Dreaming With My Dragon Lover

Having enough ingredients meant a hearty meal.

While Yuan Ge was preparing the dinner, Rong Qiuchen volunteered to do the year-end cleaning. He found a feather duster, a broom and a mop in the utility room. He examined each of the items carefully, weighed them in his hands and nodded with satisfaction, as if he had found the suitable weapons. With a twist of the wrist, he assumed a beautiful operatic pose of holding a spear and began sweeping the floor.

Ever since the gas incident, Yuan Ge had to keep an eye on the little loony for fear that he might cause trouble again. But today, seeing him meticulously sweep up all the nooks and crannies, and even clean up the cobwebs on the ceiling, he couldn't find anything to complain about, even with his high standards of cleanliness.

But it was a bit unfair to take advantage of this kind-hearted little guy to clean a big house all by himself. While waiting for the rice to be ready, Yuan Ge tied on his apron, folded a kitchen paper towel into a small hat and put it on his head, and said to Qiuchen, "You'd better leave the cleaning to me. This house has not been cleaned thoroughly for a while. Look at you, you're covered in dust already...."

But Rong Qiuchen stopped him with a smile, "Childe Yuan, you have just been driving the carriage and organising the shopping for the New Year, and now you are in the middle of cooking. Please leave the simple task of cleaning to me. It is a servant's basic duty to keep the house spotless anyway."

Without waiting for Yuan Ge to retort, he removed the paper hat from Yuan Ge's head and put it on his own head, tied on his apron and went back to cleaning.

Yuan Ge watched as Qiuchen stood on the chair and stretched out to brush away the cobwebs on the ceiling. Probably because the chair didn't provide enough height, he stepped on the armrests with his bare feet and pressed downwards as the chair stood up on two legs, enabling him to reach the ceiling. This perfect balancing act was dazzling to watch.

"Where did you learn to do this acrobatics?"

"Taught by my masters, of course. All basic skills, nothing special." Qiuchen smiled a little smugly.

"Not bad! Apart from singing opera, you're also a master at parkour, martial arts and acrobatics!"

"Childe Yuan, you must also know the saying 'to be distinguished in front of people, one must suffer behind the scenes'. Although I had won the title of the 'First Flower of the Opera Stage', to achieve that, the amount of training and hardships I had been through in the Jinyu Troupe could be matched by few people in the world. Most of these skills that you mentioned are things that I had to learn in my stage training. Today's cleaning is but a very simple task, so please don't feel bad about letting me do it."

The boy said it lightly, but Yuan Ge felt it deeply in his heart: his film showed the glory of Rong Qing in front of people, but did not portray enough the hardships he had to endure behind the scenes before he became famous. Perhaps he could ask the "Rong Qiuchen" in front of him to help him adding the necessary details to his script in the future.

"All right then, do as you please. Just be careful not to fall and break my kitchen countertop."

"Don't worry, Childe Yuan." Rong Qiuchen said as he stood on a chair and wiped the dust off the top of several paintings on the wall.

Yuan Ge gazed at his slender, upright body, his graceful movements and agile posture, which looked so beautiful even when he was doing his chores. He could not conceal his admiration and his eyes fell on him uncontrollably. He was so distracted that he almost burnt the cumin lamb he was cooking. With such a distraction, when would dinner be ready? Yuan Ge had to find an excuse to remove the distraction to enable himself to focus on cooking.

"I say, you should go clean the upstairs first. I'm in the middle of cooking, and if you carry on disturbing those cobwebs, we might end up having spiders for dinner."