Chapter 12
Lin Qi took the menu and flipped through it carefully. Without hesitation or hesitation, she quickly selected her three most desired dishes: a pot of hearty pork belly and chicken, a serving of sweet barbecued pork buns, and a roasted pigeon with crispy skin and tender meat.
Chen Yan drank his tea quietly, waiting for her to make a decision. When she raised her head, he put down his teacup and looked at her intently.
"Have you chosen?" he asked.
She told him the three dishes she had chosen. He listened attentively, nodding occasionally with a smile of approval.
"Well, these are all good, and they are all the signature dishes of this store." He agreed with a smile.
He took the menu she handed him and added naturally, "Then you choose the main course, and I'll make soup and vegetables, okay?"
After getting her nod of agreement, he didn't look at the menu again, obviously he had already made up his mind.
He waved over the waiter and placed his order in fluent, clear local dialect. "The three dishes I ordered earlier, plus an order of preserved pork with preserved vegetables and a stir-fried seasonal vegetable dish. Two bowls of rice. Thank you."
After he placed his order, the waiter left. The whole process was neat and tidy, and she was given full respect and a sense of participation, which made her feel extremely comfortable.
He picked up the teapot again and refilled the empty cup in front of her before speaking, officially bringing the topic back to their tacit "suspense".
"Okay," he put down the teapot and leaned back in his chair very relaxedly, his eyes filled with complete concentration and expectation.
"Now, you can start explaining your three books."
The restaurant was very quiet and the sunlight outside the window was just right.
Lin Qi looked at his inquiring and serious eyes, smiled at first, then put away his joking thoughts and began to seriously explain his inner world to him.
"The first book I read was about auditing," she said calmly. "It's related to my major, so there's no need to explain it in detail. I read it to make myself smarter and more professional."
"The second one is 'Flowers for Algernon,'" she said, her voice lowering slightly, a hint of introspection in her voice. "It's to remind myself that being smarter doesn't guarantee happiness. Sometimes, if you pursue intelligence too much, you end up with more troubles. Just like Charlie in the book, when he gained genius wisdom and saw the truth about human nature, he lost far more than he gained."
"And the third book, 'The Surrender Experiment,'" she raised her eyes, a look of calmness that came from a lifetime of struggle. "This book conveys the idea that if you want to achieve true inner peace, you must abandon all emotions and obsessions. Don't dwell on intelligence or happiness, and just focus on what you should do in the present moment."
When she began to explain seriously, Chen Yan put down the teacup in his hand, leaned forward slightly, and listened very attentively.
Her words, like a clear thread, connected the three seemingly unrelated books. At the same time, they revealed to him a part of her true and contradictory inner world that she never easily showed to others.
She finished, but he didn't speak immediately.
The restaurant was quiet and the waiter had just brought out the first cold course, but he didn't seem to notice.
He just looked at her with deep eyes, as if he was thinking, or resonating.
After a long time, he slowly spoke in a low voice, as if he was helping her make the most accurate summary that she herself had not even realized.
"So," he said, "you want to strive to become better, but you are also afraid of the coldness at heights. In the end, you realize that true liberation may be surrendering to the present moment."
He repeated almost completely her inner struggle and search word by word.
He looked at her, and there was no more jokes and temptations in his eyes, only a very pure and level respect.
"Lin Qi," he called her full name solemnly for the first time.
"You think more deeply and work harder than many people."
The word "hard work" was like a precise needle that instantly pierced through the hard shell that Lin Qi had always wrapped in optimism and cheerfulness.
She nodded gently at first, and when she heard the last sentence, her eyes became slightly hot, and then she used a self-deprecating smile to cover up her vulnerability.
"This is probably," she said, "a side effect of my insight and sharpness."
Hearing her self-deprecating words, Chen Yan didn't laugh, but just looked at her quietly. There was no sympathy in his eyes, which would have seemed condescending. What he offered was a more precious, level-headed understanding.
Just then, the waiter brought the steaming hot pickled pork with preserved vegetables, and the delicious aroma of the soup instantly filled the air.
Chen Yan naturally picked up the public spoon, filled her with a small bowl of soup, and pushed it in front of her with steady movements.
"This isn't a side effect," he said, his voice deeper than before. "This is the price."
He put down the spoon and looked at her again, his eyes calm and determined.
“If you want to see more clearly than others, you are destined to feel more than others.”
“Both pain and joy.”
He did not continue with this somewhat heavy topic, but pointed with his chin at the bowl of steaming soup in front of her. His tone softened, as if to comfort her, as if to give her some space to breathe and digest.
"Drink the soup first," he said.
"Otherwise, it would be a waste of the delicious food."
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