The hotel manager’s last name was Fairman, and everyone referred to him as Mr. Fairman, different from the Mr. Fairman, who had died in a fire ten years ago. If you were to dig deeper online for information about the Feld Grand Hotel’s higher-ups, like what Xiao Qing was doing right now, you would discover that the hotel was owned by the Fairman family. The Fairmans were not just hotel managers but also major shareholders of the establishment.
Major shareholders typically didn’t roll up their sleeves and dive into the service industry, so there had to be some undisclosed secrets behind the scenes.
Mr. Fairman was a tall, pale, and thin middle-aged man who always wore a neat suit, meticulously styled hair fixed in place with hair gel and a friendly yet insincere smile on his face.
He greeted the guests in the presidential suite with this smile and personally pushed in a cart loaded with various beef, lamb, and pork cuts. Waitstaff followed him, wheeling another cart filled with seafood, vegetables, mushrooms, and a variety of family-friendly dishes. There was even a separate cart loaded with desserts. He had even set up an ice cream machine that could produce three flavors of cones on the spot: milk, strawberry, and matcha.
“Due to the rushed preparations, there may be some imperfections in our service. Please bear with us, esteemed guests,” Mr. Fairman directed the staff to arrange the newly arrived dishes, removing the mess left behind from the hotpot.
He couldn’t help but twitch his mouth slightly upon seeing that the dishes from the several carts were already halfway eaten when the second round of orders from these guests had been received. But he maintained a smile on his face.
Just moments earlier, after receiving the second round of orders from the guests, he had been cursing and throwing glasses against the wall in his office. However, his internal grumbling did not manifest in the presence of the guests.
The hotel manager and major shareholder serving their table didn’t make Xu Yintang and the others uncomfortable. After all, in this day and age, customer service in the restaurant industry had become quite elaborate, with waitstaff grilling the food on your behalf being a standard practice. This wasn’t too different from a famous hotpot restaurant that even featured live performances.
In a hospital setting, service to the extent of personally feeding patients with difficulty eating was even more thorough.
So, Tiantian was the only one who questioned Mr. Fairman’s grilling skills, “The beef needs to be cooked a bit more tender, medium-rare will do, and for the pork belly, you have to render out all the fat, slightly crispy, and the beef tongue mustn’t be overcooked; otherwise, it’ll be as tough as rubber. Can you handle it, or should we do it ourselves?”
Mr. Fairman secretly breathed a sigh of relief, maintained his smile, and nodded, saying, “I understand, please rest assured.”
Great gods above! Were these people’s brains entirely dedicated to eating?! He had shown such clear signs of having a secret and wanting to discuss it with them! Why didn’t anyone express even a tiny bit of interest in his secret?! All they knew was to discuss the thickness of the beef tongue slices and whether it was better to dip it in barbecue sauce or sprinkle it with black pepper and rosemary salt!
“Uh,” Xu Yintang started, and Mr. Fairman immediately responded, “Please, go ahead.”
Hurry up and ask, hurry up and ask, hurry up and ask!
So Huahua furrowed her brow and asked him, “It seems like the aluminum foil-wrapped needle mushrooms we ordered are missing. Could you please check if they were omitted?”
Mr. Fairman’s smile became even more forced, and he had to take a deep breath once again to keep himself from losing his composure. “Certainly, I’ll check right away.”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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“…”
“Sorry, please wait a moment.”
The wriggling pile of towels behind Xu Yintang’s back reminded Mr. Fairman of reality. It was this monster that had annihilated three “buds” of their family in a single night. These “buds” had provided nourishment for years with the hope that they would one day “blossom.”
In the past few three-year cycles, their plans had never gone awry. Even three years ago, when they unexpectedly lost one of their own, they still handled the situation impeccably. However, this time, it was a sudden and unanticipated disaster. Mr. Fairman could easily imagine the storm of interrogations that their family would rain upon him once they discovered what had happened. He might even become an inseparable part of the hotel, just like his uncle.
Mr. Fairman didn’t want to fall into that abyss. His faith wasn’t devout enough to see such a sacrifice as an honor to offer to the divine. He had spent years busy with the hotel’s daily activities and had become attached to secular life. He admired the hidden entity within the hotel but also feared it. On one hand, he fulfilled his duty by facilitating more death and feeding that insatiable monster. On the other hand, he yearned to escape from this horrifying place.
