CH 26.2

After having caught Fu Zheng red-handed, Ning Wan said a lot to him in line with the educational philosophy of prioritizing learning and supplementing disciplinary punishment. Although he looked pale, at least he pressed his lips together without talking back. However, for some reason his eyes kept glancing over toward their neighbor's table, and his expression was unnatural, as if constipated. Every time he looked over that way, his face darkened.

Ning Wan frowned and followed Fu Zheng's line of sight. The girl across the way looked rich and expensive, clad from head to toe in high-end brands and currently taking a selfie with her mobile phone.

"Fu Zheng," Ning Wan snapped, unable to hold back, "I'm talking to you. Why are you looking over at someone else?"

At this time, was he still shamelessly thinking about looking good for their rich, pretty neighbour?! She wasn't even as pretty as herself! If you had to look at someone, why not her?!

She rubbed her forehead, still not very happy, but unwilling to pester him further. "Forget it. Everyone's a little vain. We can pass over it this time, but you really can't be so extravagant and wasteful in the future. Have you ordered yet?"

It looked like Fu Zheng still had their next-table neighbour on his mind. He glanced at the other girl and coughed very deliberately before answering Ning Wan somewhat absent-mindedly. "Not yet."

It's only human nature to appreciate beauty, and to look a little longer at lovely things. but somehow, when this principle was applied to Fu Zheng, Ning Wan felt particularly unhappy about it.

Thankfully, the answer that he gave was relieving. "Good thing you haven't ordered yet! Don't eat here, let's go. I'll treat you to something else tonight."

Ning Wan decided internally that she would bring Fu Zheng along to her meal with Chen Shuo tonight. It was pretty close by anyhow, and it wasn't a bad idea to have them meet. In the future, he could ask her junior if he was having trouble.

"You leave first. Pretend the signal isn't good, then go to the door. In ten minutes, I'll do the same thing. That way we can leave the restaurant without it being too awkward..."

Unfortunately, her best-of-both-worlds proposal was unexpectedly and resolutely rejected by Fu Zheng. "We've already come in and haven't even ordered food! We can't just slip away. A true man would never do such a thing."

Fu Zheng glanced at Ning Wan, bit his lower lip, and vowed not to budge on this even if it led to his death. "If I come back to this store in the future and they remember it, it will be incredibly embarrassing. I can't do it."

Ning Wan bared her teeth in an angry smile. "You're still thinking about coming here to this restaurant to spend money in the future?! Just don't come again! Anyway, what kind of celebrity do you think you are, thinking that the staff here will remember you?  Just what is in that head of yours?"

Fu Zheng simply pressed his lips together tightly, said nothing, and expressed his unwillingness with his actions.

He was big enough that without his cooperation, Ning Wan couldn't drag him away. "Must you eat here today?"

Fu Zheng answered with silence.

"Alright, fine, then if you must, I'll order." She couldn't force him to leave, so she simply snatched the menu from his hand.

The result was a look of sheer shock.

"This is extortion!”

Thousands of yuan1 for any main course?! Even a cream of mushroom soup was 100 yuan?! Was this a store of bandits?!

Looking at the prices, Ning Wan was simply rendered speechless. "Fu Zheng, you're the embodiment of 'if you can't choose the right one, then choose the most expensive one'!"

"..." Fu Zheng choked out, "There's a reason why it's so expensive. You can really tell when you eat it."

"You've eaten it?"

Fu Zheng struggled with his conscience. He desperately wanted to say that yes, he had eaten it, but in the end his struggle between honesty and practicality made him simply say nothing.

There was nothing to choose from in the menu. Ning Wan called the waiter over soon enough and ordered, "A salmon salad."

The waiter wrote it down with a smile. When she said nothing more, he asked politely, "And what would you like for your appetizer, soup, main course and dessert?"

"Nothing," Ning Wan smiled. "Just a salad."

"..." The waiter stared blankly at her, then turned to Fu Zheng, seemingly puzzled. "Just a salad?"

Ning Wan felt terribly unsatisfied. Why was he looking over at Fu Zheng? Hadn't she just placed an order for herself? What was the matter with this waiter? Did he think that the man should always order for the woman? Why, the way he was acting it was as if Fu Zheng knew him...

"Just a salad," she repeated unhappily.

Unfortunately, the waiter was obviously not sensible. Even though she had already emphasized her answer, he looked back at Fu Zheng to confirm. "Are you sure?"

Ning Wan also glared at Fu Zheng. He was still obviously holding wickedness in his heart, because he bit his lip and refused to say anything. Ning Wan kicked him under the table. As if his heart was in ashes, he finally nodded his head. It looked as though he had been humiliated in public to the point that he wished he was dead.

Thankfully, when the waiter saw him nod, he finally stopped pestering them and put away their menus.

A long wait later, the waiter came back around with bread and salad.

