SG 23

After finishing his last afternoon performance, Chu Baiyan walked straight through the underground passage to head back. He didn’t have any gigs that night, so he had parked the car in the underground garage and come to work on foot. That saved him the trouble of parking the car back at the apartment complex and then walking out again after work.

Coming up from the passage exit, there was a fresh produce shop from the residential area right along the road to “Starfish Pottery.” Chu Baiyan stopped by and bought ingredients for dinner. Besides what Yan Anqing had requested for the sweet and sour pork, he also bought green peppers and a bunch of baby bok choy.

Yesterday, since there wasn’t a basin, he had left his dirty clothes on the bathroom floor. He didn’t bother going back to get them. When he passed the supermarket, he went in and bought a new one.

It was summer break, so there were lots of people. By this hour, “Starfish Pottery” already had quite a few customers. When Chu Baiyan pushed the door open, Yan Anqing was explaining something to a customer. When he heard the door chime and looked up to see who it was, the crease between his brows immediately disappeared.

Chu Baiyan lifted the groceries in his hand to show him and said, “I’ll go make dinner, I’ll bring it down when it’s ready.”

Yan Anqing really wanted to follow and see how Chu Baiyan made sweet and sour pork, but since the shop couldn’t be left unattended, he only nodded and pulled the keys out of his pocket to hand them over.

The customer asked another question, and Yan Anqing turned back to them with a helpless look and continued his explanation.

When Chu Baiyan opened the apartment door, the slippers were already placed by the entrance, as if waiting for him to come home.

He put the groceries into the sink, took the new basin, and went to the bathroom. He was about to soak yesterday’s dirty clothes in detergent when he looked down and saw the floor was empty. Nothing was there.

He set the basin down and looked around the room. When he walked around the wardrobe, he found a standing rack by the window in Yan Anqing’s bedroom. His clothes from yesterday were hanging there, clean, next to Yan Anqing’s own washed clothes. Even his underwear was there.

A wave of embarrassment rose on his face. He hadn’t expected Yan Anqing to wash all his clothes for him.

Rice was already cooking. Chu Baiyan washed and chopped the ingredients quickly. When he was in middle school, his mother had been in poor health. During her hospital stays, he often had to cook for himself, though back then he only knew how to make food edible.

After the family’s house was demolished and he cut ties with his father, he stayed in the city where his university was during every break to work part-time. Since he rented his own place, he gradually improved his cooking over time.

Everything in Yan Anqing’s kitchen was arranged clearly. Chu Baiyan had been there several times, so he remembered where most things were.

He opened the saved tutorial video and followed the steps to make the sweet and sour pork. He tasted one piece. He didn’t know if it was authentic, but at least it didn’t taste bad.

He quickly finished stir-frying the shredded pork with green peppers and the baby bok choy. The tray on the counter could only hold two dishes, so he carried them down in two trips.

There were still customers browsing in the shop. Chu Baiyan sat beside the workbench to wait for him and noticed that an extra wooden chair had appeared next to the table, different from the one behind the counter.

Through the layer of glass, he could see that the way Yan Anqing treated customers was completely different from how he acted with him. Most of the time, the customers did the talking while Yan Anqing only nodded, shook his head, or responded with a quiet “mm.” He never said more than he had to.

When a talkative customer came along, his brows would furrow slightly, and he only wanted to end the conversation quickly, not caring at all whether the sale went through.

Fortunately, this customer was straightforward. After a short exchange, they quickly chose what they wanted, paid, and left.

Yan Anqing went to wash his hands and came back. As soon as he sat down, Chu Baiyan pushed the plate of sweet and sour pork in front of him. “Try it.”

He picked up a piece. The sweet and sour flavor was just the way he liked it.

“It’s good.” After swallowing, Yan Anqing picked up two more pieces and put them in his bowl.

He had once wanted to learn how to make it himself, but every online recipe said things like “add sugar to taste, add ketchup to taste, add a little salt.” With no fixed standard, he couldn’t figure out what “to taste” or “a little” actually meant, so he gave up.

Through the meal, it was clear that he really liked the dish. He ate half the plate himself. He also had some of the green pepper pork, but he didn’t touch the bok choy at all.

Chu Baiyan ate a small portion himself. He hadn’t done badly.

“You don’t like bok choy?” he asked for his opinion.

