Chapter 4 – Wasabi Makes People Twisted Part 1
There was no one else that would be mistaken as someone begging for a loan.
Taking out a loan was what small salesmen would do. They would chase after people buttocks to stuff their business cards in them. Then, they wanted the people to contact them.
Didn’t she look like a beautiful and graceful high level white collar worker?
Zu Jin suddenly felt a chill in her heart when she thought about it.
She gave Yan Lin a very bad first impression last night. This proved that Yan Lin was completely not her type.
If you met someone of the opposite sex that you liked, would you want to chase after them to a remote place far from the city with inconvenient transportation?
But she and Xu Tianying had spoken badly about him at the dinner party, and he heard everything…
She could make out a faint chatting sound from the guests around them. The waiter was smiling and walking towards them with the food.
For a few seconds, Zu Jin gazed at the man’s long and bony hands, but her mind already turned 180 degrees.
She, Zu Jin, could afford to let him go! He’s just a man!
There was no need for her to be entangled with him since he didn’t like her.
There was also nothing to lose, so she didn’t have to trouble herself with it anymore.
The waiter filled the entire tiny square table with food. Zu Jin didn’t like Japanese food in the first place, so now she didn’t want to pretend any more.
She picked up her chopsticks and used her other hand to make a gesture of invitation to eat.
Without waiting for Yan Lin to respond, she picked up a slice of sashimi, dipped it in soy sauce and wasabi, and stuffed it in her mouth without caring about how she didn’t like Japanese food.
The sashimi was delicious, but there was always that fishy taste that was hard to ignore.
Even the soy sauce could not cover up that taste. Zu Jin eyebrows furrowed immediately.
After chewing a few times, she painfully swallowed it down.
Yan Lin looked at her in astonishment. Then, he silently pushed a plate of tempura in front of her.
“If you don’t like tea, then eat this to cover up the taste.”
He said it softly.
But the more Zu Jin heard his gentle tone, the more distressed she felt.
That’s why no matter how many accomplishments people have or how much older they got, they would still be naive.
When you were a child, you would cry if you did not get the toys that you liked. And if you were 30 years old and could not get the person you liked, it might…
It might be even scarier.
Zu Jin sighed secretly. She could barely suppress her low spirits.
She listened to his advice and picked up a piece of tempura. She ate it and then squeezed out a smile. “It tastes good.”
Yan Lin nodded hesitantly. He seemed to be about the same age as her, but he was born to be someone above others and had an excellent temperament. Also, he had a highly respected identity on the outside.
But he was sitting across from her at this moment. Somehow, she didn’t know why, but she felt that this man’s passively appeared to have a kind of temperament like an obedient young male servant.
He was really innocent and lovely! But also provocative and pitiful!
Zu Jin crazily complained in her heart that such a high-quality man would be captured by some other lucky woman in the future.
She smiled as gently as she could and asked, “What did you want to say?”
“I just said the wrong thing.” Yan Lin put down his chopsticks and cautiously looked at her.
Zu Jin froze for a moment, and then raised her head to look at him.“What did you say wrong?”
Yan Lin was left speechless by her and smiled helplessly. “I also don’t like Japanese food. I’ll treat you next time as an apology. What do you like to eat?”
A few sentences unexpectedly reignited Zu Jin’s hope.
It seemed like Yan Lin was not a wooden pimple1 without oil or salt2!
Zu Jin didn’t like acting coy, so she directly replied, “As long as it’s not Japanese food, I can eat anything else. What about you?”
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Yan Lin said, “I’m the same as you. Then next time, I’ll invite you to eat Ding Xing Fang Hot Pot3 in a private room.”
“Yes.”
Zu Jin’s mind became alive again at the sight of another opportunity.
“I would like to ask you a personal question. May I?”
Yan Lin looked up at her and nodded.
“You just said that you thought I was a loan shark last night. Is it because you don’t like career women very much?”
The air froze for a second.
Yan Lin asked seriously, “Is there a relationship between those things?”
Zu Jin blinked and pursed her lips. “There’s not much of a relationship. I’m just asking.”
Yan Lin took a sip of tea. “There is no dislike.”
“Oh.”
Zu Jin’s mind went blank. She didn’t know whether her chopsticks were grabbing air or something else, so she stuffed it into her mouth mechanically.
As a result, eating without caring about what it was came to an end…
She abruptly put her chopsticks down and pinched the bridge of her nose. Her head dropped in pain and she bursted into tears.
She would never eat Japanese food again!
She hated wasabi!
Afterwards, the two chatted about a lot. Despite everything they talked about, the memories of these conversations became a little fuzzy to her as soon as they walked out of the Japanese restaurant.
But the content of their conversations were generally about everyday life and did not touch sensitive business topics.
Zu Jin walked back to the corporation while wondering why her memory suddenly deteriorated and how she regretted eating wasabi carelessly. She ended up being in such a state of distress in front of Yan Lin.
Fortunately, she was sure that Yan Lin did not mean to reject her completely.
And when they were chatting, she became even more secretly delighted with Yan Lin’s manners and speech, the two people’s views on some things, as well as a mutual understanding that there was no generational gap between them.
The most important thing was that Yan Lin did not really resent a strong and ambitious woman.
This point was really significant because Zu Jin had met too many male chauvinist men. These men were incompetent and were extremely fond of denying successful women of their worth and stigmatizing them.
It was obvious that their own abilities were average, but they had strong self-confidence to be able to say that the greatest value of a woman was playing the traditional role of a wife by doing things like cooking food or taking care of the children.
It was as if successful women were their enemies in a previous life.
Footnotes
木头疙瘩 (mùtou gēda) – Inflexible and slow to respond
油盐不进 (yóuyánbùjìn) – stubborn
Not sure if the author made a typo here. Raws use 鼎幸坊, but I couldn’t find anything on it so I used 鼎兴坊 instead. Ding Xing Fang seems to be a hot pot place in Henan, China.
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