Chapter 22: A Sweet Bite Before the Storm

In less than ten minutes, the waiter set down two crepes with an irresistible aroma.

Staring at the strawberry slices and cream piled almost to the point of spilling over, with condensed milk and honey dripping down like waterfalls, Jiang Ciqiu felt her right eyelid twitch hard.

‘Is this really something I can eat? One bite and I’d faint on the spot from high blood sugar and lipid complications, right?’

“Oh, looks delicious,” Lin Xia across from her said naturally.

He took out his phone, snapped a photo of the two large desserts, then picked up his fork and started eating on his own.

With long slender fingers gripping the silver knife and fork, he sliced off portions with well-balanced cream and mango chunks, drizzled with black chocolate sauce…

“Hey, Aqiu, if you keep staring like that, I’ll get embarrassed. Or do you want a bite of mine?”

“N-no, it’s just that I’m surprised you can tolerate such sweet things. After all, the calories and sugar seem off the charts.”

The girl scratched her cheek and hastily looked away.

“Aqiu thinks I’m the kind of person who drinks black coffee to look cool? How sad.”

Lin Xia clutched his chest in a broken-hearted gesture.

Jiang Ciqiu, whose plan had been perfectly predicted, fell silent. So she angrily forked up a large piece of strawberry crepe and shoved it into her mouth.

Damn, it must be because we’re both into the same kind of anime stuff. Such a typical trope is too easy to predict! I need to try something else to probe,

“Mmgh!” The girl’s crimson pupils suddenly sparkled like two lit stars.

“It’s good, right?” Seeing her delighted expression, Lin Xia smiled even more. “I was amazed when I first tasted it too. The sweetness of the cream and the tanginess of the fruit blend perfectly. The mix of various sweet flavors isn’t cloying; it actually feels fresh.”

Jiang Ciqiu ignored Lin Xia, who was talking like a restaurant review blogger, and stuffed another large piece of crepe into her mouth.

What is this? It’s too good! So sweets are this delicious?

Recalling her life after starting work, when she survived on unsweetened black coffee every day and had to nervously calculate calories and sugar for even a small piece of afternoon cake, Jiang Ciqiu suddenly felt that she had missed out on too much joy in life.

Lin Xia looked at her wolfing down food and pointed at the corner of her mouth with amusement. “You’ve turned into a mess. Eating like that makes me think the strawberry flavor is better. Let me have a bite, share with me.”

Jiang Ciqiu instinctively wanted to guard her food, but she felt it would be beneath her adult dignity to guard food in front of a middle schooler. So she reluctantly cut a piece the size of a palm and offered it onto Lin Xia’s plate.

Sensing that her eyes followed him the entire time as he popped that little piece into his mouth, Lin Xia found it even funnier. He cut a portion of his own mango crepe and offered it to her.

“Oh, thanks. I see you know how to repay a favor,” she said.

“Of course.” The teen looked at her with a grin. “Come on, open wide.”

Seeing the mango crepe coming toward her, Jiang Ciqiu froze. A suspicious pink flush instantly climbed her cheeks.

Feeding play is supposed to be an intimacy between lovers, right? Is that something close friends do?

She should refuse, but Lin Xia’s expression seemed perfectly normal. If she made a big deal of refusing, she’d come off as guilty and overthinking.

No, she couldn’t lose face to this brat in front of adults.

Jiang Ciqiu squeezed her eyes shut, steeled her heart, leaned forward slightly, and opened her mouth to take the crepe Lin Xia offered.

She chewed loudly.

“How is it?”

“…It’s just normally tasty.”

“That’s good.”

In the distance, the waitress who had taken their order witnessed everything.

Heh heh, that lingering gaze and that practiced feeding. They must be a couple. And the kind of pure-hearted fools who are deeply affectionate yet completely unaware of it.

