Pu Yuanhui was only going to the bank to check if the debt had been paid into his account. He inserted the card into the ATM machine, recollected the six-digital code and subconsciously looked around.

A girl was looking at him. Isn’t it because of the cerulean T-shirt he was wearing today that made him look all the more handsome? Or because his new cut hair was too short? Perhaps that’s what would happen to a personable man like him, attracting the attention of some girls even when he went to the bank.

Taking a second glance, he recalled that was the very girl fighting against several men the other night.The stubbornness she showed made him feel an inexplicable heartache for her. She was too young to suffer from such bitterness of bodily harm and it was a relief to see her well enough sitting in the bank today, with a cup of coffee. Her simple black and white plaid dress just covered her knees and she had a scar on the calf, but she seemed not to care about it. She smiled politely to him, and Pu Yuanhui spontaneously nodded at her in return.

The debt of the usury had been paid. And the family didn’t have to be harassed by his men from now on. In fact, the father of the boy could perfectly afford it but he was reluctant to pay and he tried to talk some righteous VIPs into interceding with him. Yet rules are just the rules. It served the boy right for bing addicted to gambling. He lost more than one hundred thousand yuan in one night. He really didn’t take his dad’s money as money and blew it.

If you went to the bank to check your credit card to find a sum of money that belonged to you had been transferred to your account, you would feel very happy, wouldn’t you?

“May I treat you to coffee, in another place?” Pu Yuanhui went up to Jiang Youyou.

Jiang Youyou felt her heart pounding. It turned out that her last prayer was heard by gods. She had smile on her face, but what she said was against what was in her mind, “Please don’t go to any bother. The coffee is really good here.”

“I could wait for you.” Pu Yuanhui looked at the stack of forms and knew she was applying for a bank card. She aroused his curiosity for a moment. Once his pampered wife at home tried to cook in the kitchen occasionally and cut a little slice of her tender skin on the index finger by a kitchen knife, she screamed as miserably as a pig being killed when her blood flew to the chopping board. She threw the knife to the waste bin and covered her finger ordering him to drive her to the hospital. He didn’t have his dinner but had to send her to dress the wound in the hospital. Finally they had to eat out. On the way home they went to a housekeeping company to hire a part-time domestic helper, who cooked unpalatable dishes. For days on end his wife had him bathe her, giving an excuse that she could not get her hand wet (this Pu Yuanhui was delighted to do of course). The matter finally ended in this way. And Pu Yunahui could still remember when they got married for just one week, his wife Yu Lizhi invited his parents to dinner at home. Many dishes were in fact bought in advance from outside restaurant and stored in the fridge and reheated before dinner. His parents raved these dishes and praised that he had found the right wife. However the fact was that she only prepared for the after-dinner salad.

Jiang Youyou saw him staring blankly at the happiness tree in one corner of the bank. She wondered if the man liked plants very mush. She waved to him with her card and said, “I’m ready.”

The Amiga club was just opposite the bank across the road. They didn’t have to drive to the club, instead, they just crossed over directly.

The sun was big at noon. When walking through the traffic, Jiang Youyou glanced at the man out of the corner of her eye, who stared airily at the restaurant in front of him.

They found a corner by the window and sat down. It took Jiang Youyou more than an hour by bus to get to the China Merchants Bank just because she was told she could have coffee here, but it was instant coffee. Coffee was degreasing. So when Jiang Youyou smelt the flavor of the steak, she heard her stomach cooing in no time.

“Would you like a lover’s package? Today’s steak is great!” The waitress dressed like the maid you could see in a movie and her voice was as sweet as a pudding, trembling with fragrance.

Steak with yellowish pasta stained by bloody red tomato sauce looked rather like a pile of dead roundworms pulled out by a hemorrhoids patient—at least you would take it as this if you were in a bad mood. Nut Jiang Youyou felt very good today. It was the happiest day since she came to Shenzhen.

When she was having the meal, Jiang Youyou felt she was interviewed at the talk show Yong Le Hui. She had to answer several questions each time she had some food.

Pu Yuanhui got a general idea of her experiences, from how she was abandoned at the welfare house to how she was adopted and why she ran away from the adoptive family back to the welfare house; then how she came to this city with a young but wounded heart, only to find the sorrow here. How she was brought to the grotto of the pyramid selling by one of her fellow girls, and how she was robbed after she quit her temporary job as a hospital carer. And she was living alone in a rented house and was going to take her time for a future plan.

Jian Youyou skipped the plots of being a medical guineapig and being gang-raped and how An Hua was murdered and had her body thrown in the street. Such plots were not sweet and tender at all, instead, they were cruel and bloody.

“What about you? Tell me your story.” Jiang Youyou burped loudly and smiled. To tell the truth, the meal was really very rich. The steak was tender with blood.

“I have little to say. I collect debt for some clients sometimes.” He twitched his mouth. “All I do can be described in one sentence.”

“Well, forget my words if you don’t want to tell me anything. I want to say thanks to you for what you did for me last time. Or how I could not take back my money. By the way, you don’t look like a gangster of the underworld. Instead, you look like a professor in a college. When I was a college student, one of my teacher resembled you a bit.”

“Ho ho, and another thing, are you in want of money? A girl should be more cautious when making a living away from home alone. Do you have any plans for the future?”

“No, I’ve no idea. Maybe I’ll try to find a job, make some money and then go back home to marry someone for the rest of my life.” Jiang Youyou gazed out of the window, as if the better life she expected were just outside the thick window glass.

Pu Yuanhui’s phone began to ring. It was his wife Yu Lizhi, who had just had a hair removal operation in the beauty salon and asked him to pick her up home.

Hanging up the phone, Pu Yuanhui felt a bit embarrassed. While paying the bill, he asked, “Shall I drive you home in passing?”

Jiang Youyou shook her head. “Thanks. But out of your way. I live in the suburbs. Thank you for inviting me to lunch. Can you tell me your name?”

Pu Yuanhui handed her his card and said, “My name is Pu Yuanhui. I’m in the regular business of selling electrical appliances. If you need my help in Shenzhen, please call me.”

Jiang Youyou took the card and put it in her purse, then she take a piece of paper on the table to write down her own phone number and said, “I’m Jiang Youyou. Well, is it your wife who called you just now? Please hasten to go in case you are in trouble when she sees us two together and misunderstands.”

Pu Yuanhui laughed, watching her bus disappear from the view. Jiang Youyou, what a name of cereal suitable in the kitchen.

When she watched TV program in the evening in her room to see the rumored seventh princess laughing, crying and making a fuss for the men, Pu Yuanhui was the only one in Jiang Youyou’s mind. What a coincidence to meet him in the bank. Would he phone me? Or maybe he lost my phone number? Or he was very busy? Or the paper with her phone number was seen by his wife?

She had to go to the employment market tomorrow. She had better go to bed earlier. Jiang Youyou sighed when turned off the TV. She didn’t notice the subtle changes in her body.