Why bother with dating when you already have a cat?

Ai Qing watched the two of them walk into the store one after the other. Li Qiqi greeted them politely, disinfected their hands, and then took them to the cat petting area.

Looking at Li Qiqi, who was standing through the glass door with a resentful expression, Ai Qing twitched the corner of her mouth and thought to herself, "How was I supposed to know that this guy could actually take girls out to play?"

Seeing the girl walk to the cat-shaped tree stump and start petting the cat, Ai Qing quickly pulled Wu Yong over and questioned, "What's wrong with you?"

"What? What happened?"

"Why didn't you tell me you were bringing a girl to the cat cafe?"

Didn't I tell you?

"I'm talking about the fact that you brought a girl with you!"

"Um... actually, she invited me, it wasn't my own idea to come."

"What?"

"She said there's a really popular cat cafe recently and asked if I wanted to go. I guessed it was your place and told you in advance."

"Good, good, Lao Wu, you've really made something of yourself! What does this girl do?"

“She’s a teacher from the same school; she also just started this year.”

"What will you teach? English?"

"Teaching chemistry."

"Huh?" Ai Qing was silent for a moment, then patted Wu Yong's shoulder. "Then you'd better treat him well and not do anything to upset him, or I'm worried you'll get an upset stomach."

Wu Yong was taken aback: "What does this mean?"

“It’s nothing.” Ai Qing shook her head and encouraged, “I won’t bother you anymore. Have fun, and just let me know if you need anything.”

After saying that, Ai Qing pulled Xiao Yu to a corner so as not to delay Lao Wu's date.

Chapter 210 Seeking a Marriage

Wu Yong has been a physical education teacher at the junior high school where his mother works for almost a semester.

The girl who came to the cat cafe with him this time is a new teacher who joined the school in the same batch as him and teaches chemistry in the first year of junior high school.

In junior high schools, there are relatively few physical education teachers.

Since each class only has one physical education class per week, three physical education teachers are sufficient for the three grades.

Wu Yong's school only has five physical education teachers in total, one of whom is considered a superior and doesn't teach much anymore.

The other teacher is responsible for training students in various sports competitions. Apart from occasionally filling in for the other three teachers when they are absent, the teacher is mainly responsible for training the students' athletes.

Wu Yong had just taken office when he began to take charge of the first-year junior high school curriculum.

As for the female teacher named Xie Qiaohe, she is one year younger than Wu Yong and just graduated from teachers' college this year. She teaches chemistry to classes 9 through 12 of the first year of junior high school.

In terms of teacher allocation in junior high schools here, only physical education and music are relatively poorly equipped. For core subjects like Chinese, math, and English, there is usually one teacher for two classes.

For subjects like physics and chemistry, four classes share one teacher.

Although the two had met when they joined the company, given Wu Yong's temperament, he was clearly not the type to take the initiative.

Xie Qiaohe just thought that the PE teacher must have a pretty good physique, but didn't think much else about it.

However, when the midterm exams were approaching, one of Xie Qiaohe's classes had one less class than other classes due to the scheduling of classes during the National Day holiday, which caused them to fall behind in the schedule.

So Xie Qiaohe specifically sought out Wu Yong, the physical education teacher, to discuss whether she could ask him for a class.

This is a common practice in schools.

Xie Qiaohe was new to the job and hadn't originally thought of this approach, but she couldn't resist the encouragement and recommendations from the other teachers in the office, so she went over to give it a try.

Wu Yong originally intended to refuse.

After all, they are still young, and what they hate most when they are in school is when the physical education teacher is sick and takes leave, and then the teacher of another subject has to substitute for them.

I never thought it would be my turn now.

Although Wu Yong is now very taciturn, he still has a lot of backbone.

When his physical education classes were taken over when he was a child, he thought that if he became a physical education teacher in the future, no one would be able to take away the children's physical education classes from him.

But when he saw Xie Qiaohe, Wu Yong hesitated.

Fortunately, he only conceded half a step, saying he could change her class before the midterm exam, but she would have to return it after the midterm exam.

This result was within Xie Qiaohe's acceptable range. After all, if a class was missed before the midterm exam and the progress fell behind, the class's chemistry score might not be as good as other classes.

But after the exam, the class catches up on the schedule a little, and at most, they only miss one review class at the end of the semester.

However, Xie Qiaohe was a new teacher who had just arrived. After Wu Yong agreed to change the class, Xie Qiaohe, out of politeness, suggested that she treat Wu Yong to a meal on the weekend.

Wu Yong agreed on the spot.

This happened in November.

At that time, Ai Qing was busy running the cat café, and Wu Yong didn't specifically mention it in the WeChat group, so Ai Qing only learned about Xie Qiaohe now.

The rest is relatively simple.

It was nothing more than treating each other to meals back and forth, and over time, we became familiar with each other.

Xie Qiaohe's family was of average means and she was not a native of Hangzhou; her home was in a small county town southwest of Hangzhou.

Although Wu Yong's family was not well-off, the two houses they received after the demolition and the house in the countryside were real assets.

