The familiar restaurant still looked the same from the outside, the signage hadn’t been changed, only the main door was tightly locked, the inside was dark and indiscernible.
So, she ventured into the backyard, the backyard’s main gate was lock-tight, the courtyard was quiet, seemingly vacant, otherwise, the front door wouldn’t have been locked from the outside.
Cai Wei made a leap, jumped in from over the wall, stealthily arrived in front of the house, pushed at the door and surprisingly, the door wasn’t latched, with a push it opened, and she walked in with ease.
Walking into the house, she took out something, it was the Night Pearl that someone gave her a long time ago in this very house, she held it up to light her surroundings and found the house spotlessly clean, not a speck of dust, particularly her boudoir, brightly lit, pristine furniture, not tainted by any dust. Even the quilts had been aired, no musty smell.
There must often have someone come to clean in order for it to be this neat and tidy. She looked in the direction of next door, smiled wistfully, with a hint of bitterness arising in her heart.
That silly boy, looking naive and silly, but once he decided on something – not even eight bulls could drag him away. They would meet tomorrow, hopefully, this time, she could get that silly boy to finally give up on the idea!
It was already late, Cai Wei laid down on her own embroidered couch, covered with a thick, warm quilt, wanting to have a nap.
However, she tossed and turned for a long time and couldn’t sleep.
Memories related to this room and this couch, like a playback reel, were replaying in her mind.
When she first rescued that man, she hid him on this couch.
At the time, the man was severely injured, incapable of looking after himself, she had applied medicine for him here, fed him chicken soup, peeled crabs for him and even once, she helped him answer the call of nature, which caused the loss of her sachet bottle...
On second thought, Cai Wei blushed, covered her head with the quilt and started giggling...
He had once quarreled and threatened her in this room, but also made promises to her. However, at that time their relationship was not as deep as it is now, when he promised to take responsibility for her, she scolded him with a barrage of abuses. At that time, she loathed him so much and wrote the character ’Despicable’ on his back with the medicine given to her by Old Turtle. Looking back now, those times were quite wonderful too...
Wave after wave of memories kept flooding in, from their first meeting on the mountain, to their encounter in town, to her saving him and their arguing and quarrelling at the start, to them joining hands against Tianjizi, right up to now!
They experienced so many ups and downs together. In order to love her, he was willing to give up many things very important to him and had to bear many pressures that originally did not exist but he did them all without hesitation. To reciprocate his true feelings, she also secretly decided that she must do all she can to help him and cannot let him lose what he deserves because of her!
She didn’t know how much time had passed when she gradually fell asleep...
During the fourth watch, members of the Zhou family next door started their day.
Uncle Zhou carried a flower basket, preparing to buy meat and vegetables from the morning market; Aunt Zhou was busy making dough, planning to make ground dumplings and Hun Dun (a type of dumpling) later; while Jiujin rose early, and went to the restaurant in the front yard for cleaning.
The restaurant was the one that Cai Wei had given them, it was named "Zhou Ji’s Roasted Meat", majoring in selling meat skewers. However, because they didn’t have cumin - the key ingredient for the roast, the business was not as booming as before. Yet, thanks to the father and son’s dedicated management, honest pricing and resolute customer service, they still made a neat sum of three to five taels of silver on most days.