Chapter 14 : The Message

The movie wasn’t particularly long or short, but no one really remembered what it was about.

Late at night, another person arrived at the restaurant, a young man with an unfamiliar face, carrying a nicely packaged bottle of red wine, as if he were bringing a gift.

El went up and gave him a hug, asking happily:
– “You’re back so soon? Why did you bring a gift? I’m so touched.”

Miss Péi also patted his shoulder and greeted him familiarly.

The young man was tall and thin, with a Japanese style of dress and curly brown hair. He seemed quite gentle.

He noticed Jiang Yanlin, whom he hadn’t seen before, and gave her a polite smile.

El quickly introduced them: “This is Evan, our good friend. He was out of the country for a while and missed my restaurant’s opening.”

Then he introduced Jiang Yanlin to Evan:
– “This is Jiang Yanlin, a good friend I recently met. It’s all thanks to her that my restaurant became famous online.”

After the polite introductions, they all went upstairs and sat down for a casual chat.

Evan was clearly closer to Péi Wanyi. They hadn’t seen each other in a long time and had a lot to talk about. El gradually found himself unable to join the conversation.

Jiang Yanlin was used to being an observer. When El came over, she was watching the movie and subconsciously creating a simple profile of the newcomer.

He had a southern Chinese accent, worked in Tokyo as an artist, had a gentle and introverted personality, and his sexual orientation was unclear, but he didn’t seem entirely straight.

“Hey, I’ve prepared something. Come downstairs with me.”
El whispered to her and then headed straight downstairs.

Jiang Yanlin didn’t disturb the two who were catching up and followed him down.

After the restaurant closed, only one light was left on on the first floor, creating a quiet atmosphere.

El tinkered in the kitchen for a while and then brought out a plate, placing it on the bar.

Jiang Yanlin glanced at it. It was a creamy yellow pudding, carefully plated and not too large.

“A new dessert?”

She didn’t eat at night, but she still picked up a spoon and took a bite to taste it for him.

El waited until she finished before asking,
– “How is it?”

Jiang Yanlin didn’t like overly sweet things, but this pudding was just right, very similar to the pudding she had at an Italian restaurant by the sea.

“Last time, you said you really liked the pudding at that Italian restaurant, so I gave it a try.”
El enthusiastically described his attempts, how many times he had failed, and how he had finally overcome the difficulties.

As Jiang Yanlin listened, the sweetness in her mouth gradually lost its flavor.

She could see that El’s attention was still entirely on her.

Even when he “helped” her last time, his main motivation was probably just to make her happy, to go along with her wishes.

In a clever person, this kind of contradictory behavior would be very purposeful, like a strategy for pursuit.

But El wasn’t like that. He was just single-minded. Until his attention was completely diverted, he wouldn’t stop this one-sided enthusiasm.

So Jiang Yanlin had to be the bad guy to the end. Even a little bit of softness would only push him deeper.

She looked up and smiled, interrupting him:
“I think it’s delicious. You did a great job. You could add it to the menu right away.”

El immediately beamed. “Really?”

He wiped his hands a little awkwardly, wanting to say more, but then he heard her say,
“I’ll take it upstairs for Mavis to try, to see if she likes it.”

El’s words caught in his throat, but he quickly nodded with a smile, watching her carry the plate straight upstairs.

The lights were dim on the first floor, and with a movie playing on the second, it was dark there too. Jiang Yanlin had to be very careful going up the stairs to avoid dropping the plate.

As a result, her footsteps were very light, barely audible over the sound of the movie and the conversation.

So much so that the two people chatting upstairs didn’t hear her.

But their conversation gradually became clearer, from fragments of words to complete sentences.

Jiang Yanlin slowly stopped on the stairs.
—It seemed she had arrived at a very inappropriate time.

“…Is that El’s new girlfriend? She’s very pretty, but she seems more like your type.”
The young man’s voice was gentle but couldn’t hide his curiosity.

The person who answered him sounded a bit helpless. “El was pursuing her before. He called me over to help him vet her. But…”

She didn’t finish, but he already understood. “I can see it. El’s attention is all on her, but she’s clearly not interested in him. On the other hand, you two… seem to have something going on.”

She didn’t deny it, only saying one thing:
“There was some drama.”

Hearing the last word, Jiang Yanlin raised an eyebrow.

She calmly took a few steps back and then went up the stairs again, the wooden steps making some noise. The two people upstairs changed the subject.

Jiang Yanlin walked slowly to them, placed the plate on the small wooden table, and said,
“El’s new dish. He wants you to try it.”

Péi Wanyi glanced at her, and after a moment, she replied,
“Thanks. Are you going home now? I’ll walk you out.”

Jiang Yanlin had already picked up her things and turned back to wave at them with a smile.

“A friend is picking me up. They’re already here. I’ll be going now. You guys have fun.”

Péi Wanyi paused but didn’t insist. Still, she got up to see her downstairs.

Evan glanced at the two of them and tactfully stayed put, not getting involved.

Jiang Yanlin went downstairs with light steps. El poked his head out of the kitchen and asked,
– “Are you leaving?”

She nodded and replied with a smile, “The pudding was delicious. I hope to see it on the menu next time.”

El blushed at the compliment and scratched his head, mumbling an “um.”

Péi Wanyi’s gaze swept over the two of them. She said nothing and followed her out the door.

Outside the restaurant, the night wind cleared the air.

Jiang Yanlin slung her shoulder bag over her shoulder, her expression calm with a hint of a smile.

“You can just drop me off here. It’s quite a walk to the intersection.”

Péi Wanyi stared at her for a moment and asked,
“Going to a party this late?”

Jiang Yanlin sighed lightly. “Parties only start around this time. Can’t be helped.”

