2

Two months ago.

She didn’t like summer.

At the height of summer, the city was surrounded by blazing sunlight and hot air waves. At lunchtime, the asphalt road was directly scorched by the sun, the road surface rose up in rippling steam, and even stepping on the ground through her shoes felt as if the palms of her feet were going to melt.

She carried the takeout box out of the well-cooled office building, and the temperature drop made her unable to help but sneeze profusely.

“This damn weather, the earth is going to explode if it keeps getting hotter.” She muttered, trying her best to hide her body in the shadows of the street trees. The harsh sunlight pierced through the green leafy crevices and sewed itself onto the ground like dense stitches. Occasionally, I raised my eyes to look at the leaves, veined by the light, and filled my eyes with refreshment.

Humming a little tune back into the cake store, the girl sitting behind the cash register looked up breathlessly, the corners of her eyes and mouth drooping in unison, “Tooth, you’re back.”

She flung the takeout box away, lifted up her short skirt and shook her somewhat reddened calves from the sun, “Come on, come on, look at that, freshly roasted pig’s feet!” Seeing that the girl didn’t have much of a reaction, she stepped forward and slapped the other girl’s ass, “Dead doughnut, I’ve sacrificed my color so much and you still don’t give the master a smile?”

The doughnut looked up and squeezed out a smile that was worse than crying.

She rolled her eyes, “Come on, I have a cheap mouth, I’ll have to have nightmares tonight. I said it’s been a few days and you still can’t stop thinking about it. Isn’t it just a handsome uncle? Really no interest.”

“So be it.” Tuanzi lazily flopped to the side, gecko-like, “Do you think he’ll come again?”

“I can’t say,” she gulped down a mouthful of water, “but then again, if it were me. If a man asked me ‘what’s your mom’s name’ as soon as we met, I’d smack him upside the head.”

“Okay, stop, I’ve already said that I said the wrong thing that day because my brain was short-circuiting and my mouth was cramping.” Tuanzi was indignant, “You too, you’re right there on the sidelines and you don’t give me a word!”

“How?” She stared wide-eyed, “Saying that you’re selling cakes and checking accounts on the side?”

“Yang Yaxiao! You’re too venomous!” Tuanzi was devastated, “Right, do you have time tonight? Let’s go shopping together, I’ll treat you to ice.”

She balked, “I have to work at night.”

Tuanzi became more and more surprised, “Aren’t you about to take your exams? You’re still working at night? Do you have to work so hard?”

“Of course I do, I’m saving up for a trip to Tibet. Besides, I’ve reviewed everything I need to review.” She was unimpressed, “This is the last and easiest subject, a piece of cake.”

Tuanzi looked at her enviously, “If I were as capable as you, and got a few certificates – even if it’s only half the number of certificates you got, my mom would burn incense and worship Buddha.”

“Taking more certificates and not being able to use them would be in vain, not to mention–” Her words were interrupted by a sudden influx of customers in the store, which soon fell into a busy state.

The closing time for the cake store was six o’clock, and as soon as the evening shift changeover came she rushed home, hurriedly ate her dinner, and then rushed to the store where she worked at night.

The store where she works at night was just found last month, and is a casino that opened not long ago in the city. The business has been booming since its opening, and the requirements for hiring staff are also very high. She worked as a box waitress, from seven in the evening to one in the morning. It was hard work, but the pay was high. Fortunately, this place was close to her home, and the transportation was very convenient.

Every weekend night the club did a great deal of business, and towards the end of the night it was even more crowded, with deafening sounds of boxing and laughing and singing from all the private rooms.

The long, narrow, noisy passageway reflected the hazy yellow light of the wall lamps, demonic and ambiguous. The faces of the passers-by were almost always half-enamored and half-drunk, and the occasional person who brushed up against her was either bumping into her intentionally or whistling in a pervert’s way. She kept a businesslike smile on her face, carrying a small basket of cold beer in one hand, while her other free hand was behind her back, fiercely flashing her middle finger at the munchkins.

“It’s so noisy,” fellow waitress Lin Yao followed her at some point, “my head’s about to explode.”

She yawned and lazily picked up, “Just get used to it.”

Lin Yao skimmed her mouth, “It coincides with the chaotic times, and the demons are all over the place.”

“Call Big Brother if there are demons.” She drooped her eyelids and responded, her footsteps were a bit fluttering, “A stick to kill things.”

The store was still busy well past midnight, yet sleepiness gnawed at what little wakefulness she had left like a voracious gorgon, even her consciousness was a little fuzzy. She braced herself to set the cold beer on the table and began to gather up the empty bottles and cans she had finished. It should be said that the guests of this VIP box were quite civilized and tidy compared to the others, and the finished beers and cups were neatly arranged like soldiers standing in line, so it was no trouble at all to clean them up. Her hands kept on cleaning up, but her mind was only thinking about how long it would take to get off work.

