An 80s female translator was spoiled rotten by a rough and jealous man.

Chapter 372 Keeping a Mistress
As the two finished shopping and were about to queue at the checkout counter, waves of office workers poured into the supermarket.

They pushed their carts and randomly chose a line that seemed shorter. While waiting, Huo Qingshan glanced at the goods displayed on the small shelves next to the cashier. His gaze lingered on them for a while until he noticed out of the corner of his eye that the person next to him was also looking over. Huo Qingshan turned to look at her, but she looked away first and stared down at the tips of her shoes.

"We've used up all the supplies at home," Huo Qingshan said, bending down and whispering closer to her.

Meng Youyou turned her face away, darting her gaze elsewhere, and muttered indifferently, "If you want to buy it, just buy it. Why are you looking at me?"

The moment he finished speaking, the man left the queue and walked a few steps to the shelf next to the checkout counter. He bent down slightly, his gaze sweeping over the outer packaging of each box. This meticulous examination was exactly the same as Meng Youyou's earlier careful selection of the various makeup removers on the shelf. The only difference was that Meng Youyou held each makeup remover in her hand and looked at the ingredient list, while he didn't touch them, but his attentiveness was no less than hers.

Then, the man reached out and took four boxes of different packaging from the shelf, one on the left and one on the right, one on top and one on the bottom. Then, he turned around in the crowd and walked back to Meng Youyou's side, putting the boxes into the shopping cart.

Meng Youyou froze on the spot. Shouldn't they just casually and casually grab a box when they get to that line?

...

There was a traffic jam on the way, and I got home about half an hour later than expected.

Huo Qingshan carried the ingredients to the kitchen, then turned around and told Meng Youyou, who had taken off her shoes as soon as she entered the door and collapsed onto the sofa, to rest for a while if she was tired, and to call her when the food was ready.

However, Meng Youyou had only been lying down for a few minutes when she also happily scurried into the kitchen, put on an apron, and claimed that she wanted to help him with the housework.

Huo Qingshan saw her take out a serving of fresh pork ribs and lotus root from the refrigerator. These were the two ingredients she had specifically requested to buy at the supermarket that afternoon, and she had picked them out herself.

Meng Youyou placed the pork ribs and lotus root on the counter, then turned on her phone. A capable, middle-aged woman's voice rang out: "This is a nanny-level tutorial on how to make lotus root and pork bone soup..."

This wasn't the first time Huo Qingshan had heard that voice. Going back a bit, she'd recently been watching a lot of cooking videos, especially soups and stews. Every now and then, he'd hear middle-aged women or men teaching how to cook coming from her phone. She'd been watching those videos for almost a month. At first, Huo Qingshan thought she was considering learning to cook, but after waiting week after week without seeing any concrete action, he figured he was just overthinking it.

To put it more recently, Huo Qingshan had heard this voice a little over an hour earlier in the vegetable section of the supermarket—she was standing in front of sections of lotus root with different shapes and appearances, and turned down the volume on her phone: "To make a pot of soft and fragrant lotus root and pork rib soup, choosing the right lotus root is key. There are two types of lotus root: soft and crisp. Those with obvious spots on the surface, a darker color, and a dull sound when tapped are the soft ones, which have a high starch content and are the best for making soup..." While watching the video, she reached out and rummaged through the pile of lotus root in front of her, occasionally tapping it as if she were doing it in a professional manner.

Huo Qingshan assumed it was just a whim, given how often she acted on impulse. He even had a plan in mind: what would he do with the ribs and lotus root? —Once her initial enthusiasm wore off, the turning point would likely occur after paying the bill, on the way home, or perhaps after she lay down on the sofa completely too tired to move. Delaying it until the next day or the third, she would most likely forget all about it. "Huh? Did I buy ribs?" "Oh, I think I did. Oh dear, I forgot." And that was it.

I never expected that she would act on her whim tonight.

Accompanied by the background music of a soup-making tutorial playing on a loop, Huo Qingshan washed the beef brisket, spinach, potatoes... and was washing tomatoes when two dusty sections of lotus root were suddenly thrown into the sink. "Wash them for me while you're at it," Meng Youyou instructed without looking up.

Halfway through washing, Huo Qingshan suddenly heard the middle-aged woman's voice stop him; she must have pressed pause. Immediately afterward, he heard her ask, "Huo Qingshan, do you have a clay pot at home?"

Huo Qingshan washed her hands, wiped them with kitchen paper, then bent down and took an enamel pot from the kitchen cabinet, placing it on the counter in front of her.

