2 – vol.2 Vanilla Caramel
“Splash—”
In the bar’s restroom area, a huge basin of water poured down without warning.
From top to bottom, it drenched the unprepared Wen Ruosui completely, icy water cascading over her body, leaving no part untouched.
Wen Ruosui struggled to wipe the water from her face with her palms.
Enduring the chill in her body, she rubbed her eyes before looking up at the restroom door.
On the door of the women’s restroom hung a half-tilted bucket, teetering precariously, with some remaining water dripping from its edge.
Someone had lured her here.
She had just received an unfamiliar phone call, saying that her café employee Xiao Hui was drunk at the bar, insisting on going home, and urging her to come quickly to take Xiao Hui back.
Xiao Hui was two years younger than her, came from a poor family, had dropped out of high school, and had been working hard to earn money. Besides working at Wen Ruosui’s café during the day, she occasionally took on part-time jobs as part of the atmosphere crew at bars at night.
Xiao Hui had gotten drunk before and asked Wen Ruosui to pick her up, and since her phone was unreachable this time, Wen Ruosui grew anxious. Without thinking too much, she closed the shop and hurried to Pucheng’s largest bar.
Little did she expect that, upon arriving at the second-floor restroom location mentioned in the call, she would be greeted by a sudden bucket of icy water.
All of Wen Ruosui’s clothes were soaked by the icy water, and her hair was no exception, with tiny ice cubes still clinging to it.
She looked like a drowned rat pulled from the water.
Thoroughly soaked.
Realizing she had been tricked, Wen Ruosui didn’t panic.
Facing the mirror in the women’s restroom, she calmly wrung the water from her hair and clothes, wiped the water stains from her face with toilet paper, and then just wanted to leave as quickly as possible.
However, as Wen Ruosui stepped out of the women’s restroom, someone blocked her path—
“Hey, little girl, here to find your friend?”
The tone was extremely impolite, especially in such a setting, and even carried a hint of lewdness.
Two vulgar men had appeared at some point.
One short and fat, the other tall and thin.
Their appearances were downright repulsive.
Having likely been lying in wait for some time, the two scoundrels’ eyes gleamed with perverted excitement.
The short, fat man looked the slender, drenched girl up and down, squinting as he said, “Even soaked, you’re still so pretty.”
He paused, then laughed and joked to his companion, “A lotus emerging from the water, don’t you think, A Yong?”
The tall, thin man named A Yong naturally had the same sleazy demeanor.
His gaze toward Wen Ruosui was lecherous, and his words were crude: “With a figure and face like that, she’s more than a lotus—she’s a fairy emerging from the water.”
Hearing his companion’s agreement, the short, fat man couldn’t help but let out a filthy laugh.
“Haha, then what are we waiting for? Let’s just do it right here in this nice restroom,” the short, fat man said, puffing out his beer belly as he took a step forward.
“Alright!” his companion chimed in.
With lecherous grins, the two slovenly, vulgar strangers closed in on her step by step.
Danger was closing in on the girl.
But Wen Ruosui was not unprepared.She quickly took a step back, grabbed the broom she had noticed earlier in the bathroom while tidying herself up, and, taking advantage of the two sleazy men’s lack of defense, she jabbed each of them hard in the stomach with all her strength, also giving their heads a solid whack.
“Ah!”
“Ouch! That hurts!”
The two sleazy men, all bark and no bite, never expected the seemingly fragile girl to fight back and immediately let out agonizing howls.
While they were crying out in pain, Wen Ruosui dropped the broom and dashed between them at the fastest speed she had ever mustered in her life, sprinting toward the corridor on the other side.
In truth, she usually didn’t have that much strength.
The jabs with the broom were purely driven by the instinct to survive.
The corridor on the second floor of the bar was long and empty, with hardly anyone around.
Wen Ruosui didn’t care about anything else. Her mind was almost blank, focused only on running forward and getting away from those two men.
But when she quickly reached the end of the corridor, she realized it wasn’t an exit leading downstairs but an entrance to a row of VIP rooms.
Where was the elevator?
Where were the stairs?
Wen Ruosui’s eyes darted around, searching frantically, but in this bizarre, dimly lit bar, the exits weren’t easy to find.
She began to feel a bit anxious.
“You little bitch, don’t you run!”
“You even hit us? Just you wait, I’m gonna make you pay!”
…
Oh no, those two sleazy men were catching up.
There was no time to look for an exit. She had no choice but to keep moving in this direction.
Wen Ruosui turned a corner and continued running down the new hallway.
VIP rooms lined both sides of this new hallway after the turn, each with a number, arranged in an orderly yet staggered fashion.
I should find a room to hide in, she thought.
Wen Ruosui began frantically trying the doors one by one.
The first one wouldn’t open.
The second one wouldn’t open either.
…
For some reason, none of the bar’s private room doors were open. Every door she tried was locked.
Meanwhile, the footsteps of the two sleazy men chasing after her grew closer and closer. Thump, thump, thump—they trampled on her heart.
They were almost here.
Wen Ruosui had no time to think further. She could only speed up her movements, desperately trying the remaining doors. With each attempt, her breathing grew heavier, her heart pounded faster, almost leaping out of her chest.
But not a single door would open.
She was on the verge of despair.
She was about to be caught by those two wolf-like sleazy men.
There was nowhere to hide.
The deafening beat of the music from the bar’s first-floor lobby echoed up, mingled with the cheers and revelry of the crowd. Amidst such noise, no one would notice what a fragile girl was going through in the third-floor hallway.
Wen Ruosui, utterly hopeless, ran to the last private room door, her mind almost devoid of any remaining hope.
She placed her hand on the matte bronze doorknob, mustering the last of her strength to turn the only door left—
It opened.
The last private room—the door could be opened.