…

Because of the poor quality of the cafeteria food at lunch, both of them were hungry and didn’t eat slowly. In less than ten minutes, two large plates of crepes were mostly gone.

Jiang Ciqiu tucked the loose strands of hair behind her ear, a faint smile curling at the corner of her mouth, like someone with a plan.

In her school days, she always thought that after eating most of the food, it would be time to play games or go out with friends. Only after adulthood did she realize that the most important part of a meal was the time after eating, when everyone relaxed their guard with alcohol and a full stomach, and chatted.

Whether it was contracts between companies or promotions within the company, many times it depended on smooth talk at those moments.

By now, Lin Xia must have released a lot of dopamine from the sweets and lowered his guard. Let’s see if I can interrogate him.

With that thought, Jiang Ciqiu confidently asked the question she most wanted the answer to.

“You really like Flash Gold?”

“Huh? Why the sudden question?”

Lin Xia didn’t expect the unexpected question, and Jiang Ciqiu’s tone sounded serious.

“Because you chose the crepe linked with her. Wasn’t there a choice to collaborate with other magical girls?”

Just now, besides the mango flavor linked with the magical girl Flash Gold, there was also a blueberry flavor linked with the blue magical girl Meteor Blue.

Wait, there was no collaboration with me. Is it because an eight-year veteran is not popular anymore?

“Just because I like mango more than blueberry. And honestly, the one with the big hammer, Cangyun, is indeed not as pretty as the one with the sniper rifle, Flash Gold. After all, the latter is more elegant and more like a magical girl, and has twin tails, which reminds me of a tsundere young lady.”

Lin Xia gestured with his fingers to mimic the signature spiral twin tails of the magical girl Flash Gold, a practical hairstyle often used as handlebars in various doujinshi.

“Pervert.” Jiang Ciqiu, who instantly conjured up a doujin, gave him a contemptuous look.

“I didn’t say anything!”

“Speaking of which, you weren’t really interested in magical girls before, right? It was only because of my enthusiastic recommendation that you began to have some feeling for Captain Hongxia. So why suddenly…”

Before Jiang Ciqiu could finish her interrogation, Lin Xia abruptly turned his head, his sharp gaze fixed on the north of the city beyond the dessert shop’s window.

The girl’s pressing words stalled, and she subconsciously looked in that direction, but outside it was just office workers stopping and going with the traffic lights.

“Hey, don’t try to dodge the question with this lame trick!”

Just as Jiang Ciqiu was about to press him further, the alert app from the Bureau buzzed.

She yanked out her phone and saw a glaring yellow light flashing on the screen.

It was a warning reading the energy of a disaster beast, estimated to appear in ten seconds, a “Leaf” class alert, the second most dangerous level.

And the direction from which the energy source surged was directly north of their current location.

“You…”

Before Jiang Ciqiu could ask, Lin Xia had already stood up, slam a hundred-yuan bill onto the table, and pulled Jiang Ciqiu along as he ran out.

“What’s wrong, customers? Is the taste not to your liking?” The waitress trotted over with concern, but she couldn’t keep up with Lin Xia’s pace.

“No, but… Please, all of you, leave! Go to the shelter immediately!” Lin Xia, just before rushing out the door, turned back and shouted loudly to the customers still leisurely enjoying their desserts.

Jiang Ciqiu felt the stares around her were looks of pure idiocy, and wished she could toss a smoke bomb and disappear.

“If you’re going crazy, don’t drag me along!”

But a few seconds later, as if to prove the urgency of the teen’s request, a deafening explosion, as if the earth itself were being torn apart, thundered from a few blocks north outside the window.

In the dessert shop, everyone’s phones simultaneously popped up an emergency alert about the disaster beast.

Amidst the panic and screams, Lin Xia pulled Jiang Ciqiu by the wrist and ran out.

Watching the teen’s solid back, the girl, jostled and dizzy from his speed, had only one thought in her mind.

‘Lin Xia, you’re definitely not quite right!’

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