I Have Decided to Go Look for My Father

Lin Xi was very quiet when she ate. She almost never glanced around but only keep her head lowered and eat what was in front of her.

She did, however, glance over at the plate of crab sitting in front of Gu Shao from time to time.

She did know when but a plate of crab suddenly appeared in front of her. Lin Xi was taken aback a little and looked up at Gu Shao.

“You like this?”

“Mmhmm.” Lin Xi nodded, “Thank… mmmm…”

Remembering what Gu Shao had told her just a little while ago, Lin Xi finally switch the “thank you” out to an appreciative smile.

She liked crab but she had no choice at the Lin family.

Owing to Song Kexin’s health problem, she could not have food that were cold in nature and Lin Anxin did not enjoy food that required so much work.

It was, indeed, true that she was not like them. There was nothing in common between them.

That what went through Lin Xi’s mind.

Gu Shao looked over at the girl who was quietly enjoying the crab. He saw her pulling out one crab from the plate first, removed the shell, pulled off the claws and the legs one by one, before she extracted and ate the meat.

She’d finish one first before she moved on to the next. Her actions and the steps were almost identical and she was very focused the entire time.

Anyone who didn’t know better would think that she was conducting some sort of advanced experiment.

***

Gu Shao thought that perhaps Lin Xi didn’t like crab legs and didn’t think much of it.

But he was wrong.

After she had devoured all the crab bodies that barely had any meat, Lin Xi returned to the stack of crab legs that had been “forgotten”.

She broke off the end of the middle portion, then broken off the front portion, then poked the pointed end from the front portion inside of the middle part and the entire piece of meat from the middle part came right out.

The entire process was nice and smooth.

Aunty Mei smiled from one side. “Miss Xiao Li is very good at this.”

“Oh, I learned it from the web,” said Lin Xi reflexively. That was all she could do to “get her fix”.

She didn’t mean it any which way but Aunty Mei felt her heart ached all over again when she heard that.

Noticing that Gu Shao seemed to be looking at her, Lin Xi paused a little.

“Would you like some, Dad?” asked Lin Xi.

“No, you can have them.”

“Oh.” Lin Xi nodded.

“Don’t have too much of it.” He seemed to recall that crab meat is cold in nature.

“Okay……”

Gu Shao looked away from her.

After a little while, he saw the girl placing a plate of crab meat in front of him.

It was a plate full of crab meat. As they were all the meat from the middle portions, they all looked to be about the same. They almost looked comical when stacked neatly on a plate.

Lin Xi smiled at Gu Shao and was still chewing on the meat from the front portions of the crab legs.

***

Anyone who was familiar with Gu Shao would know that he was a germophobe and would never eat anything that was peeled by someone else.

Nor did he know whether she had washed her hands before he came home.

Nevertheless, Gu Shao picked up his chopsticks when he saw the anticipation in Lin Xi’s eyes.

Even Aunty Mei, who had been working for the Gu family for dozens of years, were surprised.

But, came to think about it some more, they were father and daughter after all. Of course a father would never find his daughter resentful.

Aunty Mei smiled secretively and, looking at the father and daughter, trying to figure out a way to complete the mission assigned to her from Old Mr. Gu.

***

The next morning, Gu Shao headed to Village Zhang with Lin Xi in tow.

They took the same path as the one she did with her grandmother but what Lin Xi was feeling was completely different now.

Looking at the girl leaning up against the car window and watching the scene flew past them with a smile on her face, even the look on Gu Shao had mellowed out.