Winter Time Rendering

The proprietress quickly forced a smile, explaining that her husband was the only one working today and they were swamped. "I’ll go hurry him along again..."

Du Kang put down his chopsticks, about to look over, but Ruoping stopped him.

"Eat your food. Why are you getting worked up over a bunch of kids?"

Du Kang let out a frustrated sigh.

"If that kid wants to hurry them, fine, but why does he have to drag us into it? Does he really think no one will dare to say a word just because he’s with Gu Qiuyan? If I were at school... never mind." He bit into a piece of pork rib and mumbled, "We’re all classmates."

"Classmates?" Ruoping scoffed. "We might see her as a classmate, but she definitely doesn’t see us the same way."

It left Zhang Shutong wondering if she was trying to put out the fire or fan the flames.

"Looks to me like you played the good guy for nothing, Shutong. Look at her, perfectly fine and in the mood to go out and eat."

Zhang Shutong mostly understood what she meant. Even though Ruoping wouldn’t greet Gu Qiuyan herself, he had helped her out a little during the long break between classes. The fact that Gu Qiuyan still had this attitude was what set Ruoping off.

Zhang Shutong wanted to say that him playing the "good guy" really didn’t have much to do with Gu Qiuyan herself.

If he had to be honest, it was more about clearing an obstacle from his future. The murderer had to be found, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t go out for a meal with friends.

But if he told them, they’d just pester him about what this "obstacle" was. He’d already heard enough about a "man’s mission" and really didn’t want to start a conversation about a "man’s obstacles." So, he simply scooped up a pork rib for each of the three of them.

"Eat up while it’s hot. It’s my treat today."

"You’re being awfully generous," Ruoping said, though she was already nibbling on her rib.

"There’s no need. Let’s just split it like we always do," Qingyi also declined.

"Bro, you should’ve said so earlier! If I’d known, I would’ve ordered two more dishes!" Du Kang was the most shameless of them all.

"Just consider it a chance for me," Zhang Shutong said with a smile. "Besides, the three of you still owe me a KFC meal each."

His reason for suddenly wanting to treat them was simple—

For him, this was probably the first time they had all eaten together in eight years. And in those eight years, he was the first one to lose contact. Although there were reasons for it, he couldn’t help but feel he had let his best friends down.

It must have been in their second year of high school. The guys had wanted to come to the provincial capital to hang out with him, but he wasn’t really going out much back then, so he had bluntly refused. He’d already forgotten his exact reply.

He only remembered that after that, everyone seemed to talk less. Their group chat, with its cringey name, went from buzzing tirelessly until midnight every day to having no one post for half a month, until it was eventually buried at the bottom of his chat list.

One day, Zhang Shutong suddenly wanted to see what they had even talked about back then. It was just a small group of four; what could have been so interesting that it was worth talking about for so long? But by then, he had switched phones and lost the chat history.

Thankfully, he hadn’t listened to Qingyi and named it something like "Dragon’s Den," nor had they given themselves weird, grand titles. Otherwise, the corpses of the four dragons would one day be buried underground along with their little nest. Remembering that name someday would have been heartbreaking.

Zhang Shutong picked up some more food with his chopsticks. He had always been a man of few words, so the others couldn’t read his mood. The meal dragged on, and by the end, they were just idly scraping at the candied glaze on the plate.

Gu Qiuyan’s table, on the other hand, was still lively. The boys and girls were all laughing together. Someone would deliberately act the fool, while the star of the table was still typing with a single finger, occasionally looking up.

Zhang Shutong noticed the boys and girls were behaving differently. The girls were genuinely trying to find topics of conversation, while the boys seemed to be deliberately trying to win her attention. Whenever Gu Qiuyan glanced in a certain direction, whoever was there would look even more smug.

’Being a ’trainer’ seems like an exhausting job.’

Regardless of what Miss Gu and her lackeys were up to, it was time for his group to head out.

Zhang Shutong told the others he was going to the restroom.

As he passed Gu Qiuyan’s table, she was lifting her glass. There was still a little less than half of the yogurt drink left. The rim of the glass rose past the bridge of her nose, level with her beautiful eyes. Their gazes met unintentionally for a moment before Gu Qiuyan indifferently lowered her eyes, staring only at the yogurt in her cup.

’Yep, definitely not close.’

Zhang Shutong thought.

Gu Qiuyan had said so herself—via the message passed to her "little secretary" during morning reading. He didn’t know if the secretary had fully grasped the spirit of the message, but he certainly had.

At first, Zhang Shutong couldn’t even find the restroom door and almost walked into someone’s private room, so he ended up wandering around the restaurant for a bit.

Only then did he notice that the proprietress was the only one out front. The person cooking in the back was probably her husband, the owner. A restaurant this size should be too busy for just a mom-and-pop team to handle, yet he hadn’t seen any waitstaff.

The only explanation was that business was terrible.

They had only served two tables during the entire lunch period. This place was considered one of the more famous restaurants on the street, but it hadn’t been spared either.

But on second thought, although there were only a few occupied tables, there were quite a few customers.

Not including the four of them, of course. Gu Qiuyan’s bill alone was probably worth several tables, not to mention the private room had also been booked.

He had just noticed, however, that the lunch rush was almost over, and the people who booked the private room still hadn’t arrived.

Zhang Shutong pushed open the restroom door. Surprisingly, it was right next to the kitchen. He remembered Du Kang telling him once that none of the shops on this street originally had their own toilets. If you had to go, you had to run to the public restroom down the street. That was fine for other businesses, but it was a huge hassle for a restaurant not to have a restroom.

So, the shop owners had gradually renovated and added them. This fish restaurant, for example, had a rectangular kitchen, and they had forcibly carved out a square from one corner to serve as the restroom.

As a result, it wasn’t separated into men’s and women’s rooms. It didn’t even have proper walls—it was just partitioned off with plywood. When things got busy, you could hear the SIZZLE of stir-frying from next door...