In the middle of the night, starving, I logged into my husband’s Meituan account to order takeout. The System automatically recommended a malatang shop, marked “You’ve ordered here 48 times recently.” Forty-eight times in two months… What kind of heavenly malatang was this? I admit, I was curious, so I opened the shop page.
I picked the ingredients, placed the order, and paid. Then, just as I was about to type “No cilantro” in the notes, I saw eight big characters already there: “Extra cilantro, no sesame paste!”
My hands and feet went ice-cold. My husband and I are both severely allergic to cilantro. Even a little gives us a rash. And I don’t eat sesame paste, while he can’t get enough of it. So who was this malatang, which avoided both our tastes entirely, being ordered for?
A chill ran down my spine as I thought it over. I scrolled through the shop’s reviews and actually found a photo. In it, a large, bony hand was feeding a girl on the sofa fish tofu covered in cilantro.
But when I saw the wedding ring on that hand, I froze.
Wasn’t that my husband’s hand…
