"Yan Huan, there are basically no customers left. Where's Sister Tong?"
Yan Huan, who was clearing away glasses and plates, turned toward where Tong Yingying had been sitting. The bottle and glass were still there, but she was nowhere to be seen.
"I'll go look."
Yan Huan wiped his hands and headed over.
The bar had a second floor, but it wasn't open to customers. Sister Tong generally lived upstairs.
A long corridor ran between the bar and the stairs to the second floor, with the restroom halfway along it.
Yan Huan thought she had gone upstairs to rest. But when he reached the stairs, he found the metal door locked, and knocking and calling a couple of times got no response.
"That's weird..."
With Tong Yingying's attitude toward running the place, it would be quite something if a dishonest employee emptied out her bar one day.
Luckily, Yan Huan was a model young man, especially when it came to moral character.
She didn't reply to his Plane message either. Yan Huan pursed his lips, checked the time, and called out toward the front.
"Sister Guan, Brother Tian, why don't you head home? She might've fallen asleep upstairs. I'll lock up later!"
"All right, we'll put away the tables and chairs outside for you!"
"OK!"
Still in the corridor, Yan Huan called her on Plane. His phone kept ringing unanswered, but a ringtone came from the restroom.
Yan Huan raised his eyebrows, knocked tentatively on the restroom door, and called out.
"Sister Tong?"
The Dragon Nation tune kept playing inside.
Left with no choice, Yan Huan pushed the door open.
Inside the cramped single restroom, the stall door stood open, revealing Tong Yingying sitting groggily on the toilet lid.
Thankfully, her pants were still on.
Yan Huan breathed a sigh of relief, glanced at the phone on the floor, then picked it up and ended his call.
As the call ended, the lock screen displayed over ninety-nine message notifications, all from her mother.
Without looking at their contents, Yan Huan locked the phone again.
Then he moved a little closer to Tong Yingying and called to her.
"Sister Tong?"
"Mm..."
Hearing his voice, she raised a hand to rub her slightly furrowed brow and brushed her bangs aside.
On her flushed, pretty face, her eyes looked as listless as ever.
Meanwhile, her left hand quietly slipped inside her jacket, seemingly already gripping something.
But as she recognized the boy before her, the wariness in her eyes gradually melted away into the alcohol-scented breath spilling from her slightly parted red lips.
"Yan Huan."
As she let down her guard, the hand clutching something inside her jacket relaxed, and a stun baton slipped out onto her thigh.
"..."
Yan Huan found the sight rather funny. He pointed at the stun baton on her lap and asked,
"Seriously, why are you carrying a stun baton, sis? If you hadn't gotten a good look, wouldn't you have zapped me?"
"Kids shouldn't ask so much about grown-up business..."
"You're probably the only one who keeps treating me like a kid, Sister Tong."
Oh, no, there's Auntie Ye Lan too. She takes it even further.
Tong Yingying struggled to sit upright, tucked the stun baton back inside her jacket, and asked quietly,
"Have they clocked out?"
"Yeah, there aren't any customers left at this hour."
"Mm..."
Her head drooped a little again, so Yan Huan offered,
"Want me to help you upstairs to rest?"
"Mm..."
Yan Huan sighed, slipped her phone into her jacket, and helped her to her feet before heading out.
She fished the keys out of her pocket and handed them to Yan Huan, who unlocked the door, revealing the room upstairs.
The room was rather messy. All sorts of clothes and underwear were piled into mountains on the sofa, and as Yan Huan helped her upstairs, he nearly tripped over some clothing tangled with stockings on the floor.
Clearly, she had thrown both into the washing machine together, and that was how they had come out after drying.
"Sister Tong, this room shocks me every single time I come up."
Once the light was on, he could also see a black electric guitar hanging on the wall.
Yan Huan knew nothing about such things. He just thought the guitar looked well made, with a gold signature on it, and seemed expensive.
"Mm..."
Her head drooped, her red hair partially concealing her face, and her reply was thoroughly offhand.
But the hand resting on Yan Huan began wandering over his shoulder, then his chest...
Yan Huan hurriedly caught her wandering hand, then dumped her onto the bed.
For a moment, he even wondered whether Tong Yingying had been chosen by the Modifier too.
Yan Huan felt it was fine if the Modifier chose strangers like Ye Shiyu or Spencer as hosts. Someone he knew would really leave him speechless.
With strangers, he could put on an act without any reservations, treating it as a battle of wits against the Modifier.
