After entering midsummer, the daylight grew increasingly longer, with full darkness arriving only after seven in the evening.
At 7:30 PM Beijing time, in the city’s largest night market:
The streets and alleyways were bustling with people, as the noise and excitement took on a different form for the evening. The night market vigorously flaunted its unique atmosphere of everyday life.
There were many food stalls, but the one named “Peng’s River Snails” was doing the best business, with a steady stream of customers. Its signature dish, spicy braised crawfish, was sold out before nine o’clock every night.
If customers arrived even a little late, they would not only fail to get a table, but they would also miss out on the signature crawfish.
As dusk fell, a small square table was set up in an open-air corner. Mu Lian and her colleague Zhao Lan sat around the table, eating a late-night meal.
On the table sat a portion of spicy crawfish, a portion of garlic crawfish, a plate of fried oyster mushrooms, and a plate of salted egg yolk corn.
With disposable transparent gloves on both hands, Zhao Lan lowered her head to peel crawfish while offering sober observations.
“It’s just scarcity marketing! Look at these people rushing to eat crawfish when the other dishes are clearly delicious too!”
Mu Lian squeezed out a bitter smile and added fuel to the fire: “Then why do you keep eating the crawfish?”
In truth, Mu Lian liked eating crawfish very much, too. However, she was in a bad mood today and had little appetite. After eating only a few, she took off her gloves and began drinking alcohol by herself in silence.
Zhao Lan narrowed her eyes and cooed in a spoiled manner: “Lianlian~”
“You know this is my absolute favorite.”
Mu Lian was somewhat overwhelmed by a straight woman acting cute with her. Unfortunately, no one in the company knew that she was a lesbian.
That’s right, she was deep in the closet. No one around her, whether her colleagues, her superiors, or the orphanage director and aunts who had raised her, knew her true sexual orientation.
The only person who knew was her high school classmate and close friend, Qin Wanyan.
Zhao Lan: “Hiss, so spicy!”
“Quick, quick! Lianlian, feed me a sip of Coke!”
Zhao Lan’s hands were covered in spicy chili oil. If she grabbed the Coke can, she would get oil all over it. Plus, she wanted to keep peeling crawfish and didn’t want to take off her gloves just yet. So, she called for help from her friend across the table, who wasn’t peeling crawfish.
Actions like “feeding drinks” were common among straight women, and girls didn’t view such behavior as romantic or ambiguous. Sometimes, they would even share the same bottle of water.
Mu Lian hesitated for a moment, but ultimately picked up the Coke can on the table, passed it over, and thoughtfully straightened the straw.
The surroundings were filled with strangers who wouldn’t pay any attention to them. Moreover, absolutely no one knew her sexual orientation.
Mu Lian didn’t display any stereotypical lesbian traits, no short hair, no mullet, and no neutral clothing style. To Mu Lian, those so called lesbian traits were merely stereotypes, a view she did not agree with.
Seeing this, Zhao Lan immediately stretched out her neck, bit down on the straw inside the Coke can, and took two big gulps of Coke in one breath.
Sure enough, the title “Happy Fatty Water” wasn’t unearned. A gulp of iced Coke not only quickly relieved the spiciness, but also boosted her physical and mental pleasure, bubbling up nonstop like the carbonation in the soda.
Zhao Lan flashed a satisfied smile at Mu Lian and said sweetly: “Hee-hee, my wife is the best~”
Mu Lian awkwardly twitched the corner of her mouth and hurriedly put a stop to it: “Lanlan, don’t call me that.”
“You’re giving me goosebumps.”
Although she couldn’t quite understand why straight women called each other “wife,” as someone deep in the closet, Mu Lian couldn’t react too strongly. She could only stop the behavior on those grounds.
To prevent similar things from happening again, she had to nip it in the bud immediately.
Zhao Lan shrugged and said with a touch of helplessness. “Alright then.”
Diagonally across from the night market, a low-key black Bentley Bentayga was parked by the roadside, its body hidden under a tall street tree.
The interior of the car was terrifyingly silent, so quiet that Ye Yinfeng could almost hear her own breathing.
Sitting upright on the comfortable leather seat, Ye Yinfeng finally decided to lower the binoculars in her hand. To be precise, she was so furious that she had no choice but to put them down.
Fortunately, her heart had always been healthy and free of disease. Otherwise, she would surely have suffered a heart attack from anger right then.
A dark, gloomy malevolence settled between Ye Yinfeng’s eyebrows, while the bottom of her eyes looked like the frozen center of an icy lake.
The woman sitting in the dark held black binoculars, keeping every single move of her former lover in plain view. Her entire being was oozing a dark, damp aura, like a venomous snake lurking deep in the bushes.
Eating a late-night meal with a female colleague was normal enough, who didn’t have a close colleague? But what was with feeding that female colleague a sip of Coke? Did the other woman not have hands? Could she not drink it herself?!
Ye Yinfeng wished she could get out of the car right now, walk up to the two of them, and assert her dominance to the colleague.
“Haha…” Ye Yinfeng’s eyes turned red as she suddenly let out a soft laugh, her laughter filled with self-contempt.
Six years ago, she had neither an official title nor status, even after staying by Mu Lian’s side for three years. Let alone now, what identity could she possibly use to stand before these two women and think about asserting her dominance?
It was simply laughable.
However, Ye Yinfeng was using binoculars to observe their actions and couldn’t hear what they were saying. If she had heard Zhao Lan call Mu Lian “wife,” things would have escalated far beyond control.
