The Assassin's Enemy Lover

He envied him but Yi Chen was really having a hard time. The only thing he knew how to do was reheat meals prepared by his mother and make honey water, coffee and sometimes tea.

He would never starve because the housekeeping robot could whip out a nice nutrient solution or maybe a scrambled egg.

Now that they had to do this by themselves from scratch, Yi Chen almost wailed.

“... seriously it’s not that hard. You just have to cut it into cubes,” said Yeoh Jun finding this father and son pair funny. He was the emperor and even he knew how to cut things.

“I am doing it how you are doing it but it doesn’t look like yours,” complained Yi Zhen now a little frustrated. Who knew how many sweet potatoes he had screwed up so far.

“If you want we can swap you with Ming Ming so you can set the table,” said doctor Kiet who somehow had managed not to mess up the soup base by some kind of miracle. Ming Ming who was passing by with a stack of bowls refused almost immediately.

“Nope, I like my job. Thank you very much,” she said before standing on her tippy toes checking the stuff they had cut. With a judging look in her eyes, she let out a low, “Ha,” before walking away.

“What was that ha for?” asked Yi Zhen but Yi Chen pointed at the butchered sweet potato that was peeled until all its fleshy bits were gone.

.....

“Even I know that’s not right,” he said and Yeoh Jun couldn’t do it anymore.

“Here trim the wood stems off of these and slice, that’s all. I will do the sweet potatoes,” said Yeoh Jun and Yi Chen just looked at him as though saying ‘are you sure about this’.

Yi Zhen felt like it would be way easier to work with the shiitake mushrooms rather than the sweet potatoes so he agreed.

Unfortunately, his incompetence in the kitchen didn’t discriminate against any vegetable. Whether it be a root, stem, tuber or leaf and leaf stalk vegetable. They were all treated the same way. He so wished they could use a housekeeping robot for all of this but who told them to offend Lin Ruoxi?

Everything had to be done by hand from scratch.

“What if you use the cookie cutter to make cute shapes of the potatoes?” asked Yi Chen and doctor Kiet loved that idea.

For some reason, they found that quite interesting and fun so they ran with it. “We can try it on the pumpkin too,” suggested Yeoh Jun as Yi Zhen opened his mother in law’s drawers looking for the various cookie cutters.

The result was that he found cookie cutters for all sorts of holiday seasons and animal shaped ones too.

The four men gathered around trying it on the sweet potatoes first. “It’s a little hard. You should push it down with more force than that,” said Yi Zhen and Yeoh Jun pressed down the evil pumpkin cookie cutter that was meant for Halloween on the sweet potato.

“Don’t break it. She will kill us all,” said Yi Chen and with a blunt cutting sound it actually worked and they celebrated like their team had just scored a goal.

“My turn, I want to try,” said Yi Zhen and picked a t-rex shaped cookie cutter.

If grandma Lin knew her precious collection of cookie cutters was being abused she would have chased these grown men with a slipper.

Ming Ming stood by the dining table while wiping cutlery when auntie Yi said to her, “Sweetie, go get us aunties some wine please.”

Ming Ming sighed before saying, “But auntie I am setting the table.”

“We will do it for you,” said auntie Lin knowing fully well they wouldn’t. Unfortunately for them, they didn’t know who they were dealing with.

“Okay, which kind?” she asked and auntie Yi answered, “Any that’s in the green zone. The ones in the red zone are forbidden so don’t touch those.”

“Okay,” said Ming Ming before tossing the clean dishcloth in her auntie’s hands so she can polish the silver.

Ming Ming ran away so fast you would think she had oil on her feet. She was afraid that they would change their minds.

She was going to dawdle in the wine cellar and probably play a game or two so that by the time she comes back the dining table would be fully set and ready for hot pot.

As it turns out these aunties weren’t the only ones thirsty for some wine. Zi Xingxi and Lin Ruoxi were also thirsty so they picked the one who was complaining a lot before to go to the wine cellar.

Unfortunately, Zi Han was now hooked by this self abuse drama that it took being told three times for him to get up.

Lin Ruoxi knew Zi Han would be able to find the bottles she was looking for but he wouldn’t be able to navigate the wine cellar so she sent him with Yi Youxi.

The two boys rushed to the cellar completely unaware that Ming Ming was also in there but she hadn’t switched on the lights on purpose. One of them was afraid of the dark and the other was scared of ghosts so one can only imagine what transpired in that wine cellar.

“Light on,” said Yi Youxi while walking down the small stairs and the lights turned on almost immediately.

While walking in between the rows of wine racks and wine cabinets the two of them were chatting it up happily that they didn’t notice the short girl peeking through the racks.

Now if she was a perfectly sweet little princess she would have called out and said, “I am here,” but Ming Ming wasn’t that type. Besides Yi Youxi had scared her a couple of times so it was just the perfect moment to pay it back.

If only these poor naive boys knew what was coming they would have run for their lives while they still could.