[Fan Hua]: Where are you? I’ll pick you up!

Hua Jin immediately stood up, turned off the lights in the store, and then locked up. When she saw that Tan Yuan hadn’t replied yet, she directly called her phone number, “Tang Yuan, give me the address.”

“Hua Hua…” Tan Yuan held her phone while she looked at herself in the mirror, looking haggard, before she managed to choke out a reply, “I’ll be fine. You don’t have to come, really.”

“‘Fine’ my ass,” Hua Jin immediately retorted, “We’ve been friends for a few years already, so don’t think I don’t know how you act up with that personality of yours. Just where you are and I’ll immediately come and pick you up.”

Hearing Hua Jin’s fierce and implacable tone, Tan Yuan’s anxious heart slightly calmed. She started to touch up her tears with makeup cake powder before telling Hua Jin her address.

“Yuan Yuan?” A man’s worried voice sounded outside. Tan Yuan then put her phone back into her bag and then walked out the bathroom.

The two sat themselves down on the dining table, but Tan Yuan only listlessly stirred a cup of coffee, not bothering to speak nor show any emotions.

After a long while of silence, the boyfriend couldn’t help but speak up first.

“I’m sorry, Yuan Yuan,” Her boyfriend’s face looked tired as well, “We’ve been in a relationship for almost four years already, but I realize that I shouldn’t have said those things to you. Sorry.”

Tan Yuan took a quick peek at him before turning her head away again, “Cao Yi, you telling me that isn’t what saddened me. It was your blatant disregard of all my efforts, even those of my parents’, for all these years. Do you understand?”

“I didn’t mean to come off like that,” Cao Yi explained, “You know I only said it for your own good, so why do you have to interpret it like that? Lacquerware is not only time-consuming and labor-intensive, it doesn’t even make much money. Do you really want to live this kind of life forever?”

“Did you know that there are fewer and fewer people in China who can make lacquerware? If I stop doing it too, who will be left to do it in the future?” Tan Yuan tightly gripped the coffee spoon in her head, “Cao Yi, this is also my dad’s lifelong craft. I don’t want to lose it.”

“What about me?” Cao Yi’s emotions were also in turmoil, “When we get married, we’ll have to live our own life. With Uncle Tan and Aunt Gao getting older and older, if they somehow get sick in the future, it’ll cost a lot of money to get them treated. I do respect your feelings, I do, but we can’t live off of feelings alone. Simply living requires money, not to mention treating diseases. Even if the craft of lacquerware wasn’t cut off in our time, what about the next generation’s or the next one after that? Sooner or later, it will eventually disappear into the flow of history.”

Tan Yuan smiled bitterly, “If I, a successor of the craft of lacquerware, can’t even will myself to continue to persevere in it, what’s more for other people? Cao Yi, do you still remember how we first met? By the way, you don’t have to worry about my parents’ retirement, as they aren’t that poor. At least, not yet.”

Cao Yi was stunned.

“Anyways, back then, when you saw the lacquerware I made for the school’s handicraft competition, you said that it was very rare for someone to be able to study traditional crafts. You even found it attractive and chased after me because of it. Once, you encouraged me, but now, you’re persuading me to let it all go.” Tan Yuan’s eyes had become red with the irony of the situation. When she found that her tears were about to flow once again, she had to close her eyes tightly many times to try to force the tears back inside, “In the nearly four years we’ve been together, was it you who changed, or was it me?”

“It was me, but everyone changes eventually. At that time, we were still students who hadn’t entered into the real world yet. We didn’t need to think about things like money or status…” Seeing Tan Yuan’s gaze on him, Cao Yi felt uncomfortable and turned away, “What’s more, unlike Hua Jin, you have parents and an education. Your future could be so much brighter than her, a country bumpkin that has never gone to university and has no other options in life than to rely on Aunt Gao’s support. Your continued association with her brings you no benefit, and in fact will only make you delude yourself into wanting to be like her…”

“Shut up!” Tan Yuan’s face showed that she was very pissed off, “Cao Yi, Hua Jin is my good friend!”

“It’s because you’re friends with her that I have to wake you up!” Cao Yi saw that his girlfriend has turned against him for an outsider, so he too lost his temper, “You’re a famous college graduate, but you continue to hang out with an uneducated village girl… Are you really planning to lower yourself to her level?!”

“I feel like it was being with you that lowered my standards,” Tan Yuan stared at Cao Yi as she stated this, in disbelief of his treatment of her good friend. Last year, when Cao Yi didn’t know what to give his former classmates during their class reunion, it was her and Hua Hua that rushed to make more than 20 hand-embroidered cardholders for him. Even during his mother’s birthday during the beginning of the year, it was Hua Jin that embroidered an exquisite shawl for her as a gift, so that she, the would-be daughter-in-law, could impress her would-be mother-in-law. It was also Hua Jin who usually picks up the slack at work so that she could be with him more often. Was Cao Yi thinking this while he thanked Hua Jin for all those times?

“You’re right. I really needed to be woken up,” Tan Yuan’s smile turned bitter, “Cao Yi, let’s… break up.”

“Just because I talked about Hua Jin, you’re breaking up with me?!” Cao Yi looked at Tan Yuan in disbelief, “Our several years of relationship is over because of another woman?! Tan Yuan, are you insane?!”

“Not insane. Just awake.” Tan Yuan’s expression turned determined as she put the coffee spoon down, “I’m sorry I can’t give you what you want. Just go.”

