The man’s expression shifted from confusion to a frown.
He flipped his phone over and set it face-down on the table, his lips twitching as his chin pulled back slightly. He looked like he had no idea what to say.
It was probably because, facing a white-haired girl who looked underage, frail, and like she might shatter at any moment, he couldn’t fall back on his usual methods for dealing with jerks.
He probably had a daughter too—maybe around Rinna’s age.
“There are plenty of empty seats here…”
He pointed to an empty table a few meters away, his tone trying to reason with her.
It carried that standard, middle-aged, “I’ll let this slide once” voice that people used when dealing with unreasonable youngsters. “Over there isn’t…”
“No, no, no, no!”
Rinna lifted her index finger off the table, wagging it left and right in a light, quick rhythm.
A young office worker in a plaid shirt, sitting two tables away, had been drinking coffee. When he heard that, he froze with the cup at his lips, his gaze involuntarily drifting toward them.
His expression showed a flicker of surprise, quickly suppressed into nervousness at not wanting to get dragged into trouble. But that tiny spark of schadenfreude in the corner of his eye was impossible to hide.
“You…” The man’s voice rose a notch.
“What… got mad?”
Rinna clasped her hands behind her back and leaned forward just a little.
She didn’t give him a chance to respond. Her speech speed suddenly increased, but every word was crisp and clear.
“You’re not, like, a Section Chief at your company, are you? Can’t climb any higher, can you?”
The man opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
He was actually a Section Head.
Not a Section Chief.
Rinna had mixed up the two ranks… but precisely because she got it wrong, it stung even more. He had worked at the company for nearly twenty years to go from Chief to Section Head.
Every time someone called him “Section Chief,” he silently corrected them in his head but never had the nerve to say it out loud.
And now this white-haired brat had not only publicly stripped his life bare but also demoted the position he’d struggled so hard to earn.
Under the table, his knee jerked and hit the inside of the table leg with a dull thump.
Rinna caught the sound of that knee impact.
She’d hit a nerve.
She knew she had landed a blow… and a precise one at that.
Last time on the train, she’d discovered that the thing that got under the skin of middle-aged salarymen the most was their career ceiling and sense of life’s meaninglessness. Today, this man’s reaction was stronger than the last one’s, but his restraint ran deeper.
He wasn’t like that guy on the train who tried to throw a punch after being yelled at… He was more silent, better at swallowing his emotions. Probably because he’d been swallowing them for too long in life.
“Alright, alright. I’ll let you off the hook.”
Rinna withdrew her hand from the table, stepped back half a pace, and dropped her leaning posture. She resumed standing like a harmless, quiet girl in a white dress.
The man’s face had turned bright red.
It crept up from his neck, over his chin, over his cheekbones, until even his earlobes were flushed.
But he didn’t blow up.
He clearly didn’t want to pick a fight in public with a girl who looked underage and frail. Winning would mean bullying a child; losing would mean he couldn’t even beat a kid. Either way, it wasn’t worth it.
Plus, people nearby were starting to look over.
The young office worker in the plaid shirt had stopped hiding his gaze. A couple at the next table had also paused their conversation, the girl quietly poking the ice in her cup with her straw, her eyes flicking in their direction.
The man stood up abruptly, his knee hitting the table leg again with another dull thud.
His fingers squeezed his phone case twice, knuckles whitening from the pressure. Then he picked up his iced Americano and laptop bag and headed for the empty table next to his.
Scrape.
The chair dragged against the floor with a harsh sound. He didn’t look back.
His steps swayed slightly, and he disappeared into the shadow of the umbrella at that empty table a few meters away.
Rinna watched him walk off, then sat down on the wrought-iron chair.
The chair was still warm from the previous occupant—probably the person the man had been waiting for—and the metal armrests had been heated by the sun until they felt a little hot.
She rested her hands on the table, her fingertips brushing against the cup with a lipstick stain on the straw.
About a third of the Americano remained inside. The ice had all melted, diluting the deep brown coffee into a light brown.
Then that indescribable feeling surged up.
It wasn’t a sense of victory.
Her system panel had just gained about twenty-odd points of malice value… She hadn’t had time to check it closely, but it probably wasn’t too little. The man’s reaction had been so strong that the malice value density must have been high.
She had succeeded.
He probably wasn’t a bad person—not like those men on the train who deliberately bumped into girls and gave perfunctory apologies.
He was just an ordinary person trying to enjoy a little time to himself on a weekend afternoon.
And then, without a word, he had taken the insults a white-haired brat had hurled at him.
Rinna tucked her hand back inside her shawl, her fingertips lightly rubbing the red cotton fabric.
She remembered that in her past life, she had also been a regular office drone in training…
After graduation, she joined a mediocre company, did a mediocre job, crammed onto the train every morning, drank a can of beer and watched two episodes of TV at night, then did the same thing all over again the next day.
If that version of her had graduated smoothly, found a job smoothly, and lived all the way to forty, she’d probably be getting called a “small fry loser” too.
She looked down at her own fingers resting on the edge of the table.
‘Look at this mess. And I’m here acting like the bad guy.’
Rinna scoffed to herself inwardly, then pulled her hand back.
She had to go.
Hisaki should be almost at the counter now. The hot cocoa would probably be ready in a few more minutes.
Before Hisaki came back, she needed to return to that bench and pretend she’d been obediently waiting there the whole time.
But just as Rinna was sighing, several male gazes from nearby around her locked onto her.
Those looks weren’t accidental glances… They came from different corners of the plaza, all at the same moment, drawn to her like iron filings to a magnet.
A young man pretending to make a call on the other side of the fountain. A bespectacled man sitting by the railing on the third-floor food court, sipping milk tea with his head down.
A middle-aged guy casually browsing a phone case shop on the second-floor corridor… They all pulled out their phones and quickly typed in an unnamed group chat.
Scrolling up through the chat history revealed a flood of target photos, locations, times, and travel routes.
The latest message was a photo and a few short lines.
The photo had been taken from a clever long-range angle, the lens perfectly aligned through the gaps in the fountain’s water jets, avoiding the crowd’s obstruction and the sunlight’s glare, capturing Rinna’s face clearly in the center of the frame.
White dress, red shawl, amber eyes… and that lazy stance and gaze from when she’d stopped by the man’s table earlier.
“Target spotted. East side of the coffee shop in Sunshine Town Central Commercial District. White dress, red shawl. Same person as last train incident.”
“Copy.”
“Copy. Approaching from the north side, Building 6 direction.”
“Perimeter secure at Building 3.”
“What does the boss say?”
“The boss is waiting… He’s coming himself.”