Chapter 192 190. The Clumsy Su Peng
By the time she finished buying groceries and made the round trip back, it was already past five in the afternoon. An Han carried several large bags in both hands, bursting with excitement as she dashed up the stairs and quickly arrived at Su Peng’s door.
She leaned closer and listened for a moment, then lightly kicked the door twice with the tip of her foot. The door soon opened, revealing Su Peng with heavy dark circles under his eyes.
Both of An Han’s hands were full of seafood, water sloshing around inside the bags, so she couldn’t put them down. She leaned forward and stuck her face right up to Su Peng. He was startled by her suddenly closing in.
Has An Han become this… enthusiastic lately?
“Help me put on my mask. Don’t infect me,” An Han said, frowning with a look of disgust.
“Oh, okay.”
Su Peng hurriedly grabbed the mask hanging nearby, stretched it open with both hands, and looped it over her ears. Then he adjusted the top and bottom, pressing the metal strip to fit snugly against the bridge of her nose.
An Han’s skin was soft and smooth, like a peeled egg… Just that brief contact seemed to leave her youthful scent lingering on his hands, lifting his mood.
“That’s a lot of stuff,” Su Peng said, suppressing a small flutter of excitement as he looked down at the red bags in her hands. “Must’ve been expensive, right?”
An Han waved it off casually. “It’s fine, I can afford it.”
Su Peng knew An Han’s financial situation. Those big bags had to cost at least a hundred yuan. He sniffed slightly, feeling genuinely touched. After all, An Han had just rented a place and didn’t have much spare cash, yet she was willing to spend some of it on him…
“Transfer me five hundred later.”
“……”
An Han handed the two bags to Su Peng. Seeing him go silent, she looked up at him in confusion. “I bought groceries, cooked, and took care of you. You don’t expect me to pay for the groceries too, do you?”
That tiny bit of emotion vanished completely. He nodded and asked, “What did you buy?”
“Seafood!”
An Han grew excited again and started listing things proudly. “Big lobster! One hundred fifty per jin! I bought one that’s two jin!” “Big green crab! One jin!” “I also got a jin of shrimp, a few live abalones, squid, scallops…”
The more Su Peng listened, the more his head hurt. No matter how he looked at it, this was far more than one meal’s worth. He quickly interrupted her. “Wait, I have a cold. Can I even eat seafood?”
“Just carry the stuff over first. Put anything with water into a bucket.” After handing everything to Su Peng, An Han took out her phone and searched online, suddenly realizing something. “It says online that you shouldn’t eat seafood when you have a cold.”
“……”
She didn’t really care. “It’s fine. Just eat a little. You won’t die.” Then she added, “Mainly, I want to eat it.”
I’m paying for it—of course I’m eating it.
Su Peng raised another question. “Can we finish all this in one meal?”
“If we can’t, we’ll call Brother Long and the others over to clean it up.”
“Then… you know how to cook it?”
An Han looked at Su Peng like he was an idiot. “Why wouldn’t I know how to cook seafood? My hometown is coastal—we eat seafood every day.”
Su Peng finally relaxed a little. Even if he, as a patient, couldn’t eat much seafood, at least it would satisfy his cravings. So he squatted by the bucket and picked up a squid. “This one—griddle it?”
Getting no response after a moment, he turned around and realized An Han had already gone back to her room. He didn’t think much of it. Staring eagerly at the lively little creatures in the bucket, he began planning in his head.
Grilled squid, scallops with garlic and vermicelli, braised prawns, red-braised green crab, butter-fried lobster… maybe even a charcoal-grilled seafood platter. Just thinking about it made him hungry, and the loss of appetite from his cold started to fade.
Hearing An Han’s footsteps, Su Peng turned around and saw her walking in with a pot and an induction cooker.
“Clear off the computer desk!”
He hurried to his feet and tossed the laptop onto the bed, then reminded her, “I have a cold—I can’t smell oil fumes.”
“Why would there be oil fumes?” An Han looked at him blankly.
“……”
“Go wash the seafood. We’ll just toss everything into the pot and boil it later.” An Han happily plugged in the induction cooker, muttering, “Isn’t seafood best boiled or steamed? Original flavor and all. Why bother with all that fancy stuff?” “Mainly because I don’t know how.”
Su Peng paused, his body stiffening. He covered his mouth and coughed weakly a few times. The bit of appetite he’d just recovered disappeared again.
Although his fatigue had eased somewhat over the day, the occasional sneezing and coughing still bothered him a lot, and his fever hadn’t fully gone down. Why do I still have to work when I’m sick… Am I being taken care of, or am I being worked to death while getting fleeced?
“Oh right, be careful,” An Han added with concern, turning back to remind him. “I heard someone got hurt handling seafood and then died. I’m going to slice some ginger and go downstairs to buy cooking wine. Hurry up—最好 just boil everything in one pot so it’s less trouble.”
“Sigh~”
“Aren’t you happy about eating seafood?” She tilted her head slightly, frowning in confusion. “You’re not allergic to seafood, are you?”
“No, I’m not.”
“What a pity…”
An Han sighed too, then turned and ran out of the room.
Su Peng rubbed his temples, lifted a bag of seafood, and dumped it into the sink. After searching around, he reluctantly chose a toothbrush as his cleaning tool. Although An Han’s ill intentions were practically overflowing, and although her bizarre actions often left him stunned, for some reason, a smile stayed on his lips and his mood grew lighter and lighter.
“This is really nice.”
He sighed sincerely.
He could feel An Han’s unfounded wariness toward him gradually fading. But as Su Peng lowered his head, the lingering smile suddenly froze. His expression turned serious, brows tightly knit, as he cautiously poked the green crab with a finger.
The giant claw suddenly swung up, scaring him into jumping back. “No, I’ve never touched live seafood in my entire life…”
Leaning his upper body back, arms stretched out, he used toothpaste to pin the crab down while carefully scrubbing it with the toothbrush. Calling it scrubbing was generous—out of fear, his movements were so gentle it was more like giving the crab a massage. His forehead began to sweat.
His grip slipped. The struggling crab suddenly became even more active, its legs flailing as it crawled out of the sink. “Fuck!”
Su Peng jumped back, accidentally kicking over the water bucket in the process…
When An Han returned with a bottle of cooking wine, she saw Su Peng holding chopsticks, jumping around in a panic, playing hide-and-seek with a crab. The shrimp were bouncing all over the floor, the big lobster was slowly crawling across the ground, and the room was on the verge of complete chaos.
“What are you doing?”
An Han stood at the doorway, utterly unable to comprehend the scene before her. Su Peng turned around, his eyes looking as if he’d just seen a savior.
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