The courtyard was spacious, complete with a swimming pool filled to the brim with water.
There were quite a few people here too, scattered in twos and threes around the poolside and the lawn.
The moment Lin Jiaxin walked through the gate, she drew a lot of attention.
Especially her outfit…
Up top, she wore a cream-colored short-sleeved T-shirt with a cartoon cat sporting a vacant expression printed on the chest.
On the bottom, a pair of loose, ordinary jeans with large torn patches decorating the knees.
And on her feet… just a very, very common pair of house slippers.
“How ridiculous. What’s the security at the gate doing? How did they let someone like her in?”
“Think the little girl snuck in looking for a sugar daddy? Couldn’t even bother to dress up?”
“Alright, enough. If she got in, she must have some ability… Don’t go running your mouth and pissing off someone you shouldn’t.”
Lin Jiaxin caught every bit of the whispered gossip around her.
She turned her head and looked at these people.
The men were mostly in shirts and suits, a few even sporting bow ties.
The women were uniformly in cocktail dresses or silk gowns.
Stilettos clicked sharply against the stone pavement.
It looked like something straight out of a TV drama.
But Lin Jiaxin didn’t really care.
After all, she hadn’t even wanted to come, so naturally she couldn’t be bothered to dress up.
Besides, Lin Jiaxin wasn’t really comfortable in this kind of setting anyway.
She couldn’t help feeling a bit out of place here?
“Hey, that person you mentioned… what time is she coming?”
Lin Jiaxin followed Shen Yan to a corner, found a seat, and finally couldn’t hold back her question.
Shen Yan glanced down at his wristwatch. “Still a while. We came a bit early.”
“How long is ‘a while’?”
Lin Jiaxin frowned and pressed further.
She didn’t want to stay here too long.
Everyone here felt like they were wearing a thick mask on their faces. It was weird.
“It’s 5:30 now… about another hour? Let’s just wait a bit longer…”
No sooner had Shen Yan sat down than people kept coming up to chat with him. He could only spare a moment to reply to Lin Jiaxin.
“Oh, right. If you’re hungry, you can help yourself to any of that stuff… or just wander around.”
With that, he went off to greet someone in another corner who’d been calling for him.
“What the heck…”
Lin Jiaxin stared speechlessly at Shen Yan’s retreating back, unable to resist rolling her eyes hard at him.
If it weren’t for the fact that taking his money meant playing nice, she’d have thrown a nasty look and walked out right then.
But since Shen Yan said she could eat and wander freely, Lin Jiaxin wasn’t about to be polite with him.
Might as well treat it like visiting a movie set!
Because this party was way too much like the kind of scene you’d only see in a TV drama.
That was a rare sight in her world.
Anyway, the pass was already in hand—tomorrow she could go to the Qi Gathering Tower to train. For now, with nothing else to do, she might as well enjoy the show.
——————
“Wow! These egg tarts look amazing! Quick, quick, take a photo for me.”
Beside the dessert table, a girl in a little flutter-sleeve dress spotted the dazzling array of treats and her eyes lit up instantly.
She immediately shoved her phone into her best friend’s hands.
Then she turned her back to the long table piled with sweets, bent slightly at the waist, and struck a carefully posed side-profile smile.
Her friend, seeing this, raised the phone and aimed it at her, about to press the shutter.
Then… a hand suddenly appeared in the frame.
It reached out and snatched two egg tarts from the plate.
The flutter-sleeve girl and her friend both froze.
Their gazes instinctively followed those two egg tarts.
“Nom nom nom…”
Beside the dessert table, Lin Jiaxin was in the middle of challenging herself to eat two egg tarts at once, cheeks puffed out as she chewed with gusto.
But she suddenly felt two stares boring straight into her face.
She jolted, looked up, and met two pairs of wide, round eyes.
Lin Jiaxin strained to swallow half the egg tart lodged in her throat.
With her cheeks still bulging, it took her a while to squeeze out a garbled sentence:
“Nyou guys… lookin’ at wha?”
The flutter-sleeve girl’s gaze bounced back and forth between the equally vacant-looking cartoon cat on Lin Jiaxin’s T-shirt and her bun-like puffed cheeks.
She instinctively raised a finger, pointing at the tart crumbs at the corner of Lin Jiaxin’s mouth. “Um… I saw those first…”
“What do you mean, you saw them first?”
