In the evening, at a barbecue restaurant in Nanxiang Impression City.
Bei Wei lowered her head, fingers stabbing at her phone as she busily placed an order.
Zhang Yang was placing an order too. He opened the self-service cart and saw Bei Wei rapidly adding dish after dish: grilled skirt steak, beef ribs...
"Brother Zhang, I ordered all this. Do you think... it's okay?" After a while, Bei Wei stopped adding dishes.
"That's plenty. If I can't finish it, you'll have to polish it off." Zhang Yang chuckled. He could certainly eat that much, but the main thing was that eating too much would get tiring.
"Huh?" Bei Wei hurriedly put down her phone, startled.
Zhang Yang studied Bei Wei's fair, sweet little face from up close and thought, Even if she put on weight, she still wouldn't look bad. She could get chubby, but she'd never been ugly.
Zhang Yang's gaze was too direct, and Bei Wei couldn't help feeling shy. She lowered her head and stirred the dipping sauce on her plate.
Before long, the barbecue dishes started arriving.
They'd seemed like a lot when she ordered them, and now they covered the table.
Bei Wei eagerly stood up to grill the meat, snipping it into pieces and busily placing the perfectly cooked morsels onto Zhang Yang's plate.
"Brother Zhang, I didn't get a chance to ask you earlier. That girl seemed nice. How come things didn't work out?"
"I felt like our values didn't align, like we weren't on the same wavelength." Zhang Yang enjoyed Bei Wei's special treatment and answered casually.
"Then what kind of values are a good match?" Bei Wei paused before asking.
Zhang Yang took a bite of meat from his plate, letting its aroma spread through his mouth. "Let me give you an example. Lately, I've been craving barbecue. Even though I didn't tell you, you happened to pick a barbecue restaurant. And take this meat, for example. I like it grilled until it's fragrant and tender. See? You cooked it just the way I like it."
He joked as he watched Bei Wei's cheeks turn rosy from the heat rising off the charcoal.
"Brother Zhang, you're always teasing me," she said, feigning annoyance.
Zhang Yang smiled and stopped teasing Bei Wei. "You don't have to keep busy. We're not in a hurry. I can do it myself."
After persuading Bei Wei to sit down, the two of them leisurely grilled and ate, chatting about this and that for a long time.
Bei Wei's place was quite affordable. According to her, she'd gotten lucky.
"My roommate's rich and beautiful, and she's in grad school. She thought living alone was boring and wanted a roommate. I just happened to luck into the place." Bei Wei gently blew on a piece of grilled meat.
"If I really had to split the rent evenly, I'd probably have to put all my earnings toward it."
"She sounds like a really nice person," Zhang Yang said with a smile.
"She is. She's very loyal and looks out for me." Bei Wei thought for a moment. "But she can be a little blunt. People who don't know her well might find her hard to get used to."
Zhang Yang listened and nodded. Seeing how animated Bei Wei was as she talked, he grilled a few pieces of meat for her and put them on her plate.
Before she knew it, Bei Wei had her cheeks full and was constantly chewing. She'd been fed quite a lot without realizing it.
"Mmph... Brother Zhang, why do I feel like I've eaten so much?"
"It wasn't that much. Go on, eat up," Zhang Yang coaxed her relentlessly.
They ate and chatted, and before they knew it, more than an hour had passed. Near the end of the meal, Bei Wei hurriedly took out her phone and paid the bill first.
"Want to walk around a bit after we're done?" Zhang Yang remembered his mission and planned to buy a pair of shoes to make himself taller.
"Sure. It's still early." Bei Wei picked up her bag and agreed with a smile.
The two wandered around Yinxiang City. They happened to pass a milk tea shop, and Zhang Yang figured the barbecue they'd just eaten must have left them feeling a bit greasy, so he decided to buy two fruit teas to freshen their palates.
"Let me, let me." Bei Wei stopped Zhang Yang with one hand and searched her bag for her phone with the other.
Her hand slipped, and the phone flew out of her bag in an arc, hitting the corner of a step. A crack spread across the screen. It didn't look like she had a screen protector on it.
Bei Wei hurriedly picked it up. She winced for a moment, then acted as if nothing had happened and went to pay.
"Brother Zhang, I've ordered," she said with a smile.
"You don't have a screen protector?" Zhang Yang asked.
"I did, but it broke a few days ago, so I peeled it off. I guess I shouldn't have taken the chance." Bei Wei held the phone up to the light. Starting from one corner, the cracks had spread across almost half the screen.
Zhang Yang noticed but said nothing.
"Oh, you wait here for the milk tea. I'm going to the restroom."
Bei Wei nodded lightly and stood quietly in the shop to wait.
After leaving, Zhang Yang didn't go to the restroom. Instead, he went straight to a nearby electronics store.
There weren't many people inside. As soon as Zhang Yang entered, a sales assistant came over.
"I'll take an iPhone 14 Pro Max. The top model, 1 TB. White." Zhang Yang remembered that Bei Wei's iPhone 13 was white.
A short while later, he paid over ten thousand yuan, picked up the phone, and left.
The whole thing took less than ten minutes.
From a distance, he saw Bei Wei sitting in the shop with her fruit tea, looking around as if searching for him.
"Here, this is for you." Zhang Yang walked up to Bei Wei, whose black hair spilled over her shoulders, and handed her a shopping bag. "It's white. I got you a case and a screen protector, so remember to put the protector on as soon as you get home."
Bei Wei stared up at him, stunned, and for a moment couldn't react.
"Take it. Don't say no." Zhang Yang cut off all her protests, picked up his own milk tea, and casually pressed the shopping bag into her hands.
Holding the bag, Bei Wei saw the brand-new, unopened iPhone 14 Pro Max inside. She immediately stood up and hurried after Zhang Yang.
"Brother Zhang, I really can't accept this... Let me transfer you the money. I can send you some now, and the rest next month..."
"No. Zhang's in a good mood today. If you bring up money, you'll ruin it." Zhang Yang sipped his milk tea and glanced back at Bei Wei with a faint smile.
The girl's ears and neck were bright red, and she looked completely flustered.
"But I..." Bei Wei tried to say something else.
"No more 'buts.' Come with me to buy something?" Zhang Yang interrupted with a smile.
"Okay," Bei Wei replied in a very quiet voice, staying right by Zhang Yang's side. "What are you planning to buy?"
"A pair of height-boosting shoes. I want to enjoy being 1.8 meters tall for a while," Zhang Yang said frankly.
Beside him, Bei Wei burst out laughing and looked at Zhang Yang. "Brother Zhang, if you hadn't told me, I would've thought you were 1.8 meters tall."
"Don't even get me started." Zhang Yang shook his head with a sigh.
"Then... let me pick out a pair for you. No, wait—you have to give me one yuan. Otherwise, gifting shoes is bad luck," Bei Wei said seriously.
"That's fine, but I thought that superstition only applied to couples," Zhang Yang murmured to himself.
Bei Wei clicked her tongue, put her hands behind her back, and turned to jog away.
In a shoe store, Bei Wei picked out a pair of chunky sneakers for Zhang Yang.
According to her, chunky sneakers were great for adding height. At Zhang Yang's current height, he'd look like a tall guy in them.
What she didn't know was that once Zhang Yang completed his mission, his bare height would reach 1.8 meters. With these shoes on, the effect would be even more impressive than she imagined.
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