The Game of Life

Chapter 680: Chapter 678: A Late Meal

Peng Changping, Zhang Chu, and Zhang Zhiyuan were led by Fan Mei into a private room on the second floor.

The room was small, designed for private gatherings, and the round table inside only seated seven or eight people. There were windows, green plants, and some inexpensive paintings hung on the walls. Equipped with a TV, air conditioning, an independent restroom, and a dish pass-through, it was made for clients at Taifeng Building who needed to discuss things in a small group.

“The dishes Mr. Zhang ordered are partly ready. Would you like them served now or shall we wait a little longer?” Jiang Feng had instructed Fan Mei in advance, so Fan Mei knew that Zhang Zhiyuan was the one who had placed the order.

Upon hearing Fan Mei refer to Mr. Zhang, Peng Changping asked, “When did you order the dishes? Did you ask Feng to place the order last night?”

Zhang Chu was completely bewildered, thinking that he’d been brought here by his grandson and had no clue about it.

“It wasn’t me; it must have been Zhiyuan who ordered,” Zhang Chu shook his head.

“I was the one who ordered,” said Zhang Zhiyuan while positioning his phone, searching for the best angle for a video call; he had been silent until then. “Grandpa, Sir Peng, and Sir Qin, this is the surprise that Feng and I prepared for you.”

“Let’s serve the dishes once everything is ready,” Zhang Zhiyuan told Fan Mei.

“Okay,” Fan Mei nodded with a smile, leaving the room and carefully closing the door behind her.

“Surprise? What kind of surprise?” Qin Guisheng asked loudly, “Is the internet not good over there, or is it my connection that’s bad? I just saw you guys, and you all froze. Gloria, Gloria, where are you? Look what happened to my tablet’s network.”

“Sir Qin, it was our data switching to Wi-Fi that caused a temporary interruption. There’s no problem on your end,” Zhang Zhiyuan quickly responded.

“Gloria is probably preparing your breakfast, right? Is it morning there yet? We are about to have our meal here too,” Peng Changping said.

Gloria was Qin Guisheng’s caregiver, and he was currently living in a care facility.

“No, it’s still dark,” Qin Guisheng replied, practically yelling for the video call to hear him clearly. “Eating this tasteless food without oil or sauce every day makes me rather stay at home.”

“Even at home, you’d have to eat the same way,” Peng Changping said, taking a sip of tea from his thermos. “What did you have for breakfast today?”

“Gloria said oatmeal porridge and boiled vegetable leaves,” Qin Guisheng said gruffly. “Also an egg sandwich, bacon, and milk—it’s always these same things.”

Zhang Zhiyuan: ?

That was a lot better than what he usually ate!

“Right, Zhiyuan, what was that surprise you mentioned just now?” Zhang Chu asked.

“Grandpa, if I tell you the surprise, it won’t be a surprise anymore. You’ll see once the dishes come,” Zhang Zhiyuan said with a grin.

“Young people are all like this. When my grandson was his age, he also loved to give me little surprises to make me happy. It’s all a young man’s filial piety,” Peng Changping said with a smile.

Zhang Chu and Peng Changping sat in the private room waiting for their meal, but before their dishes arrived, Qin Guisheng’s oatmeal porridge did. He received the porridge, which looked as thick as paste, from Gloria with a look of deep resentment. While eating, he took advantage of the fact that Gloria didn’t understand Chinese to complain about her right to her face.

“I’ve told her so many times that this oatmeal porridge is too thick and tasteless, as bad as pig feed. But every time, it’s the same—no change. If you ask me…”

“That’s because you have to get up for breakfast before dawn, and the cook hasn’t arrived. Gloria is just a caregiver; why do you expect so much from her?” Peng Changping retorted mercilessly.

“I paid her overtime, didn’t I?” grumbled Qin Guisheng.

Zhang Zhiyuan: …

Is the life of you wealthy capitalists really this simple and mundane?

While they were talking, the dishes arrived. They were all brought at the same time by several waiters who entered in succession. After serving the dishes and announcing what each one was, the waiters left, well-trained and making quite an impression.

Meanwhile, Qin Guisheng was sitting and eating his oatmeal porridge with a spoon. Midway through his meal, he noticed that Peng Changping and the others had frozen again. Thinking it was a network issue, he shook his tablet and asked Gloria to check, but finding no problems, he shouted, “Senior brother, senior brother, is your internet having issues? Why have you all stopped moving? Can you hear me?”

It wasn’t that their internet connection had frozen; Peng Changping and the others were simply stunned.

Zhang Chu was in complete shock. The moment the dishes were served, he felt as if he had traveled through time to the day he got married decades ago. Back then, you weren’t allowed to host wedding banquets, and he and Cao Guixiang couldn’t afford one, so they invited a few close families from the village to have two tables of food at home, considering it their wedding.

Zhang Chu remembered that the showpiece of his wedding meal, the stir-fried wild rabbit, was exchanged for two chairs he had made. After trading for the rabbit, he was worried and afraid for several days, fearing being reported, and it wasn’t until the rabbit was eaten and digested that his fear subsided.

But he had no choice but to make the exchange; originally, he and Cao Guixiang’s wedding meal was supposed to be at Shunhe Building, with the best chefs preparing the most economical feast. When that fell through, if there wasn’t any impressive meat dish, he would feel ashamed to marry Cao Guixiang.

Seeing the almost identical dishes, Zhang Chu’s tears immediately began to fall.

It was an instinctive reaction. Perhaps even before emotions fully surged, the tears had already started flowing.

Peng Changping wasn’t moving simply because he was bewildered. Partly he didn’t understand the surprise Zhang Zhiyuan had arranged, and partly he was thrown off by Zhang Chu’s overly emotional reaction.

