I Blundered into the Mist Last Year

Liu Fengshuang invited some people to dinner. She checked her phone balance, then shyly pulled back the menu she'd stretched out to hand over. Starting at the bottom and working her way up, she ordered one cold dish and three bowls of rice. She said she was dieting and asked for a glass of plain water.

The four of them sat around the plate of cucumber salad, and no one reached a chopstick toward the middle. Six little bamboo sticks poked around in the mound of rice. After a long while, they finished eating and all said they were full.

She quickly urged them, “Eat, eat.”

The girls she'd invited each took a token piece of cucumber with their chopsticks and put it in their bowls. They also cheerfully said, “We're eating, we're eating. The rice here is so delicious.”

When they finished, the girls said, “Auntie, go ahead. What did you want to talk to us about?”

Liu Fengshuang said, “I'm looking for someone. She's my daughter's girlfriend.”

The three of them wanted to spit their rice back out at her. Every one of them turned cucumber-green.

Liu Fengshuang took a fruit knife from her waist pouch and slapped it down in the middle of the table.

“Which of you is my daughter's girlfriend?”

Six eyes looked at one another. At last, a pair of eyes turned toward Liu Fengshuang.

“Auntie, all of us are.

“But the person you're looking for isn't among us.”

Warning: If anything in this story is a deal-breaker for you, please leave on your own.

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