As I smoked, my eyes never left my phone. The way she spoke to me made me feel like there was some kind of fate between us, because whenever we were both down on our luck, we'd always find this not-so-fresh number in our phone contacts, chat for a bit, and sometimes we'd just start yelling at each other…

Her straightforwardness made me feel that there was nothing I couldn't say to a stranger like her, so I replied, "I don't believe you're in a bar in Lijiang. You must be out of your mind again, just messing with me!"

"You wait and see."

A little while later, she sent me a multimedia message. Sure enough, it was a view bar in Lijiang. The photo she sent was the night view of the entire Lijiang Old Town, which I felt was even more beautiful than the Old Town of Dali.

I replied, "I believe you."

Are you going to tell me about your bad luck or not?

I stubbed out my cigarette and replied, "It's not really a bad thing. It depends on your mindset. If you have a good mindset, it can actually be a good thing."

"Don't tell me good things... I don't find it interesting."

"But I'm not in a good state of mind right now, so I don't think it's a good thing."

"You're such a slowpoke!..."

I lit another cigarette, stared blankly at the moonlit area of ​​Erhai Lake for a moment before replying, "Before coming to Dali, I had pretty high hopes, so with a few buddies and I, I started this guesthouse with very simple ideas... Before, I didn't believe in the saying 'the bigger the tree, the more the wind blows,' but we really got ripped off a couple of days ago. We were tricked by a local thug. I was detained by the police station for several days, and I almost dragged the guesthouse down with me. If it weren't for another friend helping out... the guesthouse would have been taken over by that thug at a low price."

"That sounds pretty thrilling!"

"Well, later the friend who saved me told me that another friend of his was also interested in the seaside inn and was willing to offer us a transfer price of 2 million..."

"You've just escaped one trap only to fall into another... Hahaha! Your friend isn't any better; he's eyeing your inn too."

"It's not exactly a scam, considering the transfer price was 2 million, while the previous thug only asked for 500,000."

"Oh, if it's 2 million transfers, how much will you get?"

"Around 600,000. Subtracting the 190,000 my friend gave me, I'll still have about 400,000 left."

"Not bad, that's impressive. Traveling around Dali like this is equivalent to earning seven or eight years' salary for others. No wonder you said it's not a bad thing."

"If it were you, would you stay at the inn or take the opportunity to leave?"

"If it were me, I would definitely choose to transfer and then go back to Shanghai."

Her answer surprised me, so I asked, "After transferring, there are other options, so why go back to Shanghai?"

"You're a man, you should get back up where you fell down... right?... Besides, I think you still have feelings for your ex-girlfriend, why don't you go back to Shanghai, do something good, and wait for her?"

I was bewildered for a while before replying, "There's no possibility between us."

"What, do you have a new love interest?"

"No."

"So you have no feelings for her?"

"It's been three years, how could these feelings just disappear like that... Don't laugh at me, buddy, but even now, when I think about it: the night we broke up, she came to me and we had a 'breakup sex' session, and I still feel a mix of emotions!"

"Have you no shame? Saying that to a woman like that!"

"The point of texting each other is to have an honest conversation with each other, right?"

"Then why don't you want to go back to Shanghai?"

“It’s really impossible between us. I think she has no feelings for me anymore… She’s a very shrewd woman. Going abroad to study was a better choice for her. She won’t stay single forever… I bet she has a new boyfriend now.”

"You know her that well?"

"After all, we've been together for so long."

"Hehe... You're saying that because you don't understand her, you don't understand women at all... I think her choice to leave you isn't necessarily because she doesn't love you anymore, but because she can't see any hope in you."

"so what?"

"So the 400,000 you've earned now is a kind of hope for her... You didn't cheat on her emotionally or wrong her, so what is unforgivable? What else can a woman want from a man? Isn't it just to give her a stable life where she doesn't lack material things? She doesn't necessarily have to be rich and powerful."

"Forget it, I haven't even decided whether to transfer the inn or not. Talking about Shanghai now feels a bit too far away."

"What, are you reluctant to give up this profitable inn? Are you afraid that you'll never have such an opportunity again?"

"No, it's just that I feel I've let down the woman who asked me to open a guesthouse in Dali."

I thought she would say something more to me, but then she inexplicably stopped replying to my messages. I didn't think much of it, because sometimes I felt the conversations were boring, and that's what I did to her too.

...

I don't know how others got through that night, but I was in a lot of pain and couldn't sleep well. So when I woke up the next day, I was completely out of it.

Of the group, only Taozi got up. After we had breakfast together, she asked me to accompany her for a walk along Erhai Lake. I could tell she had something on her mind.

Sure enough, when we reached the shore of Erhai Lake, she said to me, "Michael, I talked to Tie Nan about the transfer of the inn last night... We agreed to the transfer."

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