In a moment’s lapse of concentration, her hands went awry. The sound of the glass bottle falling on the marble tabletop was loud and clear, piercing her eardrums like a needle. She looked up with an apologetic smile as she scrambled.

The sound in the booth was already loud, so I’m sure no one noticed. She shrugged her shoulders and continued with her hand movements.

Soon, however, she sensed something was wrong. This kind of self-policing comes from a person’s own crisis defense system, which is self-generated. Although it was not as sharp as a trigger alarm, it was extremely reliable. She looked up and around quietly through her movements, and soon intercepted a gaze with a distinctly predatory undertone.

He was sitting to her right, legs folded, one hand in his lap, the other resting on the back of the couch. The sitting posture was relaxed and leisurely, but there was a powerful compulsion upon him. At this time his face is slightly backward, only to see a beautifully curved jaw, not the kind of sharp edges, but with a wild arrogance.

In the box there is only a blue light, ambiguous and vague. But she clearly felt that the other party’s unbridled gaze like a knife scraped on their own body, with probing and judgment, as well as undisguised interest. This kind of look is too disgusting, without a trace of respect, there is only blunt and sharp weighing. This kind of weighing was not new to her, and it was not done in good faith.

She was horrified, and quickly gathered her things and half-bowed in preparation for a speedy retreat. But turning around, she barely managed to scream, for at some point he had stood by the door, blocking most of it.

She wanted to throw out the basket in her hand and run away, but at this point, she couldn’t move even half a step, so she had to hold on to her smile and poke straight at the door like a zombie.

Pale yellow wall lamp from the passage above the oblique reflection down, along the edge of the door to draw a long diagonal triangle, hidden the door inside the person’s face, but also to cover the uncomfortable gaze. But the collar button on his lapel glinted sharply in the slightly dim light, awnlike and piercing.

Subconsciously, she took a step backward.

His hand propped on the edge of the door slowly slid down, and his body slowly leaned forward in the direction of his hand, as if he was looking at the nameplate she had pinned to her chest, and with a single word, “Yang Yaxiao.”

She furrowed her brows and took another step back, deliberately blocking the carrier full of wine bottles and cans between the two of them in an attempt to put some more distance between them and him.

Hidden in the shadows, the starbursts flowed and glittered, accompanied by a very light laugh.

Unsure if it was the lingering odor of the wine in the basket and the oppressive environment around her that made her feel a little dizzy, she took a deep breath and straightened her back, “May I help you with anything else?”

He gave a slight nod and handed his hand in her direction – it wasn’t a pampered hand, it was well boned and full of strength, and the fingers, slightly arched at the moment, had an unmistakable flavor of elegance. Between her fingers were a few thin bills, which when converted to RMB were enough to cover a month’s salary.

She had to admit, she wasn’t a butthead anymore.

But greed only exposed a head will be knocked down by reason, she is again no eyesight power, at least also in this place for a period of time work, with the smell of smell out of the other side of the body of the dangerous atmosphere. This tip, it’s better not to accept it. She raised her head and squeezed out a polite smile, “I’m sorry sir, we don’t allow tipping in our store. If you are satisfied with my service, you can give me a perfect score on the comment card.”

His head tilted slightly to the side, his voice low and lazy, “Please.”

Just fill in a work number and then put a check mark, what’s so troublesome about it? Is it hard to believe that he can’t even write Arabic numerals? She thought angrily, only feeling that this man was just looking for trouble to drag his feet. No matter what, she didn’t want the money anyway, so she might as well get out of it as soon as possible.

So, her smile became sweeter and more hypocritical, and

“That doesn’t matter, you can just take it as I’m serving the people.”

After that night, she never saw him again.

Although he was really an impressive man – to quote Lin Rao’s description, he was like a two-thousand-volt bare wire, once touched, he didn’t need to be sent to the hospital, but directly ascended to immortality. But to her, he was just an eccentric guest with an unknown name, just a smile. It wasn’t long before she quit her night job to focus on the daytime cake store business, and subconsciously put everything about the previous day behind her.

She was too busy working, too busy making money, too busy preparing for her upcoming exams, too busy to think about anything else.

Had it not been for the accident, she might have been able to follow the steps she had planned for her life, step by step, until she fell into a coffin with her gray teeth and staggering gait. But life can change so quickly, like a tornado striking out of nowhere. One minute you’re watching a tornado snake around a thousand meters away, and the next minute it’s right in front of you, turning everything upside down.