Green-haired had barely walked ten steps away when the glow of his phone screen flickered across his face twice, and his post was up.
The caption was just one sentence: “Ten-yuan fried noodles by the public toilet at the end of Cross Street. If you don’t eat it, you’re a dog.”
The photo showed the empty bowl, its bottom so clean it reflected light.
Seven minutes later, the first wave arrived.
They weren’t random passersby, but people who had come all the way from the main street, holding up their phones and following the location tagged in Green-haired’s post until they found their way to the alley’s end.
At the front was a tall, skinny guy with glasses. He stopped in front of the stall, glanced around, sniffed twice, then turned and called to his friends behind him, “This is it. Smell that?”
“Yeah, yeah, I smell it. Line up, line up.”
Shen Qingqing’s spatula was still resting against the wok, a handful of chopped scallions in her grip that she hadn’t thrown in yet. She froze for half a second.
“Boss lady, one with egg and meat!”
“I want one too, extra spicy!”
“Two portions, takeout!”
Voices crashed over one another. Shen Qingqing’s head buzzed, but she snapped back to her senses and plunged the spatula into the wok.
“Alright, alright, one at a time, don’t rush!”
Her voice rang out, strong and steady, the spatula striking the rim of the wok with three sharp clangs.
Rice noodles hit the pan, oil splattered, eggs spread, garlic sizzled, and the spatula scraped along the bottom as the wok breath surged half a meter high.
One bowl out, handed over, money taken, change returned.
Second bowl into the wok, stir-fried, plated, passed on.
Third, fourth.
The phone screen flickered beside the stove again and again.
[Customer Satisfaction +10]
[Money +13]
[Customer Satisfaction +10]
[Money +10]
Shen Qingqing had no time to look at the system notifications. Her eyes stayed on the wok, her ears counted the people in line, her mouth called out prices.
“Egg and meat, thirteen. No egg, ten. Here’s your change, take it!”
The metal cash box sat open beside the stove, bills and coins tossed in with a clinking sound.
The line grew from five people to eight, then from eight to twelve.
Some people stood on tiptoes at the back, trying to see ahead. Some held up their phones to film the flying noodles in the wok. Others squatted nearby, finishing their bowls and raising them overhead, shouting, “Boss lady, another one!”
Shen Qingqing’s arms began to ache, sweat dripped from her chin into the wok, and she wiped it away with her sleeve without stopping.
“Wait a bit, wait a bit. The wok’s only this big, one at a time!”
Her words told them not to rush, but her hands moved like lightning.
She had repeated the motion of scooping noodles from the basin into the wok over a dozen times now, each time the same rhythm: three seconds to add noodles, five seconds to stir-fry, two seconds to season, one second to plate.
The money in the cash box piled higher and higher, coins forming the base, crumpled bills stacked on top into a small heap.
Shen Qingqing sneaked a glance at it, didn’t count, but just seeing the thickness made the corners of her lips lift.
She hummed softly, not quite a tune, just a sound from her nose, tinged with satisfaction.
Huo Yan sat on the small stool, unmoving.
His ears caught every sound in front of the stall: voices, the scrape of the spatula, the clink of coins falling into the cash box. He took it all in.
Clink! Another portion.
Clink! Another portion.
A few hundred yuan.
In his previous life, a single contract he signed ended with eight zeros.
His assistant, Lin Yu, could treat a client to dinner where just one bottle of wine on the bill could buy every stall in this alley.
A few hundred yuan wouldn’t even make him blink.
Shen Qingqing hummed again, this time with a slight upward lilt, like a child secretly enjoying candy.
Huo Yan’s thumb rubbed against his knee.
That tune slipped into his ears, slid down his ear canal, and settled somewhere near his throat, leaving an itch.
More pleasant than the sound of a contract being stamped with millions behind it.
He didn’t think about why.
“Boss lady! Your noodles are insane! The pork cracklings are the soul!” a bald man in line shouted, gesturing with his chopsticks midair.
“Of course! My pork cracklings are freshly fried!” Shen Qingqing flipped her wrist, sending the noodles in the wok tumbling.
“Are you coming tomorrow?”
“I’ll be here! Rain or shine!”
The bald man gave a thumbs-up and went to squat nearby to slurp his noodles.
The system interface flashed again.
[Current Total Income: 286 yuan]
[Customer Satisfaction Reached. Bonus Reward: Cooking Experience +50]
Shen Qingqing caught the numbers from the corner of her eye and quickly did the math in her head.
Two hundred eighty-six, minus about seventy for ingredients, meant a net profit of just over two hundred.
Another couple of nights like this, and the rent would be covered.
Her spatula moved even faster, her wrist a blur.
Next door.
The fat stall owner’s fryer still bubbled, skewers rolling in the oil, giving off their fragrance.
No one noticed.
The air at the end of the alley had been completely taken over by Shen Qingqing’s wok. The rich aroma of pork fat crushed the greasy scent of fried skewers, pressing it flat.
The line in front of the fat stall owner began to thin.
Two people left first, saying they’d go try the new fried noodles next door.
Then three more.
Eventually, even her regulars, who had been squatting in front of her stall eating skewers, craned their necks toward Shen Qingqing’s stall, chewing chicken strips while staring at the flipping rice noodles.
The fat stall owner gripped her long chopsticks so tightly her knuckles turned white.