Meng Youyou: "This isn't a clay pot."

Huo Qingshan: "I usually use this pot to make soup."

Meng Youyou: "The videos all use clay pots."

Huo Qingshan: "Same, no difference."

Meng Youyou nodded as if she understood, "Oh."

Huo Qingshan walked back to the sink, turned on the tap, and about half a minute later, he heard someone say, "If it doesn't taste good, it's definitely because you didn't use a clay pot. You're fully responsible."

Huo Qingshan: "..."

Huo Qingshan thought to himself, how bad can a soup be? Just wash the ingredients, chop them, put them in a pot, add water, simmer slowly, and finally add a little salt. Homemade soups are practically the most basic and difficult dishes to make, requiring absolutely no skill.

It was a very simple dish, but Meng Youyou was very serious while making it. She peeled the skin and cut the pieces very carefully. She was so focused that just by looking at her expression, posture and overly absorbed energy, you would think that she was cutting "thousand-shredded tofu". It created a grand atmosphere of "preparing a state banquet". For a moment, Huo Qingshan had the illusion that he was in the kitchen of a five-star hotel.

Of course, it could only be an illusion. Anyone who takes a look will see the lotus root pieces on the cutting board, which are all different sizes.

The recipe she was interested in required adding some oil to the pot with scallions and ginger to fry the ribs, then adding boiling water to stew them. Meng Youyou asked Mr. Huo for help with this step.

She was terrified of frying in oil. Once the oil splattered everywhere, it was truly unpredictable. Meng Youyou was terrified of it. When Huo Qingshan was frying ribs, Meng Youyou held a pot lid to cover her face and stayed far away.

She had moved about two meters away, almost back out of the kitchen, but her mouth was still busy, constantly instructing him to use a spatula to flip the food, not to burn it, and urgently telling him to turn the heat down, hurry up, hurry up, you can add water now. Huo Qingshan was unusually flustered by her urging.

After finally following her instructions and the boiling water submerged the ribs without splattering oil anymore, Meng Youyou dared to come closer to take a look. She picked up a piece of rib with her chopsticks, examined it closely, and muttered, "Is it not cooked through yet?"

Huo Qingshan: "..."

After a flurry of activity, the final product they managed to stew turned out surprisingly well in color.

Meng Youyou chopped some tender green scallions and sprinkled them on the surface of the boiling hot soup with a sense of ceremony.

The soup was simmering on the stove on the right, while the stove on the left was still burning, with several dishes being stir-fried. The fires on both sides were turned off, the dishes were taken out, and the food was served almost simultaneously.

Meng Youyou placed the soup bowl on the dining table and cleverly moved to the center position. Seeing him take off his apron and come out of the kitchen, Meng Youyou ladled out a bowl of soup and handed it to him, asking with expectant eyes, "Try it first, how does it taste?"

Huo Qingshan reached out and took the soup, took a sip, and commented, "Not bad." He was telling the truth, not just offering encouragement, because apart from peeling and cutting the lotus root, he had handled most of the main steps of making the soup after it was put into the pot.

Meng Youyou poured herself a bowl, took a big gulp, and then shook her head and exclaimed, "Mmm, this is the best lotus root soup I've ever had in the world!"

"Huo Qingshan, do you think I'm exceptionally talented?" she asked, getting a little carried away.

Huo Qingshan couldn't help but chuckle, "Yes, you have a lot of talent." Far from discouraging her enthusiasm for cooking, he praised her, "If you make it a couple more times, you'll probably surpass me." Although this meal was a bit of a hassle and took longer than usual, Huo Qingshan inexplicably felt it was quite good. It seemed that food made together always tasted a little bit better than food made by one person alone. Why was that?

Overwhelmed by the praise, Meng Youyou waved her hand and promised on the spot, "From now on, I'll be in charge of making all the soup at home!"

I don’t know if it’s because people who are cooking for the first time all have a common desire to see their hard work completely devoured, but throughout the meal, Meng Youyou couldn’t wait to refill Huo Qingshan’s soup bowl whenever it was empty.

Under his girlfriend's eager gaze, Huo Qingshan forced himself to down three large bowls of lotus root soup for dinner. The porcelain bowls were quickly emptied, undoubtedly partly due to encouragement. While the soup was indeed delicious, it wasn't so good that he'd barely eaten a few bites of rice before gulping down three bowls of soup. Even after standing up and walking a few steps, he could feel the water gurgling in his stomach, as if he'd never had soup before. After finishing his meal, Meng Youyou put down her bowl, suddenly realizing something, and glared at him, "Hey, are you trying to take this opportunity to 'turn the tables' and dump the cooking on me?"

