“???” Ji Yuenián looked utterly confused.
“It’s that girl we ran into the last time I took you to the hospital,” Ji Haotong let out a sigh and cast another wistful glance in Huang Qingchuan’s direction.
“Mom, this blind date you set up for me has really made my life difficult.”
Huang Qingchuan’s face went dark. She knew a bit about her son’s situation, but she hadn’t expected Ji Haotong’s reaction to be this intense. She opened her mouth, about to speak, but Ji Haotong continued his lament.
“Mom, can you be a bit more professional next time? I was going to ask Miss Tang to help me cover for it, but it turns out she already has a fiancé.”
“Miss Tang? Who’s that?”
“Tang Xueting, the one you introduced me to, you know, the queenly type. You even told me specifically to take the plaque for Table 9 at the bar.”
“Uh… about that, Tongtong, it was actually Table 6.”
“……”
Silence. Silence is tonight’s Cam River.
“Bro, I can confirm Mom’s telling the truth. And, actually, the Miss Tang you’re talking about is only 19 and just started college. She’s my roommate—and she’s also the fiancée of the guy who was just here,” Ji Yuenián quietly chimed in.
“……”
Still silence.
“All right, let’s eat,” Ji Hong spoke up, his tone steady and decisive, bringing the topic to a firm close.
And so, under this strange atmosphere and Ji Haotong’s bottomless gloom, the family dinner proceeded at a slow and awkward pace.
Although the hotel’s commercial value far outweighed its culinary merits, with a famous name comes some genuine quality. There were a few standout dishes—like Ji Yuenián’s favorite: pork knuckle, made from farm-raised black pig, cooked with a special secret sauce, its glossy appearance irresistibly inviting. Paired with a bottle of cold beer, the taste was rich, fragrant, and an absolute delight.
After downing a beer, the urge to pee hit her instantly. Ji Yuenián excused herself and left the private room in search of a restroom.
She glanced at the men’s and women’s signs. As a “manly man,” Ji Yuenián strode into the men’s restroom without blushing or hesitation. There was no one at the urinals; as for whether there was anyone in the stalls, she wasn’t sure.
She picked a stall at random, undid her pants, squatted down, relieved herself, wiped, pulled up her pants—her movements swift and practiced.
During her earliest days after her gender change, Ji Yuenián wasn’t used to it and would often get her pants wet, her face always turning a shade of pink. But perhaps it was human adaptability—she gradually got the hang of it, even mastering the art of control.
She was just about to leave when she suddenly heard the sound of faint footsteps.
Ji Yuenián glanced toward the stalls and saw a woman in a red camisole dress, exposing a pair of long, snowy-white legs, step out from one of them. Her face was covered with heavy makeup, lips painted a bloody red, the overall effect dazzlingly alluring.
The woman froze when she saw Ji Yuenián, then spun around abruptly, covering her face with both hands, her cheeks turning pink. “Old… Old Ji, why are you here? Don’t—don’t misunderstand.”
“Old… Hu?” Hearing that all-too-familiar voice, Ji Yuenián was momentarily at a loss, blurting out the name, then circling around the woman for a better look.
The woman, decked out in sultry attire and a wig, pressed her blushing cheeks with both hands as if scared of being recognized. But that familiar figure and the face peeking out between her fingers left Ji Yuenián no doubt.
“What’s going on here…?”
At that moment, Hu Li seemed to steel her nerves and lowered her hands from her face, though her cheeks were still red. She cleared her throat. “You know today’s Lao Yao’s birthday, right?”
Ji Yuenián nodded.
The unwritten rule in dorm 802: when a member has a birthday, everyone gets together for a meal and sings “Happy Birthday.”
But for some reason, Yao Shiming had turned down his own birthday celebration. After eating with her family, Ji Yuenián was still supposed to join the others for his birthday dinner.
“This time, Lao Yao was dragged here by his fiancée for a birthday meal. He asked me to help him out.”
“Help him?”
Ji Yuenián gave the “cross-dressing enthusiast” before her a once-over—red camisole dress, high heels, heavy makeup—but how was this going to help Lao Yao? This look would be more at home in a nightclub.
Sensing her confusion, Hu Li tucked a strand of fake hair behind her ear. “He wants me to pretend to be a girl he two-timed and then storm in, drag him out, give him a beating, and lower his standing in his fiancée’s eyes.”
“Afterward, he’s paying me five thousand.”
Ji Yuenián: ……
As expected, Hu Li, the dorm’s acknowledged little money-grubber—he’d do anything for cash, even cross-dressing.
“How are you hiding your identity?” Ji Yuenián asked.
After all, Hu Li had met Tang Xueting. Wasn’t he afraid of being recognized?
“I’ve got a mask.” Hu Li calmly produced a foldable fox mask from behind her back and waved it smugly. The lifelike fox pattern gleamed, and her eyes sparkled with sly mischief, just like a little fox who’d swiped some candy.
Staring at the mask, Ji Yuenián couldn’t shake off a sense of déjà vu. But Hu Li seemed impatient already—or rather, she was impatient for that five thousand yuan.
She pressed the mask onto her face, carefully smoothed down her hair, took a deep breath, then marched forward with fearless determination. She flung open a private room’s door and strode inside.
Not long after, a shrill female voice mixed with sobs rang out through the whole room.
“You… you scumbag!”
“How could you do this to me? What happened to your promises, to being together forever?”
“I’ll beat you to death, you scumbag!”
Amid the shouting, there were sounds of things being smashed and tossed—the entire private room instantly fell into chaos and uproar.
Ji Yuenián was oblivious to all the drama going on in that private room. At this moment, she had already returned to her own, gnawing on pork knuckle while comforting her slightly mentally-drained older brother.
It was… honestly hard to imagine what kind of powers that senior, Meng Meng Tu, must possess to turn the family’s meticulously groomed first heir into such a state.
Finally, only after Huang Qingchuan repeatedly promised not to pressure him about blind dates again did Ji Haotong finally snap out of his exhausted state.
But watching this scene, Ji Yuenián couldn’t shake off a strange suspicion—was her big brother deliberately using the “Meng Meng Tu” incident to force their mother to give in?
After dinner, Ji Hong took a glass of brandy from the waiter and led the family up to the third floor. What followed was the usual rounds of drinking and socializing, with all the tangled human relationships that come with it.
Ji Yuenián, however, smoothly found an excuse to sneak downstairs. Near Qingfeng Pavilion Restaurant was a patch of landscaped woodland, and within it, a fishing pond and a stretch of pebbled beach.
She loved to skip stones on those pebbles more than anything!
The moonlight was clear as water, the night wind rustled, tree branches swayed, and every now and then a bird would flit across the sky, dropping a feather or two.
Walking along the pebble path, Ji Yuenián spotted a familiar figure from afar—at the moment, the person was leaning against a tree, hunched over, and the sound of retching kept drifting over.
“Jiang Chi?”