AGN -Chapter 263 Born for It

Director Qin led everyone toward the kitchen.

In terms of scale, the Third Ma Road Children’s Welfare Home was certainly no match for the one Qu Jing had grown up in. Shanshi was a city, while Qiu County was only a small county town. Back when Qin Huai had not yet been adopted, there were still some healthy, able-bodied children in the welfare home.

At that time, Director Qin was less the head of the Third Ma Road Children’s Welfare Home and more like the director of a daycare center. In those days, most families were not well off. Children from ordinary households often did not live much better than those in the welfare home. They all played together, and at a glance, it was hard to tell which children were from the welfare home and which were not.

Many residents of the Third Ma Road neighborhood were busy with work, so during the day they would entrust their children to Director Qin’s care. Every so often, they would bring over rice, flour, or other food as compensation. Director Qin simply treated it as an extra job.

Qin Huai still remembered that, before he was adopted, he often talked the neighborhood children into helping him farm.

Before entering the kitchen, Qin Huai glanced at the old, worn-out building.

The children in the welfare home today probably would never get to experience the fun he had back then. The welfare home had long since moved to the outskirts of town, and healthy children had all but disappeared. When Qin Huai was adopted by Qin Congwen and Zhao Rong, he had been the last healthy boy from the Third Ma Road Children’s Welfare Home to find a family.

If, in Qin Huai’s childhood, there were still quite a few healthy orphans in the welfare home—children who had a good chance of being adopted—then now, there were very few able-bodied children left.

Even a deaf child was considered to have been born with relatively good circumstances.

Director Qin’s hopes for the children had also changed. In the past, she hoped they would find loving adoptive families, study hard, and get into university. Now, she simply hoped they could learn a practical skill, become self-sufficient, and avoid going hungry after reaching adulthood.

The future for the children in the welfare home was uncertain. The number of volunteers had been decreasing year by year, and even the cook had been dismissed after being implicated in a fraud case. Under such circumstances, Qin Huai had descended like a god in the second half of the year, introducing two exceptionally generous benefactors to the welfare home. The fact that Director Qin had not organized a full-blown welcome ceremony with all the children was already her going easy on him.

In the kitchen, two volunteers were chopping meat filling. Judging by the fat-to-lean ratio, it was clearly intended for buns.

“Aunt Liu and Aunt Chen are over there taking care of the children and can’t come over. It’s almost New Year, and we’re short-handed. Huaihuai, just make what you can. If you can’t finish all this filling, leave the rest—Old Qin can cook it into meatball soup for the children,” Director Qin said reassuringly.

Qin Huai surveyed the ingredients laid out on the counter and felt there would be no problem. After several months of learning and working at Huang Ji, he was no longer the same Qin Huai as before.

He was now Qin Huai with double the work efficiency.

He had been making Four-Joy Tangyuan and Guo’er every day. Tonight, he only needed to make some Four-Joy Tangyuan and steamed buns. Easy.

“No problem. I can finish it.”

With that, Qin Huai rolled up his sleeves and began mixing the fillings.

The moment he arrived at the welfare home, he was already grinding out experience points in filling preparation. He was confident that by this New Year, he would level his filling-mixing skill all the way up to Master level.

And then—

An A-rank Four-Joy Tangyuan!

After the New Year, it would surely amaze Gong Liang and allow him to complete Chen Gong’s side quest smoothly.

Ah, what a perfect plan.

Qin Huai mixed the fillings while the volunteers prepared the remaining ingredients. Director Qin tried to help, though she mostly just got in the way. Qin Luo was strong, so Qin Huai had her pound the meat filling for the Four-Joy Tangyuan a second time. Qin Congwen and Zhao Rong counted as high-level assistants, so Qin Huai assigned his parents the task of making the sugar syrup first.

Managing so many people at once, Qin Huai drew on the extensive experience he had gained directing kitchen assistants at Huang Ji. He organized everyone efficiently, calmly, and without the slightest panic.

Unable to find any actual work to do, Director Qin could only turn her attention to asking about Qin Huai’s life away from Qiu County.

Qin Congwen and Zhao Rong were also very curious. While Qin Huai had been at Huang Ji, he had been extremely busy—working, making pastries, completing tasks. He hadn’t had much time to chat with his parents over the phone.

Aside from knowing that Qin Huai was highly valued at Huang Ji, had become something of a master chef, had many assistants working under him, had been featured in a well-known magazine, and sold pastries at astonishing prices, the couple actually knew very little about his day-to-day life.

They had also been afraid of disturbing him or cutting into his rest time, so they rarely called first. Now that Director Qin had started asking, they immediately pricked up their ears to listen.

Qin Huai shared everything he could.

By the time all the fillings had been prepared, two batches of dough for the buns had been kneaded and set aside to rise, and they had begun making glutinous rice wrappers in bulk, he had finally finished telling his story.

