I will never give in to Miss Death

With me?

"Denghua, hurry up."

Letting go of her hand, Zhou Xiaofei gently patted Li Denghua's arm and said, "You are wrong in this matter. You must apologize sincerely."

"Ah... um... that..."

At Zhou Xiaofei's signal, Li Denghua, who was taller than me, raised her head and glanced at me carefully before looking away, seeming a little embarrassed: "It's just... before... before..."

What happened before?

"I...I said something very extreme at that time...that is..."

Li Denghua's eyes flickered, and she felt a little guilty. She hesitated for a long time before taking a deep breath as if she had mustered up the courage.

"Sister Nuoer, I'm sorry!"

The little girl's suddenly raised voice caught me off guard for a moment: "What...what's wrong?"

"It's about the matter where I asked you to go to school to help find the doll, and about your brother...brother. I said something like I wanted to test your loyalty. I was too willful. I'm really sorry!"

Li Denghua placed her hands in front of her and bowed deeply to me. She kept bowing: "I have seldom made friends with other people since I was a child. I didn't know how to respect my elders, I didn't speak too much, and I didn't know the significance of donations... You are obviously my benefactors, but at that time I... said such excessive words to you... I'm sorry! Sister Nuoer, please forgive me..."

Oh...it's that thing...

Li Denghua's speech reminded me of the days when I ran to Xingguang Primary School.

Well, although I was a little unhappy at that time, being ordered around by that little brat...

Li Denghua's personality is really lonely, strange, and very... "tsundere"? However, in the current version, tsundere has become obsolete, and can even be said to be a derogatory term. Moreover, she was born in a wealthy environment, and her parents are often too busy to take care of the household. If no one guides her and she follows her personality, she will easily suffer in the future.

I think this was probably one of the reasons why Li Denghua was unpopular in the class before.

"When I was chatting with Denghua a few days ago, we talked about how I met Sister Nuoer, and she brought up this matter."

Li Denghua was still bowing, and Zhou Xiaofei had already stepped forward and said in a negotiating tone: "I was very angry at the time and told Denghua that this was wrong and that she had gone too far. This would hurt Sister Nuoer."

"After I told her that, Denghua has been feeling embarrassed for the past few days, and then we did this together."

As she spoke, Zhou Xiaofei took out a doll that was obviously hand-sewn from the worn-out schoolbag on her back and said, "My grandmother taught me this. I taught it to classmate Li Denghua... Denghua, take yours out quickly."

"Um……"

Li Denghua also took out a doll from her bag that was a little uglier than Zhou Xiaofei's and handed it to me: "I'm sorry, Sister Nuoer."

"Please forgive Li Denghua. She is not a bad person. She just did things and spoke without thinking. I have already taught her a lesson."

Zhou Xiaofei acted like a little adult and brought the two dolls in front of me. "I'm really sorry, please don't be angry, Sister Nuoer."

"I'm sorry, Sister Nuoer, please don't be angry with me. I didn't realize how rude I was at that time..."

Li Denghua raised her head and looked into my eyes as if she had mustered up a lot of courage: "I... I just learned how to make this doll, so it may not look very good..."

Two elementary school students...apology and gifts?

I noticed that Li Denghua's left middle finger and thumb were wrapped in bandages.

"I'm not angry."

After a brief moment of daze, I smiled gently, touched Li Denghua and Zhou Xiaofei's heads, and took their dolls: "Then I will accept your gifts!"

Putting the kettle on the table behind me, I walked to the window with the dolls and carefully placed them on the windowsill so that they could bathe in the warm sunlight coming in from the window. "It just so happens that we are short of two decorations here. Thank you."

"what……"

Li Denghua still looked a little cautious: "Has Sister Nuoer forgiven me?"

"I wasn't angry in the first place."

I patted the little guy on the shoulder and said, "It seems that you have learned a lot from making friends with Zhou Xiaofei!"

Zhou Xiaofei comes from a very poor family. Usually, such families tend to have extremes. Either the children are disrespectful to their elders, uneducated, and do nothing every day, or the children obey their teachers and disciplines, and are sensible and filial. Obviously, Zhou Xiaofei belongs to the latter type.

"No...no, Denghua also takes good care of me."

Zhou Xiaofei, who was standing beside me, felt a little embarrassed when she heard me say that. She pinched the hem of her skirt and said, “This dress was given to me by Denghua…”

"It's very beautiful. It suits you very well. You look like a little princess."

I took the two children in my arms and said to Li Denghua, "Let the past be the past. Well, I accept your apology, and from now on, this matter is over."

Then, I pointed to a table not far away with various sticky rice dishes: "Have you had lunch?"

"I've...eaten."

"is it?"

Seeing that Li Denghua and Zhou Xiaofei's eyes occasionally drifted towards the colorful glutinous rice, I tentatively asked, "Did your family make colorful glutinous rice yesterday?"

"No."

Li Denghua shook her head violently: "Mom and Dad were both at work yesterday..."

"Then my sister will treat you to a meal today."

