Chapter 23-Part 2: My enemy kissed me

Tong An’yu glanced at the date marked on her tablet: September 17th.

Six days until September 23rd.

She stopped chatting with Lin Huaixu and quickly searched for farms near San Francisco on Google Maps.

However, the troublesome part was the definition of “nearby”; she didn’t know how many kilometers counted as nearby, so she could only start from close and work her way further out.

As expected, there were many farms in the surrounding area, with a wide variety of names.

Those that were already popular attractions with many Google reviews were the first to be eliminated.

Next were the ones with very large land areas.

Then, she had to narrow it down based on pumpkins and olives.

Fortunately, the California Department of Agriculture had several public platforms that included farm crop data.

She pulled an Excel spreadsheet to help herself compare and eliminate options.

After all this, there were a total of twenty-six “nearby” olive farms remaining.

She could only give it a try; finding it or not was up to fate.

Tong An’yu began searching for contact information for these twenty-six farms.

There was a lot of interfering information online, and some phone numbers had already changed or were out of service.

She could only try to find their Facebook or Instagram to contact them.

Once she could establish contact, she would ask them: “Hello, do you accept visitors for picking or tours at the farm?”

If they said yes, she would say: “I’m Chinese, and my English isn’t very good. Do you have any Chinese employees at the farm?”

Many farms replied no, so she would express regret and cross them off.

If they said they didn’t accept visitors for picking or tours, she would ask: “I’m looking for a job recently. Does the farm accept Chinese employees?”

She didn’t ask if they had openings, so they would directly answer whether they accepted them.

If they couldn’t, she crossed them off.

If they could, she asked if the farm had other Chinese employees.

After all this searching, only three farms remained on the list, and the date had reached September 19th.

Four days left.

Excluding travel time, that left only two days.

In two days, she had to try visiting three farms that weren’t close to each other, with the possibility of her efforts being completely in vain.

And school had already started; even with a weekend, she would have to skip at least two days of classes.

‘Oh my goodness.’

‘This was too crazy.’

From a young age, she had never missed a single interest class, let alone skipped school.

Fortunately, as a senior, there weren’t many core courses left; everyone was busy with theses and graduate school applications.

Aside from her thesis advisor possibly looking for her, others probably wouldn’t notice.

The ticketing platform showed flights from Jing City to San Francisco, each flight taking over twelve hours.

If she left at the earliest, she could depart tonight.

Tong An’yu’s throat went dry with nervousness, her heart feeling like it would leap out of her chest.

Click, pay.

The flight ticket payment was successful.

‘Well, since she’d already bought it, at worst it was just another trip to San Francisco. Plus, her dad had so many entrepreneur friends in San Francisco, and her brother was in North America. This should be easy, right?’

She immediately returned to her dorm to pack, told her roommates she had to go home for something, told her parents she had something at school, then promptly took a taxi straight to the airport.

At 3 PM Beijing time on Saturday, Tong An’yu landed in San Francisco.

She booked a five-star hotel that offered airport pick-up service, and by the time she arrived at the hotel, it was already 5 PM.

It would be dark soon, so she definitely couldn’t go to the farm today.

She quickly ate a buffet meal at the hotel, then went to bed.

The next morning, she asked the hotel to hire a driver for her and drove to the first farm.

This was a farm that grew olives and raspberries, sparsely populated, with vast plains.

She met the Chinese employee at the farm, chatted for a few minutes, and ruled out the possibility of her being Lin Huaixu’s mother.

After confirming repeatedly that there was only one Chinese employee here, she completely crossed this option off.

She then rushed to the second farm; the Chinese employee here was only thirty-five years old, and definitely not old enough to be Lin Huaixu’s mother.

She was somewhat annoyed she hadn’t asked more clearly over the phone.

By this time, it was almost dark, and driving back to the hotel would take another three hours.

This was all she could do for today.