Chapter Text
After getting dressed Shen Yun sat in the room and stared blankly at the peach blossom shaped deserts on the tea table.
This dessert, called peach blossom cookies, were named after their uncanny appearance to a peach blossom flower. Airplane had once written about these cookies as they were one of the only foods on par with Luo Binghe’s cooking.
Shen Yuan could tell they were delicious just by the smell. From what he had learned from his time in the bamboo house Shen Qingqiu would often partake in sweets such as these. Something completely unexpected from such a cold and aloof character.
Of course the sect leader would bring some for his most beloved shidi! Still, Shen Qingqiu usually just threw out anything the sect leader brought meaning these cookies were destined for the trash.
After sitting a while, Shen Yuan felt bored and turned his thoughts back to the peach blossom cookies. Since Luo Binghe had ‘died’ it had been a long time since he had ny quality to food to eat. Both as a fish and a human.
Now that there was an extremely attractive looking dessert display before him, Shen Yuan felt a craving. For the current time he was Shen Qingqiu’s pet, and a pet craving it’s master’s dessert was very normal!
Placed in three layers, the peach flower cookies piled up neatly to form a cookie mountain. Shen Yuan picked out a rather large one from the top most layer.
If these near god-tier cookies were going in the trash then it was up to Shen Yuan to make sure they didn’t totally go to waste.
Without grace Shen Yuan stuffed the entire cookie into his mouth.
The pink colored cookies tasted crisp and sweet, very fitting of its name. As he didn’t know when Shen Qingqiu or the sect leader would be returning he began eating very quickly. However, there was now a problem.
He didn’t plan on eating too many, but after just taking away two pieces the first layer had a hole. The original cookie mountain was no longer perfect and Shen Qingqiu would be sure to notice.
Shen Yuan thought for a moment before he began to carefully pull cookies from the lowest layer and then rearranged the cookies that were left. But then that layer shrunk… Shen Yuan took a few cookies from the second layer and rearranged them to fit the new pattern.
Like this, the entire cookie mountain shrunk in circumference and Shen Yuan had the satisfaction of eating all of the excess peach blossom cookies.
Shen Yuan changed back before Shen Qingqiu returned, mumbling under his breath along the way.
For a moment the peak lord stared at Shen Yuan and then the cookies on the table. Slowly the elder Shen waked over and grabbed the entire plate of cookies before moving over to Shen Yuan’s fish bowl.
Squeezing a cookie into pieces, he sprinkled it into the water.
Shen Yuan froze for a moment, shocked at the surprisingly generous behavior, before happily waving his tail. It seemed that Shen Qingqiu did not suspect him if he was personally feeding peach blossom cookies to him.
Strangely he felt a bit touched.
To a fish, a water soaked cookie piece still tasted pretty good.
Busy with his treat the little fish did not notice the human staring at the cookie plate. Although the presentation of the cookies was the same as when he left, the number of cookies was obviously not right.
Being the secret sweets lover he was, Shen Qingqiu knew quite a bit about these cookies. Including how superstitious the bakers were. They were very particular about the number of cookies being an amount falling within auspicious numbers.
The number of cookies now was obviously not right. Even before he fed a cookie to the little glutton he shared a home with it was obvious to him that the number of cookies was clearly wrong.
Someone had touched the peach blossom cookies, although they likely weren’t poisonous given how the fish ate them so happily.
If his suspicions were right about his fish though… Shen Qingqiu’s gaze fell and landed on the little fish who was currently carrying a small piece of peach blossom cookie on top of its head, while hastily gulping down another piece into his mouth.
Shen Qingqiu snorted. He guessed it didn’t really matter.