Huo Qingshan got up to clear the dishes, pretending to recall something as he said, "Who was it that hugged me a few days ago and said, 'Baby, you do all the housework by yourself. Don't you feel wronged?'" Huo Qingshan imitated her clingy tone perfectly. "Who was it that kept saying they would share some of the burden with me?"

Meng Youyou denied it: "Did I say that?"

"You said that once tonight." With that, Huo Qingshan picked up the greasy bowl and chopsticks, turned his back, and walked towards the kitchen.

"Oh, really? I'm being too considerate! A girlfriend as understanding as you are hard to find even with a lantern." Meng Youyou followed him into the kitchen, circling around him, chattering away: "Since I'll be making all the soups at home from now on, everyone has their own specialty. For example, I'm good at snail soup, pickled cabbage and beef noodle soup, Japanese tonkotsu soup, Korean spicy beef soup, and fatty rice noodle soup."

"If a chef runs out of ingredients, it's like a driver without a steering wheel, a doctor without a scalpel, or a painter without a palette. Can you give me back my soup base?"

"Ha, they're waiting for him here." Huo Qingshan ignored this completely.

After cleaning up the kitchen and taking a shower, Huo Qingshan still felt a bit bloated. He paced around the living room to digest, and when he had a moment, he took out his phone. That's when he saw a post someone had made on WeChat Moments two hours earlier. The post included a picture of a table full of dishes, with a bowl of soup at the center, and the caption read: "Chef Meng's first cooking experience. I guess cooking isn't that hard~"

Jiang Fu left a comment below: [Did you cook all of this? I have my doubts.]
Meng Youyou's reply was vague: [You need to get to know your roommate again; I'm not the same person I was yesterday~]
Huo Qingshan glanced at it for a few seconds and silently gave it a thumbs up.

When she was sleeping at night, she was playing games under the covers when Huo Qingshan pulled her out, took her phone, locked the screen, and put it on the bedside table on his side. He then ordered her to go to sleep because she had to get up early the next day.

Meng Youyou, held in his arms, said defiantly, "Huo Qingshan, let's settle this score."

"What?" he replied with his eyes closed.

"Have you noticed that in the past month, especially on weekend evenings, I've been spending less time playing games, reading novels, and browsing Weibo? I used to be able to play at least three rounds of Candy Crush before going to bed, but now?"

These words were clearly meant to provoke him. Huo Qingshan pretended to be asleep and remained silent.

"Why do you think it is?" Meng Youyou insisted on settling accounts with him.

Huo Qingshan remained silent, intending to continue pretending to be asleep.

Seeing that he didn't react, Meng Youyou simply climbed on top of him and grabbed his neck "fiercely" with both hands: "Huo Qingshan, you've stolen my precious leisure time!"

Now, Huo Qingshan could no longer pretend to be asleep. He grabbed her hands and released them from his throat, then said in a serious tone, "Moderate exercise before bed is not only good for sleep quality and physical and mental health, but it can also enhance the deep communication and warm up the relationship between two people through interaction. On the other hand, staring at the phone screen for a long time to play games will only hurt your eyes. So you have abandoned the dregs of the past and entered a better state of life, which is something to be happy about."

"Wow!" Meng Youyou pinched his cheek with her fingers and pulled it outwards, exclaiming sincerely, "How can someone have such thick skin?"

Then, she pressed the back of her hand against the man's face, as if feeling its temperature, and clicked her tongue, saying, "Let me see if this person feels ashamed when he lies through his teeth?"

Huo Qingshan suddenly rolled over, pinning the person who had been lying on top of him, talking more and more enthusiastically, to the ground. He threatened, "Looks like you're still not tired tonight. If you don't go to sleep, I have reason to consider whether I should help you burn off some more of your excess energy."

As soon as he finished speaking, the man's head slammed down onto the girl's neck. Meng Youyou shrank back, trying to avoid him. Huo Qingshan wasn't really going to hurt her; his main purpose was to scare her. He let her obediently writhe under his touch and return to the other side of the bed. Meng Youyou pulled the covers up, lay obediently on her pillow, and said to him before closing her eyes, "Goodnight."