She wouldn’t be sitting in the car looking calm on the surface, nursing her anger alone like she was now.
Although Mu Lian wanted to drown her sorrows in alcohol, the thought of having to go to work tomorrow and start on a new project made her suppress the urge and abandon the idea entirely.
Sensing that she was slightly tipsy, Mu Lian put down her wine glass, picked up her chopsticks, and began eating heartily.
Zhao Lan: “Lianlian, slow down! Nobody is competing with you for the food.”
Mu Lian didn’t reply and simply kept her head down to eat. She used a spoon to scoop up a big mouthful of salted egg yolk corn and stuffed it into her mouth, her cheeks puffing out on both sides.
Zhao Lan’s smooth eyebrows gradually knitted together. She felt that Mu Lian was acting a bit strange today, though she couldn’t pinpoint exactly what was off.
In a bad mood? Could she have gone through a breakup? But this person wasn’t even dating anyone. Still, this state really resembled binge eating after a breakup.
Zhao Lan: “Lianlian, did you get into a fight with your partner?”
Mu Lian shook her head lightly. “No.”
“You know as well as I do that I’m not even dating. Where would I get a partner?”
Zhao Lan let out a long sigh: “True. Of the whole company, our two departments are the busiest. You and I work like dogs every day, where would we find the time to date?”
“Even if we wanted to, we don’t have the time. That’s why our two departments have the highest number of single people in the entire company.”
Mu Lian agreed with a quiet response: “Mm.”
Zhao Lan rested her chin on her hand in a “thinking” pose and said: “Do you think there are those non-clingy young guys out there? You beckon with a finger when you need them, and wave them away when you don’t.”
Mu Lian followed along with her words: “There should probably be some, right?”
A smile appeared at the corner of Zhao Lan’s lips: “There definitely are.”
Mu Lian slightly furrowed her brow: “Hmm?”
Zhao Lan’s face wore a meaningful expression as she said: “There’s a place that has them.”
Mu Lian asked: “What place?”
Zhao Lan answered: “It seems our Lianlian is still too much of a good girl.”
Mu Lian caught on instantly, her face turning red with embarrassment: “…!”
She really had never been to that kind of place. She hadn’t even been to a lesbian bar, only to quiet lounges, and only a handful of times at that.
Mu Lian had always acted cautiously. The reason she had never visited a lesbian bar was that she was afraid of being spotted by someone she knew, even though the probability was extremely low.
Zhao Lan tapped her phone screen to check the time and said excitedly: “Going at this hour is perfect.”
Mu Lian directly advised against it: “Let’s forget it. We have work tomorrow.”
“The new project is kicking off, so both of us will be busy.”
The excitement that had just flared up inside Zhao Lan was instantly doused, as if a bucket of cold water had been poured over her head, chilling her from head to toe.
“Alright then, let me make an appointment for us another day.”
Mu Lian: “We’ll see then.”
Mu Lian didn’t give a direct answer. In reality, she didn’t want to go to such places at all, she was a lesbian who liked women and had zero interest in men.
The late-night meal lasted for nearly two hours.
Full and satisfied, Mu Lian and Zhao Lan hailed a taxi to go home together. They lived in the same direction and could share the ride.
Just last month, Mu Lian had finally brought herself to move. She moved to a residential community closer to the company. In truth, she had been financially capable of moving long ago and didn’t need to keep living in an old, run-down apartment.
There was only one reason she had kept delaying the move: she was waiting for someone. She worried that if she moved away, what if Qin Ni came back one day and couldn’t find her way home?
So Mu Lian had stayed in that rented apartment, waiting for another three years. They had lived together for three years and had been apart for three years, how many three-year periods did one have in a lifetime?
Roughly twenty minutes later, the taxi pulled up outside Gate 2 of the Danyue Residential Area.
Zhao Lan: “Lianlian, you’re here.”
Mu Lian: “…Oh.”
Zhao Lan asked worriedly: “Are you fine on your own?”
“How about I get off here too and walk you up?”
Mu Lian immediately refused: “No need! I can manage on my own. It’s fine, we’re already at the gate of the neighborhood.”
Zhao Lan looked into Mu Lian’s eyes and instructed: “Then remember to send me a message when you get home.”
Mu Lian smiled and nodded. “Mm, okay. You too.”
Zhao Lan: “OK.”
Behind the taxi followed a black Bentley, maintaining a distance of about three meters from the car ahead. For as long as the taxi stopped at the gate of the neighborhood, the Bentley lingered in place just as long.
A woman dressed in a high-end tailored suit leaned back against the comfortable, aviation-grade seat with the car window rolled down a bit. Her gaze swept past the window and looked out, her eyes filled with reluctance to part.
Only when that figure completely vanished into the dense darkness of the night did Ye Yinfeng unhurriedly retract her gaze and turn toward the driver’s seat.
“Little Li, drive.”
“Head to the hospital.”
Ye Yinfeng had promised to visit Liu Yi at the hospital tonight.
Ye Yinlin and Liu Yi had been married for seven years. Because Ye Yinlin suffered from oligozoospermia, it had taken a great deal of effort for the couple to finally have this child. This hard-won child was not only vital to the couple, but equally important to Ye Yinfeng.
Because Ye Yinfeng had never intended to get married, much less have children of her own, she had long planned to train this unborn child as her future heir.