Upon realizing that the secret garden of Edster had vanished and that he couldn’t find Laura or Gerald anywhere in the entire hotel, Mr. Fairman began to contemplate how to negotiate with these audacious, unreasonable, and outlandish guests.
He saw hope for an escape from this hotel, from the monsters, in these guests. However, he also wanted to retain the information he held and not give it away for free. He considered the possibility of using his knowledge as leverage to secure some advantages.
Perhaps he could not only leave this terrifying hotel but also overthrow the elders, replacing them. The Fairman family was so wealthy, there was no need to offer everything to the ravenous creatures that fed on human lives.
“Old man, enough is enough! Can you handle it or not?”
Tiantian’s call broke Mr. Fairman’s train of thought as she attempted to salvage several pieces of beef tongue that had been overcooked. After pondering, she realized that Mr. Fairman’s grilling resulted in either undercooked meat with dripping blood or meat that was dangerously close to burning.
She considered the fact that they were just one bite away from eating that final piece of meat and could not tolerate it any longer. She swiftly evaded the grilling tongs, exclaiming, “Alright, alright, I’ll do it! Can you just hurry up and talk and stop ruining the meat?!”
Regardless, the grilled meat was innocent!
At some point, Lei Bo, crouching in the corner of the room and desperately trying to reduce his presence, cast a sympathetic glance at Mr. Fairman. He wanted to share his own experiences of suffering.
These people’s thought processes were more unpredictable and convoluted than even the most insane demons in the hotel. Their convoluted and winding paths could not be predicted, and attempting to play mind games with them would only result in getting hammered and ending up with a concussion. It was better to be straightforward and honest from the beginning.
Lei Bo cried, covering his mouth, but when he initially told the truth, this group of people was so kind, gentle, and considerate toward him. Huahua even talked to him heart-to-heart and poured a cup of warm milk for him. But now, he couldn’t even get a single glance from her. As she passed by him, she regarded him like a piece of garbage.
Sob, sob, sob…
To be fair, as an accomplice to Edster who had harmed so many people, Huahua had already shown incredible restraint by not chopping Lei Bo into pieces. It was purely because she still found him useful that she endured his presence.
Xu Yintang patted the empty seat beside him and extended a seemingly friendly invitation to Mr. Fairman, saying, “You can sit here and talk at your own pace.”
Behind him, the towel-backed seat suddenly extended a gruesome and terrifying thick tentacle. It menacingly wriggled and waved in the empty seat, and its mouth-like aperture opened and closed, revealing sharp teeth. This frightened Mr. Fairman, whose face turned deathly pale. It took him a while to stutter, “N-n-no need, I can stand…”
“Oh, alright. Suit yourself,” Xu Yintang said, placing the tentacle of Little Darling on his own lap.
A warm and friendly welcome had failed to elicit a response from Mr. Fairman. Little Darling, somewhat dejected, used the sharp tip of its tentacle to poke his little brother, who was comfortably clinging to their mother’s chest. It wanted to snatch the younger sibling back into its own tentacles for a cuddle.
Second Treasure was comfortably lying on Xu Yintang, making happy gurgling sounds and almost falling asleep. Being poked by Little Darling only elicited a few grumbles and a change in position. He crawled from Xu Yintang’s chest to the lower abdomen, and his tail extended from beneath the clothing, intertwining with the tentacle of his brother. Touching both his mother and his brother, Second Treasure managed to balance everything perfectly.
Watching a long, fleshy, tentacle-like thing extend from Xu Yintang’s clothes, Mr. Fairman couldn’t find it amusing anymore. The fear of facing a monster was now ingrained in his face. Xu Yintang, who appeared so human and beautiful, now wore an eerie and sinister non-human filter. It was as if beneath that lovely human face hid a horrifying creature with countless tentacles far beyond what a human could endure. His eyes seemed to evaluate him, weighing his taste.
The sizzling, oily meat on the grilling plate seemed to be his inevitable fate.
Oh, great divine being above… what kind of demons had they provoked?
