The physician felt a sense of suffocation in his breath, then he forcefully adjusted his breathing and said, "Let's sit down and talk over here. Uncle Shi, it's not good to talk standing up. My father just had Uncle Seven bring over a few barrels of wine."
"Oh! Shi Qing, you're here! Come, come, sit down. I was just thinking you guys should be arriving soon. I've already prepared some snacks. Come, come quickly!" At this moment, Liu Feiyan walked out from the kitchen, still holding two plates of braised food, one with braised beef and the other with pig's trotters. She placed them on the table and said, "I'll go prepare some peanuts and pig's head meat. We can talk while we eat!"
"Alright, thank you, sister-in-law! I've really missed your cooking. I haven't had it in so long." Shi Qing quickly replied. As he spoke, he walked to the table in a few steps, picked up his chopsticks, and tasted the braised beef. "Delicious!"
Ning Xuesheng also walked over and poured wine into the large bowls on the table.
When did these bowls appear?
The physician blinked, looking at the bowls with some confusion. Then he saw Uncle Seven place the last two bowls down and hurriedly run out, only to return with another barrel of rice wine from who knows where.
"Here, there's plenty of wine! Let's not smoke here. Shi Qing, your daughter is here. Don't let her choke," Uncle Seven said as he also sat down.
However, it was clear that everyone, intentionally or unintentionally, left a space for the physician and Shi Yiling to have their own world, sitting on the other side of the large round table, so as not to disturb them.
"Ah... I'm fine. I... I'm used to it," Shi Yiling quickly said. After speaking, she secretly glanced at the physician.
The physician felt a bit embarrassed by her look. Why was she looking at him? Did she think he could smoke? Or did she mean she didn't care if he smoked or not?
"This is secondhand smoke. No, no. Our Ning family is a medical family, after all. We wouldn't make such a low-level mistake. My eldest son has had this awareness since he was young," Ning Xuesheng shook his head and said. "If you want to smoke later, we'll go outside."
Is this something my father would say?
Hearing this, the physician looked at his father with a peculiar expression. This was completely unlike his father. In the past, he would have just smoked and said, "I'm smoking, what's it to you girls to interfere so much?" He had said such things countless times.
But now, he was actually respecting his mother's and other girls' wishes?
It was indeed a big change, so big that he couldn't recognize it.
The physician subconsciously glanced at Shi Yiling again.
She seemed quite easy to talk to.
Then...
As the elders chatted, they suddenly started talking about the future. From their engagement, marriage, then to the new house, renovation, furniture, and even whether they would have a boy or a girl... everything was being planned, as if preparing to arrange everything meticulously.
The physician felt a bit superfluous sitting there, as if he shouldn't be in this place. It wasn't just him; he also noticed that Shi Yiling seemed to be enduring the situation with great difficulty. She would glance at her phone occasionally, and then steal glances at him.
How could such small actions escape the physician's notice?