Zou Yan had originally planned to hand over the coffee machine to He Dongli and leave, but unexpectedly, Cheng Yaojin showed up halfway.
The author’s recommendation: support mobile scanning to read.
That guy, Zong…something, was clearly a born young master.
He didn’t seem to have good taste either—
He Dongli’s aesthetics were just as ordinary.
Oh well, Zou Yan didn’t want to disparage his friend; at most, it was just common taste.
Under the sun, no one is immune to the allure of money and power.
The absurd thing is, many men love to control these two things, yet they hope the woman by their side stays completely detached from them.
As the wind blew away the warm breath from his nose, Zou Yan had already guessed the general reason why these two parted ways like separated swallows.
That day, Zou Yan had lightly scolded He Dongli on WeChat.
In front of her “old classmate,” she didn’t seem like herself at all.
Normally, they would chat endlessly about work or patients with complaints and comforts.
Zou Yan waited two days without any reply or new topic from her.
Today, when he messaged again, she still delayed responding.
Now the problem was clear—she had gone to meet her old lover.
This shouldn’t have been his business, but with the second shoe dropping, Zou Yan didn’t feel as relieved as he’d imagined.
He Dongli unlocked the door with her keys.
As she pulled the lock open, she said to the man carrying the paper bag, “I never said I wanted flowers.”
“Oh, well then deal with them yourself. Do you think I’m going to take them back? I couldn’t even keep them alive if I did.”
He Dongli glanced at him.
Zong Chi calmly said, “I’m here on a business trip, staying at a hotel all the time. How could I possibly care for these? You know me—if you follow me around, even a Bernese Mountain Dog would become a West Highland Terrier.”
Zong Chi’s family used to have a Bernese Mountain Dog, but since the city bans keeping them, it stayed at his parents’ suburban villa.
He Dongli had liked that dog the first time she met it.
Once, when it got sick and lost some weight, she was heartbroken and scolded Zong Chi for not caring enough, saying anyone who followed him would end up sickly.
Back then, she squatted beside the dog, watching it eat, and Zong Chi teased her that she looked like a comforting old sister-in-law watching a recovering child.
He Dongli shot back, “You’re the old sister-in-law!”
Zong Chi laughed and teased, “What, do you want to be the mother? No way. It calls me mom, mommy. You’ll have to settle for being the sister-in-law.”
Then he asked why she liked Bernese Mountain Dogs so much.
“No reason,” she said.
The first time Zong Chi invited many classmates over for a camping party at his house, He Dongli fell in love with the hundred-pound dog.
She joked that no one was that lazy to just name a dog Bernese Mountain Dog without giving it a proper name.
Zong Chi didn’t mind; he was determined.
In martial arts dramas, a sword is just a sword—there’s no need for flashy names.
The flowers were in the bag, long removed from their greenhouse.
He held it out to her.
Zou Yan, watching the scene with a knowing smirk, lingered without leaving.
He Dongli reached out to accept his gift, but Zou Yan said, “Let me help you test the machine first.”
In the end, He Dongli opened the iron gate wide and invited everyone inside.
As Zou Yan was about to leave, Zong Chi, standing just a step away, kindly reminded Dr. Zou, “You’d better move your car further in.”
Indeed, Zou Yan’s car was still parked somewhat in the middle of the road.
When he glanced back, Zong Chi had already stepped inside.
What looked like a courtyard was more like a corner, a courtyard layout where two steps would bring you indoors when it rained.
The sliding door moved sideways in a straight line.
Zong Chi stood outside the glass door, waited a moment, and despite it being open, knocked symbolically twice on the glass, then asked the people inside, “May I come in?”
He Dongli took the Blackberry Phone she had gotten last week while accompanying Jiang Xingyuan to an antique store from the small bar counter where she’d been eating and casually tossed it into a nearby drawer.
The tiled entryway faced directly the stairs going up, and He Dongli’s living room and bedroom were to the left of the stairs.
She answered from the doorway and pointed to a concealed door at the end of the staircase.