As Huo Qingshan drifted off to sleep, he felt something warm and soft snuggle into his arms. Overwhelmed by drowsiness, he instinctively pulled the softer thing closer and continued sleeping. A little while later, he vaguely heard a girl whisper in his ear, "Baby, if you ever see lotus root soup again, just remember what it looked like and tasted like today. Those are all fake. Forget about them quickly."

Huo Qingshan couldn't tell for a moment whether she was talking in her sleep or he was hearing words from his dream. He slept deeper and deeper and didn't respond.

In the darkness, Meng Youyou stared at the sleeping man's profile with her eyes open. After whispering a few words as if to lull him to sleep, she kissed his earlobe, which was so close to hers, and then kissed his chin before falling asleep peacefully.

She liked lotus root. Huo Qingshan wasn't a picky eater, but he disliked lotus root. Although he would occasionally cook it for her, he never ate it himself. Meng Youyou noticed this and figured out the reason. She thought it must be because he had dreamed of someone feeding her lotus root soup, so he "disliked everything about the house" and therefore disliked lotus root.

Meng Youyou developed a "compensatory mentality" that she only had towards kindergarten children, and she had been planning to put it into practice. She didn't want him to think of an unpleasant memory every time he saw his favorite lotus root and pork rib soup, even though it was fake, illusory, never happened, and would never happen.

It's as if replacing something old and bad with something new and wonderful can "replace the old with the new," and Meng Youyou believes and practices this. Just like a child who has dropped his lollipop on the ground, it's dirty and inedible, and he cries loudly, but if another child comes up to him and hands him a brand new, colorful lollipop, he will immediately stop crying and start smiling.

Whether it's useful or not, she wanted to give him a rainbow lollipop.

Some people will definitely think that these two things cannot be compared at all, and that this approach is naive and foolish, but Meng Youyou believes that "this person" does not include Huo Qingshan.

Because he will understand her, understand all her feelings, and then cherish the "lollipop" she gave him.

...

The next morning, Meng Youyou received a WeChat message from her mother, Ms. Hu. Ms. Hu would send her messages every few days, sometimes showing concern, sometimes offering advice. Thinking it was just another one of her usual platitudes, she opened the message: "[You have a boyfriend?]"
Mother: [You're even living together?]
The moment Meng Youyou saw the message, she sat bolt upright in bed, all sleepiness vanishing instantly.

At the end of the last message from her mother, there was a photo attached, which was the same picture that Meng Youyou posted on her WeChat Moments yesterday. Her mother circled the top left corner of the picture, where only half of a man's hand was visible, with clearly defined knuckles.

Meng Youyou thought to herself: I was careless!
How did Ms. Hu discover the trick? Her daughter, who had never lifted a finger in her life, lived alone in another city, worked five days a week and rarely had a day or two off. Why would she be willing to cook such a feast? It was unbelievable. Most importantly, this meal was far beyond what her normal cooking skills could produce.

She knew her daughter too well; there must be something fishy going on. So she took a few more glances at the photos and actually discovered some clues.

Actually, having a guy come over for dinner isn't something to make a fuss about or something that needs to be brought up. In the current social dynamics of young people, it's a perfectly normal and ordinary form of casual dining.

Ms. Hu was just trying to trick her.

As for the suspicion that her daughter was in a relationship, Ms. Hu had long suspected it—during the National Day holiday when she went home, her daughter was always glued to her phone, typing away. Even when she asked her to eat fruit, have a meal, go shopping with her mother, or get a beauty treatment, her daughter would always pick up her phone every now and then, light up the screen, and glance at it. If her eyes lit up after that glance, she would immediately pick up her phone and reply to messages with a happy expression; if her eyes dimmed, she would put the phone back dejectedly and continue chatting absentmindedly with her mother.

Everyone has gone through that stage; how could Ms. Hu not understand?

It was only out of the blue that she discovered that her daughter had started living with someone without telling her parents. Ms. Hu felt she could no longer pretend to be oblivious.

Meng Youyou racked her brains, then decided to admit half the truth first, and then proceed gradually: [We're just dating. He eats dinner at home and goes back to sleep at night; we don't live together.]
Upon receiving the message, Ms. Hu's brow furrowed: "[Your father and I have bought tickets to visit you in Fanzhou City next Saturday. You and your boyfriend, who's keeping a mistress, are in a difficult position.]"
Meng Youyou: [...]
Meng Youyou didn't even bother to put on her slippers. She jumped out of bed, found Huo Qingshan who was busy in the kitchen, and immediately said, "Commander Huo, why don't you move all your things out of my house?"

One more chapter.