Demon King – Chapter 502 – Master Chef Eiya

“Listen, bro, this really isn’t that big of a deal… don’t take it too hard. There’ll be chances again, right?”

Inside the dorm, Ziyu had one arm draped over Jixian’s shoulder. For once, he dropped the usual father-and-son way of addressing him and, surprisingly, didn’t try to take advantage of him either.

Over the past few weekends, Jixian had basically been running off to spend time with Xuenan. After something this awkward just happened, he really wasn’t in the mood to go out anymore. So he could only stay holed up in the dorm, pondering life.

“I really thought she’d say yes. We’re obviously so close… holding hands, going on dates and all that. It took me such a long time to work up the courage to tell her… sigh.”

Faced with his friend’s outpouring of frustration, Ziyu, a lifelong single dog, genuinely didn’t know how to comfort him. He had zero experience in this area. Someone who’d never been in a relationship, what could he possibly use to console someone over this kind of thing?

“She didn’t completely reject you either, right? She just said she needed time to think about it. Maybe once she sorts things out, she’ll agree?”

After thinking it over, unable to stand seeing him so dejected, he directly borrowed Jiaqi’s line of reasoning.

“Think about it. If she really had no feelings for you, she could’ve just said she didn’t like you. Why would she stay close to you for so long? Even wait until you confessed? Maybe she’s just shy, or worried about dating too early or something. Didn’t it take you guys a long time just to hold hands?”

Hearing Ziyu’s words, Jixian’s eyebrows twitched. All of a sudden, he felt like what the guy said actually made a lot of sense. Thinking back after being reminded, what Xuenan said didn’t really sound like a direct rejection either.

“If she had no feelings but still kept stringing you along like this, wouldn’t that make her a total scumbag? You know her best. Do you really think she’s that kind of person?”

Following Jiaqi’s logic, Ziyu got more and more into it, adding plenty of his own opinions and extensions along the way, leaving Jixian momentarily stunned.

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“Her? Stringing me along?”

“Then what else could it be? You’ve watched plenty of novels and anime too. You two are totally in a classic youth romcom!”

Once he got going, Ziyu couldn’t stop, even dragging in all the standard internet tropes.

In his eyes, Xuenan was just shy plus tsundere right now. Deep down, she clearly liked Jixian. Since that was the case, as a good brother, giving him a push was obviously the right thing to do.

“Analyzing what she told you, she said she understood your feelings and needed time to think about it. That’s not some ‘you’re a good person’ rejection, right? As long as you keep at it, we’ll still get to drink at your wedding banquet, yeah?”

“Yeah… that’s true.”

Jixian realized he’d been overwhelmed by the sense of defeat and instinctively treated her response as a rejection. After being reminded, his state stabilized, and his brain started taking back control.

“Wait, hold on. How do you know exactly what she said to me? Didn’t I only tell you that it fell through?”

Once his IQ came back online, Jixian immediately sensed something was off. How the hell did this guy know what happened during the confession?

“Cough, cough cough! That’s not important! Minor detail! Don’t dig into it… right! I just guessed. Analyzed it. Yeah, that’s it!”

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Only then did Ziyu realize he’d let something slip. In a moment of panic, he completely forgot Jiaqi’s earlier warning.

“When you’re comforting him, take it easy. If he finds out the two of us were eavesdropping, we’re both screwed. I don’t care about the rest, but if you get exposed, don’t drag me down with you…”

Before following Yuki and the others back to Eiru’s apartment, Jiaqi had specifically warned Ziyu like this. He never expected this troublemaking idiot to actually have proper comforting skills, but at the very least, he wanted to give him a heads-up not to sell out his teammates.

“I admit it! Jiaqi egged me on, and then the two of us went to spy on you! But he was the mastermind!”

Under the intense pressure of Jixian’s stare, Ziyu couldn’t quite hold out. He immediately chose to confess for leniency, selling out his teammate while conveniently dumping the bigger share of the blame on him.

“Achoo!”

In some apartment, Jiaqi, who was preparing dinner for four, suddenly let out a loud sneeze for no apparent reason.

“Which little bastard’s talking about me? Don’t tell me it’s that idiot Ziyu…”

After muttering a brief complaint, Jiaqi turned back to his kitchen work.

Among the four people in the apartment, the one with the best cooking skills was actually a certain girl. But that silly girl was sleeping. You couldn’t exactly drag her up to cook, right?

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Yuki’s cooking wasn’t bad either, but he had to take care of his beloved little girlfriend, so it wasn’t convenient for him to leave. As a result, dinner naturally fell onto Jiaqi’s shoulders.

As for Eiya? First of all, she had just arrived and was technically an invited guest, so asking her to cook would be impolite. But that reason wasn’t really important. The real reason was that Jiaqi simply didn’t dare let her into the kitchen…

Yuki might not have known why, but Jiaqi, who had grown up playing with the Eiru–Eiya sisters, knew all too well how terrifying a certain someone’s cooking could be.

Eiya wasn’t incapable of cooking, nor was she some kind of culinary idiot. As Eiru’s younger sister, her talent in this area was naturally not low. From a very young age, she’d already shown a love for cooking and outstanding aptitude.

The problem was that this girl never cooked properly. She was especially enthusiastic about doing weird, inexplicable things. Stuff like chocolate stir-fried eggs, or jelly stewed meat soup. She was particularly obsessed with trying this kind of bizarre concoction.

So whether it was Eiru or Jiaqi, or even the couple Ei Yuan and Liu Wan, none of them dared let Eiya step into the kitchen even once. Because you never knew when she’d suddenly add some strange ingredient into whatever was cooking.

Jiaqi glanced back. A silver-haired girl was pressed up against the glass kitchen door. Her young, adorable face was filled with longing to enter the kitchen, along with the grievance of being kept outside.

Even without her saying anything, Jiaqi could read her thoughts from her expression. “Let me in.” Those words had basically… no, already been breathed out and written onto the glass.

“Not a chance. If you come in, we’ll all be eating instant noodles tonight. And even the instant noodles might get ‘enhanced’ by you.”

He decisively rejected her request, turned back, and continued stir-frying the food in the pan, leaving the loli outside to stew in resentment.

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“I just wanted to try mixing in some dried fruit or something…”

Eiya muttered softly.

“So stingy. It won’t kill you. I’ll sprinkle cumin powder into your food later…”

“Forget it, I’ll go check on big sis. No idea if she’s awake yet…”

Since there was no hope on the kitchen front, Eiya didn’t plan to keep pestering him and decided to go check on her dear sister instead.

Sensing that Eiya had slipped away, Jiaqi finally let out a sigh of relief. Even though this girl had become much more spoiled, her desire to mess around with cooking really hadn’t changed at all…

You’d think that in front of outsiders she was so well-behaved, the picture of a cultured, sensible, cute, and well-mannered good loli. So how did she turn into a spoiled, crazy loli the moment she was around familiar people?

“Crazy girl. You used to be so well-behaved… keeping this up every day, I wonder if anyone will dare want you in the future.”