Chapter 14

With great patience, she repeated, “I said, do you want to keep a pig, or a dog?”
Yu Qing: “?”
What was that supposed to mean?
Wanting a dog she could sort of understand—but why was a pig on the list? What essential connection did those two even have?
Puzzled, confused, hesitant, shocked—
In the end, Yu Qing voiced the only question that truly mattered. “Why… would I keep either?”
At that, she saw a faintly mocking smile curve Xiang Changge’s lips. “You leave so many leftovers every day. Wouldn’t it be a waste not to keep a pig?”
Yu Qing: “……”
What was wrong with this woman? So she left food. She’d been leaving food for years. It wasn’t like she couldn’t afford it. And the kitchen scraps were handled by professionals anyway, weren’t they? It wasn’t as if they were just dumped straight in the trash. So what if she left some?
She had even gone along with the butler’s insistence and eaten on time. Maybe she hadn’t come down to the dining room, but she’d eaten at the assigned hour. Surely that should have spared her a follow‑up visit.
So it turned out she was here just to mock her for eating little and leaving much.
Yu Qing hadn’t even complained about getting only three dishes and one soup for dinner, and yet here she was, fretting over scraps. Wasn’t that going a bit too far?
Under Yu Qing’s “are you out of your mind?” stare, Xiang Changge remained unbothered.
Instead, she continued her analysis. “But if you raise a pig, once it grows up your leftovers probably won’t be enough. And when it’s full‑grown, if you don’t slaughter it for meat, that’s wasteful. On the other hand, it would have grown up on every bite and sip of food you left… It would be hard not to feel attached. Killing it might be a bit cruel.”
“So maybe a dog would be better. Your tastes are very light. A mutt that eats table scraps should be fine.”
Listening to her, Yu Qing honestly couldn’t tell whether she was seriously discussing pet options or just expressing her deep dissatisfaction with the amount of food Yu Qing had left.
Without meaning to, she thought again of how Xiang Changge had eaten the last two spoonfuls of her lily‑seed porridge.
Her mouth moved faster than her brain. “What, can’t *you* eat it, Butler Xiang?”
The moment the words left her, Xiang Changge hadn’t even reacted before Yu Qing froze.
How had something that pointlessly rude slipped out?
She opened her mouth, then shut it again, at a loss for what to say.
Xiang Changge, oblivious as ever, simply tipped her head to the side, thinking it over. “I *can* eat it. But what if I’m full?”
Take tonight for example—she had already put away a truly lavish staff dinner. She had no room left for three more dishes and a soup.
If only she had four stomachs like a cow.
The system, listening to both the conversation and Xiang Changge’s inner thoughts: “……”
What kind of host *was* this?
Poor supporting female, woo woo woo. A rich young lady actually getting scolded for leaving food—how could she be expected to endure such injustice? So she left some; it wasn’t like she couldn’t afford it!
Unable to hold back, the system reminded her, “8802, System‑tongtong would just like to point out that the supporting female is a young miss…”
“And?” Xiang Changge shot back silently. “Being a young miss means she gets to waste food?”
Her question was so forthright that, by contrast, the system suddenly felt a little guilty. “…She… she doesn’t?”
The system fell into deep thought.
So did Yu Qing.
After staring up at Xiang Changge for a long time, she finally realized that the woman wasn’t actually mocking her. She *genuinely* wanted to know what to do about leftovers when she was already full.
Yu Qing: “……”
She had been leaving food for so many years, and now someone had appeared to tell her she couldn’t. Taking a deep breath, she tried to be reasonable. “The kitchen scraps get collected, don’t they?”
Just like the garbage truck that came up every day to haul away the trash, someone collected the kitchen waste as well. Whether they fed pigs or made fertilizer with it, she had no idea.
“So you think it’s fine to leave food every day?” Xiang Changge countered.
Again, Yu Qing found herself without an answer.
Even when she’d only been reading the novel, Xiang Changge had seen red over Yu Qing swanning off from tablefuls of untouched feasts. Now that she was face to face with her, she certainly wasn’t going to let that continue.
Yes, in modern times, as long as you had money, food was never truly scarce. But “plenty” wasn’t the same thing as “license to waste.” There were still plenty of people in the world who went hungry.
And if she really couldn’t finish, she could always cut a few dishes, save the money, and donate it to charity. Why choose waste instead?
Her question about pigs and dogs hadn’t been mockery; she had honestly wanted Yu Qing to think.
This was the age of emotional‑support animals. Raising a pet—or tending plants—could be healing. A dog or some other living thing might be good for Yu Qing.