I pointed to a few spots nearby and picked up the kettle again: "Sit down for a while and play with the cats. I'll go upstairs and bring water to our equally ignorant store manager."

"I'll be right back!"

"..."

……

No. 298 is like an angel's wings

I returned to the staff lounge with the kettle, and from a distance I saw Ouyang Xue in the room still looking down at the documents that Su Yunjin had asked her to send over.

Yin Xiamo was leaning against the door with a nonchalant look on her face. When she saw me come back, she just glanced at Ouyang Xue in the room.

"Sister Ouyang."

I knocked on the door of the lounge, which was decorated with cat ears. On it was a sign that I had written in a lolita font: "Staff lounge, no entry without permission": "Hot water."

"Oh."

Ouyang Xue raised her head: "Just put it wherever you want. I will take the medicine myself later."

"Sister Ouyang..."

I put the kettle on the table and hesitated for a moment: "I still hope you can rest more. There are so many people in the store today, there must be no problem, don't worry about it."

Although Lan Jiajia has taken leave to go back to her hometown to visit her parents these days, the coffee shop is taken care of by me, Yin Xiamo, and Filo Gabriel, so there will definitely be no problems.

Apart from anything else, just the words "Xiaomo is here" are enough to make people feel at ease.

When Ouyang Xue fell ill and fainted for the first time, if I hadn’t seen Xiaomo’s expression next to her didn’t change much, I would have been really worried to death, thinking that this approachable store manager that I had finally found might have really been seriously ill.

I've seen... too many people leave.

Most of the children who are abandoned and thrown into welfare homes have congenital diseases, and many of them do not live to adulthood. I don’t know how many times I have watched familiar friends leave in front of me.

Those who suddenly develop a disease and die in the hospital despite unable to recover are considered good if they can see each other for the last time and wait for the hospital to announce the end of the disease. What I least want to face is those friends who have an incurable but fatal chronic disease. They are in class at school and suddenly receive a notice to go back to the welfare home to see someone off for the last leg of their journey. Then everyone takes leave and comes back to watch their good friends who used to play together dying, or having a high fever and talking nonsense, or gasping for breath and unable to say a word, until they close their eyes in the end.

It was in such an environment that when I went to university, I didn’t have many good friends I knew at the welfare home, and in my junior high and high school yearbooks... there weren’t many people left who I could contact.

It feels like... when we were little, everyone in the orphanage took a family photo together. As I grew up, the people in the photo turned gray one by one, and finally I was the only one left.

So after entering the society, the only people I could contact and call "friends" were some of my college classmates. But after all, I came from a humble background, and I had to work part-time to pay for my studies in college. Usually, everyone in the dormitory would play computer games and participate in various activities together after coming home, but I was elusive, either on the way delivering takeout or helping customers wipe tables in a milk tea shop. Therefore, after four years of college, my relationship with the boys in the same dormitory was not strong enough to keep in touch regularly.

It is precisely because of such experiences and life that I am particularly sensitive to things like "life". To put it more seriously, Yin Xiamo's true form is the god of death, reaping lives. I am probably on the "opposite side" of her.

Perhaps this is also the reason why I was able to awaken the Elf Mode and obtain the "Heart of Nature" very quickly.

"I'm mainly worried that you can't handle it alone, Noer."

As I watched, Ouyang Xue covered her head and said, "Today we have more customers than in the first few days of our opening."

"So Sister Ouyang, you are sick again."

I smiled bitterly: "It was the same when we opened the business before."

"It's an old problem. I get anxious when I'm busy. The more anxious I am, the easier it is for me to forget about time. Last night, I was so anxious that I sweated all over and forgot to keep warm."

Ouyang Xue got some medicine from the small shelf behind her, found a cup and poured it in, then took my kettle: "Maybe it's the aftereffects of being an idol back then. I can't get rid of the image of an idol. When I see all kinds of abuse and condemnation online, I always reflect on whether I'm not doing well enough, and then I suffer from insomnia and anxiety, and all kinds of cold viruses will take advantage of the opportunity to sneak in. Sigh..."

I hesitated for a moment: "Will Sister Ouyang also be anxious about those negative reviews in the takeaway review section?"

"Although I really want to answer you that I won't, but the truth is... I will."

Ouyang Xue sighed: "I had a psychologist test me before, and he said that I have a people-pleasing personality. I also often have that kind of... pessimistic mentality. If I encounter something unpleasant, or see someone's very negative comments about me, I will wonder if everyone is like this. I always like to prepare for the worst."

"Just like the two negative reviews yesterday, when I saw them, I began to doubt whether I was not good enough in this business, whether a coffee shop was really not suitable for the takeaway route, whether the food we made was really that bad, whether we would disappoint Tongmeng.com's expectations, whether I would be unemployed, unable to find a job... and so on and so forth. I considered all the worst-case scenarios."

