"Comrade Jiang, what a coincidence, we meet again." Shen Xuefeng, dressed in a white shirt and black trousers with handmade leather shoes, looked at Jiang Ruyu with a gentle smile on his face, a rare piece of chocolate in his fair and slender hand.

Jiang Ruyu was wiping the table when she heard the sound. She looked up and saw Shen Xuefeng. Two red clouds gradually rose on her fair face.

"Comrade Shen, hello. Are you here to buy something? You can take this chocolate back with you; it's quite expensive." Even though she had a vague feeling of goodwill towards him, she knew that she couldn't accept something for nothing. Chocolate might not be considered anything special by Comrade Shen, but it was a valuable item in the eyes of ordinary people like them.

Shen Xuefeng's face showed disappointment, but he quickly smiled again: "Comrade Jiang, please weigh out a pound of orange-flavored gummy candies for me. My niece likes them."

"Okay, please wait a moment." Jiang Ruyu smiled and weighed out a pound of candy for him: "A whole pound, one dollar and fifty cents."

"Here you go, and here are the tickets." Shen Xuefeng took out the money and tickets and handed them to Jiang Ruyu. Their hands touched unintentionally. Jiang Ruyu didn't think much of it; it was a normal thing. But Shen Xuefeng's ears secretly turned red. He took the candy and left.

Jiang Ruyu looked at the fleeing people with a strange and bewildered expression. Was she really that scary? She rested her chin on her hand and leaned on the counter, sighing listlessly, "Could it be that the peach blossom I've waited eighteen years for is actually rotten? Sigh, what a pity."

Zhang Guisheng, who was sitting to the side, happened to hear this while drinking tea. He immediately spat out a mouthful of tea, put down his teacup, and coughed incessantly. Jiang Ruyu's wandering thoughts were instantly pulled back.

"Uncle Zhang, what's wrong? Did you choke? Oh dear, be careful, that was scary." Jiang Ruyu ran over to pat Master Zhang's back and muttered to herself.

Zhang Guisheng gave the girl a resentful look and pointed at her with his finger: "You little girl, you should watch your words, or you'll make a fool of yourself if someone hears you."

"Huh? What do you mean?" Jiang Ruyu was a little confused. Seeing Uncle Zhang's eyes, she suddenly remembered what she had just said and blushed a little. "Hehe, hehe, Uncle Zhang, well, excuse me, I need to go to the outhouse, could you hold my hand?"

Jiang Ruyu felt ashamed that she had accidentally whispered her thoughts aloud and that someone had overheard her, so she had no choice but to make a hasty escape to urinate.

Seeing Ruyu fleeing in disarray, Zhang Guisheng burst into unkind laughter: "Hahaha, this girl is really interesting."

Old Li, who was at the tobacco and liquor counter next to him, asked with a smile, "Old Zhang, what's making you so happy?"

"Haha, it's nothing. It's just that working with Xiao Jiang makes every day much more fun. I feel like I'm younger."

"That's right, young people are full of energy, while we're getting old."

In mid-August, Jiang Ruyu's counter welcomed foreign guests. She herself didn't feel anything special, but she was a little curious about the blond-haired, blue-eyed foreigners, and also, they were dressed really well.

The white shirt clung tightly to her figure, paired with a well-fitting plaid pencil skirt that reached past her knees, apricot-colored high heels, a tall figure, deep-set eyes, a high nose bridge, a sharply defined face, and an elegant hairstyle. This foreign woman possessed an aura she had never seen before, and she couldn't help but stare at her.

"What's on my face?" The foreign guest, a woman in her thirties, asked Jiang Ruyu with a smile.

Surprisingly, Jiang Ruyu, whose grades were average at school, understood the sentence. She blinked and stammered, "No, you are so elegant, you're so beautiful!"

After Jiang Ruyu finished saying that the foreign guest was beautiful, what she didn't see was that the leaders behind her and the colleagues around her were looking at her with shocked eyes. Zhang Guisheng also didn't expect that this girl had this ability. This is a good thing, even though he couldn't understand what they were saying.

“My name is Anne, thank you for your praise. You’re also very beautiful!” Anne’s eyes crinkled with laughter as she listened to the girl in front of her speaking with a broken accent. She took off her lace gloves and extended them to Jiang Ruyu.

After much effort, Jiang Ruyu finally understood what the foreign guest was saying. She was praising her own beauty. Jiang Ruyu immediately smiled, revealing her large teeth. Looking at the small, white hand in front of her, she quickly wiped her own hand on her clothes and grasped it, saying, "My name is Jiang Ruyu. Nice to meet you, Anne Ms."

With this incident, Jiang Ruyu was naturally seconded by her superiors to accompany the foreign guest Annie to the department store, shopping and browsing. She had been working in the department store for three months and had become familiar with all her colleagues, if not all of them. Everyone was shocked and curious to see her speaking a foreign language while accompanying the foreign guest.

Jiang Ruyu felt like she had lost most of her brain cells in just one morning. Several times she almost couldn't keep up with Annie's words because her vocabulary was pitifully small. Fortunately, a translator from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was handing her cheat sheets from behind; otherwise, she would probably have just been awkwardly laughing with her four big front teeth showing.

Fortunately, this unexpected mission can be considered a successful conclusion. Judging from the large amount of foreign exchange certificates Annie spent at their department store, she didn't cause any trouble. Also, when seeing Annie off at the door, Annie gave her a business card and a particularly beautiful brooch from her brooch.

“Ruyu.” Annie said “Ruyu” in slightly accented Mandarin, and her smile was gentle and beautiful: “I am very happy today. Looking forward to your letter.”

Jiang Ruyu looked at this gentle lady, somewhat surprised that she would be willing to establish a long-term friendship with her. She smiled broadly and said, "Annie, I will, we will meet again."

Anne smiled as she looked at her friend whom she had only known for half a day. She went up and hugged her, repeating what she had just said: "We will meet again, Ruyu."

Jiang Ruyu returned to the counter, poured herself a cup of water, and drank it all in one gulp. She had just put the cup down when Uncle Zhang startled her; the old man was circling around her.

"What are you doing, Uncle Zhang? Do I have any gold on me?"

Zhang Guisheng rolled his eyes at the girl: "Hmph, this is the first time I've misjudged you. I thought you were a clever and quirky girl with a bit of intelligence, but I never expected you could speak a foreign language."

Jiang Ruyu chuckled and said, "Before the Cultural Revolution, we had a teacher in junior high school who had studied abroad. I was curious about what foreign countries were like, so I kept pestering her to tell us. To whet our appetites, she told us to study English hard, and that's how I learned a little. I used to speak better than this, but after a few years, I've almost forgotten everything I learned."