“It’s identical, just identical,” exclaimed Zhang Chu excitedly, “almost exactly the same!”

In truth, Zhang Chu couldn’t clearly remember the details of the wedding feast dishes from back then, but seeing the dishes in front of him now, he felt they were just like the ones from his wedding.

“What’s identical?” asked Peng Changping.

“Right, what do you mean ‘exactly the same?'” There was still a bit of delay on Qin Guisheng’s end of the connection.

“These are the same dishes from our wedding banquet back then, these ones!” Zhang Chu was so excited he nearly jumped up from his seat, his explanation to Peng Changping coming out somewhat jumbled, “During my wedding to Guixiang, these were the dishes we had. I was wondering why Zhiyuan suddenly asked me this morning what we ate at our wedding, so it turns out…”

Zhang Zhiyuan helped explain, “Actually, this was Feng… Jiang Feng’s idea. We all thought that you and Sir Qin must have regretted not being able to attend my grandparents’ wedding feast, and my grandfather has always felt sorry about that. Now that you and my grandfather have the rare opportunity to meet, we wanted to do a little something to give you a surprise. Actually, Jiang Feng did most of the work, I just helped by asking around, the dishes were all made by him, and it was his idea.”

Zhang Zhiyuan didn’t take any credit for herself.

Zhang Chu urged Peng Changping to taste the dishes on the table, and with each one that Peng Changping hadn’t tried, Zhang Chu felt compelled to explain.

“These peanuts were really precious back then, just a small plate and I got it from the party secretary’s house.”

“This eel, which is oily, Guixiang put in a lot of effort to make it. I remember as soon as it was served, everyone crowded around asking Guixiang and me how it was made, why it was so delicious, fragrant, and tender, and if there was some secret recipe.”

“And then there’s this river shrimp…”

Zhang Chu was pulling Peng Changping to try the food while explaining each dish, much to the anxiety of Qin Guisheng on the other end of the video call. Since he couldn’t see the dishes on the table from the angle of the phone, and Zhang Chu, caught up in his excitement, completely forgot about him, urging Peng Changping to eat, and even Peng Changping, somewhat shocked, momentarily forgot Qin Guisheng, causing Qin Guisheng to just hold his tasteless oatmeal porridge and shout at the tablet screen.

“What dishes are those, what are they, speak up, I can’t hear you. What happened to my junior sister back then, speak up, turn the phone around, let me see, let me see!”

Fortunately, Zhang Zhiyuan still remembered Qin Guisheng, otherwise he would have been left urgently peering at the tablet screen.

Then there was the odd spectacle of Qin Guisheng eating ‘cloud dinner.’

Zhang Zhiyuan held the phone to give Qin Guisheng a close-up view of the dishes, and with each glance, he took a spoonful of oatmeal porridge. Another glance, another spoonful of oatmeal porridge. With one eye on the dishes and another spoonful of porridge, Qin Guisheng felt as though he was savoring the feast that Zhang Chu had made up for him.

“Zhang Chu, what was my junior sister wearing at her wedding, was it the dress I sent?” Qin Guisheng wasn’t satisfied with just the dishes; he wanted to recreate the scene in his mind.

“Just ordinary clothes, grey, kind of like a Lenin style. The dress you sent was too eye-catching, and Guixiang didn’t dare to wear it out, she could only sneakily wear it at home at night.” Zhang Chu explained, taking a bite of wild greens, “This wild green is authentic, almost identical to the way Guixiang made it, simply stir-fried with a bit of salt. It’s a bit bitter but very refreshing and tender, could eat three big bowls of sweet potato rice with just this when there were no other vegetables available.”

“What greens, let me see!”

Zhang Zhiyuan quickly moved the phone camera closer to the greens so Qin Guisheng could see them in a tight close-up, and he ate another satisfied spoonful of oatmeal porridge.

Yes, that was the taste he remembered.

“Senior brother, could you describe the taste of the eel to me again?”

Peng Changping could only take another bite of the eel and said, “Very tender, fragrant.”

“What else?” Qin Guisheng scooped up another big mouthful of oatmeal porridge.

“No taste of seasoning, no spices added, not fishy, just pure eel flavor.”

Qin Guisheng took another large spoonful of oatmeal porridge, then turned to Gloria and asked her to serve him another bowl of oatmeal porridge.

By the end of the meal, Zhang Chu and Peng Changping hadn’t eaten much, but Qin Guisheng had the largest serving, polishing off three big bowls of oatmeal porridge!

“Burp.” Unable to eat any more, Qin Guisheng could only burp towards the tablet screen, his face filled with regret, “My junior sister’s cooking was so much better; I never eat this much for breakfast as a rule.”

Peng Changping: …

He spoke as if he had actually tasted the dishes his junior sister made.

However.

Peng Changping looked at the dishes on the table, home-style, delicious, made with care and attention to detail.

He savored them.

“Ding, congratulations player for completing the side quest [Zhang Chu’s Worries], you have been awarded the prize: [A Piece of Zhang Chu’s Memory].”

When the game notification sounded in Jiang Feng’s mind, he knew that tonight’s dinner was definitely satisfying for Zhang Chu and the others.

As expected, when Jiang Feng finally got the chance to check his messages on his phone, he saw the messages Zhang Zhiyuan had sent him earlier.

Zhang Zhiyuan: Feng, thank you. I’ve never seen my grandfather so happy. Sir Qin also asked me to thank you, he said he was very satisfied with his meal and would definitely like to thank you in person if there’s a chance.

Jiang Feng: ?

Qin Guisheng was satisfied with his meal?

What did he eat?

Isn’t he in the United States?