Pour hot water into the cup, take a small spoon to stir the medicine in the bowl a few times, Ouyang Xue turned her face away: "Su Yunjin is right, I am indeed not suitable for this kind of management job. This store manager is more suitable for Su Yunjin. He is a smiling tiger type of manager, very good at capital operation... You see, now that he sees that the coffee shop business is good and the popularity exceeds expectations, he decisively decided to open a branch. If it were me... I would definitely not make such a decision."

Smiling tiger?

It seems... that's indeed the feeling.

Su Yunjin is always laughing and joking when he is with us. Since he is quite handsome, most people don't have any negative impression of him when they see him for the first time. When discussing work, he often speaks in a more tactful way. He is like a caring and good boss who cares about you, takes care of you, and lets you participate in various company decisions and discuss them together.

But if you think about it carefully, you will find that... Su Yunjin is not that "kind".

He said before that he was planning to start e-sports in the basement of the coffee shop. Although he used a negotiating tone, now thinking back, this matter is actually not negotiable. Tongmeng.com is determined to start e-sports, and we have to cooperate to find "angels" to manage it. Even though Su Yunjin said tactfully at the time that it didn't matter if we couldn't recruit angels, he had actually put pressure on us.

In my impression, this is how the boss of a large company should feel.

Make you feel that this is a good boss, make you think that your boss is understanding, cares about yourself, works hard and cares about the company, make you feel like a "loyal minister" has found a "wise king", and then swear to live and die with your boss and the company in the future.

In fact... if you just think about it a little, you will find that working under such a smiling tiger, the benefits are not that good, the salary does not increase, the company is indeed getting better and better, and the boss changes the car to pick you up on business trips every day. I don't know whether it is happy or sad.

"It doesn't matter if you get bad reviews. There will always be bad reviews."

Seeing that Ouyang Xue, who had a low fever, was a little depressed, I subconsciously comforted her: "It's better to say... it's wrong that there are no bad reviews. This means that our restaurant is out of business."

"Yeah, so I figured it out last night and went to bed at two or three."

Ouyang Xue blew on the hot water in front of her: "I was fine when I woke up this morning, without any symptoms. Who knew that after I finished my work and came here to rest for a while, I felt a fever coming on."

"Maybe the air conditioner is turned a little low."

I turned around and said, "Then Sister Ouyang, you should have a good rest. I won't disturb you."

"and many more."

Ouyang Xue stopped me and said, "This document says that Su Yunjin wants me to go there next month. This month, Nuoer, you must be prepared to take over as store manager. Nuoer, if you have any questions about the store manager's job in the next few days, you can..."

"I know! You can find Sister Ouyang, right?"

I interrupted her and said confidently, "If there's anything, wait until Sister Ouyang recovers. I'm sure there won't be any problems with the store manager. Besides, if things really don't work out, I still have Xiaomo!"

As I said that, I pointed at Yin Xiamo outside the door: "She is the God of Death here, and also a super demon king from another world. While she's chatting and laughing... whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, everything is reduced to ashes. She's very strong."

"puff--"

Ouyang Xue was amused by me: "Nuo'er with Chuunibyou is so cute."

"It's not a Chuunibyou!"

I deliberately put on an "I'm serious" expression: "Xiaomo is very strong, of course I am also very strong."

"Good good."

Ouyang Xue signaled that I could leave: "You guys should take a break too. This should be your break time, right, Nuoer?"

"Well, at the beginning, there is still an hour of rest time. It's okay. I can just take a ten-minute nap at noon every day."

Just as I walked out of the door and was about to close it, I heard Ouyang Xue's hoarse voice behind me: "Su Yunjin and I went to the Tongmeng.com headquarters to discuss the bonus for you bringing back the angel and solving the anchor problem. I asked them for a condition."

"Eh?"

"The condition is that if you guys take over the coffee shop in the future, Nuoer, Tongmeng.com cannot kick you out for any reason. Even if they fire the four of you, you must hold more than 15% of the coffee shop's shares."

I turned around and asked, "Is this the reward I gave you for bringing Gabriel back a few days ago?"

"Well, didn't we joke that a 10,000 yuan bonus wasn't enough? Su Yunjin joked that we could talk, and I took him to the headquarters. We talked for a long time. The people at the headquarters probably saw that the prospects of the coffee shop were terrible, so they agreed to these conditions."

Ouyang Xue behind him said, "I said at the time that if I was transferred and Nuo'er or Xia Mo became the manager of the coffee shop, this shop must be yours. Tongmeng.com can lie in the background and get a share of the profits, invest, and sponsor, but it cannot directly and forcibly interfere with all your decisions."

I was a little touched for a moment: "Sister Ouyang..."

"I've experienced similar things and know the darkness behind capital, so we discussed almost everything that needed to be discussed, recorded the video, and signed the contract. I originally thought that we would have to argue for several hours before we could reach an agreement on such conditions that were not conducive to capital expansion, but to my surprise, those people actually agreed. You know, even Mayor Ye was present that day."

Ouyang Xue said with emotion: "I feel that Su Yunjin should also be on your side. He said a lot of good things."