Mr. Fairman sighed in despair, and he was too scared to try to negotiate any terms after this frightening encounter. He clasped his hands together, just like a primary school student summoned to the principal’s office, with lowered brows and a timid demeanor. He revealed everything he could offer.
Xiao Qing cast a glance at Mr. Fairman, who had been scared to the point of turning white and then looked at Xu Yintang, who was unknowingly exuding an aura of power.
Xu Yintang was happily pouring cola into his cup, visibly experiencing much more happiness from a carbonated drink than one cup of happiness should provide. He squinted his eyes and his lips curled up, resembling a cat that had just tasted a fish, and it wasn’t surprising that the ladies couldn’t take their eyes off him.
This man was extremely skilled at disguising himself and learning. At first glance, his behavior was entirely conventional, just like an ordinary person’s. Even if you observed him closely, you’d at most feel that he was a little peculiar.
However, with the blessing of that handsome face, he was easy to understand. But once you detected any incongruities, the sense of being an otherworldly being emanating from Xu Yintang became overwhelming, compressing your preconceptions, making you astounded and even afraid of why you hadn’t realized it earlier.
Xiao Qing sighed inwardly.
If he could tell that Leibo was lying, he naturally could tell that most of Xu Yintang’s story was true, including the last sentence, “When did I say I left?” It was a completely honest statement.
Those vividly detailed descriptions of “treatments” at the hospital, the enigmatic and non-human nurses and doctors, and even the patients, as well as the central figure with her presence in every part of the story, Tian Jiao…
It was almost like a mirrored version of the hospital setting but deeply rooted in the real world, right within their reach.
Xiao Qing flipped the meat on the grilling plate, picked up a piece of crispy roasted pork belly, and placed it on Xu Yintang’s plate. He taught him another way to eat it, wrapping the meat in lettuce. He watched as Xu Yintang tried to stuff a fist-sized piece of lettuce-wrapped meat into his mouth, causing his cheeks to puff up, and sauce to smear on his lips, appearing clumsily cute.
“I’ll add you as a friend on the forum when we get back,” Xiao Qing said.
“Just remember to confirm.”
He blinked twice at Xu Yintang and a complex emotion that Xu Yintang couldn’t understand gradually turned into a warm and gentle smile in his eyes. “Then I’ll treat you to extra servings and all the cola you can drink.”
Author’s Note –
Congratulations to Mother Xu Yingtang for winning a cola supplier! [Clap clap clap!]
Mr. Fairman tried to play tricks with the mobs but ended up being tricked ten times worse. Why doesn’t he learn from Lei Bo’s bitter experience? [Shaking head]
Today, received supplies from the community, with vegetables, salted meat, and milk. Dad also bought fifteen kilograms of pork. The refrigerator is full, it’s heartwarming. Tomorrow marks one month of staying at home. My mom is planning to use up the flour to make dumplings. Hoping the pandemic will be over soon [praying].
This makes me so hungry for hot pot! 😭
It’s so cute how second treasure has found his happy place.
Finally Xiao Qing’s view of Xu Yintang! He is so nice!!! Wanting to send him cola because he knows he can’t get any in the hospital! <3
Thank you for the chapter! <3
Awwwwww Xiao Ying understanding Xu Yintang’s situation and environment and wanting to provide and give him happiness. This is so healthy and healing for Xu Yintang too 😭
I understand him completely.
Yeah, and he seems to be trying to surreptitiously teach XY skills like the food wrap. I think the kids just got a grandfather
Truth-o-meter is a strong talent! Cola for our Xu Yintang and a new friend…on the forum. Babies are too cute—I imagine furry cuteness… then remember our babies aren’t fluffy on the outside—pfft. Second Treasure is such a happy little fellow all cozied up on mom with big bro’s tentacle … Thanks for the update 🤣❤️🤣❤️
Where is my extremely handsome wife and mother of my children who has cute little tentacles?! Why’s life so unfair😭😭
Thank you for your translation 💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜
The hotel’s name keeps changing in every chapter from Fair, to Faier, to Feld, I’m assuming these are all typos? Since the owning family name is Fairman the real hotel name is most likely Fair.