One of the apartments was close to the school, and Wu Yong and his mother lived there.

The other house in Jinpan Yunting Mansion, as well as the house in the countryside, are usually rented out.

With the combined salaries of the mother and son from their current jobs, their monthly income is more than enough.

Moreover, Wu Yong himself is not bad-looking. He is a former soldier and is much more pleasing to the eye than those who start to have beer bellies after the age of thirty.

After a while, the two of them started to hit it off and went on several dates without anyone noticing.

"Brother, are they dating?" Xiaoyu asked in a gossipy tone when she saw Wu Yong bring a girl into the store.

"They're probably still in the ambiguous stage before they start dating," Ai Qing whispered back. "Take a few packets of freeze-dried fruit to him later, just to help him out."

"Okay." Xiaoyu nodded repeatedly, seemingly quite interested in other people's romance, watching the two interact with great interest.

Just as Xie Qiaohe was about to finish distributing the free cat food, Xiaoyu quietly handed several bags of freeze-dried food to Wu Yong.

Wu Yong secretly thanked her and then moved closer to Xie Qiaohe, joining her in using freeze-dried food to lure the kitten.

Although Lao Wu hadn't been to a cat cafe many times before, he had at least been there before and had seen how amazing the cats in Ai Qing's shop were.

When he beckoned to the Japanese lady and said "backflip," she actually did a perfect backflip, which made Xie Qiaohe gasp in surprise.

The Japanese soldier wore a disdainful expression and snatched his share of freeze-dried food.

Seeing that the interaction on the other end was going well, Ai Qing felt a little relieved.

However, Li Qiqi's expression was not good.

There were no customers at the door at the moment. Li Qiqi appeared beside Ai Qing like a ghost and suddenly spoke up: "Cousin, is this how you recommend potential partners? How novel."

Ai Qing: "...This was a mistake, there won't be a next time."

That certainly won't happen again.

He only had two close friends, Wu Yong and Kong Fugui.

Wu Yong now sees a chance, and Ai Qing is unlikely to push her cousin into a fire pit.

That's for sure, there really won't be a next time, after all, his social circle is just that narrow.

"Tch, I wasn't expecting much anyway." Li Qiqi pouted, looked in the direction of Wu Yong and Xie Qiaohe, and sighed softly, "How wonderful, youth."

"Don't think about it anymore. Your youth has already been buried in school. Now, just settle down and be a working person." Ai Qing patted her shoulder and kindly comforted her.

"You're really good at comforting people," Li Qiqi rolled her eyes at him. "How about you hire two handsome male employees for the store?"

"Sorry, dating is not allowed in the workplace."

"So what's the meaning of your relationship with Xiaoyu?"

“We’re the bosses, of course it’s different,” Ai Qing said matter-of-factly. “But you can look among your customers, surely there are plenty of good customers who would like you?”

"Don't you even consider the kind of people who come to our cat café?" Li Qiqi said speechlessly. "They're either couples, people in ambiguous relationships, or students. What single, high-quality young man would come to a cat café?"

"I see." Ai Qing nodded, thinking that what she said made some sense.

After all, the probability of boys coming to cat cafes is indeed lower.

For most guys, petting a cat is a great option, but if you're going to spend money on petting a cat, you might as well get a wife in a game, or buy a single-player game to play, or at the very least, you can treat yourself to a nice meal.

They would only willingly take out their wallets when accompanying female classmates or colleagues they liked.

Men who are truly single and don't have a romantic interest wouldn't normally go out alone just to visit a cat café.

If you're hanging out with your best buddies, it's either a bar or karaoke bar, or an internet cafe or barbecue stall. How many grown men go to a cat cafe together?

Thinking of this, Ai Qing sighed and expressed her understanding of Li Qiqi.

but.

Many men are unwilling to pay to pet cats in physical stores, but they would be quite happy to pet cats virtually.

Thinking of this, Ai Qing had a sudden inspiration, looked at Li Qiqi, and sized her up.

"What are you doing?" Li Qiqi looked at Ai Qing with a wary expression, highly suspicious that this guy's motives were impure.

"Look, our Home for the Homeless now has at least two or three million followers across the entire internet," Ai Qing said, calculating with her fingers as she spoke eloquently.

"If we were to film a dating video for you, even if the male and female fans were evenly split, and only one-tenth of the male fans were of marriageable age, and only one percent of those tenths were suitable, that would still be more than a thousand people."

"If even one-tenth of these men are interested in you, that means you have over a hundred high-quality single men to choose from."

"You're not bad at all, so you'll have it all figured out when the time comes, won't you?"

After being persuaded by him, Li Qiqi actually felt a little tempted.

The young girl was a little shy and quietly asked, "So, how do you want to take the picture?"

"Just shoot normally." Ai Qing said, stroking her chin as she pondered, then looked Li Qiqi over again.

Although Li Qiqi's appearance is not as good as Xiaoyu's, nor as good as Xiao Youqian from the pet hospital next door, she is still quite pretty.