Chapter 65
It was guilt that was at play.
The next day, Guan Nan appeared at the hospital again, trying to comfort herself.
But after going around the room, she still didn't see that familiar figure again. Leaning against the cold white wall, she slowly exhaled, feeling more and more that she had overstepped her bounds.
Jiang Li had food poisoning and his girlfriend didn't even come; she rushed to the hospital instead. That was really inappropriate.
Thankfully, Jiang Li wasn't there; thankfully, it was a wasted trip. After reason finally prevailed over emotion, I still couldn't stop feeling sad, disappointed, and defeated.
In a daze, just as she sighed, she heard a voice.
"Guan Nan?" the voice called out to her cautiously.
Guan Nan looked up and saw a person standing an arm's length away. The face was familiar yet not quite, a mix of familiarity and unfamiliarity. Since the other person had unmistakably called her name, she gave a dry laugh.
The man walked over with a smile and struck up a conversation as if they knew each other well: "It really is you! I was wondering why you looked a bit like me."
"Hmm." Guan Nan didn't recognize the person and didn't know how the other person recognized her, so she spoke in a formal manner, "Why are you at the hospital?"
"You've come to see a doctor?" the man said with a smile.
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Seeing her embarrassed expression, the man turned around and raised his hand as he spoke, "If you're accompanying someone to see a doctor, this way."
Fuling is neither too big nor too small, and on this trip back, I ran into all the familiar faces.
Guan Nan listened to Guo Yuhang telling interesting stories, while Luo Haoyu, a patient sitting next to her, rarely spoke, occasionally offering a few perfunctory words.
"Do you still keep in touch with Jiang Li?" Guo Yuhang asked. "That young master is quite remarkable. I heard he formed a band in college. While we were still struggling with internships, he was already performing at music festivals all over the country, and it seems like they haven't disbanded yet."
After listening to him for a while, Guan Nan smiled and shook her head: "We haven't been in contact."
“I thought you two had a pretty good relationship in high school, and I thought you’d still kept in touch,” Guo Yuhang said, not paying much attention. “Yeah, that young master has his own circle of friends, and he’s doing really well. He basically doesn’t hang out with us. He opened a studio back in Fuling, right near the Bell Tower. It’s called something like ‘Insisting on Doing Art.’ Last time we went there for drinks, we thought it was a bar, but it turned out to be a small performance venue. What a blunder!”
Guo Yuhang sighed, "Now that I'm in Fuling, I basically won't be able to get together with my college classmates. I'm just hoping to hang out with my high school classmates. Hey, let's go visit Young Master Jiang sometime. It would be good for old classmates to get together."
Guan Nan nodded perfunctorily, "Maybe there will be a chance."
As they chatted, the topic turned to work, and they began sharing their work experiences.
Because Guo Yuhang was there, the conversation never stopped from the beginning, until he received a phone call and had to part ways. Then he said, "Let's exchange contact information so it'll be easier to get together in the future."
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Perhaps influenced by those words, I unknowingly ended up at the coffee shop.
She hesitated at the door for a long time before finally mustering the courage to go in. But before she could even step halfway across the threshold, the busy cleaning lady stopped her: "Hey, young lady, private places are not open to visitors."
So, with one foot dangling in mid-air, Guan Nan awkwardly said, "I...I'm here to return the money."
"Give me back my money? You've come to the wrong place, young lady," the cleaning lady said, taking out a wooden plaque and hanging it on the door while muttering to herself, "Oh dear, who took the sign down again? The boss will be unhappy when he gets back."
Guan Nan watched as she hung up the wooden plaque, on which were prominently written the words:
—Private area, no tourists allowed.
She carefully examined the large characters again and again, then recalled the scene inside, the "Welcome" that Qi Qi had stumbled over that day, and the parrot's "Get Rich".
It wasn't until now that she gradually realized that the abnormality she felt that day wasn't abnormal at all, but rather her "trespassing".
But the wine that day, the words that day, that day...
Just then, someone inside happened to be teaching the cleaning lady, and the cleaning lady reminded her of her absent-mindedness once again.
Guan Nan snapped out of her daze and forced a smile. "I'm sorry, I came to the wrong place. I'm sorry to bother you."
As soon as she finished speaking, the old door creaked shut the instant she turned away, the plaque exuding a detached indifference yet politeness, just like the person she was talking about.
When Guan Nan took out her phone, she touched the wad of cash in her pocket, glanced at it, and couldn't help but laugh at herself.
In an instant, I felt like a clown.
“Hey, this auntie,” Lin Rui said to Jiang Li as soon as he saw the cleaning lady close the door before he even reached it, “Look how scary you are! People are so scared that they close the door as soon as they see you.”
"..." Jiang Li said expressionlessly, "This is my fucking shop."
Lin Rui said "Oh," and took down the wooden plaque from the door. "Why is it up again? Didn't I say we wouldn't hang it up for now?"
