The Duel of the Dinner Table

“If I hadn’t returned, my little nanny would have been devoured whole by you.”

Gu Wei’s gaze swept past Shen Lanzhi’s shoulder, pinpointing Xiang Qing’s still-dripping finger with unsettling precision.

Taking swift, decisive strides, she roughly pushed Shen Lanzhi aside, her movements as dismissive as one might swat away a bothersome weed.

“Give me your hand,” Gu Wei commanded, her tone brooking no argument.

Xiang Qing instinctively clasped her hand behind her back.

‘What kind of joke was this? Fresh out of the wolf’s den, only to leap into the tiger’s maw?’

‘Did these two women harbor some peculiar obsession with her hand today?’

“Give it to me,” Gu Wei repeated, reaching out directly to seize it.

Xiang Qing was too slow to evade, and her left hand, which had endured such humiliation, was firmly clasped by Gu Wei.

Gu Wei glanced down, observing how the small wound had already turned a faint white from being waterlogged.

From her jacket pocket, she produced a small box containing a medley of colorful band-aids, a tiny bottle of povidone-iodine, and a few cotton swabs.

With practiced ease, she opened the box, twisted off the bottle cap, dipped a cotton swab into the iodine, and prepared to dab it onto Xiang Qing’s injury.

“CEO Gu, there’s no need, it’s just a minor cut…” Xiang Qing attempted to withdraw her hand.

“Don’t move.”

Gu Wei lifted her gaze, fixed Xiang Qing with a sharp stare, then deliberately shifted her attention to Shen Lanzhi, her voice carrying clearly enough for everyone in the kitchen to hear.

“The surveillance cameras in this house are high-definition, complete with audio, 4K resolution, and not a single frame ever lags. I see everything with perfect clarity. Some people, you see, may present themselves as a kind older sister, yet behind closed doors, they engage in truly vampiric schemes.”

Shen Lanzhi appeared utterly unfazed by Gu Wei’s thinly veiled accusations.

Composedly, she strolled to the counter, picked up the cucumber Xiang Qing had left unfinished, and with unhurried grace, continued to flatten it. The cleaver struck the cutting board with crisp, rhythmic thuds.

“Oh, really? It seems CEO Gu is truly overwhelmed with responsibilities, so much so that even during working hours, she must divert her attention to surveillance footage. One might almost assume she has become so idle that the head boss herself needs to personally oversee the nanny’s cooking.”

“My employees are naturally my concern.”

Without lifting her head, Gu Wei meticulously disinfected Xiang Qing’s wound. She then selected an orange-pink band-aid adorned with a strawberry pattern and carefully applied it.

“Especially when it comes to guarding against certain ‘old green teas’ with ulterior motives who seek to exploit any vulnerability.”

“Caring for an employee’s well-being is commendable, but an excess of concern, treating someone as if they were a caged canary, ceases to be care. That, CEO Gu, is what we call perversion.”

Setting down the cleaver, Shen Lanzhi picked up the flattened cucumber and turned towards the kitchen doorway. “Dinner’s ready,” she announced. “Come out and eat. Oh, and by the way, since Xiao Qing’s finger bled, I happened to simmer a blood-replenishing soup.”

The two women’s gazes met mid-air, sparking with an almost audible crackle.

Caught squarely between them, Xiang Qing felt like a pork chop being electrocuted, on the verge of being charred inside and out.

****

At the dining table, an unsettling atmosphere permeated the air.

Four dishes and a single soup were laid out, filling the table to capacity.

Gu Wei occupied the head of the table, with Shen Lanzhi seated to her left. Xiang Qing, in turn, was positioned to Gu Wei’s right, forming a perfectly equilateral, if somewhat ominous, triangle—a ‘triangle of death’, as it were.

“Xiao Qing, have some more of this; it’s very nourishing.” Shen Lanzhi delicately placed a piece of pork liver into Xiang Qing’s bowl with her chopsticks.

Xiang Qing, pleasantly surprised, replied, “Thank you, Sister Lanzhi.”

Before the words had fully left her lips, Gu Wei’s chopsticks swiftly intervened, plucking the pork liver directly from Xiang Qing’s bowl and depositing it into her own. She then served Xiang Qing a generous piece of spicy chicken.

“She doesn’t care for organ meats; she prefers spicy food.”

Shen Lanzhi’s chopsticks froze in mid-air.

“Is that so? Odd, I recall Xiao Qing not being particularly fond of spicy dishes.”

“I remember.”

Gu Wei’s lips curved into a faint, knowing smirk. “Not only do I remember her preference for spicy food, but I also recall her shoe size, her preferred brand of shampoo, and even which pillow she likes to cuddle while sleeping. Unlike some people, who only seem to remember how to seize an opportunity.”

Xiang Qing buried her head, vigorously shoveling rice, pretending to be nothing more than an emotionless eating machine.

‘When the titans clash, it’s the mortals who suffer.’

‘Her sole desire at this moment was to become invisible.’

‘And Gu Wei mentioning her love for spicy food likely meant she already knew about the hotpot incident with An Qi. How utterly mortifying.’

‘But how did she know about the pillow? Had she mentioned it during a past livestream?’

“Here, Xiao Qing, have some soup.”

Shen Lanzhi served a bowl of black chicken soup and presented it to Xiang Qing. “Your complexion doesn’t look too well; this soup is excellent for replenishing qi and blood.”