“The bathroom’s over there.”
Before Zong Chi could stoop outside the door, she saw through it and reminded him, “No need to take off your shoes.”
So, the man outside stepped in and headed straight for the bathroom.
By the time Zong Chi finished washing his hands, Zou Yan had already entered and unpacked half the box.
He Dongli stood watching, holding a stack of manuals, and in a rather blunt tone told Zou Yan, “You can put it down. I can handle it myself.”
“You’re the one who hates reading manuals the most.”
“Yeah, but I can look on Xiao Hong Shu. There must be unboxing videos there.”
Zou Yan brought out the One-Piece Machine and asked where exactly to put it.
He Dongli pointed to the corner of the bar counter.
“Put it there.”
Zou Yan nodded and went to set it up.
She stood with her arms crossed and suddenly seemed to remember something.
She glanced toward the door; Zong Chi silently stood there.
He Dongli instinctively looked back.
Zou Yan remembered an important tip and told her, “The top half is the bean hopper, and the lid underneath is the powder hopper. Don’t mix them up.”
He Dongli quickly nodded.
Zou Yan turned to make sure she was paying attention.
“Here. Don’t be as confused as I was.”
“Like you?”
Zou Yan nodded, saying that to show his sincerity in giving the gift, he had bought a machine in advance and tested it himself.
He Dongli roughly knew the price of this brand and teased Zou Yan, “You might as well just give me the money for both machines in cash.”
Zou Yan powered it on, added purified water, and ran a cleaning cycle to rinse and descale.
The machine wasn’t exactly quiet.
He said something she didn’t catch.
When she asked again, the person peeking from the door called out, “He Dongli, have you contacted Chen Xiangyang yet?”
Without turning her head, she replied, “Notified already.”
“How soon will she arrive?”
She glanced at her watch and estimated, “If no traffic, about forty minutes.”
With the machine cleaned and set, Zou Yan worried He Dongli might not have beans, so he had brought a bag of Coffee Beans and eagerly adjusted the settings to brew the first cup.
He asked what she wanted to drink, but He Dongli shook her head, “No more. I’ve already had several cups today.”
“Oh.”
Just as Zou Yan was pouring in the beans, one accidentally fell to the floor.
He bent down to pick it up.
He Dongli calmly and tacitly handed him a tissue, indicating he should wipe his hands and discard the paper.
Zou Yan didn’t say thank you aloud.
The person at the door spoke up again, isolated, “He Dongli, I think I accidentally dropped something down the sink drain.”
Someone turned back at the sound, and she looked at Zong Chi with obvious impatience.
Zong Chi lifted one sleeve to show her—he was missing a cufflink, the Gold and Black-and-White Pearl Cufflinks.
“What now?”
He Dongli didn’t respond much, just coldly instructed, “The drain has a U-shaped trap that prevents backflow. If it really fell in, you have to undo that bend and look for it yourself.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
Zou Yan chuckled beside them, cheerful and eager to help.
I’ll help him.”
He Dongli’s face darkened.
She quickly stopped Zou Yan.
She had already taken off her coat, but the room had no heating or air conditioning and was chilly everywhere.
As she rolled up her sweatshirt sleeves, her face looked quite pale.
The host took charge, and the guest who lost something had no reason not to follow her.
He Dongli came to the bathroom.
The sink was on the right as you entered.
She bent down to open the storage cabinet below, but Zong Chi was quicker and grabbed the handle of the other cabinet door first.
“Show me.”
She glanced up at him.
The scent of wood mixed with the tobacco smell of his recent social engagements wafted toward her as he bent down and added, “Just tell me where it is. I won’t touch anything. Finding it is one thing; if not, then blame me for bothering you.”
He Dongli immediately let go of his hand and stepped aside to point out the spot.
It was a simple daily routine, but for someone without experience, Zong Chi was sure to mess it up.
Like adding too much water to flour or too much flour to water.
He once complained that “just the right amount” had to have been invented by a female cook because no one could just explain it clearly the first time.
