Lawrence Winters hadn’t finished speaking when Blake Leaf came in, carrying a large tray.
Hearing Lawrence’s last sentence at the door, Blake’s eyes turned slightly red, and he cast a grateful glance at Lawrence, lowering his head in silence as he served the dishes.
It seemed as if Big Sister Three Billion had never considered the issue from this angle before.
She hesitated for a moment, but when Blake began serving the dishes, she couldn’t help but say, "What’s the point of pretending to be someone you’re not? There are so many profitable paths in computer science, yet you choose to serve dishes instead..."
Blake paused for a brief moment, then continued to place the dishes on the rotating table in front of them.
Throughout it all, he never raised his head again.
From Lawrence’s angle, she could only see the two whorls on the top of his black head.
It’s said that people with two hair whorls are both smart and stubborn.
Lawrence shrugged. It was someone else’s business; she had warned as much as she could.
After serving the dishes, Blake left the private room without saying a word.
Lawrence was only interested in the bowl of crab noodles. She picked at it with chopsticks and began to savor it slowly.
Joyce Shaw smiled as she served a bowl of silverfish steamed egg custard to Crazy Girl, then watched nervously as she took a bite.
"How is it? Delicious?"
Crazy Girl nodded emphatically, swallowing the spoonful of silverfish steamed egg custard and said in surprise, "It tastes so much like the egg custard my mom used to make! I always thought my mom’s steamed egg was different from others because she must’ve added silverfish seasoning!"
It was indeed the taste she was used to from childhood.
Joyce was overjoyed and also served herself a bowl, eating contentedly as she commented, "Actually, it’s slightly worse than what my mom made, but it’s very close."
"After all this time, you still remember?" Big Sister Three Billion scoffed, not having much of an appetite.
She ate a small crab roe lion’s head, then stood up saying, "I’ll be right back, just stepping out for a moment."
She took her small purse and walked out of the private room, heading to the large tree outside the restaurant, where she lit a lady’s cigarette, took a deep breath, and blew out a smoke ring.
Just as she was about to take a second puff, her phone rang from inside her purse.
She took out the phone, glanced at it, saw it was her father’s number, and despite her reluctance, she answered it.
"Dad, what’s up?" Big Sister Three Billion’s voice held a hint of impatience.
"Sweetheart, what are you doing now? Have you had dinner yet? Are you eating out?" a man’s deep voice came over the phone, speaking Mandarin with a thick dialect accent.
"Ate, ate. What are you doing? Going out to play cards again?" Big Sister Three Billion decided to speak in dialect.
The dialect-accented Mandarin was truly grating.
"I have no cards to play, I went to the library to read. You always tell me that reading more books makes one cultured." The man on the other side spoke excitedly, "I’m reading that Mo Yan book you mentioned, ’Red Sorghum’, I thought it was about farming but I can’t understand it at all..." Tʜe source of this ᴄontent ɪs 𝓷𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓵✦𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖✦𝙣𝙚𝙩
As he spoke, he opened a video call to show her that he was reading in the library.
Big Sister Three Billion: "..."
In the elegantly and simply decorated library, there sat a man with a rough face and tattoos all over his arms, a classic gangster-type old man, sitting on a trendy INS-style fabric sofa, with a row of natural wood-colored bookshelves behind him.
He held a copy of Mo Yan’s ’Red Sorghum’ in his hands, but his expression was entirely one of "Old Grandpa on the subway looking at a cell phone.JPG", his face clearly expressing "What kind of nonsense is this?"
Big Sister Three Billion covered her face, imagining the feelings of people in the same library as her father, witnessing such a scene.
"Dad, maybe you should just go play cards, stop trying to read," Big Sister Three Billion rubbed her temples, beginning to feel a headache coming on.
"Alright, alright! My daughter said I should play cards! I always listen to my daughter!" The man, relieved, put down the book, grabbed his phone, and quickly dashed out of the library.
Once outside, the man felt he could breathe freely. Continuing the video call, he accidentally slipped, "I heard from Blake Leaf you’re dining here..."
Big Sister Three Billion paused, "Blake Leaf? He contacted you again?"
"Yes, he did, I find him quite pitiful, already grown yet just finding out his parents aren’t his real ones, sigh..." Rarely did her obviously easygoing father heave a sigh.
Big Sister Three Billion hesitated for a moment, her mind in a tug of war, finally saying, "Well, if you can help, do help him... You know a lot of people..."
"Since my daughter says so, of course, I’ll help... Twenty years ago, apart from my old friend, no one else can do anything about it!"