Chapter 13

Yu Qing paused, puzzled. Who had come up behind her?
Turning, she saw the elevator doors sliding open. A figure in a white suit—haunting her like a ghost that refused to move on—came gradually into focus.
Yu Qing: “……”
Xiang Changge didn’t step out. Standing inside the gleaming elevator car, she looked at Yu Qing and said gently, “It’s five‑forty, Miss. In twenty minutes, at six o’clock, please remember to come down for dinner.”
“Or I can have it sent up to your room.”
Yu Qing: “!”
So annoying. What was this, kindergarten? Did she really have to eat at prescribed times?
Maybe she should fire her after all.
That night’s dinner might have been the simplest meal Yu Qing had seen in her life.
The menu, drafted by Xiang Changge and executed by the chef, consisted of simple home‑style dishes—light and nutritious.
At six sharp, Xiang Changge appeared in the main‑house dining room, watching as the kitchen staff carried out the freshly cooked dishes and set them along the two‑meter‑long marble table.
So few dishes, so plain—it all looked a little sparse and out of place on that lavish table.
But when she thought of the Manchu‑Han feasts Yu Qing usually let go to waste, Xiang Changge felt nothing amiss.
Even with just three dishes and a soup, there was no guarantee Yu Qing would touch any of them.
Making a mental note to drag the long‑idle nutritionist back to work, Xiang Changge checked her watch, then glanced toward the elevator doors outside the dining room.
Looked like the young miss was going to need an invitation again.
With that thought, she turned and headed for the elevators.
In just one day, she had already grown used to taking them. With only three floors and high speed, there was hardly ever any wait. She no longer saw the point of stairs.
She had barely reached the elevator buttons when Aunt Yang emerged from one car.
Smiling at Xiang Changge, she said, “The miss says she’ll be having dinner on the third‑floor balcony tonight and asked me to take the food up.”
Xiang Changge only nodded slightly.
As long as Yu Qing ate, she could eat anywhere she pleased.
Seeing Aunt Yang carry the already modest portions of three dishes and a soup upstairs, Xiang Changge didn’t cruelly follow to supervise the young miss’s meal.
She had more important things to do.
Once Aunt Yang disappeared from the first floor, Xiang Changge turned on her heel and strode out the back—to the staff cafeteria.
Perhaps the kitchen staff there had heard what had happened in the main house and wanted to curry favor; that night’s staff menu was unusually generous.
Braised lamb shanks, stir‑fried beef, garlic ribs, a plate of simply stir‑fried seasonal greens, and fish‑head tofu soup—pork, beef, lamb, fish, all present and accounted for, and all well‑cooked. The moment Xiang Changge stepped into the cafeteria, she felt as if she’d entered heaven.
The aromas rushed to meet her. For someone who had starved for five years in the apocalypse, such temptation was impossible to resist. She had already eaten plenty that day, but right then she felt as if she could put away three whole cows.
Unlike the other staff, who ate from compartmentalized trays, she, as the butler, was served four dishes and a soup on white porcelain plates, each portion generous.
Sitting alone at a side table, she first drank half a bowl of sweet, fresh fish soup to wet her throat, then set about demolishing the rest like a whirlwind.
After her ruthless firings that morning, the remaining staff were noticeably more respectful, afraid that one wrong move would land them on the chopping block.
Worried as they were, none of them dared to chat her up or cozy up to her. As a result, she enjoyed an unusually quiet—and, for her, incredibly abundant—dinner.
Elsewhere, Yu Qing—who had been half‑worried she might see that white‑suited figure again—finally relaxed when, on the third‑floor balcony, she saw it was only Aunt Yang bringing the food, with no one behind her.
She wasn’t afraid of Xiang Changge, exactly. She just couldn’t be bothered to argue with her. As long as the woman had the sense not to appear and get in her way, that was enough.
Though it was just past six, the rain had darkened the sky considerably.
After setting the tray down, Aunt Yang switched on the balcony’s warm orange pendant lights. Wrapped in her shawl and curled up on the fabric sofa, Yu Qing let her gaze slide past the dishes on the table to the garden outside.
She wasn’t thinking of anything—and she was thinking of everything.
She sat in a daze for a long time. Only when Aunt Yang reminded her did she pull her eyes back to the table.
Catching sight of the simple three dishes and one soup, she blinked and instinctively looked at Aunt Yang.
Face a little guilty, Aunt Yang dropped her gaze, but her mouth was honest and quick. “This is the menu the butler arranged…”
In other words, if Miss Yu felt slighted, the blame had a clear owner and shouldn’t fall on her by mistake.
Used as she was to seeing at least eight dishes on the table at every meal, Yu Qing did feel a jolt of strangeness at the sight of such simplicity.
But it wasn’t the vague sense of neglect Aunt Yang feared. It was more like the odd feeling of bumping into an unexpected change in the monotony of life.
A few dishes more or less made little difference to her.
