Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
Five years later.
B City, in a two-bedroom apartment.
Ye Fei took out a piece of chicken breast. She tenderized the meat then, added salt, black pepper, cooking wine and light soy sauce to it. Afterwards, she poured in a small amount of honey to marinate the chicken breast in before frying the meat.
Subsequently, she covered the pot with a lid so that the meat would simmer for a short while. This way, she could ensure that the chicken meat was succulent and not dry or hard.
After that, she sliced the carrots and cucumber, sprinkled salt and black pepper over them and put the ingredients into the frying pan to fry on both sides.
Following that, she took out her pre-made wrap pastry and cooked purple rice. After shredding the chicken breast meat, she placed it on top of the purple rice with some vegetables, then spread a layer of avocado puree on top before rolling everything up with the wrap pastry. After that, she used a tin foil to hold the ingredients in place firmly.
The calorie-controlled meal that the customer wanted was finally ready.
Ye Fei hurriedly grabbed the lunch for the day, rode on her small battery-powered vehicle and rushed to Chang Ping Corporation.
Ye Fei was currently running a home restaurant, but she did not have a physical store. Instead, she completed the cooking directly in her home, which helped her to save on a lot of costs.
She only operated in the midday and delivered two types of dishes everyday—a healthy, calorie-controlled meal, and a delicious bento with meat and vegetables. It was up to the customer to choose which of the two they wanted.
But most of the customers—especially for women in white-collar jobs—would choose the healthy, calorie-controlled meal.
“Thank you.” A white-collar worker took the lunch prepared for five people; it had been ordered altogether by their office employees. “Ever since I started eating your calorie-controlled meal, I have not been against calorie-controlled meals anymore. Recently, the diets of several girls in our office have become much healthier too.”
“I really don’t know how you do it. The chicken meat is tender and juicy while the carrots do not have that particular smell at all,” the white-collar worker praised.
“It’s great that you guys liked it. Please continue to patronize my business in the future,” Ye Fei smiled, “If there is anything that doesn’t suit your tastes, do let me know. I can adjust it.”
“Sure thing!” The white-collar worker paid the bill and walked off with the lunch.
Ye Fei was just about to leave too when she received a phone call from the kindergarten.
“Xiao Mo’s Mom, that… Xiao Mo has gone missing! Please come to the kindergarten quickly.” On the phone, the teacher was so anxious that she was close to tears.
“What?” Ye Fei hurriedly got onto the vehicle and headed towards the kindergarten, “How could he have disappeared for no reason?”
The teacher-in-charge finally found an excuse, “Because he was criticized for fighting with a child from another class. He probably couldn’t accept it, so…”
“Xiao Mo isn’t a child who would fight with someone without any reason at all. Moreover, your kindergarten is sealed off from the public—that a small child could actually walk out of your kindergarten on his own. I’m starting to hold great suspicion regarding your kindergarten’s security system.”
In addition, despite being the teacher-in-charge, she didn’t even realize that a child in her own class had gone missing!
There weren’t many kids in one class—only 15 in total. How difficult was it for them to find out that Xiao Mo was missing!
“We’ll talk about this after I’ve found him,” Ye Fei hung up the call and hurriedly called Ye Xiaomo.
Because she was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to contact Xiao Mo if he was outdoors, so she specially bought Ye Xiaomo a children’s phone.
If there was any urgent matter, both of them could reach each other at a moment’s notice.
But despite dialing the phone for a long time, the call wouldn’t go through.
Ye Fei’s whole body was trembling when she got onto the electric scooter.
Five years ago, when she left home, she feared that Xu Huizhen and Ye Ning would search for her all the way to her school. Thus, she simply suspended her studies.
Afterwards, she hastily purchased a train ticket to go up north, and arrived at B City.
Ye Cheng was not a big town so she did not dare to continue staying there. Otherwise, they would definitely find her one day.
Using the savings that she had scrimped together in the past, she rented a house and found a job in a cafeteria as a junior chef.
She was so busy every day that she did not even realize that her period had not arrived.
That was till she started to show symptoms of pregnancy such as morning sickness. Even her lower abdomen was growing more and more pronounced.
Ye Fei rushed to get a check-up. That was when she discovered that she had been pregnant for almost four months by then.
At that time, the child had already started forming. If she got an abortion, not only would the damage be tremendous on her, but it would also be cruel to the child.
Struggling alone in B City, Ye Fei didn’t know where she got the courage to give birth to the child at that time either.
As her stomach grew in size, she was no longer suited to work behind the kitchen, so she could only quit.
She made use of that period of time to record videos of her cooking delicacies and came up with a stage name for herself—called Fei Xiaomo.
Fei was her name.
While Mo referred to the unfamiliar child in her stomach, who came from an unfamiliar man.
Aside from recording videos, she also made full use of the rest of her time.
She registered for an account on a takeaway app—to make home-cooked dishes.
Since she was alone and pregnant, there was a limit to her energy. Thus, she could only restrict the number of orders she could take everyday.
She hadn’t expected that her culinary vlogger account would gain more and more fans. Furthermore, the number of regular clients for her home-cooked meals also stabilized and she had many repeat customers too.
Her income grew more and more stable; not only did she receive income from selling home-cooked dishes, but she also collected advertising revenue from her culinary vlogger account.
At the beginning, she could only receive a small number of advertisements for mineral water, edible oil, condiments and et cetera. But now, she managed to receive advertisements from major brands like famous branded knives, kitchen appliances like refrigerators, ovens, dishwashers and so on.
Not only did she get her payment for the commercials, there were several appliances gifted to her by certain brands.
Nowadays, most of her appliances in her kitchen were gifted to her by those famous brands. She didn’t need to spend her own money and could still continue upgrading them to the newest model all the time.
As such, her life with Ye Xiaomo had also become more stable. She no longer had to worry about her livelihood and could still give Ye Xiaomo a stable and comfortable life.
From beginning to end, she could always remember the moment when she gave birth to Xiao Mo and saw him for the first time.
She had never imagined that the little guy could actually be so good-looking.
His eyebrows didn’t resemble hers. Ye Fei was certain that he had taken after that stranger with facial features that she wasn’t aware of.
Ye Xiaomo’s face alone was enough evidence to prove how outstanding that stranger’s appearance was.
Moreover, her culinary vlogger account’s name was Fei Xiaomo because of that stranger as well.
As a result, she gave the little guy the name—Ye Xiaomo.
During every moment of these four years, Ye Fei was thankful that she chose to give birth to the little guy back then.
To her, Ye Xiaomo had nothing to do with that stranger; he was the angel that the heavens had bestowed upon her.
He was the best present that had been sent to her in her most difficult time.
***
Inside a Rolls Royce Cullinan parked on the side of the road, Zhao Gushen was currently sitting in the backseat.
His long and well-defined fingers were currently holding a mobile phone that looked somewhat old. It was an outdated phone with an old model number.
He flipped through the picture gallery, WeChat, and other social media platforms. Although he had already browsed through them countless times during the past few years.
But from this, he still could not find any useful information.
The phone address book was completely blank. There wasn’t even a single call in the records.
There wasn’t even one selfie in the picture gallery—the most it contained were culinary pictures.Even the memo app held only cooking recipes. Albeit, some of the recipes had been modified.
There wasn’t even a single friend in the WeChat app. This was absurd. What did she download WeChat for then?
Just to follow the various culinary accounts?
“Young Master Shen, you’re looking at that again?” asked Xiao Ruofeng, who turned his head back from the front passenger seat.