Just as Xiang Qing reached out to accept it, Gu Wei swiftly intercepted the soup bowl.

“She has a ‘cat’s tongue’ – she’s sensitive to heat. Let it cool down before she drinks it.” Having said that, she placed the soup bowl beside her, picked up a spoon, and began to carefully blow on each spoonful.

As Xiang Qing observed Gu Wei’s demeanor, reminiscent of a doting wife and caring mother, and then glanced at Shen Lanzhi’s gentle, yet subtly venomous smile across the table, her stomach began to ache anew.

****

“Oh, right.”

As if suddenly recalling something, Gu Wei set down her spoon and looked at Shen Lanzhi. “You’ve been staying at my place for quite some time now. Are you accustomed to sleeping on the sofa? Would you prefer I arrange for a more comfortable cot?”

Shen Lanzhi elegantly dabbed her lips with a napkin.

“Thank you for your concern, CEO Gu, but there’s no need to trouble yourself. After all, I’m here to look after Xiao Qing, and as long as I can keep an eye on her, where I sleep is irrelevant. However, CEO Gu, it must be exhausting for you to rush back from your demanding company duties. Perhaps after dinner, I could brew you a pot of tea to help you refresh yourself?”

“Why, certainly,” Gu Wei replied, a subtle arch to her brow.

Sensing the escalating tension, Xiang Qing realized she couldn’t allow the two of them to continue. She had to take the initiative to diffuse the atmosphere.

Xiang Qing instantly donned her sweetest, most practiced smile. Picking up a pork rib, she first placed it into Gu Wei’s bowl. “CEO Gu, you’ve been working so hard; please have a rib to replenish your energy!”

Then, with equal swiftness, she selected a piece of fish, carefully deboned it, and placed it into Shen Lanzhi’s bowl. “Sister Lanzhi, you also worked hard cooking; please have some fish for beauty and nourishment!”

Having completed her task, she clasped her hands together, adopting a slightly bashful posture. “Everyone, let’s just eat in peace, shall we? The food is getting cold.”

Gu Wei glanced at the pork rib in her bowl, then at Xiang Qing.

Shen Lanzhi, too, looked at the fish in her bowl, then at Xiang Qing.

For a rare moment, both women fell silent.

Xiang Qing felt as though she were a battlefield mediator, having just successfully averted a nuclear detonation.

No sooner had she exhaled a sigh of relief than she heard Gu Wei’s voice, low and deliberate.

“You just used these chopsticks to serve her?”

Xiang Qing froze, taken aback.

Shen Lanzhi let out a soft chuckle, interjecting, “And she just used these very same chopsticks to serve you?”

Xiang Qing stared at the serving chopsticks in her hand, her mind instantly drawing a blank.

‘Wait, was there a problem with that?!’

‘My single pair of chopsticks, bringing two formidable figures to their knees?’

‘A huge problem.’

‘The issue wasn’t the serving chopsticks themselves, but rather, who they had served first, and who they had served second.’

Xiang Qing’s brain momentarily crashed for a fraction of a second, then immediately whirred back to life at light speed.

‘This was clearly not a matter of hygiene; it was a matter of precedence, of choosing sides. And she, Xiang Qing, was merely the unfortunate palace maid forced to serve water to both the imperial concubine and the empress.’

‘Serve either one, and death was assured.’

In a flash of lightning, an absurd yet singularly viable idea surged into her mind.

‘Fine, you want absolute fairness, don’t you? You want to eliminate all indirect contact, don’t you?’

Hardening her resolve, Xiang Qing slapped the chopsticks onto the table with a sharp ‘clack.’

Under the stunned gazes of both Gu Wei and Shen Lanzhi, she abruptly rose, rounded the corner of the table, and charged directly towards the steaming plate of sweet and sour pork ribs.

Then, utterly disregarding the scalding sauce, she extended her right hand and snatched a rib directly from the platter.

‘Hiss—’

‘It’s so hot! My skin feels like it’s peeling off!’

Suppressing the searing pain of the burn, she quickly strode to Gu Wei’s side and, with a decisive ‘thwack,’ dropped the rib, now imprinted with her fingerprints, into Gu Wei’s bowl.

Without a moment’s pause, she whirled around and lunged towards the plate of steamed perch, extending her ‘demonic claw’ once more to precisely seize the plumpest piece of fish belly meat.

The warmth from the fish instantly enveloped her fingers.

She walked unflinchingly to Shen Lanzhi, tossing the fish with a ‘thwack’ into her bowl.

Having completed her defiant act, she retreated two steps, holding up her red, greasy, sauce-covered hands before them, as if displaying trophies of war.

“This way, it’s perfectly clean, isn’t it?” Her voice, trembling with a mix of anger and pain, rose. “Only touched by my hands! Absolutely no cross-contamination! Are you satisfied now?!”

The entire dining room fell into a deathly silence.

Gu Wei looked at the rib in her bowl, then at Xiang Qing’s flushed fingers, the fierce expression on her face vanishing without a trace.

Shen Lanzhi also lowered her eyes, looking at the fish in her bowl, her hand gripping the chopsticks frozen in mid-air, unmoving.

Xiang Qing’s fury, like a punctured balloon, rapidly deflated after her outburst, leaving behind only an overwhelming sense of grievance and exhaustion.

She felt like a child in kindergarten who had fought over a toy and was now being made to stand in the corner by the teacher—the kind who had voluntarily asked for the punishment.