Nobody knows what the “right amount” really is.
He was still stuck now.
He Dongli folded her arms to watch for less than ten seconds but worried he’d be too rough and ruin the entire drain.
She released her grip and, with no emotion, said, “You can get up now.”
Zong Chi seemed not to hear, his head practically buried under the sink.
He Dongli called out, “Let me do it.”
Just as she said that, a twisting sound echoed.
She forgot to give him a basin to catch the remaining water in the pipe.
The head under the sink was silent, probing around the bend.
Apart from a few strands of hair dropped by accident, there was nothing else.
He Dongli kicked the trash bin closer to him and handed him some tissue, which Zong Chi didn’t take.
He emerged from under the sink, flicked her hair into the bin, and wordlessly turned on the tap to wash his hands.
He Dongli took his moodiness over not finding the item lightly.
Using some facial towels in her hand, she almost crouched by his feet to wipe the water marks under the sink dry.
She stood up, efficiently restored order to the bathroom, and pretended to comfort him, “Go check your car. Maybe you dropped it somewhere else.”
Zong Chi looked down at her crouched by his feet, then suddenly stood up in frustration.
“Forget it, I’m not looking anymore.”
He Dongli didn’t respond.
After washing his hands, Zong Chi picked up a bottle of body lotion with a prominent Double C logo from among He Dongli’s numerous skincare and makeup products on the sink.
He glanced at her as if silently verifying, “I told you, you like this brand.”
He lifted the bottle and asked if he could borrow some to apply on his hands.
He Dongli didn’t say anything, watching him hold it.
But Zong Chi clearly didn’t know how to use it—he didn’t realize this one had a twist-off cap.
He fiddled with it several times without finding the mechanism.
She reached out, took it back, and put it down.
Their eyes met for a moment.
Zou Yan called for He Dongli again.
Not wanting her to leave smoothly, Zong Chi asked, “Are you so impatient because you think I’m lying to you?”
“They’re not just any brand, but a unique, one-of-a-kind pair.”
Zong Chi said as he pulled out from his trouser pocket the Gold and Black-and-White Pearl Cufflinks.
Only the white pearl remained on the shirt cuff.
The man who proved his point just stood there arrogantly, waiting for her inspection.
He Dongli had no interest in whether the “unique” cufflinks were really lost or limited edition.
Whoever gave them to him could go look for them; she certainly hadn’t lost them.
The next second, Zong Chi’s mind-reading was accurate again.
“Unique means they won’t give you another pair.”
Whether they give them or not is your business.
He Dongli didn’t want to spend half the night dealing with a gift-giver she didn’t know.
The key to ending a fight was not to be sentimental.
So she abruptly changed the subject, “Where are your car keys?”
She saw him turn out every pocket in frustration but didn’t see the keys anywhere.
Zong Chi’s expression changed, as if caught off guard by the question, but he didn’t seem to mind.
“In the car.”
He Dongli said disdainfully, “Maybe the reason you always lose your limited edition cufflinks is because you don’t like to lock your doors.”
Zong Chi was caught by her cold joke.
He was about to laugh, but He Dongli didn’t find it funny at all.
“You either stay in the car or—”
He picked the second option.
“I’m going to get them now.”
He Dongli was speechless with anger and turned to leave.
There was the sound of Zong Chi leaving the entryway door.
Zou Yan heard it and asked He Dongli, “Your old classmate left?”
He Dongli didn’t respond directly.
She stood by the bookshelf, pulled out a few books that had been somewhat untidily stacked, and pushed them back in order.
Just then, Jiang Xingyuan messaged her, saying the delivery rider was almost here and asked her to send the verification code to the rider.
He Dongli cheerfully shared with Zou Yan, “Jiang Xingyuan suddenly brought me some Butterfly Pastries. I’m going to get them. Want to come with me? We can bring some back to go with the coffee.”
Zou Yan smiled, straightening up from where he had been lazily leaning against the bar counter and asked leisurely, “Dongli, is this a send-off order?”