Winter Time Rendering

Chapter 153: Chapter 64: Mianmian’s Energy

Since everyone else had stood up, the hall was suddenly filled with the scraping of chair legs against the floor. Only two people remained seated: Zhang Shutong and Gu Qiuyan.

Zhang Shutong was thinking about how he’d just been her lackey a few days ago, and now they were enemies. ’Life is so unpredictable,’ he lamented inwardly.

Gu Qiuyan, however, set down her yogurt drink.

"Sit down."

She uttered the two words coolly, and everyone around them sat down in unison.

It made it hard for Zhang Shutong to connect this girl with the one who talked to Tom Cat. Still, it was a rare treat to see the young heiress revert to her cold and aloof persona.

Gu Qiuyan kept her expression cold and continued to drink her yogurt, the rim of the cup held high enough to obscure her eyes. She avoided everyone’s gaze. Her young secretary, now understanding her stance, began to berate the boy who had started the trouble.

The proprietress had rushed out to break up the fight, but she froze on the spot when she saw this scene.

Du Kang sat back down with a grunt, muttering that the little bastard was asking for a beating. Ruoping chided him, "Why are you getting so worked up over a bunch of kids? Besides, there are more than a dozen of them. If a real fight broke out, we’d be the ones to lose out, wouldn’t we?"

Qingyi nonchalantly said, "It won’t come to a fight. Can’t you see Shutong is here?"

’I really don’t think I can take on a dozen guys by myself,’ Zhang Shutong thought. ’This situation might be more than I can handle.’

Qingyi added, "Didn’t Shutong help her pick up her building blocks during the break? She still owes him for that."

Zhang Shutong had almost forgotten about that himself.

It seemed the two of them did have some history, after all. And based on his understanding of Gu Qiuyan, she hated being indebted to others—buying him two huge bags of snacks on Saturday was a perfect example.

Now he could finally eat in peace. He waited until his plate was nearly clean, then glanced at the time. He remembered that this was when he had gone to the restroom last time and overheard the owner and his wife’s conversation, learning about the conflict on the commercial street.

Zhang Shutong wondered if he should go eavesdrop again, and maybe record it this time. While not recording wouldn’t change the ultimate outcome, he wanted to deliberately speed up the process. The recording might come in handy. At the very least, sending it to the police would be enough to get their attention.

Besides, it wouldn’t take much time.

With that in mind, Zhang Shutong told his friends, "Give me your share of the money. My stomach feels a little upset. Why don’t you guys head out and look around for a bit? I’ll settle the bill and catch up."

This plan had another advantage: once he recorded the couple’s conversation, he could pretend to have "accidentally" overheard about the commercial street dispute while in the restroom.

He could then play the recording for his friends. That way, he wouldn’t need to invent some other excuse to make them realize the gravity of the situation, which would only help with what came next.

The three of them didn’t suspect a thing. They just said they’d find a shop to wait in and that they would be in touch.

Zhang Shutong took the money, went to the restroom, and discreetly started his phone’s voice recorder. Sure enough, he heard the proprietress walk into the kitchen and start nagging her husband. The content of their conversation was more or less the same as last time.

But he remembered that last time, it wasn’t long before the boy from the other table shouted for the check, and the proprietress had rushed out.

But this time, that didn’t happen.

’What’s going on?’

He immediately thought, ’Maybe it was that little conflict from earlier. It must have caused Gu Qiuyan’s table to eat more slowly, delaying when they’d pay the bill.’

’There are just too many of these small changes.’

The owner and his wife couldn’t just curse at each other all day, not with Gu Qiuyan eating right outside. They switched to chatting about trivial, everyday things. Zhang Shutong figured he’d heard enough and was about to turn off his phone when he heard someone pull on his stall door. It was a makeshift restroom, walled off with plywood. The door was locked, of course, but the sudden noise still startled him.

"Someone’s in here!" he called out. The door was pulled again. The person outside didn’t say anything. It was as if pulling the door was some kind of secret code. Zhang Shutong sighed. ’How can I, a single butterfly, be affecting even other people’s bathroom breaks?’ he thought helplessly. ’My reach is getting a little too wide.’

Since there was no reason to stay any longer, he unlocked the door and stepped out, only to freeze.

Standing outside the door was none other than Gu Qiuyan.

The girl was clutching her stomach, her brows furrowed. She was biting her lip, and a flash of pain crossed her face. She looked weak, but the moment she saw him, her expression instinctively hardened, as if she didn’t want him to see her in this state.

"Uh..."

Zhang Shutong was at a loss for words. The girl was easily embarrassed, especially about something like this. If he were in her shoes, he’d be mortified too. This restroom was a later addition, and he was about to make a subtle reminder by pointing to the "Urination Only" sign on the wall, but then he saw what Gu Qiuyan was clutching in her hand and suddenly understood.

He quickly got out of her way. He saw Gu Qiuyan hurry inside, barely having the strength to close the door behind her.

’So she knew it was me in there,’ he realized. ’She was just too embarrassed to say anything, so she pulled on the door to hurry me out.’

Zhang Shutong then remembered their trip to the supermarket. She had stood in front of the spicy snacks, agonizing over them for the longest time.

He’d told her to just buy them if she wanted them, but Gu Qiuyan had said she couldn’t eat spicy food for the next few days.

Of course, Zhang Shutong wasn’t so dense that he didn’t understand her subtle reference to her period. He was just wondering why this, too, was happening earlier than before. Or maybe not earlier—after all, today was only Thursday and that day had been a Saturday, not a huge difference. But still... why did it have to hit her so suddenly right now?

Some girls have a stronger reaction, some have a milder one. Gu Qiuyan was clearly in the former category. She was in so much pain that her lips, from all the biting, had turned pale. Sure enough, no matter how cold and aloof she acted on the surface, deep down she was still a softie.

Zhang Shutong really wanted to say, ’If you know the cramps get this bad, why were you chugging a cold yogurt drink on a day like this?’ But the yogurt wasn’t the main point. The real question was, why had this changed, too?

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