"Curator, these are freshly baked red bean puff pastries."
On the third floor of the White Box Library, Cha Shiyin watched the blindfolded girl enter his office with a lunchbox in her hands. The irresistible fragrance of puff pastry spilled out, completely overwhelming the lid's ability to contain it.
"The only benefit of letting that brat Shi Wen work part-time here is that I can occasionally eat snacks I can never get at the cafeteria." Cha Shiyin laughed. "Sigh, in this enormous Imperial Academy, you're the only one who comes to show me filial respect. Those students only know how to curry favor with their instructors for a few credits, yet they ignore me, a dignified knowledge manager. They're so shortsighted. This batch of Imperial Academy students is truly hopeless..."
Lai Ya had long grown accustomed to Cha Shiyin's habit of suddenly going off-topic to complain. She had dealt with him several times before. Although she had also hoped to curry favor by giving him gifts, she regarded Cha Shiyin as a friend. Perhaps because of her poor eyesight, Lai Ya could keenly sense how others treated her. The cooks, aunties, students, and teachers she encountered were sometimes ill-intentioned, but most were kind and sympathetic.
Sympathy was not necessarily a bad thing. Lai Ya was grateful to those who helped her out of sympathy, and she was not as awkward about it as Shi Wen. But she had never sensed any sympathy from Cha Shiyin. Nor had she sensed any malice, of course. The curator would speak quite naturally about her disability and mock Shi Wen's foolish daily antics, but his tone was always perfectly measured. He never made people uncomfortable, much less moved them. He only made those who heard his jokes burst into helpless laughter.
If she had