Chapter 100: Found

Professor Zhan returned to his office with the file clutched in his hand and lit a cigarette.

By all accounts, he could only have reached his position through his own abilities, and he considered himself a competent mentor to his students. Yet what happened today was certainly not handled properly—it had carelessly wrecked someone’s future. Still, he could not argue with his wife, and he could not suddenly back out of a promise once given. After much thought, the only path was to sacrifice Chen Xin.

But the problem was this: in the one glance they exchanged today, he discovered that the gentle girl he remembered was not as harmless as he had imagined. That cool, piercing look, and the impatience hidden beneath it, made his heart—so seasoned by experience—flutter with an odd embarrassment.

Chen Xin received the school’s call three days before classes resumed.
Someone else called on the school’s behalf, saying that after an internal adjustment she had been assigned to a different professor for direct recommendation for postgraduate study, and that she should meet him after the semester opened.

Chen Xin did not make a fuss. For one thing, that professor had nothing to do with this affair; for another, all she wanted was the degree, and she had no power to challenge the hidden dealings. The other side had actually been fair; they did not fail her outright. Even when she met him later, it would be only a nod, a greeting, and then nothing more.

With her studies temporarily out of the way, Chen Xin poured all her energy into finalizing the flower tea book. The manuscript was complete in all essentials; all that remained was to obtain the publication number and begin printing.

For most mainstream books today, words are still the main measure, so Chen Xin’s book was a little unconventional. Each chapter is a tea recipe, and every ingredient is illustrated. Every finished drink is painstakingly arranged and photographed, enticingly vivid enough to make one itch to gather every utensil at once, brew a pot of floral tea or fruit tea, and enjoy a leisurely afternoon tea in the soft warmth of spring sunlight.

To coordinate with the book launch, Chen Xin even created a sunlit corner on the second floor of the café. The layout there is even more casual: the sofas are those rare lounge-like beanbag chairs, custom-made just for her. Greenery hangs at the window, tied irregularly with jute rope; tiny glass bottles hold a pothos, a bit of a sprout, or a little trailing branch, whatever she could find. Thus the glass wall is adorned with sunlight, plants, and colorful sheer curtains, looking almost dreamlike. Soon it became the place most coveted by the girls.

After operating for a while, Chen Xin had someone alter the corridor a bit, and this sun corner was set apart for female guests only, separated from the other area by opaque glass. There, there is no need to fuss over posture: one can occupy a whole recliner alone, or three to five friends can sit on the floor around a low table.

On the far side of the glass wall stood a delicate bookshelf lined with elegant essays and travel accounts. Near the window, a rotating rack held photo albums, music magazines, and entertainment magazines—things to pass the time.

Cheng Jie had recently taken up handcrafts. During breaks she would carry a box of tangled yarn balls and a crochet kit into this corner and begin stitching. She made nothing large, only small dolls and tiny pendants. Cheng Jie had a fine sense of design; she worked with care, and the key-chain pouches she made were so pretty that Chen Xin found herself wanting them.

One day, Chen Xin was about to upload new recipes to her blog. She placed Cheng Jie’s crocheted pieces beside her dishes, added a careful table setting and polished the photos afterward, and suddenly every image came alive.

Take, for instance, a vegetarian dish she made that day: cold shredded three strips. It is simple, relying on nothing more than the color balance of the shreds and the harmony of the sauce. In the past her photos usually showed only plates and seasoning. This time she staged a tiny animal birthday party using Cheng Jie’s little rabbit, turtle, and bear dolls, with the main course as cold shredded three strips, desserts of Song Yi’s butter cookies as small as a fingertip, and a three-layered fruit pudding served in miniature wine glasses. The rabbit held chopsticks, the turtle clutched a cookie, and the bear peered over the rim of a glass. The scene was so alive that one nearly wanted to pluck the food out of the picture and taste it.

Chen Xin’s blog had long attracted true food lovers—people who loved watching her cook, learning a few techniques, and following her words and photos to experience local flavors. A new group of fans had now gathered around her. They were mostly young women, and they had no resistance to those cute little handmade figures. After seeing Chen Xin’s blog, they also found many food-therapy recipes suited to women’s health, light-meal combinations, and flavor suggestions. Before she could even react, her blog suddenly caught fire.

There have always been plenty of black-hats online, but there was never much controversy in Chen Xin’s blog except one subject: her trip to the old town to help Old Man Qian find his son.

The later developments of that affair were, however, unexpected.

Qian’s son was found, but life turned out to be even more melodramatic than people could have imagined. The son had suffered a stroke years earlier, and his thinking was in disarray; he no longer recognized where his ancestral home was. His wife had died ten years ago. His children were not unfilial, but because of his mental confusion he often flew into senseless tantrums. At one point he almost burned his grandson with boiling water. At the younger daughter-in-law’s insistence, the two brothers could only build a room for their father in the space between their homes, with each household taking turns caring for him daily.

When netizens found him, even his own son did not know any of this. He had said that when his father was still in better shape, the man would always say there were no parents left at home. His late mother had once mentioned that there might still be relatives in the old village, but whenever return to the ancestral place was brought up, his father would flare up in anger. Then his mother suddenly fell ill and died, and he never mentioned home again. With his father now in this condition and both sons already burdened with their own small families, no one had thought to pursue the past of the hometown. If the netizens had not gone to them, they would never have known that a grandfather was still alive.

The younger son runs fish farming at home and is constantly swamped. So he left the matter of sending their father back to the old village to see his own father entirely to the elder brother and elder sister-in-law.

The elder brother and his wife run a vegetable greenhouse business. The sister-in-law has many relatives nearby, and plenty of hands to help, so spending a few days on the journey was no problem.

After learning of the backstory, the elder brother could not sit still. He wanted to go and see for himself, saying that if Grandfather was willing, he would bring the old man home and care for him.

Though the sister-in-law was a bit unwilling, she did not oppose him. Once the itinerary was confirmed, every item to take for the old man was bought one by one by her own hands.