writing; there were no calluses anywhere else. The callus on Sun Miao’s hand wasn’t that thick. She hadn’t held a pen much after graduating from junior high, so the callus she had developed before had gradually smoothed out, leaving only a small bump, which looked like it had a bit of a scholarly foundation.
The callus on Su Ruixi’s hand was very obvious. All her other fingers were particularly smooth, with only a protrusion on the side of the middle finger of her right hand, which felt hard to the touch. Other than that, her entire hand felt smooth and delicate.
So Sun Miao would also remind Su Ruixi to do some maintenance.
She usually didn’t let Su Ruixi do much work, and there was a dishwasher for washing dishes at home, but occasionally she still had to let Su Ruixi participate. Sun Miao was a bit petty; she always felt that if she did all the work by herself, wouldn’t she really become the housekeeper Su Ruixi hired?
Only when two people work together does it feel like a little couple7.
Su Ruixi didn’t mind doing work either, and besides, the tasks Sun Miao assigned her were indeed very few. Hearing Sun Miao’s instruction, Su Ruixi laughed with a hint of annoyance: “All you know is to care about my hands.”
But this was just a bit of playful banter between a young couple. Sun Miao didn’t respond, just took the vegetables, and let Su Ruixi go sit on the sofa for a while. After an hour, Sun Miao had finished cooking all of the dinner. She called out to Su Ruixi, and when she came in, they brought the dishes out together.
She didn’t make much tonight, but cooking itself is a time-consuming and troublesome affair. Simply making three dishes and one soup would take at least one hour to start with.
Su Ruixi’s appetite had been a bit bigger than before recently, but overall, the two of them didn’t eat much, so Sun Miao didn’t make large portions for each dish. Today, she simply made a stir-fried celtuce lettuce, scrambled eggs with Manchurian wild rice, stir-fried beef with green peppers, and a bok choy and tofu soup.
According to Sun Miao’s taste, she would most likely have made beef with hot peppers, but Su Ruixi couldn’t eat spicy food, so this green pepper was also a non-spicy variety. Sun Miao didn’t mind eating bland food at all. She had made a lot of chili sauce this time for the Yangyu potato cake; if she really had a craving, she could just scoop out a spoonful of chili sauce for herself.
Su Ruixi, however, ate very happily, especially the scrambled eggs with Manchurian wild rice.
Manchurian wild rice is a vegetable cultivated in water. This type of vegetable inevitably has a characteristic: it more or less carries that kind of earthy, fishy smell from the river. Manchurian wild rice is considered to have relatively little of this earthy smell, but Su Ruixi had a picky mouth, and that little bit of earthy smell was particularly obvious to her.
But Manchurian wild rice was indeed delicious. Su Ruixi liked to eat it, but she didn’t like the earthy smell. Every time she saw stir-fried Manchurian wild rice, scrambled eggs with Manchurian wild rice, or shredded pork with Manchurian wild rice, she felt very conflicted. Especially the latter two; the Manchurian wild rice already had a bit of a taste, and adding the fishy smell of eggs and the gamy smell of meat…
Especially in some restaurants, they would also add a lot of oil, which made Su Ruixi like it even less.
The one Sun Miao made didn’t have this problem, because she would—chaoshui8. Actually, Manchurian wild rice needs to be blanched, because Manchurian wild rice contains oxalic acid9, which is not good for the human body. Blanching can remove it, and can also remove that trace of earthy smell from the Manchurian wild rice.
Although it was a little bit troublesome to prepare, seeing Su Ruixi eat so happily, Sun Miao felt it was all worth it.
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