May.
It was the season between late spring and early summer. The streets and alleys were filled with the scent of leaves warmed by the sun, fresh and pleasant, enough to make one’s spirit relax.
Lin Yao held a cardboard box in her arms. Inside were a few traditional Chinese medicine books, an acupuncture kit, and the medical cases she had organised in her daily work. With brisk steps, she walked out of the entrance of “Shanghai Sixth Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine.”
From this moment onward, before unemployed Comrade Lin Yao had to face the embarrassment of her financial situation, she felt that she should first welcome the freedom of her soul.
A whole year and a half.
She had finally escaped Liu Deman’s clutches.
“Xiao Ming, your mother has finally resigned! Hahahahaha…” The moment Lin Yao stepped out of the hospital entrance, she immediately took out her phone and called her best friend, Yue Mingyuan, to share the good news. She laughed so wildly at the hospital entrance that the patients coming in for treatment nearly thought they had accidentally arrived at a psychiatric hospital.
“Are you still standing at the hospital entrance?” Yue Mingyuan, who understood Lin Yao’s nature all too well, could almost imagine the bizarre sight of a woman laughing up at the sky like a lunatic outside the Sixth Hospital. “Young lady, pay attention to your image. Be careful, or someone might send you straight to the psychiatric department.”
Lin Yao stopped laughing. She looked left and right and, sure enough, saw quite a few people secretly glancing at her. She used the cardboard box to cover her face and walked a little farther away in slight embarrassment before speaking again.
“I said that once I resigned, I’d definitely celebrate. So? Are you free?”
“Of course I’m free,” Yue Mingyuan said with a laugh. “I have to celebrate too. Celebrate the fact that from now on, I finally won’t have to hear you calling me every few days to complain about Liu Deman.”
“Then hurry up and come over. I’m so happy I’m hungry.”
“Your reaction to happiness really is different from normal people.”
Ignoring her best friend’s teasing, Lin Yao hung up the phone directly, hailed a taxi by the roadside, and headed towards the small restaurant the two of them often went to.
Since it was a working day and not rush hour, there were not many people in the restaurant, only one or two tables of customers. Lin Yao found a seat by the window with practised ease, casually placed the cardboard box beside her, ordered the food, and then lowered her head to play on her phone.
About five minutes later, a tall, handsome man dressed rather flamboyantly appeared at the entrance. He glanced around the small restaurant, spotted Lin Yao by the window, and strode over.
“Have you ordered?” Yue Mingyuan asked as he pulled out a chair and sat down.
Lin Yao looked up and was almost blinded by her best friend’s flashy clothing style.
“Can you not dress like a peacock every day?”
“Do you understand fashion or not? This is the most popular style this summer. Big-name male models are all wearing this.”
“They walk the runway. You walk the streets. A pheasant trying to imitate a phoenix,” Lin Yao mocked.
“Medicine Bag, if you keep this up, I won’t rent the flat to you anymore,” Yue Mingyuan said angrily.
“Don’t be like that. I just resigned, and the hospital dorm won’t let me stay anymore. If you don’t rent it to me, what am I supposed to do? Could you bear to let a weak woman like me wander the streets?” Lin Yao looked pitifully at her best friend, just short of having tears glistening in her eyes.
“A weak woman?” Yue Mingyuan gave an obvious cold snort.
Sure enough, using gentle tactics on Student Xiao Ming did not work. Lin Yao took the acupuncture kit out of the cardboard box, opened it, and with a swish, pulled out a long needle. Wearing a “kind” smile, she waved it at him.
“W-what are you doing? I’ll call the police.” The moment Yue Mingyuan saw the long needle in Lin Yao’s hand, his legs went weak and his face turned pale.
“Why is your face so pale? Are you physically weak? Let me give you a couple of needles.” Lin Yao made as if she was about to go over and give Student Xiao Ming a few acupuncture jabs.
“No, no! I’ll rent it to you. I’ll rent it to you. I won’t even charge you rent.” Yue Mingyuan miserably surrendered under Lin Yao’s tyranny.
“No rent? How generous.” Lin Yao put away the silver needle and raised an eyebrow. “Could it be… you’ve actually had a crush on me for a long time?”
Yue Mingyuan was so frightened he almost fell off his chair.
“Bro, you can’t have that kind of thought. I only like women.”
“Get lost!” Lin Yao could not help cursing.
Bickering back and forth like this was the daily routine of these two best friends.
Before long, the waiter began serving the dishes one after another, and the two chatted as they ate.
