After leaving the hospital with Ye Zhi, we walked side by side on the bustling street. Although we had been in Dali for a while, we were not very familiar with Xiaguan because we rarely visited this area before.

I asked Ye Zhi, "Are you familiar with this area?"

"Not familiar with it."

"Then how do we find a place to eat?"

Ye Zhi looked around and then replied, "Let's just pick any shop on the street."

"Since this is the first time I'm formally inviting you to a meal, let's not be too casual. Let me ask Bai Lu."

As I spoke, I took my phone out of my pocket, only to find that they were already chatting wildly in the guesthouse's WeChat group. The gist of it was that they were marveling at how well the guesthouse was doing; despite it being only its first day of opening, it was already fully booked, and Yang Sisi had started turning down bookings since 5 PM. Everyone was wishing they had 20 rooms. However, the bar's business was pretty much as I had predicted; we only made a few orders from our own guests, amounting to only a few hundred yuan.

I asked in the group chat, "Do you know any restaurants in Xiaguan that serve good food?"

Are you inviting us to dinner?

"I'll treat you all another day, my friends."

"How come we didn't know you had friends in Dali besides us?"

"As for Ye Zhi, didn't you see that he drove Ye Zhi's car back to the inn today? He's definitely going to use the car loan as an excuse to invite her to dinner again. To put it bluntly, he's going to arrange a date with her."

They kept talking back and forth, which gave me a bit of a headache. I simply put my phone back in my pocket, out of sight, out of mind. I said to Ye Zhi, "Those guys are all bad friends, none of them can talk to me properly. Let's not bother looking for them. Or, let's start counting from the right and count to the tenth restaurant. That's where we'll eat."

"It seems quite interesting."

"However, let's make it clear beforehand that once the rules are set, they must be followed. You can't cheat just because you don't like the food."

"I'm afraid you'll regret spending the money later... I think you're pretty stingy."

I glanced at Ye Zhi, feeling a little embarrassed. The reason for the embarrassment was that she had hit the nail on the head. If I weren't stingy, would I have argued with her for so long over a few hundred yuan worth of fireworks?

I straightened my back instinctively before replying to Ye Zhi, "Don't worry, I'm a very contract-conscious person. Even if we choose a big hotel that serves shark fin and sea cucumber, I'll still pay the bill."

"You said it yourself."

...

I walked along the long street with Ye Zhi. There were hardware stores, appliance stores, and barbershops on the street, but very few restaurants. So even when we were almost at the end of the street, we still hadn't counted ten.

So we walked to another street, but it was a completely different scene. It was an extremely bustling commercial street, seemingly housing the most upscale hotels in the entire city. Just standing at a distance, we were already "forced" to look directly at it by the dazzling neon lights.

Ye Zhi turned and smiled at me, seemingly to remind me to be on my own. But it also revealed a cute side of her, so I didn't feel so bad about those restaurants that looked like they were built with gold and diamonds.

I really wish we could sit in a hotel with music and a fountain, have a nice meal, chat about everyday things, and wash away all our fatigue on a quiet evening like this.

But when a gust of wind blew by, I thought of another woman. We had been together for three years, and I had also struggled with the city of Shanghai for three years. But in all that time, I don’t think I’ve ever had such a good mindset as I did right now, taking her to a high-end restaurant and having a nice meal.

I always have endless overtime work, and when I finally have a free moment, all I want to do is bury my head in sleep, and then I repeatedly neglect her in a dusty corner...

She has every reason to be disappointed in me.

I couldn't help but wonder: if I had the ability to foresee the future and told her that I would be coming to Dali in a few months, and that I would have a very profitable inn, and that I would have learned to enjoy life, met more people, and had plenty of time to date... would she come with me?

I turned my head and looked at Ye Zhi beside me... Her appearance and the image of Lu Jia in my mind gradually overlapped and then separated at the edge of the light... Ye Zhi beside me was undoubtedly more beautiful and had more temperament, but she was a dream, not like real life... So she stood beside me in a dreamlike way, but I thought of Lu Jia more realistically.

My feelings are a bit complicated... for no reason!

Perhaps it was just a sudden gust of wind that brought it to mind, and people are sometimes that simple... they might think of someone unexpectedly, and then forget about them just as easily.

...

After walking another hundred meters, we stopped in front of a large hotel called "Erhai Moon," which was the tenth restaurant we were going to visit. I was ready to go in and eat, but Ye Zhi's eyes were drawn to a rice noodle stall across the street.

She raised her arm, making a measuring gesture, then turned to look at the "Erhai Moon" Hotel behind her and asked me, "Which one is the tenth, the rice noodle stall across the street or this hotel?"

"The ones across the street don't count, do they?"

"The street across the street is also on this street."

"You're saying this because you already have the answer in your heart."

As I spoke, I glanced at the rice noodle stall again. The owner was an old man, and he had no customers, so he huddled behind the stove. Although Dali is spring-like all year round, the early winter nights are still quite cold. Compared to the "Erhai Moon" behind me, what I saw was the hardship of a person from the lower class. I felt that he really needed us to eat a couple of bowls of rice noodles at his stall.

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