Chapter 744: Bonus Extra – Happy Winter Solstice
Bonus Extra
“Today is the Winter Solstice.”
Wen Jianyan raised his head, breathing out a puff of white air, watching it slowly disappear against the backdrop of the gray sky. Suddenly, he seemed to think of something:
“We have to eat some dumplings.”
Walking beside him, Wu Zhu’s steps paused. He lowered his head and looked at him in confusion: “?”
“It’s a food with a very special meaning,” Wen Jianyan turned his head to look at him, speaking with an earnest tone that made it hard to tell if it was true or fake. “If you don’t eat it today, your ears will get frozen off this winter.”
“——What?!”
Ma Qi gasped, her eyes going wide.
“He’s lying,” Wen Ya said flatly, not even lifting her head.
“No, no,” Wen Jianyan shook his head. “This is a real thing.”
“Think about it, before entering the instances, didn’t you always think there were no ghosts in the world?” He guided her patiently. “With all those scenes of daily life, how could you have known they had another side to them?”
“Some rumors only seem absurd, but the metaphors behind them are completely genuine.”
Ma Qi stared at him with a struggling expression, clearly going back and forth between believing and not believing.
Wen Ya rolled up the document in her hand and whacked Ma Qi hard on the forehead.
“Ouch!” Ma Qi shuddered from the hit.
She covered her forehead, looking blankly at Wen Ya.
Wen Ya let out a long sigh: “When we get back later, re-take the anti-fraud course in the guild.”
Rule 101: Be wary of every single word the President says.
No matter how credible it sounds.
Wu Zhu kept his head down, brows tightly furrowed, his expression grave and serious as if studying a monumental puzzle.
“…Like this?” Soon, he opened his palm, and a crooked, grotesquely ugly lump of dough appeared in his hand.
“Sigh.” Wen Jianyan sighed.
“I’ll do it once more, watch carefully.”
“First, you need to cup your hands… like this.” As he spoke, he picked up a dumpling wrapper, intentionally slowing down his movements—placing the meat filling, dabbing water, sealing the edges—his nimble, flour-dusted fingers gently pinched and tucked, and a round, plump, white dumpling appeared in his palm. “See, isn’t that done?”
“You try again.”
Saying this, Wen Jianyan placed another dumpling wrapper into Wu Zhu’s hand, keeping a close eye on his movements.
“Yes, right—slower.”
As if facing a formidable enemy, Wu Zhu started again.
Who knew how he did it; although he hadn’t wrapped many dumplings, he had gotten quite a lot of flour on himself. His collar, cuffs, and front lapel were covered left and right with white flour prints. To make things easier, his long hair that usually fell over his shoulders was all tied up, yet even so, the ends of his hair were somehow dusted with flour. He looked somewhat comically disheveled from taking it too seriously.
It’s just a pity that in this world, there are some things where the more careful you are, the easier it is to make a mistake.
“Wait, don’t—”
Before Wen Jianyan’s words could finish, the dust had already settled.
Wu Zhu’s pupils trembled slightly. He stared heavily demoralized at his palm, which now only held a lump of dough and meat filling mashed into mud by his out-of-control strength.
“Sigh…”
Wen Jianyan shook his head and let out a long sigh.
He raised his hand and pressed it onto Wu Zhu’s face, then rubbed it vigorously as if venting his frustration, leaving behind five white flour handprints—completely destroying the only clean area left on him.
“Go, wash your hands.”
He stood up and greeted the other free laborers: “Don’t stop your hands, don’t forget we still have to deliver some to Su Cheng, Yun Bilan, and the others later. So you must make more, the more the better—”
Chen Cheng was currently trying to attach a rat’s tail to one of the dumplings.
Ji Guan responded with a flour-covered, malicious hand gesture while smiling.
Wen Jianyan pushed Wu Zhu to the kitchen.
The faucet was turned on, and freezing water poured down, splashing fine droplets against the inner walls of the sink.
Wen Jianyan leaned against the edge of the sink, tilting his head, watching the other party wash off the dumpling filling under the faucet.
“See, I told you it was hard.”
“Just using brute strength is useless, you have to restrain your power and use finesse.”
“…”
Wu Zhu paused, seeming to think of something.
“I’ll try my best.”
When they left the kitchen, the front door happened to open from the outside. Cold wind rushed in through the crack, and a small figure charged in like a bullet: “What delicious things are you making?!”
Seeing the dumpling wrappers and meat filling on the table, Orange Candy froze: “Dumplings?”
She looked around, her face showing obvious disappointment: “Aren’t you guys boiling tangyuan?” (T/N: sweet glutinous rice balls).
“Yeah,” Ma Qi looked up and answered very seriously, “The President said if you don’t eat dumplings on the Winter Solstice, your ears will freeze off.”
“Huh? He said that?”
Orange Candy tilted her head.
She blinked, and a terrifyingly innocent smile subsequently appeared on her face.
“But how come I heard that if you don’t eat tangyuan, your head will be chopped off in the winter?”
“…?!” Bai Xue, who was earnestly wrapping dumplings with his head down, looked up, his expression a mix of bewilderment and shock.
Hugo followed closely behind her. He still carried the chill from outside and happened to hear her spouting nonsense. He couldn’t help but frown:
“Don’t speak nonsense.”
“Tsk, what dumplings or tangyuan… they’re all boring.”
Chen Cheng scoffed. He put down the lump of dough in his hand—having added an even uglier rat’s tail to the butt of an already ugly dumpling—and said with great disdain, “What you really should eat is glutinous rice cake, understand? And it must be red bean flavor.”
