“Forget it, forget it!” The restaurant manager stepped forward to mediate. “It’s really not that big a deal. Why take it all the way to court? Harmony is precious. Two beautiful ladies, each of you take a step back and let it go, alright?”
“Get out of the way!”
The waiter pushed the manager aside. “You’re not the one who got slapped. If she pays compensation, it comes out of my wages. Of course you’d play the nice guy!”
After glaring at the manager, he turned to Zhang Fan and smiled. “Jie, thank you! Just for standing up for justice like that, I can’t back down! Growing up, even my parents never slapped my face. What gives her the right?”
With that, he extended his right hand to shake Zhang Fan’s, but Wang Zekai beat him to it. “Brother, that’s the spirit. We’re workers, not servants. Sue her!”
“You people?”
Zhu Li looked around, hoping to find support, but at some point her best friend had run off! The entire restaurant was full of people recording video on their phones, even passersby outside.
“Fine, you guys are ruthless!”
She opened her purse, grabbed a handful of cash. “Sorry! Satisfied?” She slapped the money against the waiter’s chest, flung Zhang Fan’s hand away, and ran.
[Ding!]
[Quest objective completed: one-fifth!]
The System’s notification ringing in her mind dazed Zhang Fan for a moment, and she forgot to give chase.
Looking at the money scattered across the floor, the waiter still felt humiliated. Zhang Fan crouched down, picked up the money, straightened it out, and handed it to him. “People are people, money is money. It’s not dirty. Take it!”
With that, she led Da Huang out of the restaurant. Wang Zekai immediately caught up. “Wait up!”
At the street-center park, the two sat on a bench, quietly eating takeout.
Perhaps what a man considers romantic is a woman willing to eat street food with him? Although this didn’t quite count as street food, the fact that she could sit here, ignoring passersby’s stares, and share takeout with him showed that Zhang Fan didn’t treat him as an outsider.
Wang Zekai was overjoyed. He inserted the straw into the drink and handed it to Zhang Fan. “Actually, what I said at the restaurant was from the bottom of my heart!”
He watched Zhang Fan’s expression and said cautiously, “I hope you’ll seriously consider it. I don’t care about money. Your parents deserve proper respect and care—as long as it’s within reason, I have no problem with it!”
Zhang Fan took the drink and sipped it. It was the kind of milk tea with half a cup of ice.
Since childhood, she had understood one principle: when she got sick, her parents basically wouldn’t bother with her—she could only endure it. So she rarely ate cold or raw foods. No matter how busy, she would try her best to eat on time.
Strict self-discipline had its benefits. At least she rarely caught colds, and her health was somewhat better than others her age.
She couldn’t afford to get sick, couldn’t afford to be hurt. She could only control herself and not indulge.
Even now that she had money and didn’t need to worry about finances, she still didn’t intend to change these habits.
With money, it was all the more important to stay healthy and enjoy life.
She held the drink cup covered in tiny beads of sweat, her gaze flicking past Wang Zekai. She could no longer clearly remember what reason she’d used to reject his confession back in school.
After all these years, he still hadn’t let go of those feelings. Zhang Fan wouldn’t be so conceited as to think it was because her charm was just that irresistible.
There was a faint ring mark on his left ring finger. This indicated that he had probably just divorced, or perhaps hadn’t even divorced yet. At their age, dating seemed somewhat superfluous—if they were compatible, just shacking up together was the normal way of thinking.
Wang Zekai’s directness was something she could understand. She wasn’t fussy either, insisting on finding a man with no marital history.
If this had been before the System awakened, with such a good opportunity, she definitely would have been tempted. But now, she didn’t want her life to have any regrets.
Love, marriage, children—this was a complete emotional process. Without love, then marriage and children weren’t necessary either.
“Thank you for today!”
The moment she opened her mouth, Wang Zekai raised his hand to stop her: “Alright! Don’t give me the nice-guy card!”
He shook his head with a bitter smile: “I know, we’ve just reunited after so many years, and we’re already strangers to each other. I won’t rush you. You watch how I perform, and take your time deciding, alright?”
When a grown man spoke with such humility, how could Zhang Fan bring herself to refuse?
“Alright then!” She smiled, and Wang Zekai smiled too when he saw it.
After the meal, Wang Zekai took Zhang Fan to get Da Huang a dog license and vaccinations. It had to be said—with a car and a friend, things got done with remarkable efficiency.
As they were about to part, somehow, a sense of reluctance to say goodbye had actually arisen.
“Look, it’s mealtime again. How about…” Wang Zekai smiled sheepishly: “Come to my place for a simple meal?”
He was truly sincere, but going to someone’s home was absolutely out of the question.
“By rights, I should be the one treating you—you’ve been running around with me all afternoon.” Zhang Fan thought it over. From what she could see so far, Wang Zekai, aside from being impulsive and slightly prone to violence, was actually quite decent.
Maybe she could have the best of both worlds—marriage and romance together.
“I still have some personal matters to deal with today. How about we meet up another day and have a meal? My treat!”
“Don’t make it another day—let’s do tomorrow!”
Wang Zekai tilted his head with a smile, expectation in his eyes.
“Fine, tomorrow at noon then!” Zhang Fan said helplessly. She actually wanted more time to prepare.
“It’s settled! No standing me up!” Wang Zekai took out his phone, barely able to contain his excitement: “Let’s add each other’s contacts first, otherwise if you run off, I won’t be able to find you again!”
This anxious, fretful tone made Zhang Fan feel a little sweet inside. Growing up, this was the first time anyone had cared about her this much.
The two scanned each other’s contact cards, and only then did Wang Zekai feel relieved. Whether it was from excessive excitement or not, the phone slipped from his hand and fell straight through the gap of a roadside storm drain, sticking into the mud.
“No way, my phone!” Wang Zekai was alarmed. He bent down to lift the drain cover, but the cover—which could be stolen at any moment—was now incredibly sturdy, and he simply couldn’t budge it.
“Wait a moment, I have an idea!”
Zhang Fan borrowed two pieces of steel wire from a roadside shop owner, folded each in half to make two “U” shapes, then carefully threaded the wires through the gaps of the drain grate, splitting them into two ends and slipping the phone into the wire loops.
The rest was to carefully and steadily lift both sides of the wire slowly.
It had fallen in vertically, slipping in ever so smoothly, but coming out horizontally, the gap seemed just a bit too short.
In this situation, the only option was to lift the phone closer and then grab it by hand.
Then an awkward thing happened: Wang Zekai’s fingers were too thick to fit in!
The two of them were stuck in a dilemma. Zhang Fan held the wire and didn’t dare move, afraid that if he moved, the phone would slip down again. If it fell again, the angle might not be as good for fishing it out.
“Here, you hold the wire, I’ll grab the phone!”
“Oh, okay, okay!”
The two of them faced each other, bending down and squatting by the drain, carefully passing the wire back and forth.
“Thud!”
Due to a moment of carelessness, the phone still managed to fall down, lying horizontally in the mud.
Seeing that they were about to succeed but failed at the last step, the frustration made the two squatting there exchange bitter smiles.
“It’s okay, let’s try again. This time you fish it out, just bend the wire into a new shape.”