Chapter 7
One week.
Li Mo camped out at Hidden Mountain Cafe for a full week.
He came every day at ten in the morning and left at five in the afternoon. He didn’t dare order lemon water again; it was too expensive, so he switched to plain water.
He never did run into Liu Ruyan. Her assistant, though, came by every day with the same three items: an Americano, a latte, and tiramisu.
After a week, he had figured out a few things.
Starsea Group employees took lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., and this cafe was busiest between 11:40 and noon.
Liu Ruyan’s assistant came once or twice a day, always once in the morning around 11:40, and sometimes again in the afternoon.
He didn’t know the assistant’s name, but the face was familiar now: short hair, a gray skirt suit, walking fast and talking even faster.
The owner of the cafe was a man in his fifties with white-streaked hair who wore an apron and made the coffee himself.
Whenever the assistant came, he always made a point of saying a few extra words, like, “Is President Liu busy today?” or “Were you satisfied with the last batch of beans?” His tone was very familiar.
That meant Liu Ruyan was a regular here, not someone who only came once in a while. She’d been a long-term customer.
Li Mo wrote all of it down in his memo app.
Looking back now, he only wanted to laugh at how stupid he’d been.
She was the chairwoman, with an assistant running errands for her. There was no need for her to come downstairs herself.
The chance encounter route simply did not work in a coffee shop.
His bank balance had fallen below two thousand, and nothing had happened.
He still hadn’t even seen the shadow of Liu Ruyan.
“This can’t keep dragging on like this.”
He threw his phone onto the bed and flopped back, staring at the ceiling.
The water stain shaped like a question mark up there seemed a little bigger than last week.
“Wrong method.”
He stared at the stain and muttered to himself, “If I just squat downstairs at her company, even if I wait a hundred days, she still won’t drop out of the sky.”
He rolled over and his fingers found the business card under the pillow.
Liu Ruyan. The corners were curled now, soaked through by sweat more than once, and the writing had blurred a little.
“Treat me to coffee some other day.”
Those were her own words.
Li Mo stared at the phone number on the card and swallowed.
“Or maybe... I just call?”
No. Too abrupt.
What would he even say? Hi, I’m the guy who bumped your car last week. I want to buy you coffee?
Anyone who got a call like that would think it was a scam.
Text her instead?
“That sounds even more like a scam.”
He pressed the card against his chest and closed his eyes, thinking for a long time.
Then he suddenly sat up.
“No, that’s not it. I was thinking about this the wrong way.”
He didn’t need to get her to come out. He just needed her to see him.
He only needed to make her remember his face.
Turn himself from “some stranger who hit her car” into “that vaguely familiar guy.”
How could he make her see him?
She didn’t come downstairs to buy coffee, and she didn’t enter through the front door. She went in and out through the underground garage.
That left only one possibility.
Wait where she would appear.
Not at the company, but somewhere outside it.
Li Mo grabbed his phone and started searching.
“Liu Ruyan public event”
Nothing.
“Starsea Group recent events”
One result.
A charity banquet sponsored by Starsea Group, next Wednesday, at the InterContinental Hotel. Entry required an invitation.
He locked his phone and tossed it onto the bed. An invitation.
He couldn’t even get through the door.
“Forget it.”
He got up, went to the kitchen, boiled a packet of instant noodles, and squatted by the table to eat.
He hadn’t even finished the noodles when his phone rang.
A notification from the job app.
He opened it reflexively, ready to see another “not suitable.”
But this time it wasn’t.
[Your application for the “InterContinental Hotel banquet service temporary worker” position has been viewed. The other party has invited you to an interview.]
Li Mo froze with a mouthful of noodles hanging in the air. InterContinental Hotel. Banquet service.
Temporary worker.
He set down his chopsticks and read the notification again.
He’d applied three days ago. That day, while searching for information related to Starsea Group, he’d casually sent out applications to every nearby opening he could find, without reading them carefully.
“InterContinental Hotel...”
He opened the job details.
Duties: on-site service for large banquets, including guiding guests, serving dishes, and beverage service.
Working hours: July 19, Wednesday, 4:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
Pay: 300 yuan per day.
Requirements: good appearance, height 175 cm or above, service experience preferred.
Li Mo’s heartbeat started to race.
July 19, Wednesday.
The Starsea Group charity banquet was also on Wednesday, and also at the InterContinental Hotel.
He didn’t need an invitation.
He could walk in as a waiter.
“Fuck...”
He jumped up from the stool and paced around his rental room twice, even forgetting to finish his instant noodles.
The interview was the next day.
The hotel HR office was inside the employee passage on the first floor, in a very small room.
He was interviewed by a plump middle-aged woman wearing a hotel badge that said “Sister Zhao.”