But if someone he knew suddenly used the Modifier on him, the hardest thing to handle would be that sense of familiar relationships twisting and breaking apart.
Especially when he was the one the Modifier was being used on.
Thankfully, Tong Yingying seemed to be merely drunk. Once tossed onto the bed, she behaved herself.
Yan Huan sighed and said with a smile,
"You really must be desperate, Sister Tong. I'm ten years younger than you, and you'd even go after me?!"
Tong Yingying grunted. That sudden remark from Yan Huan seemed to rouse her muddled mind a little.
She opened her eyes, then narrowed them at the boy standing by her bed.
He was wearing his bartender's uniform, the brown waistcoat outlining his tall, slender figure with a forbidden allure.
From that little squeeze earlier, his muscles were firm too.
Most importantly, there was that charming face of his.
Ooh.
"..."
Tong Yingying's appraising gaze made Yan Huan a little uncomfortable.
"Sister Tong?"
After a moment of silence, she sat up.
Then she turned and took a bulging wallet from the bedside cabinet.
"Sit."
Yan Huan brought over a chair from the side, set it in front of the bed, and sat down.
He watched her open the wallet and draw out banknotes one by one.
Then she handed him the small stack she had taken out.
Yan Huan didn't dare accept it. He merely blinked at her.
When he wouldn't take it, Tong Yingying tossed the money onto the bed.
At some point, a metal flip-top lighter had appeared between her fingers. She took out her cigarette pack, lowered her eyes, and suddenly asked,
"How do I usually treat you?"
"..."
Why did this feel like a movie scene where the boss was about to send a henchman off to die?
"S-so-so?"
Tong Yingying paused in the act of taking out a cigarette and looked up at Yan Huan.
Smiling, Yan Huan hastily corrected himself.
"That came out wrong. Just kidding, Sister Tong..."
Tong Yingying lowered her head again, only to hear him continue,
"You actually treat me pretty badly."
"?"
Tong Yingying looked up at him again, her usually utterly dispirited eyes opening a little wider.
Yan Huan reached over and gently closed her open cigarette pack, then counted on his fingers as he explained,
"Look, you dump all the work at the bar on me every day. Never mind that, you're always threatening to dock my pay, too. You're a terrible drunk, you never watch your mouth, and you swear all day."
"Anything else?"
Tong Yingying nodded and added that question as she reached for her stun baton.
Yan Huan immediately smiled.
"Nope, everything else is great, Sister Tong."
No longer in the mood to joke and bicker with Yan Huan, she gestured with her lips at the stack of money on the bed.
"Take the money. I need a favor."
"Tell me what you need first."
"My family's really pushing me to get married. They know I'm single, so they call every other day telling me to go on blind dates. If I ignore them, they get all sorts of relatives to drop hints about how my parents are getting sick from being angry with me..."
"Hmm, are they putting on an act?"
"Who knows? And I'm abroad. If I have to go all the way home over this stupid crap, I swear..."
Tong Yingying sighed, cradled her pretty face in her hands, and told Yan Huan,
"So, I have an idea, Yan Huan."
"..."
"Play along with me. Whenever they video-call, show your face, act close to me, and help me deal with them."
As Yan Huan listened, he looked at the perfectly serious Tong Yingying, seeming to have something to say but holding back.
Seeing his expression, Tong Yingying paused slightly and asked,
"What? Got something to say?"
"Sister Tong, you really do nothing but come up with terrible ideas."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"When business was bad before, you suddenly decided to bring in a band, without noticing they played heavy metal. Then someone reported us for disturbing the peace, and the neighbors pelted the whole place with eggs and vegetable scraps..."
Tong Yingying blinked, seemingly remembering the incident. Yan Huan had been the one to persuade those older men and women to go home.
"And then, to promote the drinks, you put some discount vouchers online. Somehow, you even got the price wrong, putting the decimal point in the wrong place. Someone spotted it and bought a ton, and we got milked for an entire month..."
"..."
At that, Tong Yingying's mouth hung open, and for a moment she couldn't say a word.
Actually, when Tong Yingying wasn't drinking, she was clearheaded and very sharp.
But the moment she drank, she turned into a little genius idea machine, her head full of terrible schemes that hurt others without benefiting herself.
"Hey, Yan Huan, I have an idea!"
It was like a passive skill that activated after drinking. Every time Yan Huan heard those words, he felt trouble coming.
More importantly, Yan Huan had discovered that Tong Yingying had another bizarre mechanism.
