Rainy night.
Old Li glanced at the lone white van parked by the roadside. Rain was falling, and there was no one else on the road.
Panting, he made his way up to the Hill Grand Hotel and politely knocked on the door.
"Is this Mr. Zhong Chengshi? Your delivery has arrived. Enjoy your mea—"
Before he could finish, the door opened. A burly man with a face full of flesh snatched the delivery away and cursed at him without mercy:
"Ten minutes! You were ten whole minutes late. What the hell am I supposed to eat now? Damn it, I'm definitely refunding this order. Just wait for your bad review and pay deduction! Trash will always be trash."
Bang!
The door slammed shut with a boom.
"I'm sorry, but it's raining heavily..." The words Old Li had just blurted out were shoved back down his throat by that muffled crash.
His face was full of bitterness. He stood before the door for a full two minutes before hurrying into the elevator.
In the elevator, Old Li silently calculated.
"They'll dock sixty or seventy yuan."
He unlocked his phone. After hesitating for a moment, he still canceled the birthday cake he had ordered for himself. There were still some little bread rolls at home; if he found a candle, it would be more or less the same.
"Even alone, you should have a sense of ceremony!"
He walked out of the splendid hotel and returned to the deserted long street beneath the torrential rain.
"Hm?"
Old Li rubbed his eyes. Hadn't there just been one white van?
How had it suddenly become two?
Through the dense curtain of rain, he vaguely saw an old man standing in the rain. The doors of both white vans opened, and people rushed out