Night Rose

"Grandma, you've misunderstood. I have nothing to do with him!" Su Jin quickly explained, not daring to take the tofu pudding anymore. She tried to put it down, but a pair of wrinkled hands held her up.

"Oh dear, Xiao Zheng paid for your breakfast. It was a misunderstanding on my part. Little girl, here, have some. This is Nanyuan's specialty tofu pudding; you can't find it anywhere else," the old lady said with a smile.

Su Jin almost blurted out, "Would Zhou Zheng really be so kind?" but she swallowed the question back down.

The old lady looked kind and was a lovely little old lady. Her clothes were simple and clean, and her breakfast stall was polished and looked very clean.

Su Jin thanked her and stood aside, taking small bites of her tofu pudding.

Her eyes lit up after the first bite.

She spent several years in New York, and her taste buds were practically tortured. If Lu Mingzhou hadn't hired a Chinese chef for her, she would have given up and returned to China long ago.

"Grandma, this tofu pudding is so delicious! You made it so well!" Su Jin praised.

The old lady smiled broadly and gave her another small bowl filled with a steamer of xiaolongbao (soup dumplings). "These xiaolongbao were made by my husband. Please try them."

"Thank you, Grandma." Su Jin politely accepted the money, knowing that Zhou Zheng had paid for her, so she didn't pretend to be polite with the old lady.

She finished her breakfast by the roadside and felt completely refreshed.

Looking at her bright and lovely appearance, the old lady asked curiously, "Young lady, how did you and Xiao Zheng meet?"

Su Jin knew that the old lady wanted to know about her relationship with Zhou Zheng, so she asked in such a tactful way so as not to offend her.

She rolled her eyes and found a suitable explanation, "Grandma, Zhou Zheng and I are colleagues."

"Oh, so you're colleagues! Xiao Zheng told me about your company. The benefits are good and the salary is high! He's a hard-working person and can earn a lot of money," the old lady said.

Su Jin: "..."

Are the benefits good for driving an unlicensed taxi? Is the salary high at Tu Ying's place?

Su Jin thought to herself, "This person is quite vain. He doesn't have a proper job, but he still lies to the old man and says that he's working at a good company."

But since breakfast was paid for by him, Su Jin reluctantly refrained from exposing his actions.

"Yes, the company is quite good," Su Jin said tactfully.

"By the way, Xiao Zheng's..."

The old lady wanted to chat for a bit more, but before she could finish speaking, a group of guests arrived, and she hunched over and got busy again.

As Su Jin watched her retreating figure, she thought of her own grandmother, and her eyes welled up with tears.

When she went abroad to study, her grandmother was heartbroken for a long time. She hasn't been home since she returned to China. Once the competition in Nanyuan is over, she must go home to see her grandmother.

The old lady's busy figure never stopped. Su Jin exchanged fifty yuan in cash at the hotel front desk, put it under her bowl of tofu pudding, and quietly left.

Time seemed to slow down in China; there were no work worries or the roar of race cars.

Su Jin turned on her long-unused computer, and email notifications kept popping up, one after another chasing after her like ghosts.

I can't even imagine how many letters came from the company, from various media outlets, and from my lingering ex-boyfriend.

Lu Mingzhou tried to contact her through various channels, even attempting to transfer money via Alipay several times, each time transferring 8888 yuan along with a message.

Su Jin really didn't understand why Lu Mingzhou avoided her when she was still in New York, but now he was haunting her like a ghost.

Does this really prove the lyrics, "What you can't have is always the most alluring"?

Su Jin ignored him and didn't want to open the email at the top of the page; it was just another request for her to undergo review.

The driver, Mr. Li, was unconscious in the accident, and many details need to be obtained from him when he wakes up. She and Mr. Li have been working together for a long time, and they are as familiar with that race car as old friends.

To truly hold Su Jin accountable, we need Li's testimony.

But he didn't wake up.

The injuries were not serious, but the person remained in a coma, and doctors had concluded that there was a possibility of becoming a vegetable.

Topchain dealt with this matter under immense external pressure. To stabilize the situation, Topchain's first action was to fire the engineer and give an explanation.

Su Jin waited for Li to wake up amidst endless torment, praying that he would finally wake up.

She locked the racing data on her computer in a folder. Top Chain had asked her to hand over the core data, but she wouldn't give it to anyone until Li woke up.

Su Jin created a new folder to record data about the Nanyuan race. She searched for the event online, but few web pages popped up; most were about racing failures.

She skipped over all the junk information and found some useful data in the massive amount of information, then pasted it all into a folder.

Knowing how stingy Tu Ying was with modifying the race car, she opened a website to check the prices of parts, filtering them from low to high.

"We never had to live such a hard life before?" Su Jin murmured.

The prices on the website were almost all beyond Tu Ying's budget. After thinking for a while, she opened a second-hand website...

By the time she finished her work, it was lunchtime. She had been eating at restaurants around the hotel for the past few days. The food was so-so, but luckily she had just returned from abroad, so she could manage.

But she still wanted to find a chef to cook for her at home and began to miss the Chinese chef that Lu Mingzhou had found for her.

She's currently staying at a hotel, and she's wondering if she could use the kitchen if a chef comes to cook for her. Perhaps she should find a place to rent for a couple of months.

Su Jin found some sticky notes and wrote down three goals on them.

1. Find a house and a cook! 2. Win the race! 3. Train amateur racers!

In the afternoon, the appointed time arrived.

Wang Tianle was lying on the bar counter doing accounts, fiddling with his abacus, making a loud clattering sound.

Zhou Zheng lay asleep in the chair, his hands clasped over his stomach. He always looked tired, as if he hadn't slept in a long time.

"Why is he still sleeping? What kind of sleep schedule is that?" Su Jin kicked the bar table in disgust.

Wang Tianle paused, his fingers moving. He didn't like being disturbed when he was doing his accounts. He was about to look up and seriously criticize the person who came in when he saw Su Jin, who wasn't wearing sunglasses.

Su Jin took off her sunglasses today. The redness and swelling in her eyes had completely disappeared, and jet lag had not left any trace on her face. She swaggered around with her clean and beautiful face.

Dressed in a smart short-sleeved shirt and trousers, with her hair tied in a neat ponytail, she looked completely different from the elegant beach beauty she was yesterday.

Wang Tianle's cheeks flushed red, and he completely forgot he was going to criticize someone.

"Sister Su, you're here."

Su Jin smiled at him and beckoned him.

Wang Tianle leaned closer, waiting expectantly for her to speak.

"Did he go out to steal at night? Why is he always sleeping during the day?" Su Jin said with a smile, pointing at Zhou Zheng.