Zhang Tingting looked out the window and spoke up: “Since Jiang Yi told us to go ahead, Assistant Cheng must have something to say to her. It wouldn’t be convenient for us to be there.”
Zhao Zhao suddenly understood. Oh, right, that made sense.
The car window rolled down, revealing a beautiful face where beauty and sharpness coexisted, with an exquisite, full jawline. Yet her voice carried a hint of petulance as she rested her hand on the window frame, a trace of gloom about her: “What took you so long?”
Jiang Yi’s eyelids lowered slightly, her trench coat drifting gently in the evening breeze, even her profile seeming soft. “Mm, sorry.” She didn’t explain. Cheng Le knew the flight had always been scheduled to land at this hour Shen had deliberately wanted to pick a fight with Jiang.
Where would a cold, aloof woman get tenderness from? Shen Siyao gave a cold snort. “Get in the car.”
Jiang Yi asked nothing, put her bag in the back, sat down, and fastened her seatbelt. She was so mild and obedient that Shen Siyao swallowed all the prepared speeches, even the sarcastic remark about making her walk back on her own two legs.
She thought to herself: at least she knows how to read the room. She knows this is my turf.
On your first day in Ge City, you simply had to try the local specialty. Even though it was already one in the morning, the moment Zhao Zhao saw the red broth shimmering with oil, she found it irresistible in color, aroma, and flavor bright, translucent chilies spread across a local specialty beef-tallow hotpot base.
It bubbled away, the fragrance wafting over and whetting the appetite.
She picked up a piece of beef tripe, blanched it for ten seconds, and it went into her mouth springy and crisp, as if her tongue were dancing. Zhao Zhao pronounced her verdict: “Delicious.” Authentic and classic.
Zhang Tingting whispered in relief: “Good thing Jiang Yi isn’t here. She has gastritis, she can’t eat this stuff.”
Zhao Zhao was puzzled: “Jiang Yi has gastritis? Then why does she eat all those instant meals all the time?”
Zhang Tingting was the more observant one. She had accidentally spotted the medicine in Jiang Yi’s bag at their last dinner gathering. She’d assumed Jiang Yi just didn’t like spicy food and that was why she ate so little of it, turns out her body had been unwell for a long time.
But Jiang Yi never made a big deal out of such things, so all Zhang Tingting could do was remember it and be careful.
Zhang Tingting thought for a moment: “Because instant.”
Zhao Zhao was speechless. Well, that actually made sense.
Shen Siyao led Jiang Yi to a restaurant with a neat, square facade. The Eldest Miss walked with her aura fully unleashed, drawing repeated glances from passersby.
The car was a fine car, and the woman herself was so beautiful she seemed to carry an edge, stunning at a single glance. Yet the tall woman beside her in a beige trench coat lost nothing in comparison, her features and bearing cool and gentle, perhaps even a touch frail.
For a moment, no one knew whether to look at the car or the people.
Shen Siyao was long used to such stares. She only looked at the woman with a thin sheen of sweat on her brow, looking frail even under the lights, and her face darkened.
Low blood sugar plus gastritis, and she’d forgotten to eat probably hadn’t had a bite since getting on the plane. This woman really didn’t take care of herself at all. When they got out of the car, if Shen Siyao hadn’t noticed something was wrong, she would have kept hiding it.
Fortunately, Shen Siyao had the foresight, she’d brought her out to eat in the first place.
Jiang Yi tugged at the corner of her mouth, an apologetic look on her face. She seemed to have forgotten to eat again. To Jiang Yi, food was merely fuel to sustain her vital signs, whatever was most convenient would do.
Shen Siyao said crossly: “It’s not like I’d starve you. Don’t make it look like I mistreat you.”
Jiang Yi felt a little dazed. The words before her overlapped exactly with her memories of the past, as if she had returned to that afternoon in her senior year of high school when she hadn’t eaten for too long, her vision went black, and she was taken to the hospital. Shen Siyao, eyes rimmed red, had said petulantly and awkwardly, “It’s not like I wouldn’t let you eat. Don’t make it seem like I’d ever be harsh with you.” Then she had stuffed a piece of candy into her mouth.
Seeing her zone out, Shen Siyao drew a deep breath, irritation unmistakable between her brows. “Wait here.”
She walked over to speak with a waiter, and before long returned holding something about half a finger long in black packaging. She tore the wrapper open with her fingertips. “There’s no candy here, only chocolate. Eat a piece to hold you over.” She was a little angry, and her words were blunt with reproach. “How can anyone be so stupid as to forget to eat? Don’t you know the state your own body is in?” She never liked eating back then, and now, meeting again, she was still the same. Shen Siyao felt that one of these days Jiang Yi might just starve herself to death.
Day after day of this would surely leave lasting damage.
Jiang Yi found it a little funny. The girl who used to love dressing up in skirts, who would rather freeze than wear the thick, bulky school uniform, was now scolding her for not taking care of her health.
Shen Siyao, exasperated, tore open the wrapper and put the piece straight into Jiang Yi’s mouth before she could react.
Jiang Yi instinctively closed her lips, her soft ones brushing against the woman’s fingertip.
Both of them froze one unintentional, one careless.
As their eyes met, she heard her own heartbeat lose its rhythm. Shen Siyao silently cursed herself for being so weak. She didn’t know whether Jiang Yi had ever truly liked her, but the one who falls first loses most completely and she felt an ache in her chest, sharp and undeniable.
Jiang Yi spoke first. “Thank you, Yao. Miss Shen.”
