Si Mo pretended to rummage through the drawer on one side of the table. When he pulled his hand out, there was a can of beer in it.
He placed the beer in front of Xie Xinxin. "This is a can of beer I secretly stashed here, hiding it from the boss. There's only one can. How about I exchange this can of beer for your story?"
Rong Lan, the boss who had been kept in the dark, stared blankly, with the word 'envious' practically written on her eyes.
Si Mo had arrived later than her. How could he have had the chance to stash beer in the drawer? Moreover, this guy didn't like drinking, so there was no way he had the habit of hoarding alcohol.
He must have teleported it from the fridge at home using magic!
She could perform such minor teleportation spells too, but she had no spiritual energy right now, so she couldn't use them at all!
She was so envious of Si Mo, who could use magic at will!
"Of course, if one can of beer isn't enough, I can exchange my story with you." Seeing the hesitant look on the human girl's face, Si Mo calmly upped his offer.
Xie Xinxin, with a bottle of beer beside her, hesitated to speak. She really wanted to say that it wasn't good for a boy who looked like a minor to drink, but after a moment's hesitation, she remembered that she wasn't familiar with him and had no right to dictate Si Mo's life, so she swallowed back her words of advice.
Looking at Rong Lan's expression and mistaking the 'envious' look for shock, thinking that Rong Lan would surely admonish such behavior, she grasped the beer bottle and nodded firmly. "Okay, but where should I start?"
Si Mo looked at the little fox, who was munching on a drumstick happily.
Caught in his gaze, Rong Lan secretly sighed. She had thought she could slack off, munch on a drumstick while listening to Si Mo and Xie Xinxin tell their stories, but Si Mo's look clearly reminded her that it was time for her, the boss, to do her job.
"How about, miss, you first tell us why you dislike these three dishes so much?" The little fox's gaze swept across the dishes on the table.
Si Mo knew exactly what dishes the girl disliked, but she didn't. She had no idea what these dishes represented.
Hearing this, Xie Xinxin pulled the tab on the can, took a big gulp of beer, and then began. "I have mild post - traumatic stress disorder."
"I have a younger brother who's ten years younger than me. It's quite laughable. Ever since my brother grew old enough to eat drumsticks, no matter how many drumsticks there were on the dinner table at home, I never got to eat one. Whether there were two or four, I didn't get a single one. Once, there were four drumsticks on the table. Mom put one in my bowl, but then my brother started crying. As soon as he cried, my grandma immediately took the drumstick from my bowl and put it in my brother's. After that, I never touched the drumsticks on the dinner table at home again, and I really dislike drumsticks... because subconsciously, I felt that they weren't meant for me..."
As she spoke, the girl who had been looking down at the table raised her head and looked at Rong Lan, smiling. "Does the master think I'm just being too sensitive and overthinking things, so I care about such trivial matters?"
Rong Lan noticed that Xie Xinxin's hand holding the beer can was trembling slightly uncontrollably. Suddenly, the drumstick in her hand didn't seem appetizing at all. She put down the unfinished drumstick. "In my opinion, this isn't a trivial matter..."
In a family with two children, usually each child gets one drumstick, unless a child clearly says they don't like drumsticks and don't want one. Such blatant favoritism would make her cry ten times if it happened to her.
Of course, her parents never showed favoritism. If her parents went to catch chickens, she and her elder brother always got one chicken each. No one got more or less. Even though her brother was over a hundred years older than her, her parents would give her the same things as they gave her brother, ensuring absolute fairness. As long as something could be divided into two roughly equal parts, her parents would divide it equally between her and her brother.
"That's good. I'll continue." Xie Xinxin lowered her head again, staring blankly at a certain spot on the wooden table. "Actually, the story about the marrow bones is quite similar. Whenever I fished out a marrow bone from the soup at home and started eating it, and when my brother took a fancy to it and started crying, my grandma would take the half - eaten marrow bone from my bowl and put it in my brother's, regardless of the fact that I had already started eating it."
"I've always thought that the right thing to do would be to patiently console my brother and promise to buy him one if he wanted it the next day, instead of taking my stuff and giving it to him. My brother stopped crying after getting the marrow bone, but I felt really bad."
Rong Lan frowned. Putting herself in Xie Xinxin's shoes, she thought she might even run away from home out of anger.
Xie Xinxin twitched the corner of her mouth and took another big gulp of beer. "They always said that as the elder sister, I should naturally give in to my younger brother. I can give in to him, but that doesn't mean he can take away what should be mine. When I was young, I thought they were right. The elder sister should give in to the younger brother. But later, I realized that not every family is like mine."
Si Mo took a sip of his green tea. "The idea that the elder sister should give in to the younger brother is inherently flawed."
He paused. "My elder sisters never give in to me. We don't have this notion that one must give in to the other."
Xie Xinxin looked at the expressionless Si Mo. "Why do you have three elder sisters? I thought it was because your parents preferred boys, so they wanted a son."
Si Mo knew she would think this way. When he first mentioned that he had three elder sisters, the look in her eyes was not only full of envy for him but also faintly pity for his elder sisters.
However, the truth was different from what she had imagined. "There's no gender - bias in my family. As for having three elder sisters, it's simply because my parents love each other deeply."
"That's so nice..." Xie Xinxin broke into a smile.
Seeing that the little fox and Xie Xinxin had stopped eating, Si Mo started to clear away the remaining food on the table.
The little fox looked at the unfinished drumstick with a hint of regret and sighed softly. "In this case, just beating up your younger brother won't solve the root problem."
Because the root problem lay with those who had subtly influenced her younger brother. Of course, her younger brother wasn't completely innocent either. A 14 - or 15 - year - old boy who had received a normal education at school should surely know by now that it wasn't right to take his elder sister's kindness for granted.
Xie Xinxin understood this. "Of course, but beating him up would make me really happy. It'd be best to beat him to tears. I'd definitely be the most gleeful one then."