“Do you really not think it’s a pity? So many people want to get into Sixth Hospital but can’t,” Yue Mingyuan still couldn’t help asking.
“That’s perfect, then. I’m freeing up a spot for them,” Lin Yao said indifferently. “I really don’t want to see Liu Deman ever again.”
“You dislike him that much? He’s an associate professor at the University of Chinese Medicine, you know.”
“What kind of lousy professor is that? He has no ethics as a teacher at all.” Lin Yao was still furious just thinking about it. “We interns are there to learn from our teachers, but what about him? Every day, he just made me do odd jobs for him. Fine, odd jobs are whatever. Which intern doesn’t do odd jobs for their teacher? The problem is, he refused to teach me anything. When I finally managed to follow him during outpatient consultations, I wanted to accumulate more experience, right? But he directly had me take patients to get lab tests, pick up medicine—he absolutely wouldn’t let me stay in the consultation room for more than three seconds.”
“What is a teacher supposed to be? Someone who educates, guides, and passes on knowledge. If he’s really that unwilling to mentor students, then why be a teacher?” Lin Yao said angrily. “If it weren’t for the fact that I needed this one year of work experience before I could take the licensed physician exam, this old lady would’ve stopped serving him ages ago.”
“Aren’t all intern doctors treated like this?” Yue Mingyuan said. “If you’d just stuck it out, once you became a regular employee, you could’ve gotten a Shanghai household registration.”
“Don’t even mention household registration. It makes me even angrier.” Lin Yao became agitated. “Do you know what he said to me yesterday?”
“What did he say?”
“He told me to teach him the acupuncture method of the Qingming Nine Needles, then write a paper about the Qingming Nine Needles and publish it under his name. Then he would tell the hospital that I was his final disciple, so that I could become a regular employee, and he’d guarantee me a Shanghai household registration. How can his face be that big?”
“That shameless?” No wonder Lin Yao had been in such a hurry to resign before even getting this month’s salary.
“His final disciple? As if he’s worthy. His medical skills are far worse than my grandpa’s,” Lin Yao cursed.
“How could he compare to Grandpa Lin?” Lin Yao’s family came from a lineage of traditional Chinese medicine practitioners. Grandpa Lin had spent his entire life practising medicine and saving people. Although he did not have any expert titles, his medical skills were still somewhat famous locally.
“The Qingming Nine Needles is our family’s inherited secret technique. How could I possibly pass it on to an outsider so easily? He wants to take advantage of me? Dream on,” Lin Yao said.
“Don’t be angry.” Seeing Lin Yao getting more and more worked up, Yue Mingyuan quickly poured her a cup of cold tea and handed it over. “Anyway, you’ve already resigned. From now on, you’ll never have to cross paths with him again.”
“Didn’t we say we were celebrating? Why did you bring up that annoying Liu Deman again?” Lin Yao complained.
“Fine, fine. It’s all my fault. I was wrong, okay?” Yue Mingyuan very tactfully took all the blame onto himself. “Then what do you plan to do from now on?”
“Find a job, of course.”
“I have a buddy who runs a health and wellness club. Why don’t I ask if they’re still hiring…”
“A health and wellness club? The kind where an illness that could be cured with one prescription gets dragged out so they can trick people into buying membership cards worth tens of thousands of yuan?”
“Don’t say it so… bluntly.”
“I’m not going.” Lin Yao rejected it outright. “If my grandpa found out I was doing that kind of thing, he’d break my legs.”
“Then what are you going to do?” Yue Mingyuan said. “Let me remind you, the employment prospects for traditional Chinese medicine aren’t that great to begin with. On top of that, nowadays hospitals are packed with master’s graduates and PhDs everywhere. As someone with only an undergraduate degree, finding a job won’t be easy.”
Lin Yao naturally knew this was the current situation as well, but she said carelessly, “I’ll look slowly. Anyway, summer’s here. I can sell some mosquito-repelling sachets. I won’t earn any less than what the hospital paid me.”
“Oh, right. Give me a few more of those mosquito-repelling sachets you gave me last time.” At the mention of mosquito-repelling sachets, Yue Mingyuan remembered that the ones at home had started losing their effectiveness, so he said, “There’s nothing to say about the effectiveness of your mosquito-repelling sachets. They work really well. It’s just that the effect doesn’t last long enough. After a week, it gradually fades.”
“It’s thirty yuan each. You expect it to last a whole year?” Lin Yao said irritably.
Most mosquito-killing products on the market contained some toxic chemical components, and after generation upon generation of reproduction, mosquitoes had gradually developed resistance. Many times, even if one lit mosquito-repellent incense, it still could not keep the mosquitoes away.
