Chapter 1144 — You Went Yourself

"Nothing but little clams and tiny sea snails — that's all there is!" An Jianwen said with a sour face.

"This should be about enough, shouldn't it? I don't think we'll catch anything more no matter how long we keep at it!" Su Taizao was already chilled to the bone. It was not yet midsummer, the sunlight was not yet strong, and the night sea was icy — it had not soaked up much warmth — so Su Taizao had long since gone stiff with cold. If not for An Jianwen still being there, he would have scrambled ashore long ago.

"Fair enough. Let's take what we've got — it'll do for two people, at least. We'll give it to that little troublemaker and Yaoyao first; I can't look after anyone else!" An Jianwen was only human, and he too was frozen half to death.

An Jianwen and Su Taizao came ashore and found their haul was not bad at all — between the two of them they had gathered a basinful, enough to boil up a pot of seafood soup. So An Jianwen, beaming, carried the basin of small seafood off to find Gu Mengyao.

"Yaoyao, I just caught a whole lot of seafood — all fresh, straight out of the sea!" An Jianwen said, setting the seafood down in front of Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu.

But before Gu Mengyao could say a word, Shen Yushu spoke up first: "What kind of seafood is this? Scrawny snails and clams — they're so tiny. How are we supposed to eat them?"

"Well... this is all there is right now... this is all you can catch in the sea at the moment..." An Jianwen groaned inwardly. These miserable snails and clams, he thought, had cost him no end of effort to dredge up! At this hour of the night, catching even this much was no small feat!

"Oh, then you two eat them yourselves. We've got proper seafood — we don't need yours!" With that, Shen Yushu pulled a foam cooler out of the car's trunk and opened it. Inside was every kind of seafood imaginable, a bit of everything!

"Gah?!" An Jianwen's eyes went wide.

"Whoever said you have to go into the sea to catch seafood if you want to eat it? You went and caught it yourself — I never told you to!" Shen Yushu rolled her eyes and looked at An Jianwen with contempt.

"I... I..." An Jianwen wanted to shout that he had been played for a fool again! But this was a loss he had to swallow in silence — he was the one who had misunderstood; what did it have to do with Shen Yushu? She had never told him to go catch anything. He had simply read too much into it...

"Brother Shield, let's grill seafood!" Shen Yushu said, ignoring An Jianwen entirely, and cheerfully carried a box of seafood over to Wei Zhao's campfire. By now Wei Zhao had already set up the grill and was about to start cooking.

An Jianwen stamped his foot in fury and went back with his little basin of snails and clams.

"Brother An, why are you back? How did Gu Mengyao take it? Was she moved that we went out in the middle of the night to catch seafood?" Su Taizao had been too far away to hear the earlier exchange between An Jianwen and Shen Yushu.

"Moved, my ass!" An Jianwen had already calmed down, but Su Taizao's question brought it all back, and he exploded: "They've got seafood — whole boxes of it, bought from the supermarket — and we went and caught our own. What idiots we are!"

"Huh? Then why didn't they say so?" Su Taizao was stunned, thinking that he had gone into the sea for nothing and nearly frozen to death.

"Ugh, it's my own fault for not asking!" Though An Jianwen suspected Shen Yushu had deliberately kept it from him, he also blamed himself for not asking more carefully. This was the second time he had come off worse. If he had asked clearly back at Gu Mengyao's house what they wanted to eat, he could have just gone to the supermarket and bought it! And if he had asked just now whether they had any seafood, he would not have had to go into the sea at all!

"So... Brother An, what do we do now?" Su Taizao asked.

"We eat it ourselves!" An Jianwen said gloomily. "Otherwise all that catching was for nothing!"

Wei Zhao began grilling seafood over the fire, and wave after wave of fragrance drifted over to An Jianwen and Su Taizao, making their mouths water.

"We'll grill too!" An Jianwen said through gritted teeth. "Don't we have lamb skewers and chicken wings? Ours are no worse than theirs!"

"Right, I'll go get everything ready!" Su Taizao hurried off to prepare. But when he had everything ready, he made the tragic discovery that the car battery was dead! Earlier they had used the headlights to light their way while catching seafood, and had forgotten to keep the engine running. The power drain had been too great, and the battery had run flat.

"Brother An, we're in trouble! The car battery's dead!" Su Taizao fiddled with it in the car for a while to no avail, then cried out with a sour face.

"What? Dead? What did you do? Can't you manage to do anything right?" An Jianwen said, beside himself with rage.

"I accidentally forgot to keep the engine running..." Su Taizao said timidly.

"You... never mind!" An Jianwen wanted to curse him out, but he was too hungry now to muster the strength. He waved a hand instead. "Doesn't this high-tech thing support manual power generation? Go and generate it by hand!"

"Huh? Me?" Su Taizao looked at the grill and saw that it was hand-cranked! In other words, if they wanted the food cooked, someone would have to keep cranking the handle the whole time! By the time everything was done, wouldn't he be worked to death?

"Of course — who else, me?" An Jianwen glared at him. "Hurry up, stop dawdling! It's just a crank — think of it as jerking off!"

"..." Su Taizao had no choice but to walk over and start cranking the handle rapidly by hand. Sure enough, heat began pouring off the grill, and it flashed with rainbow-colored lights! Su Taizao could not help but curse: "What brain-dead idiot invented this? You work yourself half to death to generate this tiny bit of power — couldn't it be put to some proper use? And it flashes lights too — how much of my sweat is that wasting?"

"Stop dawdling, crank faster!" An Jianwen said, flipping the skewers on the grill and urging him on.

Over on Wei Zhao's side, however, they were already eating delicious grilled seafood!

"How romantic... I never thought I, Feng Xiaoxiao, would have a day like this..." Feng Xiaoxiao murmured to herself as she watched the various seafood delicacies sizzle and give off their aroma over the fire. She had thought she would never have friendship or love in this life, and yet all at once she had both.

The friends Feng Xiaoxiao had kept before were all fair-weather hangers-on she had met through racing, not the kind you could open your heart to. There was no way she would have gone camping with them — who knew what ulterior motives they might have had?

"The oysters are ready!" Wei Zhao took a few oysters off the grill, put them on a plate, and handed it to Shen Yushu, who was waiting nearby. "You go ahead and eat first!"

"Oh, they're ready!" Shen Yushu cheerfully carried the plate over to Gu Mengyao, Feng Xiaoxiao, and Tang Yun, set it down on the sand, and said, "I'll go get some drinks."

"You all start — let me shell one for Wei Zhao." Tang Yun picked up an oyster, pried out the meat, and held it out to Wei Zhao.