She walked towards the restaurant before Huo Zheng could react to her sudden change in mood.
Huo Zheng caught up to her and said, "You've ordered so much, can you finish it? Aren't you afraid of getting fat and bursting!"
Xu Shishi stopped abruptly and shot back, "Dog mouth, can't spit out ivory." Her mind was made up to have a good meal at his expense, preferably to the point of bankrupting him.
Huo Zheng frowned as he watched her sulkily eat the feast before her, but he found her gluttonous appearance rather cute.
"Eat slowly, I'm already full. No one's going to snatch it from you."
Xu Shishi glanced up and glared at him. Just as she was about to continue, her phone rang.
She glanced at the flashing number on the screen. It was her mother calling, and she immediately got up, took her phone, and walked to a corner of the restaurant.
Huo Zheng wondered who was calling that she couldn't talk in front of him.
He watched her from afar, observing her extremely restrained expression as she spoke on the phone, and became quite curious about her.
When she finished the call and returned to the table, her appetite was gone. She kept stirring the fried rice with her spoon.
"Can't eat anymore? It's okay, you can pack it to go. Eat it later when you're hungry," Huo Zheng said generously. "Pack whatever else you want to eat. It's just one meal, I can afford it."
"I know you're a rich young master, very impressive," Xu Shishi said weakly. "No need to pack it, I really should be going."
"Whose call was it just now?" Huo Zheng couldn't help but ask.
Xu Shishi looked at him and said, "My mom called."
Huo Zheng checked the time and said, "Oh, Auntie must be worried about you. I'll give you a ride home."
Xu Shishi, however, didn't make a move to get up. Gathering a lot of courage, she said to him earnestly, "My mom wants me to go on a blind date with a man I've never met. I don't want to go. Can you help..."
"Blind dates are always with people you haven't met before, otherwise, it wouldn't be called a blind date," Huo Zheng interrupted her, amused.
For some reason, seeing her serious expression, he couldn't help but feel a little afraid, afraid she might say something like she liked him, which would make things awkward for both of them.
"But I know I won't like that person even if I go on the blind date. For my father's business, they want me to marry that person," Xu Shishi said very seriously. "Right now, I really need someone to pretend to be my boyfriend. I think you're the most suitable candidate. Don't worry, it's just pretend, not for real."
Huo Zheng couldn't agree immediately. Her request was too sudden. He asked, "What's going on with your family? Forcing you to marry someone you don't like, what's the difference from selling their daughter?"
Xu Shishi smiled faintly and said, "Yes, they never cared about my feelings and never truly cared about me. My parents divorced when I was very young, and I lived with my mother. My father remarried and had a son. So he didn't care much about me. After my mother divorced, she was devastated and needed my father's financial support. She always resented me for not being a boy, otherwise, my father wouldn't have been seduced by that vixen."
To show her sincerity, Shishi began to tell Huo Zheng about her experiences since childhood. Huo Zheng couldn't help but feel a little sympathetic towards her.
Shishi continued, "Although my father has always supported us, he's always late with the alimony payments to my mother. She would then send me to my father's new home to collect it..."
She paused here, then chuckled self-deprecatingly and said, "You know, every time I visited my father's new home, my father always liked to have me stay for dinner. My stepmother would look down on me, whether I used chopsticks, spoons, or knives and forks, she would mock me. She'd say I ate like a pig rooting for food, that I had no manners, that I was born but not raised, and other such things."
"Every time this happened, my father would sit there, not only not defending me but also asking me, 'How does your mother teach you at home? You have no manners at all.' Do you know how I felt every time?"
Huo Zheng immediately responded, "Of course, you were very angry and probably smashed your bowl and chopsticks and left."
"Wrong. I wasn't as spirited as you think. For the alimony, no matter how angry or hateful I was, I could only endure it. I had to pretend to have no self-respect and continue eating their food until my father handed me the monthly alimony. Only then would I leave their house like a beggar." Shishi's eyes reddened as she spoke.
Huo Zheng handed her a tissue, thinking that her parents were indeed alive, but she had been so pitiful, caught between them since childhood.
Shishi continued, "So from then on, I vowed that when I grew up, I would never be as useless as my mother. I would study hard, get a good job, and support my mother myself so that we wouldn't have to ask my father for money anymore."
"You've already achieved that. You can make your own decisions and don't have to heed your parents' arranged blind dates," Huo Zheng encouraged her.
Shishi said helplessly, "Yes, I don't want to ask my father for a single cent anymore. But my mother thinks my idea is foolish. She says my father's assets should be mine because I'm his biological daughter, and I should fight for them with that vixen my mother mentioned and my half-brother. So my mother still forces me to visit my father's house once a month to try and get something back."
Huo Zheng sighed along with her, "This, this Auntie is too shortsighted."
"She's more than shortsighted, she's mistaken. She thinks that by appearing at my father's place frequently, I'll get a share of the family fortune. In reality, my father's small company has been in decline for years. Not only is there no family fortune, but we might even have to help him pay off his debts. So recently, my father met someone who can save his company and wants me to marry him to help his company come back to life."
"That's too much," Huo Zheng said indignantly on her behalf.
"The most ridiculous thing is that my father didn't talk to me directly. Instead, he bypassed me and convinced my mother first, making her insist that I go on a blind date with that man. I've already declined two or three times, but they're still relentless." As she spoke, Shishi glanced at Huo Zheng again and said resolutely, "If you're unwilling to pretend to be my boyfriend, I think I'll have to leave Lancheng and never see my parents again. I won't risk my own marital happiness..."
"You don't have to have such a strained relationship with your parents. Your mother is already divorced. If you also run away from home and disappear, how heartbroken she'll be," Huo Zheng gritted his teeth and generously agreed. "Alright, I'll pretend to be your boyfriend. But you must make it clear to Sister Susu that we're just pretending to be a couple, don't let her misunderstand me."
Hearing him agree, Shishi immediately nodded repeatedly, "Don't worry, I only need to pretend in front of my parents. I would never let my colleagues at the studio misunderstand us. You're not the prince charming in my heart. My prince hasn't appeared yet."