When Lin Yao was young, she often followed her grandpa into the mountains to gather medicinal herbs. In order to avoid mosquito and insect bites, Grandpa Lin made mosquito-repelling herbal sachets. Lin Yao had carried them with her since childhood. It was not until she came to Shanghai for university that she discovered the business opportunity of summer mosquito prevention. Thus, she began occasionally selling mosquito-repelling sachets part-time through WeChat and Taobao. When business was good, she could earn seven or eight thousand yuan a month.
“Isn’t it troublesome to keep coming to you every so often to get more?”
“The medicinal properties of the herbs can only last seven days. I can’t do anything about that. If you think it’s troublesome, just place an order on Taobao and I’ll mail them to you,” Lin Yao said.
“You’d even earn money from me?”
“Big brother, I just lost my job.” Lin Yao picked up a piece of pork rib and put it in her mouth. “You’re paying for this meal.”
“You…” Yue Mingyuan retorted, “If you’re this stingy, you’ll never find a boyfriend.”
“If I can’t find one, I’ll marry you.”
“I’ll pay, I’ll pay. Please don’t scare me with that.” Yue Mingyuan raised both hands in surrender.
Seeing her best friend’s lifeless expression, Lin Yao found it both annoying and funny.
Yue Mingyuan was not Lin Yao’s childhood friend, nor was he her classmate. He was not even from the same university. He was a student from the Business University next door to Lin Yao’s school. When Lin Yao first met him, Yue Mingyuan did not dress like the flamboyant peacock he was now.
Back then, Yue Mingyuan’s face was covered in acne. Large patches of red, swollen pustules piled up across his face. To put it bluntly, it was the kind of sight that made it a little hard to eat.
Yue Mingyuan was a local from Shanghai, and his family was fairly well-off. He had sought medical treatment for a long time, but the problem stubbornly remained unresolved. As a result, throughout the best years of his youth, he had never managed to flirt with girls. Deep down, he felt inferior, timid, and unwilling to meet people.
The two of them became acquainted because Yue Mingyuan had heard that a well-known professor of traditional Chinese medicine would be giving a lecture at the medical school. So Yue Mingyuan had waited outside the classroom early in the morning, hoping to be the first to ask the professor for a consultation once the lecture ended.
However, the professor was far too popular. Yue Mingyuan did not even manage to touch the hem of the professor’s clothes before he was shoved far away by a crowd of the professor’s fangirls.
Heartbroken and disappointed, he walked back, and accidentally stepped on Lin Yao’s newly bought little white shoes.
Lin Yao instantly flew into a rage. “My newly bought shoes!”
“S-sorry.” Seeing that he had stepped on a pretty girl’s shoes, Yue Mingyuan hurriedly apologised.
“Why are you lowering your head? Don’t you know you’re supposed to look someone in the eye when you talk to them?”
Yue Mingyuan carefully lifted his head.
“That acne of yours…” Lin Yao narrowed her eyes and examined him closely.
Yue Mingyuan knew his current appearance must be frightening, and in a panic, he raised his hand to cover his face.
“Are you planning to use the sweat on your hand to disinfect the acne on your face?” Lin Yao said sharply.
“Classmate, I’m sorry. I’ll pay for your shoes. How… how much are they?”
“One hundred for the shoes. One thousand to treat your face.”
…
After lunch, Yue Mingyuan gave the waiter two hundred yuan and waited for the change. During that time, he did not stay idle for even a moment, holding up his phone to take selfies and fix his hairstyle.
“It’s just a face worth one thousand yuan. Why do you care so much?” Lin Yao could not stand men who were even more vain than women.
“You’re not allowed to bring up that joke again.” Yue Mingyuan became angry out of embarrassment.
“One thousand yuan is a bit cheap. If you’d given me ten million back then, every time I saw you I’d say, ah, that handsome face worth ten million,” Lin Yao said exaggeratedly.
“I’m blocking you for three days.” Yue Mingyuan was so angry that he did not even take the change. He grabbed his phone and stormed off in a huff.
Lin Yao chuckled, took the ten yuan change from the waiter, and went out to buy a bottle of cola.
**Author’s Note:**
I originally wanted to start the new novel after my exams next week, but Crab couldn’t hold back…
I hope the little angels will like the new story too. Crab will put even more care into it than before.
After a month apart, Crab has returned with red envelopes again… la la la…
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Thank you to the artist from Tuhua Paradise for making the cover… all the artists are beautiful and kind-hearted.
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