Shen Siyao’s flicker of emotion vanished without a trace. She looked away. “Hah. My company doesn’t buy insurance for temps.”
Jiang Yi’s lips parted slightly. “It’s fine. I have some.”
? Was that what she meant? Shen Siyao thought that with the way this person interpreted things like her head was full of fog, Jiang Yi always had a knack for infuriating her.
Yet the culprit showed not the slightest hint of reflection. Shen Siyao suddenly wanted to just walk away, but she was the one who had brought her here to eat, and leaving her behind like that didn’t seem right.
But then she thought, even if she did leave her behind, Jiang Yi probably wouldn’t blame her. She wouldn’t even get angry. She’d probably just act as if nothing had happened and carry on as usual.
And if she didn’t walk over to her now, she’d only drift further away. Shen Siyao felt a wave of grievance so deep that the scars from all those years, never healed, seemed to ache even more in her chest.
It hurt so much she had no appetite at all. She wasn’t hungry to begin with.
At two-thirty in the morning, Jiang Yi hadn’t expected Shen Siyao to bring her for congee. The aftereffects of her low blood sugar were slowly warming back to normal, and belatedly, a thin mist gathered in her eyes.
That night at the hotel, the two of them had seemed to share an unspoken understanding, and Shen Siyao had no intention of talking to her now either. She fiddled with her phone beside her, typing with one hand, the glow of the screen making it impossible to read the emotions of the person across from her.
Jiang Yi felt the atmosphere was heavy. She sniffled. “Are you going to eat?”
Shen Siyao set down her spoon and pushed the bowl aside.
The message that she didn’t want to eat was clear enough.
This restaurant served seafood claypot congee made with freshly killed ingredients, the chef slaughtered the lively shrimp and crabs right in front of you, and the accompaniments were all neatly arranged in little leaf-shaped dishes: dried scallops, conpoy, squid tentacles, shiitake mushrooms, and nearly twenty-five other ingredients.
The congee base was silky and thick, blended with the natural sweetness of the seafood.
Jiang Yi thought it tasted pretty good. She looked at the bowl Shen Siyao had pushed aside, barely touched after two spoonfuls, pulled it over next to herself, picked up the spoon that had hardly been used, and finished it off.
Shen Siyao didn’t stop her. She watched her eat it bite by bite, her eyes unreadable.
Many years ago, Jiang Yi had done the same thing. Shen Siyao was a picky eater, so Jiang Yi would eat whatever she left behind. Back then, Shen Siyao had assumed she just loved food. Only later did she learn that Jiang Yi wasn’t picky, she ate everything out of frugality, unwilling to waste anything. As long as something wasn’t outright disgusting, she would clean her plate completely.
In those days, to spare Jiang Yi’s pride, Shen Siyao would sometimes deliberately have the family servants pack her lunchbox to the brim, and then at school, the young Miss Shen would refuse this and turn down that, while Jiang Yi was like a bright-eyed little puppy scavenging for bones.
She never thought anything of it.
Only now did Shen Siyao realize that back then, Jiang Yi hadn’t cared about pride at all. All that well-intentioned protection she’d imagined was just her own wishful thinking.
She could even, with a bit of wickedness, spare a thought for this: if she made Jiang Yi a disastrous meal, she’d probably swallow it down anyway. There was no fun in that.
The claypot was scraped clean, and Jiang Yi felt a little stuffed. Shen Siyao got up to pay by scanning the QR code, and Jiang Yi trailed behind her like the very picture of someone being kept. She actually felt a flicker of pride at the thought.
But if Shen Siyao knew, she’d probably be furious, Jiang Yi mused, lowering her eyes.
The black car’s hazard lights blinked, flashy and wild. A few men loitering by the roadside circled it a couple of times, then looked toward its owner as she hurried over. Someone let out a whistle.
Hooligans are everywhere, but a good neighborhood lends them a veneer of class. A suited man, a self-styled gentleman, flashed his Baymax-white teeth at Shen Siyao with what he thought was a charming smile: “Would this beautiful young lady care to get acquainted?”
Little did he know how greasy he came across. A cold light entered Shen Siyao’s eyes. She was already in a bad mood, and here was someone practically begging for abuse. Her thin lips parted and spat out a single word: “Scram.”
The man’s smile froze, then turned intrigued. Ooh, a feisty one unaware that this type of woman only inflames a man’s conquering ambitions.
He was about to say more when Jiang Yi, standing behind, gave a light cough, patted his shoulder and gripped it looking down at this greasy man who wasn’t even as tall as she was, a mere 1.7 meters: “Excuse me.”
It looked like nothing more than a light pat; she made no other move.
The man felt a pain in his shoulder, like he’d been stung by a hornet, and grimaced, utterly unable to figure out how this beauty had such strength. He’d seen the two of them come out one after the other and assumed they were together, but hadn’t thought much of it, just two pretty women. After all, males who think with their lower halves have no brains.
Wang Guxiong naturally wasn’t willing to just walk away, especially with so many people watching. He was someone with a reputation in this area, even if the pickup failed, at least he could run his mouth and save face. So he got aggressive: “Fuck, (a plant) I just wanted to make friends with you. Who knows how wild and slutty you’d be in bed, and you’re putting on this high-and-mighty act.”
Getting angry and lashing out after a failed pickup happens all the time, but while some people watched the show, others felt he was going too far.
Shen Siyao glanced at him, her gaze like tempered ice, her thin lips parting slightly as if the next second they would spit out words that would make him ashamed of himself. And indeed they did: “First, I don’t make friends with dumbasses.”