Looking at the tiny little bit of salad, Ning Wan was simply amazed. "You call this a salad? This is just a pot of grass! And for two hundred yuan2! That's it?!”

Fu Zheng rubbed his temples. As if he could not help himself, he finally explained, "This salmon was marinated with the freshest ingredients flown in by air. It has grapefruit, quinoa, western sunflower, hydroponic lettuce, kale and homemade Greek yogurt. It is not a 'pot of grass'. For this sort of taste, only 200 yuan is..."

Ning Wan's face was thunderous. "Look at you! Completely brainwashed by marketing. You even call it 'western sunflower'! Do you know what normal people call 'western sunflower'? It's horseradish! Horseradish!"

“……”

She eyed the salad in disgust. "You eat it. I don't want this ridiculous grass."

"A bowl of salad isn't going to be enough. Since we've ordered already, we should order some more."

Just as Fu Zheng was about to call the waiter, Ning Wan stopped him. She pointed to the bread. "Why isn't it enough? Eat that to line your stomach. It's free, and if you're still hungry we can ask for more. Hurry up and eat your horseradish. This place is too expensive, when you're done I'll take you someplace more cost-effective for a second round."

Obviously unwilling to give in, Fu Zheng tried several more times to no avail. Ning Wan had made up her mind, and in the end nothing was ordered.

However, a word of praise did have to be said. Perhaps thanks to the psychological effect of sitting in such an expensive restaurant, even the free bread seemed to taste better than elsewhere. After eating the whole basket, Ning Wan asked the waiter for another. Fu Zheng looked as though he wanted to hide under the table...

Before the shining searchlight eyes of neighboring Zhou Yingying, he bit the bullet, numbly ate his salad, and wallowed deeply in regret.

After having a salad and two bowls of bread for dinner, Fu Zheng armed himself with his best deadpan look and asked for the bill before the baffled eyes of all his regular waiters.

At a restaurant where the usual price for a meal was 2000RMB, he looked at his bill--

Wonderful. Two hundred. A zero was missing.

If he had known from the start that he would be reduced to this, he felt like he should have just listened to Ning Wan at the beginning and left early...

The most unbearable part was his cousin's clear gloating over his misfortune. Thanks to the circumstances, he had to be passive and could only give her a warning glare.

It was too bad that he had been abroad for so long that the fear of God he had originally instilled was gone, so much so that Zhou Yingying was actually unscrupulously broadcasting live to the group chat.

When Ning Wan left for a moment to take a phone call from her junior, Fu Zheng glanced at his phone and almost rose up to heaven on the spot.

"Oh my God!! This woman is too fierce! A werewolf!"

"Isn't our cousin pretty bad-tempered usually? Why is he just laying down in front of her?"

"I'm begging you to introduce this talent to us!"

"She's very beautiful, but if you listen closely, it seems like she doesn't know much about our cousin's situation. She seems to think he's very poor? Cousin isn't swindling her, is he? Fraud is a crime, you know!"

"Perhaps our cousin has fallen in love with role-playing? After all, stiff people like him are often kind of depressed. Having a strange hobby or two is pretty normal."

"You don't say! You figure our cousin is a secret M?! No one in our family ever abuses him, so he's never before discovered that part of himself. But now he's found his own S, and his soul has been set free!"

"Well then we'll have to give our cousin some love later! We'll work together to shame him, trample him, beat him."

……...

"Ahahahahahahaha! Cousin Fu Zheng is being scolded so miserably!!!"

"Horseradish!! Did you see his face when she said 'horseradish'?!!"

"Cousin cried, cousin was wounded, cousin gave up, cousin lost..."

"Do you think cousin Fu Zheng will ever be able to go back to this store again? I'm guessing not hahahahahahahaha let's all go there next time we have a family reunion! 'Review the old to learn the new', we can't let him forget the good memories of the past!"

……...

This group had been built by and for Fu Zheng's younger generation, and it was called the 'Rong City Eat, Drink and Play Group'. He had not been in it at first, but when he had returned to China, a random cousin had dragged him in. However, he had never participated in the group, so they had probably all forgotten that he was in it and were rampantly delighting in his misfortune.

As a result, when he entered he found that this group of brothers and sisters had spammed hundreds of comments roundly mocking him. They had even taken screenshots of the live broadcast and made them into memes.

Ho ho ho.

Fu Zheng sneered and typed a single line:

"Let me remind you all that I'm also in this group."

With that one sentence, the chat immediately fell silent. Fu Zheng smiled in satisfaction, and was just about to continue intimidating them when Zhou Yingying actually had the monstrous audacity to defy him--

"Not for long."

Just as that sentence was posted, but before he could react, he received a message. Fu Zheng looked down--

'You have been removed from the group chat by the group owner.'

Great. Just great. Excellent. Wonderful.

Fu Zheng felt like his life had truly reached its peak.