Chapter 89 — Consider It My Treat
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
"That's true enough," Kang Xiaofeng nodded in agreement after hearing Wei Zhao's words. Tang Zhi's beauty was the kind that, once seen, was not easily forgotten; otherwise, so many boys would not have been left utterly smitten after a single glance at her.
"Never mind all that, let's eat. I'm starving," Wei Zhao said, unabashedly grabbing a dried tofu roll and stuffing it into his mouth. "Not bad, this is pretty good."
"Heh heh, of course it is. You should know whose mother grilled it," Kang Xiaofeng said with a satisfied chuckle at Wei Zhao's praise.
"..." Wei Zhao glanced at Kang Xiaofeng, genuinely at a loss for words. "You make it sound like she's your mother."
"Cough, cough..." Kang Xiaofeng cleared his throat awkwardly. "Eat, come on, eat. Here, boss, I salute you." With that, he raised his beer.
Wei Zhao smiled and raised his bottle as well, clinking it against Kang Xiaofeng's.
Soon the rest of what Kang Xiaofeng had ordered arrived one dish after another. Tang Zhi, however, seemed to have made it her personal mission to make trouble—if she wasn't slamming the skewers down hard onto the table, she was deliberately bumping into Wei Zhao.
This little beauty is quite a piece of work, isn't she? Wei Zhao thought, looking at the fuming Tang Zhi with some amusement. She wants to drive me off.
There was still a large lecture that evening, so neither Wei Zhao nor Kang Xiaofeng drank much. They each finished only the one bottle in hand and polished off the food on the table, then Kang Xiaofeng rose to settle the bill. "Auntie, how much do we owe?"
"Ah, Yun'er, go and tally it up," Tang's mother said, busy with several orders for other tables and thus dispatching Tang Zhi to do the reckoning.
"Eighty yuan," Tang Zhi said, coming over to Wei Zhao's table. She shot him a covert glare and thought to herself: I'll gouge you good and proper, see how long you can keep up the act.
"Huh?" Kang Xiaofeng was taken aback. What he and Wei Zhao had ordered couldn't have come to more than forty yuan at most—how could it possibly be eighty? But seeing Tang Zhi's utterly confident manner, he couldn't bring himself to argue with the girl of his dreams, and could only fish a hundred-yuan note from his pocket and hold it out to her.
"Hold on," Wei Zhao said, stopping Kang Xiaofeng. "I think that's miscalculated, isn't it? I did the math just now—twenty skewers of lamb at one yuan each is twenty, two lamb chops at four yuan each is eight, two chicken necks at two yuan each is four, two tofu rolls at one yuan each is two, and two bottles of beer at two yuan each is four. That comes to thirty-eight yuan in total, doesn't it?"
"Well..." Tang Zhi hadn't expected Wei Zhao to actually go through the bill item by item with her, and her face flushed red at once with embarrassment. She was not a greedy person by nature; the reason she had said eighty yuan was simply that Wei Zhao's earlier gentle, refined manner had irked her, and she had kept wanting to find some way to trip him up and expose him. Yet after several deliberate provocations, Wei Zhao had shown no reaction at all, which only made Tang Zhi angrier. She thought: fine, if you love putting on an act so much, then act away—I'll just overcharge you a bit and call it even.
But no sooner had the little beauty named Tang quoted her figure of eighty yuan than she was challenged by the great arrow-brand brother, Lin.
"Yun'er, what's the matter with you? Why are you tallying the bill all wrong?" Tang's mother might have been busy with the grill, but Tang Zhi had gone to settle accounts not far from her, and she could hear every word of the exchange with Wei Zhao clearly. Seeing that her daughter had actually quoted a customer such an outrageous price, she grew angry and began to scold her with a stern face.