If you came up with a bad idea while drunk, surely you'd realize something was wrong once you sobered up and your brain worked again?
Well, Tong Yingying was just that miraculous.
The terrible ideas she came up with while drunk were like rules in a rules-based horror story: her brain absolutely could not disobey them, so even once sober, she would never realize anything was wrong.
"..."
"..."
For a moment, Tong Yingying and Yan Huan stared at each other in silence.
A second later, Tong Yingying rubbed her red hair in irritation.
With a light tug, she undid the knot at the back of her head, letting her shoulder-length hair fall free.
"Then what am I supposed to do? They call and nag every day. My head's about to explode."
Yan Huan propped his chin in his hand, thought for a moment, and asked with the wisdom of someone possessed by Zhuge Kongming,
"I have a best, middling, and worst plan. Which do you want to hear first, Sister Tong?"
"...The worst one first."
As expected of a drunk Sister Tong. Even her train of thought was different from everyone else's!
Yan Huan didn't comment, though. He merely smiled and continued,
"The worst plan is yours: I put on an act to help you deal with them. But you can't keep the truth hidden forever. They want you married, not dating. So even if we get past this round of blind dates, you still won't escape all the questions afterward, right?"
Tong Yingying frowned, spinning the flip-top lighter in her hand faster and faster.
"What's the middling plan, then?"
"The middling plan is to harden your heart. Ignore them, no matter what they say or how much they nag. Block whoever needs blocking."
"..."
"Ultimately, Sister Tong, you're upset because you're still considering your parents' feelings, aren't you? If you really had a heart of stone and refused to date no matter what they did, what could they do?"
Looking at Yan Huan, Tong Yingying sighed and said,
"I wish I could be that heartless. They're my parents, after all. I came here for high school, and they farmed back home to support my education. Whatever else..."
But as she spoke, she still couldn't help growing a little angry.
"But having this happen every day is driving me crazy too. They keep forcing this extreme choice on me: either I get hurt, or they do. What's the point?"
"Don't worry, there's still the best plan, Sister Tong."
"Mm-hmm, go on."
Yan Huan raised an index finger and asked in return,
"Sister Tong, can't you think about why they're always pushing you to get married?"
"What else could it be? Their outdated ideas."
"Yeah, that might be part of it, but I think there's another reason: you make them worry too much, Sister Tong. They want someone to take care of you."
"Wait, you little monkey, have they turned you against me?"
Tong Yingying looked at Yan Huan with deep suspicion, seemingly believing her mother had possessed him.
"...Sister Tong, where's your brain? Your brain."
If she hadn't been holding a stun baton, Yan Huan would have insisted on examining just how her drunken brain was put together.
"Look at yourself. You stay up late, drink too much, and smoke every day. When anyone calls or messages you during the day, you never answer or reply. Anyone can tell your sleep schedule is fucked."
"..."
"Even if they finally manage to get you to answer a video call at night, you look like some ancient corpse from the Qing dynasty, with all your yang energy sucked dry. Anyone who didn't know better would think Linmen had bad feng shui and churned out zombies."
"..."
"Before they started pushing you to get married, I'd already heard them bring this up countless times. So I think your parents just can't think of any other way, Sister Tong. They think getting married might fix those bad habits of yours."
Looking at Tong Yingying, who had frozen before him, Yan Huan finished,
"So the best approach is to quit smoking and drinking, fix your sleep schedule, and get out more instead of spending all day in this coffin shop of yours. Let your parents see some changes, and maybe they won't push so hard."
Tong Yingying blinked. She was just about to say something when she suddenly remembered that Yan Huan had been doing this all along.
Whenever he saw her move to smoke, he would immediately interrupt her casting animation.
Whenever he saw her about to drink, he would try to talk her out of it.
Come to think of it, during the year Yan Huan had worked here, she really had smoked and drunk much less. She was already in much better shape than a year ago, though still far worse than a normal person.
No wonder her parents thought that way.
But why had Yan Huan been so active in trying to get her to quit smoking and drinking all year?
Could this guy... like me?
At that thought, Tong Yingying paused, her eyes flickering slightly as she asked,
"Then why have you spent this whole year telling me to quit smoking and drinking?"
The question came out directly, but hesitation crept in midway.
"Oh, that..."
Yet Yan Huan didn't seem to pick up on the implication. He simply gave a sunny smile and said,
"Because I don't like the smell of smoke. After all, Sister Tong, whenever you smoke in front of me, it stinks to high heaven."
"..."
