The Relay

Chen Miemie watched with a smile as Yi Zhu wolfed down his food.

After eating five or six pieces of spareribs in one go, Yi Zhu finally set down his chopsticks.

“I’ve missed this so much. I’ll never forget this flavor in my lifetime. No matter how delicious other dishes are, none can ever compare to this one.”

Chen Miemie agreed, “Indeed. This dish has another name—‘A Mother’s Love.’”

Yi Zhu glanced at the glass jar nearby. After using some honey to cook the spareribs, what had been less than half a jar was now reduced to barely a quarter.

“Thank you, Brother Miemie, for letting me taste the flavor I remember from seven years ago. But I think this will be the last time. I want to treasure the remaining honey and keep it forever, never using it again.”

“Of course. I said I’d leave it to you, and it’s yours now. How you handle it is up to you.”

Yi Zhu ate so cleanly that even the sauce at the bottom of the plate was gone. Only one piece remained, which he couldn’t bear to finish.

His table manners weren’t great, but no one laughed at him.

He stood up, bowed to Chen Miemie, then turned and bowed to the chef named Loop, who was sitting a little farther away.

“I also want to thank Ms. Xunhuan. I have a special ability—I can taste a mother’s love for her child in this dish. You must be a great mother too.”

Loop shook her head slightly and didn’t respond.

It was Chen Miemie who spoke up: “Loop isn’t a mother, and her cooking is pretty ordinary.”

Yi Zhu was stunned. “But what about the honey spareribs?”

As an experienced chef, Yi Zhu knew that even with the exact same recipe and ingredients, recreating the same taste required exceptional skill.

It was impossible for just anyone to produce the same flavor. Aside from the sweetness, his tongue never lied—no chef he knew could replicate the effect of this dish.

Chen Miemie got up, walked around to the stove, and picked up a plate of untouched spareribs from below.

“Yi Zhu, what you just ate wasn’t made by Loop. This plate right here is hers.”

Yi Zhu couldn’t process it. “Then… what did I eat?”

“Exactly. That plate was made by your own mother.”

Yi Zhu stood frozen, like a wooden chicken. “But… but isn’t my mother already…”

“Your childhood wasn’t lucky—you lost your biological mother. But you’re also lucky, because you had two mothers. That’s right. This dish, ‘A Mother’s Love,’ was made by your second mother, Madam Dujuan.”

“Impossible! How could that woman recreate the exact same taste as my mother? That’s absolutely impossible!”

“Yi Zhu, don’t you get it yet?

Your biological mother, Ms. Hua Nian, couldn’t cook. From beginning to end, the spareribs you ate as a child were made by Madam Dujuan for you.”

“Impossible! That was my mother’s recipe! That was her honey jar! The special honey she conjured! And all these…”

Chen Miemie cut through the illusion:

“This notebook was written by me, based on what Ms. Hua Nian left behind. I added some content to her creative ideas. The honey in the glass jar was bought from the old woman’s shop at the end of the street.

None of it is real. The only thing that’s true is the love a mother has for her child in this dish.”

Yi Zhu still couldn’t believe it, muttering “this can’t be” over and over.

He clenched his teeth and raised his head. “Lies, all lies. You must be tricking me, right?”

“Whether I deceived you or not doesn’t matter — why keep deceiving yourself?

[Mysterious] Ms. Hua Nian, who doesn’t even have a single level of mysterious power, could she possibly conjure things out of nothing using just a mysterious prototype? And it just so happens to be honey as a substitute for sugar?

Back then, bedridden as she was, she could barely feed herself — how could she have gotten up to cook you spareribs?”

“But why, why did they keep telling me that this was a dish my mother made, and sometimes even that my mother personally carried it out of the kitchen?”

“That plate just now was brought out in a Loop, but it wasn’t made by her, was it?

I don’t know what your two mothers were thinking.

But in my opinion, a so-called ‘mother’ is just a woman in her early thirties, who still has her own ‘childishness.’ It’s not unusual that she wants to show off in front of her child and hopes to be praised.

Yi Zhu, you came in with preconceptions, always saying that Dujuan had stolen your mother’s place.

But you know, you only chose to keep your distance — you never retaliated. That’s because deep down, you knew better than anyone that it wasn’t true. What you did was just taking your anger out on someone because you couldn’t accept the truth.”

Yi Zhu took a deep breath.

“Brother Miemie, you’re right. When I was young, I didn’t notice, but now that I’m grown and looking back, actually… that woman… Dujuan was very kind to me. Every time I came home, she always wanted to stuff me with lots of food and things. I just kept resisting.”

“Mm, good. I heard that every time she invited you to stay for a meal, you never accepted. If you had stayed earlier, maybe you would have figured it out yourself without me needing to step in.”

“Why?”

“Because among all the dishes prepared for you each year, there was always this Honey Spareribs.”

“So you’re saying that Honey Spareribs was a dish made entirely by Dujuan for me?”

“No.” Chen Miemie denied it.

Yi Zhu hadn’t expected another twist and stared at Chen Miemie in amazement.

“This dish—I’d call it great.

At first, Ms. Hua Nian was concerned about your health. To keep you from eating sugar, she—someone who knew nothing about cooking—started experimenting and found a substitute for sugar.

The notebook and the honey jar are real. In the end, she designed this one and only recipe. That was a mother’s love for her child.

Then, Madam Dujuan followed that recipe, after dozens or even hundreds of attempts, she finally succeeded in making the finished dish. After Ms. Hua Nian was gone, she carried on that love, blending it into her cooking.

This is a dish passed down by two mothers, a dish meant just for you.”

Yi Zhu slumped silently into his chair.

Chen Miemie pointed at the last piece of sparerib on the plate: “Not going to finish it? It’ll get cold.”

Yi Zhu picked up the last piece, put it in his mouth, and kept chewing, unwilling to swallow for a long time.

“So ‘Mother’ has always been by my side, never far away.”

It was at that moment.

From this last piece of sparerib, the tip of his tongue tasted a new flavor.

That taste was very faint, very faint — like a wisp of ethereal moonlight piercing through the night.

It was the sweetness of honey.

What the tongue can taste is not just dishes — it takes an unlocked heart to savor all the flavors of life.

Yi Zhu kept his head down, not wanting anyone to see the red rims of his eyes.

Chen Miemie didn’t look at Yi Zhu. He too gazed off into space, his memory drifting back to the second Eternal Moon Night of last week.

Back then, in the shop.

He transformed into [Huangyi], seated on the main sofa, and addressed the arriving guest:

"You mean you want your biological child to have a bright future?"

Madam Dujuan replied:

"No, they are all my children. This time, I am formally requesting that the issues with Dazhuang and Xiaoqin be resolved. Their lives have just begun—they deserve a better future."

"The cost will be heavy."

"As long as I can afford it."