She had nothing in particular she loved to eat or hated. If she was in a good mood, she’d pick at a few bites; if she wasn’t, she ate nothing at all. That was her norm.
After her parents died, with the house under her control, she had long since rebelled against the carefully scheduled diet the nutritionists had imposed for the sake of her health. For the last few years she had done as she pleased.
The result was that she had ruined herself.
Body and mind, both.
Not that she’d really noticed—or if she had, she didn’t care.
The butler’s menu.
Perhaps it was the novelty of any change, or simple curiosity, but Yu Qing found herself studying the dishes.
Steamed bass, stir‑fried pumpkin, lettuce with sliced pork, and yam‑and‑rib soup. All were light and mild.
She picked up her chopsticks and tried a bit of each.
She wasn’t hungry. Between the glucose and the half‑bowl of lily‑seed porridge, she would normally have skipped dinner entirely.
But tonight, for some reason, she wanted to see what these dishes tasted like.
The bass was tender and sweet, the pumpkin rich and fragrant, the lettuce crisp and refreshing, the yam soft and yielding… She even, for once, drank two sips of soup.
Her final verdict: the chef was just as good at home cooking.
When Yu Qing was done, Aunt Yang, delighted that she had eaten at all, carried the leftovers back to the kitchen.
The moment she walked in, she saw Xiang Changge sitting at the serving table with a tablet, occupied with something or other.
“Didn’t you go to dinner, Butler?” she asked quickly.
At the sound of her voice, Xiang Changge closed the tablet and answered first, only then turning her eyes to the tray in Aunt Yang’s hands.
“Already did.”
Eating didn’t take long—and eating was what she did best.
Then she looked closely at the food Yu Qing had left.
Aunt Yang noticed her gaze and broke into a smile, just about to say that Yu Qing had actually eaten some dinner, when Xiang Changge said, perplexed, “Was this for feeding the flies?”
She knew Yu Qing’s appetite was small and the portions had already been set accordingly. But even so, the girl had only nibbled at them, like a bird pecking at crumbs.
Aunt Yang’s face froze. The smile on her lips now looked wrong whether she held onto it or let it go.
After a couple of seconds, she gave a few awkward chuckles. “Ha… well…”
She honestly didn’t know what to say.
In her eyes, the fact that Yu Qing had eaten anything at all was progress. But judging from the butler’s tone and expression, she clearly found the amount entirely unacceptable.
It did feel a bit like courting trouble with the young miss—but Aunt Yang knew Xiang Changge was genuinely taking responsibility for the Yu household and Yu Qing’s health.
After a moment’s thought, she half‑explained, half‑reported, “The miss has always had a tiny appetite and never eats on time. The fact that she had any dinner tonight is already a big step forward.”
Xiang Changge said nothing. She turned and walked out of the kitchen. Aunt Yang craned her neck after her and saw her heading toward the elevators.
Heading for the elevator… so she was going upstairs?
To do what? See the miss? What for? Surely not to tell her she ate like a fly?
That couldn’t be. The miss was the miss and the butler was the butler…
Uneasy, Aunt Yang hesitated for a moment, then set the tray down and hurried after her.
When Xiang Changge stepped out of the elevator, she heard music—recorded, not played live, from speakers with excellent sound.
Following the sound down the corridor, she quickly reached the small sitting room on the third floor.
Beyond that was the balcony. The glass doors between the two were wide open, and the side windows on the balcony stood ajar as well.
Mountain nights ran cool. The night air, heavy with moisture, blew through the open windows into the room. Xiang Changge could smell the faint, clean scent of the outdoors, tinged with cold.
Yu Qing sat cross‑legged on the wool rug in the sitting room, black hair spilling down her back. The light above her cast a halo around her small frame.
The speakers in front of her were playing a low, mellow tune. Within that cocoon of sound, Yu Qing sat alone, slowly piecing together a dense jigsaw puzzle.
Xiang Changge lingered for a while in the shadowed bit of hallway that opened into the sitting room, then walked forward.
She deliberately let her heels tap audibly on the floor, the steady clack‑clack drawing Yu Qing’s attention so that she noticed her presence without being startled.
Yu Qing turned, her long lashes casting shadows under her eyes.
Perhaps because she had just been lost in her own world, her gaze was flat and lifeless.
Only when she saw that it was Xiang Changge did a faint ripple pass through her eyes, gone again an instant later.
She glanced at her, then lowered her head to her puzzle again, asking in a low voice, “What is it?”
Xiang Changge didn’t stop until her toes touched the edge of the wool rug.
Looking down at the woman sitting at her feet, she asked, “Do you want to keep a pig, or a dog?”
Yu Qing, who had just found the perfect puzzle piece, froze, her hand suspended in midair. She blinked.
Was there something wrong with her hearing?
After a moment, she raised her head slightly, confused. “What did you say?”
Xiang Changge lowered her eyes, lids half‑drooped, and met her gaze.