Gao Sijin wasn’t one for blind dates, but his coworkers were all hopelessly “warmhearted.” The result was that nearly every month or so, Gao Sijin found himself dragged to some restaurant with a complete stranger.
And the script was always startlingly similar.
After arriving at the restaurant, Gao Sijin and the girl would, in a tacitly synchronized rhythm, both pull out their phones, scrolling absently while choking down food that never really suited either of their palates.
Once the meal was done, they’d bid each other farewell and become strangers once more.
Thinking back, those girls—the clean, decisive, and nonchalant ones—weren’t so bad.
The more outrageous ones would even bring their mothers along for a real mother-daughter combo deal.
What kind of process was that supposed to be?
Basically, it was no different from grocery shopping at a wet market—hairline’s too high, nostrils are a bit big, lips are too thick, doesn’t earn enough, didn’t graduate from a 985 or 211 university. It didn’t matter who you were; the moment you stepped into the blind-date arena, you were a fish on the chopping block. People could poke and prod you however they pleased, all to make the haggling easier.
Housewives were particularly seasoned veterans in this field. All alone in Bincheng, Gao Sijin would always end up inexplicably torn down and devalued before making his escape.
He utterly despised that interrogative tone, as if he were a criminal on trial.
Sometimes he felt that if some of those women joined the Criminal Investigation Division, they’d easily solve a mountain of cold cases.
In Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Prince Andrei had once advised Pierre: “Never, never marry, my friend.”
Gao Sijin considered marriage to be a tomb. Regardless of whether love existed before the union, marriage inevitably led to the loss of many irretrievable things, the most important of which was freedom.
This time, the destination was a French restaurant.
Based on Gao Sijin’s past experience, girls who suggested French restaurants were usually the ambitious-but-incompetent types, the ones who looked down their noses at everyone.
They were like those women in street interviews asking how much savings a 25-year-old man should have—the kind whose looks you wouldn’t even glance at if they threw themselves at you for free, yet they’d lead with: “Well, at least eight hundred thousand in savings.”
But an arrow, once loosed, cannot be called back. To avoid Director Zhang giving him a hard time at work later, Gao Sijin had to steel himself and charge in, get it over with quickly, and head home to write.
“Hang in there, young man.”
The Driver Uncle, who had deliberately taken the scenic route, gave Gao Sijin a thumbs-up.
As always, Gao Sijin plastered on a smiling face while internally cursing a blue streak as he paid the fare.
The street outside the restaurant was practically a showroom for luxury cars, and the building’s European-style architecture alone was enough to make a man’s knees buckle.
Though Gao Sijin was flat broke, he could always pay in installments. No matter how poor he was, he still had his Huabei credit limit.
In this day and age, who wasn’t a leek getting harvested by the capitalists?
Who were they looking down on?
Just as Gao Sijin was about to ask Director Zhang for the woman’s WeChat contact, a clear, cool, and pleasant voice rang out behind him—the kind of voice that instantly conjures the image of a powerful, commanding businesswoman.
“You must be Gao Sijin, right?”
Gao Sijin turned around and saw her.
The woman standing before him had sharp, knife-like eyes that seemed capable of scaring off malevolent spirits with a single glare. Her near-perfect S-curve figure was draped in a woman’s trench coat that looked ridiculously expensive, giving her an air of bold, valiant elegance.
What was most commendable was that, in this bone-chilling winter at minus eighteen degrees Celsius, her long, slender legs were sheathed in a pair of branded Balenciaga patterned black stockings. She was also quite tall, and with her black heeled boots, her height was practically level with Gao Sijin’s own one hundred seventy-eight centimeters.
She was practically a queen…
“What’s with your eyes? They look like a dead fish’s.”
“That’s Conqueror’s Haki…”
“Hahaha, so you’ve watched One Piece too.”
Hearing Gao Sijin mutter to himself, the woman covered her mouth and laughed, her sharp gaze melting into spring water in that instant.
She was a beauty with sharp, distinct features; her every move was like that of a queen riding into battle.
If this were the world of a light novel, Gao Sijin would definitely cast her as the female lead, or maybe the secondary female lead.
But sadly, this was reality, not fiction. And Gao Sijin couldn’t be the male lead; he was destined to remain part of the scenery.
“You look exactly like your photo—just oozing a clueless, dopey aura from every pore. Hey, are you even awake yet?”
She sauntered towards Gao Sijin, and the stark, humiliating contrast between them made him want to flee on the spot.
“Let me introduce myself. My name is Yu Qingxue. I’m your blind date for today, and my identity is a former international student at the University of Tokyo.”
“Y-you’re the one Director Zhang mentioned?” Gao Sijin swallowed hard, asking with a hint of terror.
Yu Qingxue nodded with a smile, then very naturally took hold of Gao Sijin’s hand. A sensation of being enveloped by ice instantly washed over him.
“I’m guessing you’re dying to run away right now, aren’t you? After all, we’re about to dine at a French restaurant. I hear a meal here is quite pricey. If it really comes down to it, Big Sis will treat you to this one.”
“Hold on. How old are you to be calling yourself ‘Big Sis’?”
“I’m twenty.”
“Miss Yu, I’m older than you.”
“I’m not talking about physical age,” Yu Qingxue said, winking coquettishly. “What I mean is, I’m older than you mentally. You’ve already fallen right into this Big Sis’s palm, so just be a good boy and go on this blind date with me.”
And so, Gao Sijin, like a sheep, was dragged into the French restaurant by this domineering wolf of a woman.
He didn’t believe such good fortune existed in this world. A stunning beauty like her? The line of men chasing her probably stretched from People’s Street all the way to Freedom Road. What reason did she have to eat with a nobody like him?
There had to be a catch.
It was just like the famous line from Stefan Zweig’s Mary Stuart: She was still too young to know that all the gifts of fate had already been secretly marked with a price.
Gao Sijin was suddenly worried that, before he knew it, he might end up missing a body part or two after this was over.
“Oh, right, Miss Yu, it just hit me—I think I forgot to feed Little Bai his dog food.”
“This is no time for such unromantic talk. You’re supposed to be asking me whether I like green peppers or not.”
“Well… do you like green peppers?”
“I don’t like green peppers. But if you said you liked green peppers, I’d immediately change my tune and say I liked them too.”
“You don’t have to hold my hand. We’ve only just met; it’s improper for a man and a woman to be so close.”
“Of course I do. It’s a necessary precaution to stop you from running away. And if I, a woman, don’t mind, what are you so worried about?”
Yu Qingxue wasn’t using much force, but Gao Sijin could sense that trying to brute-force his way out of her slender, delicate grip was simply impossible.
It felt like she had some kind of formal training.
As they reached the restaurant entrance, Yu Qingxue tossed a foreign phrase Gao Sijin couldn’t understand at the doorman.
“Bonjour.”
Could this woman possibly get any cooler?
Gao Sijin felt as though he’d completely become an accessory to her, totally stripped of any autonomy.
“What do you think?”
“I think… this might be the luckiest, and yet the most disastrous, blind date of my entire life.”