"My older sister said she'd come in here every day even if she didn't hang anything." Qi Qi walked out and bumped into the two people who were coming in, and casually added, "She really treats this place like a tourist attraction."
Lin Rui: "Isn't this a living tourist attraction? It's free to enter, so let people come and see it."
Upon hearing this, Jiang Li gave him a cold look.
Seeing this, Lin Rui touched his nose, trying to calmly change the subject. Suddenly, he remembered the familiar figure at the door when he came back and couldn't help but ask, "Why did that person at the door look so familiar?"
"Oh," Qiqi said, "I heard from the cleaning lady that they came to return the money, but they came to the wrong place."
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Qi Qi was stunned: "Give me... Holy crap, give me back my money?!"
"You're dead." Upon hearing this, the figure instantly made them realize who it was. Lin Rui crossed his arms, a gloating expression on his face. "Qi Qi, you're dead."
"Damn it, I didn't know that either..."
As Qi Qi said this, she couldn't help but glance nervously at Jiang Li's expression.
But Jiang Li remained expressionless, showing no sign of emotional fluctuation.
But those eyes made people uneasy.
The intimidation was tinged with annoyance.
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After Jiang Li went inside, Qi Qi dared to complain to Lin Rui in a low voice: "I spent all night working on the music last night, and I haven't had time to clean up all the empty bottles on the floor. When my older sister told me that someone was coming to pay back the money, my mind was completely blank. How could I have thought of that?"
"Can't you even come out and take a look?" Lin Rui mocked him. "You can't even walk a few steps without breaking your leg?"
"If I had known it was his ex-girlfriend, I would have crawled out of there, okay? I didn't know, so why are you making sarcastic remarks to me?" Qi Qi was furious and embarrassed. She grabbed him and gave him a good shove. After shoving him, she still wasn't satisfied. "Well, why couldn't I have asked a few more questions?"
Lin Rui sneered: "Go say that to Jiang Li."
"Do I dare?" Qi Qi retorted.
Thinking about how Jiang Li had dinner with them last night and was originally planning to go back to the coffee shop to stay all day, but then he heard Hei Zi's phone call and drugged himself without saying a word, so Jiang Siyao and her husband had to take him to the hospital overnight.
The next day, things took a turn for the worse. After finally putting Sister Wen at ease, she went back to the mountain hospital for a quick look around, and then rushed back here in a panic. It was like she didn't care about her life.
So Lin Rui added a word of advice to Qi Qi, "Next time, tell that auntie that as long as this person comes, the coffee shop is open 24 hours a day, instead of just having an open day every two or three months. Otherwise, you'll have to deal with the consequences if it happens again."
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For a week, the videos she posted received a great response. While Guan Nan was accompanying Lulu to film other outdoor videos, she received a repost link from Chen Fei.
After Lulu finished filming the video, she went to remove her makeup. Guan Nan, standing there bored, clicked on the link and discovered that the video had gone viral. The video had received a whopping 5.29 million likes and was still going strong.
The account "Senior Sister Lulu" gained 168,000 followers solely from this video.
With two years of experience working on the front lines, personally creating ideas, and supervising the process, Guan Nan could conceive of the entire production line for this account in the blink of an eye after seeing the numbers.
“I’m done playing,” Guan Nan said to Lulu after she came out with her makeup off. She calmly explained that the video had gone viral. “From now on, this will be your new account and new persona. You can keep the old account so that everyone can see your attitude towards life.”
Lulu was still immersed in the joy and disbelief that the video had gone viral: "Huh?"
“From now on, this account will be used exclusively for sharing educational videos. You can’t post videos about cross-dressing, mukbang, or entertainment. I will help you find resources to maintain your persona and get you on suitable shows and videos. For now, to keep the account’s content vertical, we’ll continue to maintain an update frequency of once or twice a week, or we can find influencers from the same school and field for a dream collaboration.” Guan Nan said seriously, “The clothing will be fixed at a preppy style.”
"I," Lulu finished speaking, her expression not very good, "but, my grades aren't good, and the school..."
Guan Nan said seriously, "You underestimate Fuling University. It's the university that so many students dream of attending. Don't let the opinions of some people around you influence you. The behavior and opinions of a minority cannot represent the masses. I remember I said these things to you before."
Upon hearing this, Lulu pursed her lips, recalling those words from that night, her brow furrowed with worry.
However, Guan Nan had no intention of saying anything more about it. She had said what she needed to say and taught what she needed to teach. If Lulu did not improve and could not figure out the right balance, then she would have to replace her.
"I...I can..." Lulu swallowed, not daring to look Guan Nan in the eye. "Can I think about it some more?"
Guan Nan put away her phone and picked up her outdoor gear bag: "Okay."
"But the deadline is Saturday. You need to update a new video on Sunday, featuring your graduation certificate, degree certificate, national scholarship, and high school exam papers and grades to encourage all the younger students who are preparing for high school."
"This video is positioned as inspirational."
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