"And, Sister Tong, whenever you drink, alcohol takes over your brain, and you turn into a complete idiot. I'm afraid you'll be stupid enough to lose all your money, and the shop will close, leaving me without a paycheck, so..."
"..."
Tong Yingying's utterly listless gaze gradually became the look one gave a dead man.
Seeing that she had pulled the stun baton all the way out, Yan Huan immediately stood.
Glancing at the time on his phone, he said,
"All right, that's that. Time for me to clock out. I've pretty much finished cleaning downstairs. Enjoy your nightlife, Sister Tong."
"..."
Watching him turn to leave, Tong Yingying suddenly called him back.
"Hey, wait."
"What now? No way. Are you really going to zap me, Sister Tong?"
"You're nuts."
Tong Yingying picked up the money on the bed, counted out some of it, and handed it to him.
"Here, take this month's pay now. There are only a few days left until payday anyway."
Yan Huan raised his eyebrows, took it, and counted it before asking,
"Extra?"
"I'm not counting the weekend as you skipping work. Add today to that, and it's an extra six hundred."
"Sister Tong, love you."
"Fuck off. You think I won't zap you to death?"
Tong Yingying brandished the stun baton in her hand, though she wasn't looking at Yan Huan.
"All right, I'm off, Sister Tong."
Yan Huan put away the money, turned, and left Tong Yingying's room.
Watching him leave, Tong Yingying lay back down on the bed and called downstairs,
"Lock the door for me!"
"OK!"
Then came the sound of the iron door closing and locking, followed by Yan Huan's footsteps gradually fading away.
Lying on the bed, Tong Yingying put down the stun baton, her gaze still blank.
Change my lifestyle, huh.
For the moment, Tong Yingying couldn't make up her mind or leave the comfort zone of lying flat and giving up.
After all, habits weren't formed overnight. She was already used to living like this.
Still, perhaps quitting smoking and drinking really was necessary.
She seemed to have drunk herself into hallucinating just now. Through the haze, she'd actually seen a talking...
White snake?
Linmen, Luoqiao District.
In a room in a three-story building in one of the residential area's housing complexes, a black-haired girl in pajamas was fiddling with a box in her room.
Inside the box was a leopard gecko staring at her with wide eyes.
"Xiaoyun, come out and play for a bit."
The black-haired girl's pajamas were loose, yet the enormous breasts beneath them still pushed the fabric taut.
She had only just finished showering and swept the hair from her forehead to the back of her head, revealing her adorable, rosy face.
She was An Le, a student in Class C of the first year at Totsuki Academy.
Barely noticeable in class, she finally revealed her lively personality in the privacy of her room, where she could pursue her hobbies without restraint.
An Le liked keeping exotic pets.
She was interested in geckos, lizards, all sorts of insects, and other strange little creatures, and often browsed videos of them online.
However, the gecko in the box, called "Xiaoyun," merely looked up at her, showing no intention of moving.
"Don't want to come out?"
An Le smiled and put the box back on the shelf, unwilling to force even her pet.
Then let's look at some stuff online.
Any new games?
Everything lately has been so tame. It doesn't really do it for me.
An Le put on her blue-light-blocking glasses and sat down at her computer.
She opened a resource-sharing forum and browsed the contents of its "Adults-only games" section.
The search box above still showed her previous searches, all rather questionable terms.
Yes, An Le was actually a very seasoned geek in private.
But unlike ordinary geeks, the things she liked looking at were a little...
Hard to put into words.
"Hmm, this gameplay is a little dated. If it's just penetration and whipping..."
"What about this one? Ugh, the male lead is so ugly. He'll look even worse once he's broken. Oh, oh, so there's a nonhuman form..."
"This one looks pretty good. Tentacles..."
As An Le browsed the webpages on her computer, seemingly unreal sounds drifted from the windowsill.
"Hiss, hiss... gurgle..."
An Le paused, then turned toward the windowsill.
"Huh? What's that sound?"
She stood and walked over, seemingly intending to close the window.
Yet only when she approached did she suddenly notice a tiny white snake lying motionless on the sill.
The white snake seemed injured, with some of its scales missing.
"Huh, a snake? Why did it suddenly show up here?"
An Le blinked, asking herself that question.
The little snake weakly opened its eyes, gave the girl before it an exceedingly pitiful look, then closed them again.
"..."
An Le's mouth hung slightly open. She seemed to be hesitating.
A moment later, she went back into the room.
When she returned, she was wearing bite-resistant gloves. She cupped the snake in her hands and brought it into the room.
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