It was at a party that she had met El, just a week ago.

Péi Wanyi thought to herself, but the words that came out were:
“Okay, I won’t see you off then. Be safe on the way.”

Jiang Yanlin nodded, gave her a light smile and a wave, and then turned to walk towards the intersection.

Péi Wanyi stood there for a moment, one hand in her pocket, and then went back inside the restaurant alone.

Only after the gaze behind her disappeared did Jiang Yanlin take out her phone and call for a car.

She walked at a leisurely pace, the faint smile on her face long gone, replaced by her usual emotionless expression.

This was her state most of the time—no emotional fluctuations for many people and many things.

That’s why she liked to watch the drama, the jokes, the spectacle.
—She was just that kind of “Drama Queen.”

It was past one in the morning when she got home. Jiang Yanlin went through her routine of washing up and skincare, and it was just two o’clock when she finally lay in bed.

She was physically exhausted. After all, she had been helping out all night, and for free.

But her mind was still active, pushing sleepiness far away.

Jiang Yanlin turned over and finally picked up her phone, planning to watch some hypnotic videos.

After unlocking the screen, she saw a message notification from about ten minutes ago. Before she could read the content, she accidentally swiped into the chat.

But the message wasn’t in the chat window.

Jiang Yanlin understood in a second that the message had been deleted.

The biggest convenience of this app was that you could delete your sent messages at any time, with no record of withdrawal, silently. If you were unhappy, you could even dig up and delete a message from three years ago.

So if you missed a message and didn’t have notifications enabled, the receiver would never know what they had missed.

It was very convenient for people who liked to retract messages, but for the receiver, it could be a bit annoying.

Jiang Yanlin was very annoyed right now, so she typed a line and sent it:
[“Received a message from 18 minutes ago, but it’s not there when I clicked in.”]

She hadn’t read it, and she didn’t want to pretend she hadn’t seen it.

Miss Péi’s reply was very fast, almost within the same minute.

[“It’s nothing. I thought about it, and it’s not important.”]

Jiang Yanlin couldn’t help but laugh. Playing this game?

Her fingers flew as she sent a reply:
[“It’s important to me.”]

This time, the reply was a full four minutes late.

[“I’ll think about it.”]

Still unwilling to give in, and with quite a high-and-mighty attitude.

Jiang Yanlin curled her lip and also waited a full two minutes before giving a simple response:
[“Okay, good night.”]

After sending that, she didn’t look at the chat window again, switching to another app to check her unread messages.

She had only read a few when a new notification popped up, after another four-minute interval.

Jiang Yanlin clicked on it, ready to see what card the other person had played this time.

This time, it was a slightly longer sentence, and the content was unusually “sincere.”

[“Even though I really want to get to know you better, I also care a lot about El’s feelings.”]
– From Mavis.

Jiang Yanlin was a bit surprised by her directness, but she quickly understood.

El was Péi Wanyi’s friend. Of course, she would care about his feelings.

But the extent to which she cared, Jiang Yanlin had “personally experienced” over the past two days.
—Just a little while ago tonight, they were doing those things where El couldn’t see.

Jiang Yanlin slowly saw what Péi Wanyi really cared about.

She couldn’t help but think of Han Xu’s way of doing things.

In front of Jiang Yanlin, Han Xu had taken off his mask for a long time.

He would say the most cutting things with a smile, commenting on the people and events in his life.

Jiang Yanlin still remembered him telling her calmly and clearly:
“The risk of doing bad things is not about whether you do them, but whether you get caught.”
“As long as you’re not caught, it’s as if you never did it.”

Unfortunately, his skills were still too shallow. Every time he did something bad, Jiang Yanlin would catch him in the act.

Péi Wanyi was much more skilled than him.

If she was going to do something, she didn’t care if she got caught—otherwise, she wouldn’t have done those things twice in places where El could have seen them at any moment.

What she cared about was whether it was worth it, whether it was troublesome, and whether the losses were within an acceptable range.

In other words, El’s reaction to this matter was the risk she would have to bear.

Thinking it through, Péi Wanyi’s message now had another meaning in Jiang Yanlin’s eyes:
—I want to have something with you, but I need to weigh the risks.

From her position as El’s friend, this statement seemed reasonable.

But for someone like Péi Wanyi, who kept her true thoughts hidden, under what circumstances would she deliberately say them out loud for someone to hear?

Of course, it would be when she wanted to achieve certain intentions.

At this moment, she had thrown the problem to Jiang Yanlin, as if telling her:
“This is the risk I have to take for you. But are you worth it?”

If it were an inexperienced young girl, she would probably be both excited and desperate to prove herself worthy, afraid that a second’s delay would mean missing her favor.

In that case, what Péi Wanyi wanted, whether it was control or the other person’s attitude, would be clear at a glance.

—Unfortunately, Jiang Yanlin was not such a young girl.

So she let out a laugh and replied in just a few seconds:
[“Of course. You’re best friends.”]

Not long after she sent it, the other person’s status showed “typing,” but Jiang Yanlin didn’t care what she would reply. She continued to type another message and sent it decisively.

[“I anticipated this from the beginning, but right now, I just like the feeling of being with you. If we rush to change things, it might ruin this feeling.
Chatting and watching movies with you is very enjoyable, even with El around, it doesn’t diminish the happiness. Maybe you feel the same way.
As for other things, I haven’t considered them yet. I hope you don’t feel too much pressure.”]

After sending this message, Péi Wanyi never replied again, only adding a cold emoji reaction to her message much later, the “OK” symbol.

Jiang Yanlin finally felt a little sleepy. She threw her phone aside and closed her eyes in a good mood.

As for Miss Péi’s mood.
—That was not a problem she needed to consider right now.