Lin Jiaxin finally swallowed the egg tart, then stuck out her tongue to lick the pastry crumbs from the corner of her mouth.
She frowned in confusion at the comment, then pointed at the table with utter confidence.
“Isn’t this a public table where anyone can eat? If you’re not eating, does that mean I can’t either? Besides… if you wanted some, why didn’t you say so earlier? If I’d known, I wouldn’t have fought you for them.”
“No, no, that’s not what I meant…”
The two girls exchanged a look, their eyes darting rapidly in silent communication.
In the end, both of their gazes locked onto Lin Jiaxin’s torn jeans and casual slippers.
Combined with Lin Jiaxin’s utterly unguarded, carefree demeanor…
Could she be… a close friend of the host?!
The two girls, who were also first-timers brought to this kind of party by someone else, quickly completed their cost-benefit analysis.
A standard social smile was plastered back onto their faces.
“We… just thought you were really cute and wanted to take a photo… is that okay?”
“No thanks. Take your own photos… I’m going over there to play. Bye.”
Lin Jiaxin shook her head, declined, and picked up a small drink from the table before walking off to a corner by herself.
She studied the paintings on the courtyard wall while sipping her drink at her leisure.
The two girls whispered to each other, shot Lin Jiaxin a wary glance, and decided to move further away too.
Anyway, the courtyard was big enough, and there was more than one dessert table.
…..
“This mural… hmm…”
Lin Jiaxin held her drink, stroking her smooth chin as she examined it closely before finally giving her high praise.
Gotta say, even though it looked a bit like something from a cartoon, it was actually pretty nice!
Worth a photo!
Lin Jiaxin pulled out her phone and aimed the camera at the mural.
The shutter click and flash went off simultaneously in that corner.
Because dusk was approaching, the courtyard was filled with ambient lighting.
So Lin Jiaxin’s phone flash stood out conspicuously.
Someone frowned in annoyance at the person ruining the ambiance.
Someone curled the corner of their mouth, purely there to enjoy the drama.
Someone was direct and blunt, furrowing their brow and snapping at Lin Jiaxin: “Hey! What are you taking a picture of?”
“Me? I’m taking a picture of the painting.”
Lin Jiaxin opened her photo gallery and flashed it in front of the other person. “What’s the matter? Not allowed?”
The other person gave Lin Jiaxin a once-over, then suddenly let out a cold laugh. “You? With your taste, can you even appreciate it?”
“Dude, why are you so nosy? I’m just asking, can I take a picture or not?”
Lin Jiaxin was instantly annoyed by that remark.
If she wasn’t allowed to, just say so. She’d delete it, no problem.
But attacking her personally?
Who the hell do you think you are?
“Of course you can. It’s your right.”
The suit-wearing man just adjusted his tie, pursed his lips, and spread his hands in a show of innocence. “I was just worried a wild boar wouldn’t know how to appreciate fine dining.”
“Pfft… I’m a wild boar?”
Lin Jiaxin had been a little angry, but hearing that, she nearly lost it.
“Come on then, tell your Sister Xin here—if your Sister Xin is a wild boar, then what are you? A domesticated pig that can appreciate fine dining?”
“A wild boar is probably freer than a fat domesticated pig like you, right?”
“You!”
The suit-wearing man got flustered. “All you can do is run your mouth! Who do you think you are? I don’t even know how someone like you got in here. You’re dragging down everyone’s class!”
“Classic. Lose the argument, start getting flustered. And you talk about class? Domesticated pigs eating fine grain have this weak a mental defense? What a mess.”
“You—”
“Alright, Ajie. What’s there to argue about over a photo?”
A thin, wiry man not far from Lin Jiaxin, wearing a black turtleneck with a middle-parted curly mop of hair, stepped in to stop the commotion as things escalated.
The suit-wearing man finally backed off with a sour look.
“Fine… I’m doing this out of respect for Ating. Don’t you think I’m scared of you, you yellow-haired little girl…”
“Copium. You win again, bro?”
Lin Jiaxin rolled her eyes and waved her hand dismissively. “Fine, then, I guess you win.”
But the turtleneck man, watching Lin Jiaxin, found her increasingly unfamiliar.
He walked up to her, looked her up and down, and asked with a frown:
“Pardon my asking… but who are you?”