Chapter 13 : The Layers

The friend request was eventually accepted.

Jiang Yanlin knew this didn’t mean they would be playing games together in the future because their gaming preferences didn’t overlap much.

The biggest significance of adding this friend was to see what the other person was doing.

Under normal circumstances, Jiang Yanlin wouldn’t like this kind of development because it already encroached on her private space.

In the past, Jiang Yanlin was always inflexible on this point.

Every one of her ex-girlfriends had clashed with her over this aspect.

The most hurtful time was during her relationship with her ex-ex.

At that time, Jiang Yanlin was living in Hong Kong. She had met her in the area. She was a very clingy Asian girl, who, despite having a face with strong features, had the heart of a young girl.

They met at a party with a group of foreign friends, and within a few days, they were intimate, maintaining an ambiguous relationship.

Jiang Yanlin knew she would eventually leave Hong Kong and wasn’t planning to develop a serious relationship. So, from the beginning, she made it clear that she wasn’t that serious.

However, over time, Jiang Yanlin’s heart softened somewhat, and she allowed the relationship to evolve naturally into a committed one.

After her time in Hong Kong ended, she returned home but never revealed her address to the other person.

For Jiang Yanlin, the age gap, the gap in life experience, the economic gap, and even the difference in nationality all required a long time to balance. When the time wasn’t ripe, she wouldn’t let the two of them become overly attached, lest the burden became too great and went against the original intention.

So, on Valentine’s Day that year, when her girlfriend carefully prepared a handmade gift and wanted to buy a plane ticket to see her, Jiang Yanlin simply hung up the phone and told her to cancel her plan.

For Jiang Yanlin, this wasn’t a surprise, but an unwanted trouble—especially since this wasn’t the first girlfriend to create a “surprise,” but every time, the outcome was as she expected.

She had expressed this point many times, but the other person always thought there would be an exception, a special moment.

Jiang Yanlin knew this was hurtful, but she also realized that they weren’t compatible.

Even setting aside those realistic factors, just talking about the most fundamental point, the conclusion was obvious.

—She didn’t like this person enough to change her principles.

“Xiao You really held onto that thing for many years.”

When she was reminiscing with her old friends from Hong Kong recently, they mentioned this matter, and her friend couldn’t help but sigh.

Jiang Yanlin wasn’t self-reflective. She only replied coldly:

“So, for her birthday this year, she asked me to go to Hokkaido with her, and I spent half a month there. This is all I could do for her.”

Her friend was very curious, asking, “You could do this much. Didn’t you have any affection for her at all?”

Jiang Yanlin thought for a moment and finally replied:

“I loved her, but more I wished for her to be happy. At the very least, I had no desire for her before the breakup.”

Her friend immediately rolled her eyes and gave a judgment:

“You’re just a pure carnivore.”

Jiang Yanlin readily accepted this assessment.

Since she first fell in love with a woman at sixteen, she had been clear about her own nature.

Possessiveness, the desire to control, and the desire for love were her most innate desires.

Over the past ten years, she had continually verified her nature, at the cost of hurting many people and falling into one pit after another, shattering into pieces.

But deconstruction is a prerequisite for reconstruction. After picking up her shattered pieces, brushing off the dust, and reassembling them, she would be reborn.

And after years, there were also troubles.

Because it was hard to find a restaurant that suited her taste, but very easy to get tired of it.

The more delicious food she tasted, the more particular she became.

Jiang Yanlin sat in front of her computer, looking at the new name on her Steam friend list. Her thoughts were complex, but perhaps also clearer than ever before.

—There was a rare, hard-to-find restaurant right in front of her, and the wait was long, the price was high, and it was also a hassle to eat there.

But without paying a price, how could she possibly get to eat it?

Anyway, it’s just a taste.

Unsurprisingly, Péi Wanyi didn’t invite Jiang Yanlin to play games after adding her as a friend.

Instead, she directly invited her to a movie, still at the same place.

Jiang Yanlin really wanted to refuse, just to see what Miss Péi’s reaction would be, but it was just a thought.

The ordinary dog-training techniques wouldn’t work on such a person. In fact, it would likely backfire.

Jiang Yanlin could clearly sense that Péi Wanyi was at least a four-layered cake.

The first layer: dealing with all the unfamiliar people, perfect social etiquette, knowledgeable about human affairs, clearly aware of her social positioning, attracting people around her by playing to her strengths while not “acting” too much, which would make her annoying.

The second layer: dealing with more familiar people, whether it was El or Lu Sien and those people, she was on good terms with them, and it was genuine friendship, without a hint of flattery. This showed that Péi Wanyi had genuine feelings for her friends; at least, that’s how her friends saw it.

The third layer was probably dealing with closer relationships.

She would show her sexual attractiveness and charm, take the initiative, and be skilled at flirting without forgetting to occasionally reveal a bit of her “true self”—the cute, gentle, decisive, and considerate side.

But Jiang Yanlin knew this wasn’t the whole of her.

This point was temporarily unsubstantiated, simply because Jiang Yanlin didn’t believe in the perfect fake.

Péi Wanyi, this woman, even her arrogance was part of her charm, making it difficult to leave a bad impression on people—Jiang Yanlin herself wasn’t included in this category.