Cao Yi was so incredulous with Tan Yuan that he began to laugh. He then loudly clinked his coffee cup with her, which attracted the attention of the people around their table, “Tan Yuan, you’re so ruthless. Our years of relationship… and all the love I have for you… and at a whim, you decide to move on, where’s your heart?”

“I’m ruthless? You who looks down on my parents for the craft they chose to dedicate their entire life to? You who mocks my good friend?” Tan Yuan asked back, “Cao Yi, I like you, but I’m not going to live my life just for you. You want me to give up what I like, my friends, and everything else just for you? I can’t do that.”

“You……”

“You claim to love me so much, but why can’t you even try to understand my love for my profession or even respect my friends?” Tan Yuan stood up and prepared to leave. She didn’t even care that she was making a scene. “Stop trying to use the fact that you ‘love’ me just to hurt me. I can’t afford to receive such love anymore.”

“You can’t leave!” Cao Yi grabbed Tan Yuan’s wrist, “Tan Yuan, we’re not done talking!”

“What’s happening?” When Hua JIn approached the coffee shop, she saw a livid Cao Yi holding Tan Yuan’s wrist while everyone else in the shop was looking at them. Pandemonium was about to ensue.

She went forward and pulled Cao Yi’s hands away before placing Tan Yuan behind her, “Cao Yi, if you want to talk more, let’s go somewhere else. Do you really want to argue here and become a laughingstock?”

“I won’t let an outsider like you get involved in the matter between me and Yuan Yuan,” Cao Yi sneered, “Aunt Gao only accepted you as an apprentice, yet you took it so far as to consider yourself as Yuan Yuan’s sister?”

“Yeah, I’m thick-skinned and I just love to be nosy.” Hua Jin glanced at Cao Yi a few times to make sure that he didn’t have a lethal weapon on him that he could use to hurt people if he suddenly goes crazy, so she tried to reason with him, “In any case, even if you’re unsatisfied, you’re still a big man bullying my female friend. If that doesn’t allow me to meddle, then what will?! Did you really think that there is no one that’s got my Tang Yuan’s back?”

Cao Yi’s ears burned red as his fury soared. He didn’t expect Hua Jin to be so shameless! And when he saw that Tan Yuan and her was really holding hands, he became even more anxious and inflamed, “You’re just a village girl who can never get married! Have you become a psychopath who can’t differentiate the good intentions of other people?! Is that why you came to destroy our relationship?!”

“GET LOST!” Tan Yuan could bear it no longer as she picked up her unfinished coffee and splashed it across Cao Yi’s face, “Cao Yi, watch your words!”

Cao Yi calmed down a bit after being splashed on the face. He slowly wiped the coffee off and tried to calmly ask, “Tan Yuan, are you seriously breaking up with me?”

Tan Yuan didn’t even bother to reply to him and just continued to hold Hua Jin’s hands before whispering to her, “Hua Hua, don’t listen to his nonsense! No one says you’re a village girl.”

“Of course I won’t listen to any of his drivel. At least in terms of appearance, I’m not just any village girl, but a village beauty, at the very least!” Hua Jin didn’t know what had just happened between the two, but she just wanted to de-escalate the situation so she made a joke. “Besides, who cares about what a non-too-handsome man says?”

“Hua Jin, you don’t have to pretend in front of me. Didn’t you get close to Tan Yuan just because you wanted to learn Aunt Gao’s embroidery techniques?” Cao Yi sneered, “I have seen upstarts like you, and only a few are really as they seem. Tan Yuan, if you keep protecting her, one day, you’ll find that she’s sold you out just for more money.”

He still remembers that there was a time when he visited the store and saw Hua Jin put on an act just to earn a few dozen more dollars. Although she’s learned something as elegant as embroidering, she as a person remained extremely unrefined.

“I’m okay with that,” Tan Yuan’s heart has completely frozen over, “Cao Yi, just leave already. There’s nothing left to say, because the problem between the two of us isn’t rooted in other people. In the end, we’re just not compatible with each other. We have different points of view, and even if we try to force ourselves to be together, we’ll just be torturing each other. While we’re still young, I’m releasing you. I hope you find a partner that truly suits you.”

“If you’re not going to mention it, then I will,” Cao Yi continued to glare at Hua Jin, “Hua Jin, the reason Tan Yuan and I argued up to this point is at least 50% thanks to you…”

“Is this a wet market or is it a place to drink coffee?” Just as everyone in the care was enjoying this exciting live drama, several young men and women walked in and chimed in.

The man at the lead was wearing a white shirt and his hair was neatly groomed, and his dreamy eyes couldn’t hide his slight arrogance. With his long legs, he walked toward Hua Jin and the others unhurriedly. The diamond tie bar sparkled like the stars as it swayed with his gait, but it everything paled before his own dazzling appearance.

“Could you repeat that,” He ridiculed, as he raised his wrist to tidy up his cuffs, when suddenly he made a low kick to Cao Yi’s knee, causing him to fall.

“Who are you calling a ‘village girl’ again, hmm?”

After kicking Cao Yi, he turned to look at Hua Jin, his face still full of disdain, “How come you can speak so casually to me, but when you encountered this kind of garbage, you not only couldn’t beat him, you couldn’t even scold him properly?”

The Author has something to say: A small lesson from Pei Yan: Good children, don’t learn what I did!

A small lesson from Hua Jin: Regardless of gender, when encountering scumbugs, if you notice that they’ve become agitated or have even become aggressive, always try to fall back and try your best to placate them. Also, call the police if you manage to escape to give yourself a safety net. In life, your safety is the most important thing.