Chapter 23 – He walked over to them. He hesitated for a moment before picking up a nearby blanket and gently covering Ruan Xia with it. (1)

Song Tingshen wasn’t hungry anymore after eating the bread while Ruan Xia still felt hungry after snacking on bread.

Watching as night descended, Ruan Xia felt happy that they would be home soon, so she had a bigger appetite than before. She bought two cups of instant noodles and a cooked ham sausage.

Ruan Xia had especially loved eating instant noodles when she was a child. During her childhood, when her grandfather had asked her what she wanted to eat on her birthday, she would answer that she wanted to eat instant noodles. In child Ruan Xia’s heart, there was nothing more delicious than instant noodles.

Once she started high school, she moved to the city to live with her parents. She had to study at night because the coursework was heavy. While she ate most of her meals at the cafeteria, eating instant noodles was a regular occurence too. Later, for a long while, instant noodles became a junk food that she had no interest in eating.

Although she wasn’t a poster child for healthy living, she really didn’t eat much instant noodles as an adult.

But right now, the instant noodles smelled delicious and tasted as good as it smelled.

Little Song Shuyan took a big sniff. Drooling, he looked at her cup of instant noodles. Children were always full of curiosity about the foods that adults eat. For example, right now, he gulped and asked, “Mom, can I have some?”

Before Ruan Xia could answer, Song Tingshen strictly and impartially said, “No.”

He wouldn’t control what Ruan Xia ate, but their son was different.

Song Tingshen definitely wouldn’t allow his three-year-old son to eat this type of junk food. Even for something like ice cream, he would put restrictions on how much ice cream his son could eat.

Ruan Xia also felt that it wouldn’t be good for young children to eat instant noodles, so she lied, “It doesn’t taste good at all.”

The chubby kid couldn’t quite articulate his feelings. “But it smells yummy!”

He had a nose and could smell the instant noodles, so don’t try to trick him by lying. Be a little more sincere and honest.

Ruan Xia thought for a moment before answering, “There are some foods that smell good, but don’t taste good, and other foods that smell bad, but taste especially good. For example, stinky tofu, snail powder, durian.”

The chubby kid obviously wasn’t that easily fooled. He stretched out his fat fingers and said, “Let me try a bite and I’ll know if it tastes yummy or not.”

“Little kids can’t eat this food. If you eat it, you’ll get diarrhea and will need to get a shot too.” Ruan Xia said in an exaggerated tone, “The needle is really thick and big, and it’ll pierce right through you tender skin.”

Perhaps, it was the fear of a nurse giving him a painful shot, the chubby kid shrank back a bit. He stopped asking to eat instant noodles.

Although Song Tingshen was reading emails on his cell phone, he still paid attention to the conversation between Ruan Xia and their son.

He didn’t know what had happened to Ruan Xia to bring about these strange changes in her behavior, but it was nonetheless a positive thing that she was willing to be close to their son now.

He had always known that no matter how good of a father he was, it wouldn’t be an adequate replacement for a mother.

Little Wang had an outgoing personality, but when he saw his kindergarten friends with their parents, he would ask him, “Why isn’t mom coming?”

Right now, Song Tingshen could only hope that Ruan Xia wasn’t doing this on a whim. After all, it would be better for a child’s development to have both of his parents want to spend time with him.

The train would occasionally pass through a tunnel and make rumblings sounds. As Song Tingshen looked at emails on his phone, Ruan Xia watched cartoons on her phone with the chubby kid. She was really rich right now, so she didn’t have to worry about using her phone’s wifi.

Song Tingshen was over 1.9 meters tall, so he was very cramped when he lied down on the sleeper bed on the train. Ruan Xia and the chubby kid squeezed together and fit on the other sleeper bed.

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