Sister Zhao glanced at him, her eyes lingering on his face for two seconds.
“Have you worked as a waiter before, kid?”
“I helped out in the school cafeteria.” Li Mo said. In truth, he’d only helped the aunties clear plates.
Sister Zhao looked him up and down again and ticked a box on the paper.
“Fine. Report to the employee passage at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday. Black pants, white shirt, leather shoes. Bring your own.”
“Okay, thank you, Sister Zhao.”
He had a white shirt. He’d bought it for his senior-year ID photo, and it still fit.
He didn’t have black pants. He’d need to buy some.
He had no leather shoes at all.
He opened the map and searched for the nearest wholesale market.
...
Wednesday.
3:28 p.m.
Li Mo stood at the entrance to the InterContinental Hotel employee passage. His white shirt was tucked into black pants, and on his feet were faux leather shoes bought at the wholesale market for 120 yuan, a little stiff when he walked.
Sister Zhao assigned him a spot: the second entrance to the banquet hall, in charge of guiding guests and beverage service.
“When you carry drinks later, don’t shake your hands. Don’t bump the glasses. Whatever the guests say, just smile and nod. Don’t talk back. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“This is Starsea Group’s charity banquet. The people coming are all big shots. Don’t screw it up for me.”
“I won’t.”
Li Mo changed into the hotel’s standard vest and bow tie and stood beside the second entrance with his hands clasped behind his back.
At 5:30, guests began arriving one after another. Every time someone came in, he instinctively scanned them.
Suits, evening gowns, jewelry, perfume. Every outfit on them could have fed him for half a year.
6:10 p.m.
A black Maybach pulled up in front of the hotel.
The valet opened the rear door.
Li Mo’s breath caught.
Liu Ruyan stepped out of the car.
Today she was wearing an emerald-green mermaid gown. Her hair was pinned up, a pair of diamond earrings hung from her earlobes, and there was nothing around her neck.
Standing under the lights, she looked different from everyone around her, and not just because she was beautiful.
There was something that came from deep in her bones, something that made people instinctively straighten their backs. Li Mo’s hand tightened around the edge of the tray behind him.
In the simulation, Liu Ruyan called him Master, acted coquettish on top of him, knelt between his legs, and tilted her face up like a puppy.
But the Liu Ruyan in front of him made him want to lower his head the moment her gaze swept past.
She was a completely different person!
No, it was the same person, but the aura was different, the pressure was different.
This Liu Ruyan was real!
Li Mo stood there watching her walk in through the front entrance, the familiar assistant by her side, along with two men in black suits.
When she passed the second entrance, she was less than three meters from him. Li Mo’s heart hammered in his chest.
Just then, Liu Ruyan’s gaze swept over.
It wasn’t deliberate, just a normal shift of her eyes, passing over the entrance, over the service staff standing nearby. Over him.
She paused for a moment, very briefly, less than a second, then looked away.
Liu Ruyan kept walking, her high heels clicking against the marble floor, the rhythm unchanged.
But Li Mo saw her brows twitch slightly, as if she were recalling something.
She didn’t turn back.
The assistant leaned in and said something. She nodded and walked into the banquet hall.
Li Mo stood there, his back drenched in sweat.
Not from the heat. From that one glance.
She saw him.
She paused.
Even if she hadn’t recognized him, she had still stopped.
The corners of Li Mo’s mouth moved a little, barely noticeable.
...
10:30 p.m.
The banquet ended, the guests dispersed, and Li Mo changed back into his own clothes before leaving through the employee passage, clutching the 300 yuan in cash that Sister Zhao had settled with him on the spot.
Standing on the back steps of the hotel, he felt the night wind blow over him, cool and sharp.
A blue panel popped up.
Unlike before, when it had been dull and gray, it was bright now.
The text on the panel was flashing.
[Cooldown complete.]
[Begin simulation? (1.0)]
Li Mo stared at that “1.0,” his pupils contracting hard.
There hadn’t been a version number before.
Now there was.
1.0!
“It changed...”
He stood under the streetlight at the bus stop, his finger hovering above the panel.
Today, at the banquet, he’d exchanged a glance with Liu Ruyan.
The system had come out of cooldown, and it even had a version number now.
His guess had been right.
Every step forward in his relationship with Liu Ruyan in reality would unlock something new in the simulation world.
“1.0...”
He repeated the number in his mind.
The bus came, its brakes screeching loudly.
Li Mo put away the panel and got on.
He found a seat in the very back by the window and pressed his forehead against the glass.
The streetlights outside slid backward one by one.
His mind was full of that tiny pause in Liu Ruyan’s gaze as she passed by him.
Less than a second.
But it was enough.