Abnormal Gourmet Chronicle-Chapter 971 - 478: The Nature of Spirits

Because of An Youyou's novel—not, her resume, which was overly verbose and poorly written—we won't go into detail here. Qin Huai took over 20 minutes to skim through it and could see that An Youyou had tried her best.

Qin Huai asked An Youyou to start her resume from life experiences, educational background, and hobbies, and An Youyou did all of it, afraid that Qin Huai might find her resume insincere. She even included how as a child she used to set up a stall with her grandmother to sell pears, and one day, after eating six pears, she was too full to eat any braised pork at dinner, which upset her for a week. Since then, she would think of the uneaten braised pork every time she saw pears, and to this day she still doesn't like to eat pears.

An Youyou used a full 13 lines of text to describe her sadness over losing out on braised pork because of those six pears, which indeed shows she was very upset.

The entire resume was composed of small incidents like this. An Youyou, in chronological order, wrote into her resume all the things she could remember from childhood to adulthood that she thought met Qin Huai's criteria of showing more of her true self. The text was rambling, a bit like a diary, without many embellishments, limited by her education, but very genuine.

The resume was so genuine that after Qin Huai finished reading the entire 29-page document, he especially wanted to quickly improve his skill level to make the three A+ level buffs of snacks, so that An Youyou could wake up faster from her dream.

An Youyou was a "left-behind child" before four years old, and after four, it was even worse than being left-behind.

Before the age of four, An Youyou's parents were working elsewhere, leaving her to be taken care of by her grandmother. Besides taking care of An Youyou, her grandmother also had to look after eight other grandchildren, a mix of grandsons, granddaughters, and great-grandchildren. The nine with their varying ages, whether noisy or quiet, obedient or rebellious, all drained the old lady's patience. In An Youyou's description, her grandmother wasn't kind or gentle; she was a loud, fierce-talking old lady who was very good at scaring children.

The old lady's secret to handling kids was to make them afraid so they would obey; therefore, she excelled at scolding loudly and telling ghost stories at night.

Ordinary children, before going to school, would be frightened into tears by ghost stories told by elders, scared that if they didn't sleep, the ghosts outside would take them away, making them grab their blankets and nervously fall asleep.

But not An Youyou. She cheerfully described in simple words several ghost stories that left a deep impression on her, praising her grandmother as someone very talented in storytelling, whose ghost stories could make all the kids in the village cry. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Besides being good at telling ghost stories, An Youyou's grandmother was also excellent at directing kids to do various chores. In the old lady's belief, idle kids cause trouble, so keeping them busy keeps them from mischief.

In the countryside, children, even as young as three or four years old, have lots of chores they can do: sweeping, taking out trash, picking vegetables, collecting firewood, weeding in the garden, running errands, delivering things...

Such stories, which are enough for a small influencer to start a channel with "my tragic family background," in An Youyou's narration, show her grandmother's foresight, having long predicted that after she turned four, her parents would return and open a breakfast shop in town, hence the early cultivation of her ability to work.

After turning four, An Youyou moved to town. In her resume, An Youyou plainly stated that she was not very familiar with her parents at four, and even now, she isn't very familiar with them.

She knew her parents didn't like her as much, not even as much as her grandmother did, and they preferred her younger brother. In An Youyou's resume, there was no complaint, reflection, internal conflict, or dilemma about any of this; she considered it all very natural.

Her parents didn't like her that much, and correspondingly, she didn't like them much either. She didn't study hard when she was at school, so her academic performance was bad. Her dad liked to skimp on ingredients for the buns, so even though their skills were decent, their breakfast shop business was just average.

In An Youyou's worldview, nothing is naturally owed; if you have it, you have it, and if you don't, you don't. It's not shameful to want what one doesn't have; if you don't have it now, earn money to get it in the future.

She finished primary and middle school in town, completed nine years of compulsory education, but with poor grades. Her parents didn't want to spend extra money on high school, so after graduating from middle school, she helped at the family breakfast shop.

Her younger brother finished primary and middle school in the city, passed the exams, and went to high school there. They used the money made from her and her parents selling buns to pay his tuition and living expenses. Sometimes customers at the breakfast shop would give her sympathetic looks, muttering about how this family really favored boys over girls: the brother was studying in the city while the sister was working so young.

But in her resume, An Youyou wrote that she found this reasonable. Her brother was good at studying and was accepted into high school, so of course, he should attend. Her grades were poor, so it didn't make a difference whether she studied or not. Her parents were not fair, but so what? That was their problem. Was she supposed to spend her limited time, which she usually used to watch pirated TV shows online, to be angry and sad about it?

Moreover, it wasn't like she realized her parents didn't love her enough just today; she had known since before she was four years old.

An Youyou wouldn't be bound by other people's looks and words, nor would anyone else affect her mood, judgment, and goals. When helping in the family breakfast shop, at first, her parents didn't even want to give her 200 bucks, thinking she was not yet an adult and was helping at their own shop, eating and living at home, so what was there to spend money on?