Bai Xue straightened up, unable to help but hold his breath and ask: “…Or else?”
“Or else?” Chen Cheng thought for a moment, and quickly smiled wickedly. “Or else your eyeballs will turn into two large red beans in the winter. They’ll be dug out, stuck onto a glutinous rice cake, and then you’ll have to eat it yourself.”
Bai Xue’s eyes went wide, and he gasped.
Chen Mo: “…”
How did these guys turn the Winter Solstice into a collection of cult ghost stories?
Since opinions were exceptionally divided this time, after several rounds of fierce arguing, they finally reached an agreement—Orange Candy dragged Wen Ya out to buy tangyuan; Qi Qian tagged along, mainly to get some mutton soup as quickly as possible; Chen Cheng started staring at Ji Guan, forcing him to make red bean glutinous rice cakes from scratch; while the other laborers continued to silently bear the burden of wrapping dumplings.
The good news was that, under Wen Jianyan’s patient guidance, before the night ended, Wu Zhu finally succeeded in wrapping his very first complete, unflattened, and uncrushed dumpling.
“For you.” He solemnly and cherishingly handed it to Wen Jianyan, looking at him with anticipation.
“Good! Very good!”
Wen Jianyan spared no words of praise, extolling it highly.
“Exceptionally perfect!”
Busy with the red bean cakes, Ji Guan took a moment to glance over, and fell silent.
——It was an ugly, crooked, wrinkled lump of dough.
Calling it a dumpling was simply an insult to a normal person’s eyesight and cognition.
To this, Chen Cheng evaluated: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder; bad dumplings in the eye of the lover.”
The dumplings had just been put into the pot and would need a while before being served. Wen Jianyan seized the opportunity to go out to the balcony for some fresh air.
His white breath dissipated upwards, hazy in the faint moonlight.
Suddenly, he felt his ear being touched by something. Wen Jianyan shivered, involuntarily shrinking his shoulders, and subconsciously looked beside him.
It was Wu Zhu.
With lowered eyes, he pinched Wen Jianyan’s slightly red, freezing earlobe, rubbing it lingeringly.
“It didn’t freeze off.”
He said seriously.
Wen Jianyan couldn’t help but laugh: “Wait, you actually believed that?”
He tilted his head, pressing his ear into Wu Zhu’s palm.
“It’s just a folk rumor,” Wen Jianyan lazily rested his head on Wu Zhu’s hand. “Different regions have different customs, the things they eat are different, and the sayings are different too…”
“Is eating dumplings your custom?”
“No.” Wen Jianyan raised his eyebrows, curving his eyes into a careless smile. “I don’t have customs.”
The orphanage didn’t celebrate the Winter Solstice.
The cold winter wind poured into the drafty walls like knives; no one cared if their ears froze off or not.
Liars had no hometown, no customs.
No past and no future.
“But…”
He turned his head.
Behind him, the light from the room fell onto him through the window.
A thread of warm light flickered deep in his eyes, like a flowing river of memories.
“It’s the custom of the previous owner of this house.”
The same old room, the same warm yellow light.
A child, skinny as a ghost, curled his body, using a pair of terrifyingly large, terrifyingly bright eyes to stare intently at the old woman across the table—like a scrawny, dirty-furred little animal that had been beaten too many times, nervously watching the tall, unfamiliar figure before him. Possessing street-smart vigilance and cunning, ready to viciously bite the other at any moment, yet at the same time trembling and terrified of a beating that could fall at any second.
A steaming hot plate was pushed over.
“Eat quickly.” The old woman feigned a threat. “Otherwise, watch out or your ears will freeze off this winter!”
Hot steam rose from the plate, leaving large, misty white traces on the glass.
Through the blurry steam, figures bustled about inside.
Orange Candy seemed to have returned from outside, excitedly showing everyone her favorite fruit-flavored tangyuan; Chen Cheng was bossing Ji Guan around about his work, and Ji Guan’s tolerance for this guy who didn’t help but only got in the way had clearly reached its limit, his bad temper on the verge of exploding; Yang Fan was feeling his way around, muttering as he taught Bai Xue how to wrap dumplings in other shapes.
Wen Jianyan retracted his gaze, and his eyes eventually settled fixedly on Wu Zhu.
He had chosen a past and customs that belonged to him.
Just as he had chosen a family and future that belonged to him.
“Alright.”
Wen Jianyan blinked and said smilingly:
“We need to go back in.”
They had been out for long enough, the dumplings in the pot should be cooked by now, it was time to go back.
Wu Zhu lowered his head, touching the tip of his nose against Wen Jianyan’s, a gilt-like glint reflecting in his eyes.
He suddenly thought of something and asked:
“By the way, do you know how I succeeded… with that last complete dumpling?”
Wen Jianyan froze and shook his head.
“Like this.”
Wu Zhu gently kissed his lips.
His movements were very careful, very gentle, almost affectionate.
The moonlight was frozen into frost by the winter.
Under the blurry light, their exhaled white breath mixed together, inseparable from one another.
Teeth resting against lips, tongue tip licking tongue tip. All the tyrannical, fierce, unreasonable passion was constrained and restrained by an astonishing willpower. Sticky, wet, warm light melted around them, ultimately turning into a patch of warm, soft, lingering tenderness.
“…What you taught me.”
Wu Zhu gently pursed the tip of his tongue.
The vicious beast that devoured people had been shackled, only daring to gently and carefully touch its lover’s lips.
“…Finesse.”