In the short few days they had spent together, Jiang Yanlin had basically understood her social logic, which was only to show her good side.

Unfamiliar people, familiar people, people she was flirting with.

The people she showed herself to all found her likable; the worst they could do was to be jealous or see her as a rival.

Jiang Yanlin didn’t think there was anything wrong with this. Who didn’t want to have a good image of themselves? Did people who couldn’t hide their flaws not want to hide them?

But Péi Wanyi hid it too well.

This inevitably made Jiang Yanlin think of Han Xu and Qining.

The difference was, Han Xu’s ability to get along with everyone was somewhat driven by his low self-esteem and his self-sacrificing personality. His inherent thinking led him to pretend to be a good person, trading on this for the treatment he wanted.

Qining was naturally arrogant, yet she didn’t want others to see her coldness. So, she explored a set of social patterns that belonged to her, pretending to fit into the group.

Péi Wanyi, it seemed, was not quite the same as those two.

El had asked recently about why Jiang Yanlin had broken up with Qining.

She didn’t want to talk about her emotional experiences and only replied: “They weren’t compatible.”

El didn’t ask any more but reminded her: “Qining’s ex-ex… the person before you, is also a friend of Mavis. You might run into them.”

He hesitated for a moment and added:

“Actually, Qining is also a friend of Mavis, but they haven’t been hanging out lately.”

Jiang Yanlin wasn’t very surprised, but she was somewhat speechless.

One Han Xu was enough. Now there was Qining too? Were these people tied together by some invisible rope? Once you pull one, you bring up the whole root system.

Sure enough, she was doomed to clash with the North American circle.

Jiang Yanlin didn’t know if Péi Wanyi knew about these things, but even if she did, she probably wouldn’t care.

Thinking like that, Jiang Yanlin had no idea that this would be the first deviation from all her assessments of Péi Wanyi.

In the evening, they said they were going to watch a movie, but they actually spent most of the time helping out at El’s restaurant.

After closing the shop for a day, the reservations hadn’t decreased by much, but there were more staff to handle them. El was finally able to barely cope.

Péi Wanyi was temporarily acting as a cashier, and Jiang Yanlin was helping with taking orders and translating for the foreigners who didn’t speak Chinese.

After the promotion made them famous, many foreigners living here came to try their food. Most of them were white, but there were also some from Asian countries.

There was a group of Japanese people and a group of Koreans that night. Jiang Yanlin’s Korean was limited to basic greetings. Péi Wanyi had to come to the rescue.

“Have you lived in Korea?”

After closing time, the few of them were hiding on the second floor to watch the movie. Jiang Yanlin was putting on a muscle-soothing patch while asking the person beside her.

Péi Wanyi, somewhat impressed that she could still carry these things around, replied casually:

“I lived there for more than three months. I used everything I learned that night.”

She didn’t say why she had lived there. Jiang Yanlin naturally didn’t ask again.

“And you? Have you lived in Japan?”

Péi Wanyi turned her head and asked her.

Jiang Yanlin let out a light laugh, also glossing over it:

“Just for a short period of time.”

El was exhausted. He came back after washing up in the restroom.

He was very grateful that they had come to help. He said he would open a bottle of wine for them.

Péi Wanyi didn’t want to call for a designated driver again that day and directly declined, asking him to deliver it to her home next time. No need for much; just a case.

El’s eyes widened, making Péi Wanyi burst out laughing.

After he went downstairs to prepare the midnight snack, Jiang Yanlin asked:

“How long have you two known each other?”

Péi Wanyi’s attitude towards El was full of patience, as Jiang Yanlin could see.

It was unlikely that an average friend could get a busy woman like the young miss to help out after work.

Although she was only working remotely during the day.

After El left, Péi Wanyi’s words became much more casual. She leaned one hand on the sofa behind Jiang Yanlin, almost encircling her in her embrace.

Her hand, adorned with a silver chain, toyed lazily with Jiang Yanlin’s hair.

“For a few years. We weren’t close at first. Last year, when I was working in the country, I started to get closer to him.”

This was the first time they had spoken about this topic, touching on the past.

The distance suddenly became too close. Jiang Yanlin smelled the scent on her, like a light mint shower gel.

The hand playing with the strands of her hair was always gentle, circling and circling, nonchalantly entangling her.

On the long and slender fingers, black and white alternated.

Jiang Yanlin, looking at her eyes, continued the conversation with ease, but the content of this topic seemed no longer important.

El would be coming up at any moment.

Had El told her?

Of course not, because she was the “in the dark” party.

Did she know that El liked me?

Of course, she wasn’t blind.

Did she care about El’s feelings?

Not completely indifferent.

—Otherwise, she wouldn’t have, after he left, reached out to touch her.

Jiang Yanlin stared into Péi Wanyi’s eyes.

Those eyes were beautiful. Even without smiling, the corners were slightly upturned, with a certain coldness, a hint of arrogance, as if saying “keep out.”

But when she smiled, it changed her entire face, like a blooming peach blossom.

Jiang Yanlin heard her breath, a light facade.

This made Jiang Yanlin feel a sense of delight.

—Péi Wanyi, you, too, are a bad thing, just like me.