It would give her one more source of responsibility, something to tie her to this world so she wouldn’t keep muttering about how she had no bonds and might as well just die.
Since Yu Qing still wasn’t speaking, Xiang Changge, ever decisive, made the choice for her. “Then let’s go with a dog… If you keep leaving too much, we can make it two.”
“You can think about what color you’d like. I’ll make the arrangements.”
With that, she walked out onto the balcony and shut all the windows, leaving only narrow slits at the sides.
On her way back into the sitting room, another thought struck her. She checked the time. “Right—according to your schedule, you’re supposed to be in bed by ten tonight. If you still need to bathe or wash up, please keep an eye on the clock.”
Author’s note: By the way, would you all like paragraph comments? I’ve never used them, but some readers seem to want them. I’ve heard that if I edit chapters the comments might get out of place or disappear, though. Your resident typo‑fixing author is confused. [sobs][sobs] Also, would they get in the way of reading?
Xiang Changge left.
Some time later, Aunt Yang crept over. Seeing that Yu Qing had abandoned her puzzle and gone completely blank, she scratched uneasily at the back of her hand.
Oh my goodness. No wonder the new butler had dared to overhaul almost the entire staff on her first day—she even dared to lecture the young miss!
And not just lecture her—she was treating her like a preschool teacher scolding a picky eater and telling a child exactly when to go to bed. Aunt Yang had been listening from not far away, hardly daring to breathe.
What kind of butler was this? This was a parent.
She had no idea what Miss Yu thought of any of it.
Forget ten p.m. sleep—there were days when Miss Yu was still awake at ten in the morning and only crashing at ten at night.
Sneaking another look at the dazed young woman, Aunt Yang wavered, torn between saying something and finding an excuse to slip away.
For a long time, the only sound in the little sitting room was Yu Qing’s favorite song, looping again and again.
She didn’t know how much time had passed. Aunt Yang was just deciding she should probably bring the miss a glass of water when she heard Yu Qing tell the speakers, with a voice command, to stop the music.
Silence dropped over the room.
Yu Qing pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, chin resting on the bony caps. In a lazy tone, she asked, “Aunt Yang, being a pauper… isn’t that kind of nice?”
Aunt Yang, who was already standing stiff with nerves: “?”
Was the miss talking in her sleep?
Had the butler pushed her so far she wished she’d never had a butler at all?
If she didn’t want one, she could simply say so. Why bring poverty into it?
What was good about being broke? Just hearing the thought made her hair stand on end—it was worse than a horror story.
She thought all that, but what she said was much more cautious. “I… don’t think so, no?”
People talked about striking it rich, not about going broke.
Yu Qing said nothing more.
Maybe the question hadn’t really been for Aunt Yang at all.
Earlier that afternoon, she had read the contract and will again in detail. According to the documents, if she fired Xiang Changge, she would no longer be able to inherit the Yu family estate—which was effectively no different from being penniless.
She couldn’t understand why her parents would have written such a will. It read like something made up on a whim.
Why did she only get the inheritance if Xiang Changge remained her butler? What connection did those two things have?
Her parents had always cherished her. Why would they have written a clause like that? Did they really trust Xiang Changge that much?
She couldn’t make sense of it.
It was one reason, among others, why she was curious about Xiang Changge and why, even when the woman “overstepped,” she hadn’t responded with a firm, final decision to fire her.
But now she was going too far.
Yu Qing hated the way her childhood had been—listening to doctors and nutritionists, living like an experimental subject with no freedom at all.
And now Xiang Changge seemed determined to drag her back to that past.
Her voice echoed again in her mind:
“I’ll raise you until you’re healthy and white and chubby and let you live to a hundred.”
If staying alive meant being sheltered in a greenhouse, stripped of freedom and whim, then she’d rather die.
“Beep‑beep.”
“Negative thought level critical. Host, please take note.”
Back in her small villa, Xiang Changge had just parked the four‑seater shuttle and was on her way to draw herself a milk bath when the system’s warning blared in her head.
She stopped mid‑step. “Detected what, exactly?”
The system repeated itself.
Xiang Changge: “……”
For a first day on the job, it was a brutal report card—for both her and the system.
They’d come here to help Yu Qing regain her faith in life and live happily. Yet after one day of their efforts, she was already entertaining deeply negative thoughts.
For a few seconds, host and system stared at each other in wordless dismay—at least, in the literary sense.
Then Xiang Changge clenched her fists and turned for the door.
“Deeply negative thoughts? What kind of thoughts? She doesn’t want to live anymore? Why not? Is it because I told her to get a dog and stop wasting food or because I told her to be in bed by ten?”