Director Qin summed it up with a smile, “These past few months have been more exciting than the past several years you spent in Qiu County.”

Qin Huai thought to himself: Of course they were. These were the months of a system-novel protagonist. In a web novel, this stretch alone could easily fill 900,000 words. Naturally it was exciting.

“It really has been quite eventful. I’ve met many wonderful elders and made some new friends as well,” Qin Huai said modestly.

Director Qin smiled, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes deepening. “Big cities really are better. No wonder people always say young people should go out and make their way in a big city. If you stay in a small county like ours your whole life, life will only ever be so much. A talent like yours deserves a big stage to truly shine. It would be a waste to stay in a place as small as ours.”

The moment Director Qin said that, Qin Huai instinctively glanced at Qin Congwen—and, sure enough, Qin Congwen had once again slipped into that familiar state of feeling guilty for holding his son back.

Just as Qin Huai was about to say something to steer the conversation elsewhere, Director Qin asked, “Huaihuai, you never mentioned it—what surname did your biological parents have?”

Qin Huai replied, “Qin as well. Quite a coincidence, actually.”

Director Qin turned to Qin Congwen and said, “Old Qin, see? I told you—you and Huaihuai were destined to be father and son. Stop looking guilty every time someone says something that even remotely suggests otherwise. Where do you get all this guilt from?”

“Have you been watching too many melodramas?”

Qin Luo didn’t quite understand and casually asked, “But why does my brother’s biological father being surnamed Qin mean that my brother and Dad were destined to be father and son?”

Zhao Rong and Director Qin burst into laughter for no apparent reason, and Qin Huai suddenly had a very bad feeling about where this was going.

Director Qin was wonderful in every way—except for one thing. Though she was getting older, her memory hadn’t faded one bit. She remembered every embarrassing incident from the past and could bring them up faster than anyone.

Smiling, Director Qin explained to Qin Luo, “Your brother’s surname was Qin before because my surname is Qin, so he took mine. Qin is a common surname around Qiu County, but not every family is named Qin. Normally, when a child from the welfare home is adopted, they take their adoptive parents’ surname. Changing both surname and given name is perfectly normal.”

“But your brother was an exception. When he was little, he was considered a healthy boy, so there were plenty of families willing to adopt him. Every single time, things would go smoothly right up until the topic of changing his name came up. Then he’d burst into tears, scream and wail endlessly. I don’t even know how many prospective adoptive couples he cried away.”

“In the end, we had no choice. When selecting adoptive parents for him, we specifically looked for families with the surname Qin. Fortunately, there are plenty of Qin families in Qiu County, so it wasn’t hard to find one willing to adopt.”

“But even that wasn’t enough. Same surname was fine—but changing his given name? Absolutely not.”

“He cried so hard that anyone who didn’t know better would have thought we were abusing the children. We nearly had the police at our door.”

Qin Huai scratched his head awkwardly. “I thought the reason I wasn’t adopted earlier was because, as a child, I was always flailing around and people suspected I had hyperactivity or some kind of disorder.”

“That too,” Director Qin said. “Other children could sit quietly, but you couldn’t stay still for even a few minutes. You didn’t exactly look like the brightest child. Then, whenever anyone mentioned changing your name, you’d bawl your eyes out. People started wondering if you were intellectually disabled. Luckily, your parents lived nearby and knew the situation well. Otherwise, you would have cried my reputation into the ground.”

“I still remember what people used to say. Oh right—they’d say I was being dishonest, trying to pass off a foolish child as a normal one.”

Qin Huai: …

He had to defend himself—back then, he had simply suffered from being illiterate and uneducated!

What child, especially one with an unactivated system, would know they even had a system before reading enough system novels to recognize the signs?

Qin Huai was so embarrassed he wanted to bury his head in the dough. But Qin Luo, ever so helpfully, added the finishing blow.

“So that’s why no one adopted you when you were little—because they thought you weren’t very smart.”

Qin Huai: …

Dear little sister, you missed the tasting for the mixed-fruit filling tangyuan, didn’t you? No worries. This New Year, I’ll make sure you more than make up for it.

“But doesn’t that just prove that not only were Dad and you destined to be father and son, but you and I were destined to be siblings too?”

“If you’d been adopted by another family, you wouldn’t have become my brother.”

Qin Luo said this with a bright grin.

Qin Huai was so touched that he blurted out, “Luoluo, this New Year, your brother will absolutely let you eat A-rank Four-Joy Tangyuan!”

“Brother, what’s A-rank Four-Joy Tangyuan? Has that imaginary system of yours assigned you another mission?”

“Don’t worry about it. You’ll understand once you taste it. Your only mission this New Year is to eat!”

“Okay!”