“I don’t eat vegetables.” Yan Anqing answered honestly, then added, “They get stuck in my throat.”

When he was little, leafy greens often got stuck halfway because he couldn’t bite through them, so he stopped eating any leafy vegetables since then. He only bought things like lettuce stems, zucchini, loofah, and carrots that could be sliced or shredded.

That reason made Chu Baiyan smile. It was such a simple and real explanation, even a little cute. He made a note to remember that Yan Anqing didn’t eat leafy greens.

With Chu Baiyan helping in the shop that night, Yan Anqing felt much more relaxed. When there weren’t many customers, he took a small plastic box and scooped half a box of water from the tank, then used a net to pick the starfish out one by one and transfer them into the smaller box.

The four that Chu Baiyan had given him were kept separately in another small tank. He grabbed a handful of dried shrimp and dropped a few pieces into each tank as food.

Right after a customer left, Chu Baiyan turned and saw Yan Anqing busy by the water tank. He went over and asked, puzzled, “Why are you taking all the starfish out?”

“To feed them.” Yan Anqing lifted the box. One fast-moving starfish had already caught a shrimp.

“You don’t just drop the shrimp straight into the tank?” Chu Baiyan had only seen his feeding videos before. This was the first time he saw him feeding them in person.

“Starfish eat slowly. If the shrimp stays in water too long, it turns cloudy and starts to smell bad, and the starfish can get sick. I’ll put them back after they finish eating.” Yan Anqing watched the starfish while answering.

Chu Baiyan leaned closer. The starfish in the box slowly used the tiny legs around their mouths to grab the shrimp and push it in bit by bit, their five arms folding in to wrap around the food.

Compared to how they usually stayed still for hours, feeding time made them look lively.

“How long until they finish?”

“Several hours. They’ll stay in the small tank overnight. I’ll put them back tomorrow morning.”

Yan Anqing looked down at the movement in the tank, using tweezers to feed the slower ones directly.

“That’s a lot of trouble.” Chu Baiyan had thought keeping starfish was like keeping fish, just sprinkling some feed every day.

“It’s not trouble. I like it.” For Yan Anqing, anything he liked never felt like trouble.

“I feed them once a week. When they’re full, they don’t bite each other. If they bite, they can die.” When he first started raising them, he hadn’t gotten the timing right, and a big starfish had eaten a smaller one.

There were quite a few customers that evening, mostly tourists wanting souvenirs. After settling the starfish, Yan Anqing went to help them.

They had run out of the defective ceramic pieces used as free gifts, so later customers got upset. When they argued, Yan Anqing’s way of handling it was simple: if there were none left, then there were none, and no gifts would be given.

But customers didn’t see it that way. Why did the last person get a free cup, but after spending so much, they got nothing?

One customer finally said harshly that if they didn’t get a gift, they wouldn’t buy anything at all.

Chu Baiyan took a hand-shaped starfish ornament from a basket nearby and paid for it himself by scanning the code. He handed it to the customer as a free gift, and the matter finally ended.

“Why did you spend money to buy that starfish ornament to give to that customer?” Even though the customer ended up buying everything, Yan Anqing still wasn’t happy.

He couldn’t understand why buying something had to be tied to receiving a gift, or why Chu Baiyan had to pay for something himself to give it away.

“Because that customer bought a lot, and they saw the last customer get something for free, so they felt it was unfair. I didn’t want you to lose the sale. You already spent so much time explaining things to them.”

If the sale hadn’t gone through, then all that time Yan Anqing spent would’ve been wasted. Chu Baiyan explained, unsure how much he’d understand.

Yan Anqing didn’t really get it. But looking into Chu Baiyan’s eyes, he understood at least that Chu Baiyan was helping him. He pursed his lips and didn’t say more.

When it was finally closing time, Yan Anqing let out a long breath. After checking the shelves, he quickly locked the door. He placed ice packs under both tanks, told the starfish “good night,” and went upstairs with Chu Baiyan.

“You washed my clothes for me?” Once they were in the room and it was just the two of them, Chu Baiyan asked.

“Yeah, with the washing machine.” For Yan Anqing, dirty clothes naturally needed to be washed.

“The underwear…” Chu Baiyan wanted to say he’d wash those himself next time, but before he finished, he got interrupted.

“The underwear was hand washed. I didn’t use the washing machine.” Yan Anqing explained quickly. He hadn’t thrown the underwear in with the rest.