Her gold tooth bit into the inside of her lip, leaving a dent.
She turned her back to Shen Qingqing’s stall, dug her greasy hand into her apron pocket, pulled out her phone, tapped the screen three times, and pressed it to her ear.
“Hello, Brother Bao?”
Her voice dropped low, words squeezed out from between her teeth behind the phone.
“There’s a new stall at the end of Cross Street, hasn’t paid any management fees and is stealing business. Come take a look.”
Something was said on the other end. The gold tooth showed again as her lips stretched into a grin.
“Alright, I’ll wait.”
She shoved the phone back into her apron pocket, picked up her chopsticks, flipped the skewers twice, and cast a sharp glance toward Shen Qingqing through the haze of oil smoke.
Shen Qingqing didn’t notice.
She was plating the nineteenth order, noodles piled like a small hill with pork cracklings gleaming on top.
“Ten yuan. You can scan or pay cash!”
The customer handed her a twenty. Shen Qingqing dug out ten from the cash box and handed it back.
“Boss lady, do you sell the pork cracklings separately?”
“Nope, limited supply. They only have a soul when they’re in the noodles!”
“Then give me another portion.”
“Coming right up!”
The spatula moved again, the wok breath surged again.
Shen Qingqing’s T-shirt was soaked through at the back, clinging to her spine. Sweat ran down from her hairline into her eyes, stinging, but she wiped it away with her sleeve and kept going.
Ten more minutes passed.
By the time the system notification showed [Total Income: 412 yuan], three men appeared at the alley entrance.
They weren’t here to eat.
The people in line noticed them first.
The three men split from the crowd at the alley entrance, walking at an unhurried pace with their shoulders squared.
Their bare arms were covered in tattoos from shoulder to elbow, dark ink gleaming under the streetlights.
The one in front was short and stocky, his neck as thick as his head, his arms like steel rods. He held a stainless steel baton, dragging its tip along the ground with a scraping hiss against the concrete.
They didn’t look at the stall or the wok. Their gaze swept over the crowd and went straight for the folding table beside Shen Qingqing’s stove.
Bang!
A kick landed.
The folding table’s metal legs bent in the middle, the tabletop flipped and crashed to the ground. Paper bowls, chopstick holders, and soy sauce bottles scattered everywhere. The soy sauce bottle shattered, dark liquid splashing across the ground.
Customers eating their noodles nearly dropped their bowls, noodles spilling everywhere. Someone yelped and jumped back, knocking over two plastic stools.
The line split apart as if something had cleaved it in two, scattering to both sides.
In an instant, the space in front of the stall was empty.
Shen Qingqing’s spatula froze in the wok, her wrist stiff.
The stocky, tattooed man stood two steps away from her, planting the steel baton on the ground and resting both hands on top of it, his chin propped on his hands as he tilted his head at her.
“Who told you you could set up a stall here?”
Shen Qingqing swallowed.
“Hm?” The man slammed the baton against the ground again, the dull metallic thud vibrating through the concrete. “I’m talking to you. Deaf?”
Behind him, the other two tattooed men spread out. One stepped on the overturned folding table, the other picked up the cash box, shaking it so coins and bills clattered loudly inside.
“Well, well, made quite a bit, haven’t you?”
Shen Qingqing stared at the hand holding her cash box. Her fingers tightened around the spatula handle until her knuckles turned white.
“That’s my money.”
“Yours?” The stocky man let out a low laugh, rough like sandpaper scraping metal. “Setting up a stall on this street, did you pay the management fee? The sanitation fee? The land usage fee?”
“What management fee?”
“You don’t know?” He lifted the baton onto his shoulder. “New here, huh? Let me educate you. The rule on Cross Street is one hundred yuan per stall per day. Pay monthly and you get a ten percent discount. You set up today, so that’s one hundred. Pay up.”
Shen Qingqing parted her lips.
One hundred yuan.
She had only made a little over four hundred tonight, and that was before deducting costs.
One hundred a day meant three thousand a month.
She didn’t even have enough in her pocket for tomorrow’s rice noodles without calculating every cent.
“I’ve never heard of any management fee,” she said, her voice dropping slightly, but her grip on the spatula didn’t loosen.
“Well, now you have.” The man stepped forward half a step, lowering the baton to the ground right in front of her.
The metal struck the concrete just twenty centimeters from her feet, the vibration numbing her soles.
“Pay, or get lost. Pick one.”
Shen Qingqing’s back pressed against the edge of the stove, the metal digging into her waist.
Her gaze flicked to the right.
Huo Yan stood up.
Not abruptly, but slowly, vertebra by vertebra straightening, like a compressed spring gradually returning to form.
His hands hung at his sides, fingers relaxed, slightly spread.
Behind the sunglasses, his blind eyes couldn’t be seen, but his head tilted at an angle, directly facing the direction of the stocky man’s voice.
His lips moved. No sound came out.
The muscles along his neck tightened, veins rising beneath his skin like snakes.
The man holding the cash box noticed him, gave him a once-over, and sneered.
“Well, well, there’s even a blind guy here?”
He reached out and shoved Huo Yan’s shoulder.
Huo Yan’s body swayed half an inch.
Then steadied, his fingers curled.
Not into a fist, but slowly, one by one, starting from the little finger, drawing inward into his palm, like he was gripping an invisible throat.