Chapter 19: Being Hand-Fed by Shang Hejing
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Xu Tanxi sensed the warning in Shang Hejing’s eyes and deliberately edged to the side, blocking his view with her body.
“Don’t mind him. Whisper it to me.” She leaned her ear toward the King’s mouth.
The King really did mumble a few more times beside her ear, looking utterly aggrieved.
After listening, Xu Tanxi frowned slightly and turned to Shang Hejing. “The King says you’re bullying him and won’t give him anything tasty to eat.”
Holding a cleaver, Shang Hejing turned around and looked coldly at the woman and dog crouched on the floor.
“If not letting him eat chocolate counts as bullying, then the two of you can join forces and kill me.”
Xu Tanxi glanced at the cleaver in his hand. “Let’s talk this out. Put the knife down first, and I’ll help you reason with him.”
Shang Hejing therefore went back to concentrating on the piece of beef atop the cutting board.
Xu Tanxi patiently coaxed the dog. “Baby, you can’t eat chocolate. It’ll kill you. Then you’ll become a stiff, dead dog and won’t be able to play ball or frisbee on the grass anymore.”
The King, who had still been sobbing softly, immediately fell silent.
The King’s owner fell silent too.
“See? He’s not upset anymore, is he? You just have to use the right method.”
Shang Hejing said, “So what method do you think you used?”
“I told him the truth. It’s not as if dogs can’t understand human speech. You just tell them the truth. Eating chocolate really will turn him into a dead dog.”
At the words “dead dog,” the King seemed to have triggered some keyword. He sprang to his feet and spun around several times in place, frantic with worry.
Xu Tanxi hurriedly reached out and patted his head to soothe him.
“All right, all right, good baby. We’re not going to become dead dogs, no, we’re not. So we won’t eat chocolate, okay?”
“Woof~”
Xu Tanxi looked at Shang Hejing smugly. “Did you hear that? It was a woof with a tilde. He agrees.”
Shang Hejing raised his brows, his face full of question marks.
“Believe it or not, even if I put chocolate right up to his mouth now, he still wouldn’t eat it.”
Shang Hejing became interested. “Try it.”
Xu Tanxi took a piece of chocolate from the box and held it to the King’s mouth. “Baby, do you want some chocolate?”
Eating chocolate equals becoming a dead dog.
The equation instantly appeared in the King’s mind. The disdain and indifference in his eyes became visible to all. This time, he did not even sniff it before turning around and walking away.
Xu Tanxi withdrew the chocolate and spread her hands toward Shang Hejing, her expression clearly saying, See? What did I tell you?
Shang Hejing looked at Xu Tanxi, his face thoughtful.
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He had tried countless times to stop the King from doing things, yet the dog never seemed to learn. And this woman had restrained him with nothing more than the words “become a dead dog”?
He now had reasonable grounds to suspect that she possessed some kind of superpower that allowed her to communicate with dogs.
Twenty minutes later, one meat dish, one vegetable dish, and one soup were ready, and Shang Hejing carried them to the table.
Xu Tanxi sat down and took one look, her face filled with astonishment.
Stir-fried beef, dry-fried green beans, smooth loofah-and-pork soup, and fragrant steamed rice—ordinary home-style dishes, every one of them, yet they instantly whetted her appetite.
Shang Hejing took in her expression, his languid tone carrying a hint of deliberately feigned amazement.
“So this is how Chief Xu eats: by staring at the food and using her mind until she’s full. Impressive.”
Xu Tanxi, who had been silently praising him in her heart, glared at him.
She had said it before: the man was quite good, except that he had a mouth.
The mint rice noodles had smelled wonderful, and now the food before her smelled wonderful too. Too hungry to be bothered with anything, Xu Tanxi picked up her bowl and started eating.
Before the food had been served, she honestly had not expected much from Shang Hejing’s cooking. After all, he looked in every way like someone who would never know how to cook.
But the man was simply too confident.
That imperious command—“Don’t order takeout. Come downstairs and eat in a bit”—had taken complete control of her.
Yet the moment she first saw how the dishes looked, Xu Tanxi knew they could not possibly taste too bad.
And sure enough, after taking one bite, she stopped talking altogether and focused solely on eating. Before long, her bowl was empty, and she rushed into the kitchen to fill it a second time.
As soon as she sat down, she suddenly noticed that the man across from her had not touched his chopsticks from beginning to end. He had merely been watching her eat.
Xu Tanxi looked puzzled. “Why aren’t you eating?”
“I already had dinner before I came back.”
“Oh. All right.”
She went right back to eating.
After two more bites, she suddenly realized something.
“Hm?”
She looked at the man across from her. “So you made this meal especially for me?”
Shang Hejing answered with a perfectly straight face, “No. I made it for the dog.”
The King, sitting on a stool between the two of them, looked at him with clear, bewildered eyes.
Xu Tanxi noticed the dog’s expression and asked Shang Hejing, “If the King could talk, what do you think he’d say right now?”
“Let’s hear it.”
“He’d say: ‘You made it for the dog, but the dog didn’t get any. You old geezer.’”
“Woof, woof.” The King barked twice, softly.
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Xu Tanxi said, “See? He’s backing me up.”
Watching the teamwork between woman and dog, Shang Hejing gave a derisive laugh, then reached out to pull the plate of stir-fried beef toward himself.
“You’re not eating anymore.”
Xu Tanxi immediately lost her nerve. “I’m sorry, I was wrong. I shouldn’t have called you an old geezer. Please forgive me.”
“You certainly know how to bend when necessary,” the man snorted.
“What choice do I have? Once you’ve eaten someone else’s food, you lose your leverage. Thanks for feeding me.”
“How are you going to thank me?”
Xu Tanxi blinked. “Didn’t I just say thank you?”
“So when you thank someone, all you do is move your lips and say two words?”
Xu Tanxi faltered. “Then how do you want me to thank you?”
Shang Hejing’s gaze swept across her face. He picked up the glass of water beside him.
“Eat first. Once you’re full, we’ll discuss it.”
Fine.
Entirely focused on eating, Xu Tanxi failed to notice the meaningful look in the man’s eyes.
She fed herself another mouthful of stir-fried beef mixed with rice and felt completely satisfied. After glugging down a bowl of soup, she suddenly remembered some scenes she had read in domineering-billionaire novels.
“Shang Hejing, why did you make Chinese stir-fried dishes instead of white-person food? You used to study abroad too. By rights, people who study abroad should know how to make a few Western dishes.”
Shang Hejing looked at her as if she were an idiot.
“Is that stuff people actually eat? People abroad eat white-person food because they have no choice. But if they come back home and still eat it, that’s just self-torture.”
That made perfect sense. She had no way to argue.
Over the course of dinner, Xu Tanxi ate three bowls of rice. As a dancer, she ordinarily should not have eaten so much, but thinking of the intense rehearsals ahead, she calmly drank another bowl of soup.
Full and content, she promptly forgot all about Shang Hejing’s earlier remark that she would have to thank him.
When Xu Tanxi came out after washing up, she saw Shang Hejing sitting in a single armchair beside the floor-to-ceiling window.
The lines of his handsome profile were sharp and cool, his eyes somewhat shadowed as he looked in her direction. Perhaps it was the lighting, but Xu Tanxi felt that his gaze seemed dark and unfathomable.
Why wasn’t this man going back to his room to sleep at this hour? What was he doing in hers?
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