Can You Wait Until I’m Sick of Eating Before You Go Bankrupt?

After changing jobs, Chen Li moved into a new home in Jiangcheng, beyond the city's Fifth Ring Road.

The whole district had a distinctive retirement-community vibe. It was clean but crowded, with electric scooters and illegally parked cars clogging the streets. Every morning at five sharp, elderly residents rummaged through the bins downstairs, banging the lids so loudly that anyone with a delicate sleep schedule had no chance of resting.

But none of that mattered.

What mattered was that there was a two-hundred-meter breakfast street right in front of her complex, with baozi, fried dough sticks, tofu pudding, beef noodles, hot dry noodles, Chongqing noodles, and more. Behind her was a whole street of little eateries, with barbecue, hot pot, seafood stalls, braised snacks, desserts, and snack vendors, offering something different at every meal.

After living in these "harsh" conditions for half a year, Chen Li had successfully developed what she called "Schrodinger's pickiness": the list of foods she could eat kept getting shorter.

Then, as if things weren't bad enough, her beloved restaurants started closing one by one.

The malatang place she'd eaten at every day for a month shut its doors without a word.

The Chongqing hot pot restaurant she couldn't get enough of turned into an influencer hotspot overnight, started livestreaming, and changed its food until it was unrecognizable.

Her favorite snakehead fish noodle shop closed so the owners could focus on their child's college entrance exams.

Even the owner of the private barbecue restaurant she'd joined a WeChat group for announced that it would close at the end of next month for a break, and reopen at an unspecified date.

Her menu was shrinking.

Chen Li couldn't understand why.

She only knew that her world was falling apart.

After the malatang, the hot pot restaurant, and the snakehead fish noodles, she couldn't bear to lose one more favorite barbecue place!

So she bravely made her move.

After that, the barbecue restaurant owner kept asking her every day: Who matters more to you, me or the malatang/hot pot/snakehead fish noodles?

Chen Li: ...

If fate insisted that she choose between going hungry and putting up with a sharp-tongued boyfriend

She'd still choose the latter.

He could feed her.

A hard-working wage slave who lives to eat x a barbecue restaurant owner who just wants a vacation but gets stuck with a hungry ghost

I dedicate this story to all the wonderful restaurants around me that have closed _(:_"∠)_

Theme: Eat well, drink well, and stay healthy