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After being gently rebuffed, Zhou Yan forced a smile. Before she could say anything, Lao Zhao, sitting across from her, frowned and shot a sideways glance at Shi Ying. “What’s the harm in introducing someone? Why are you sticking your nose into everything! Are you dating this girl?”
“Has she agreed to it?”
Before Shi Ying could react, Lao Zhao turned back to Zhou Yan with a wrinkled grin and continued making small talk. “Swallow, I feel such a connection with you. Let’s be friends—add me on WeChat. If there’s ever anything I can help you with, just let me know. I often have delivery jobs for wine—I’ll refer them all to you, how’s that?”
“I heard from Shi Ying that you live on his floor? Is he causing trouble for the neighbors? If he is, tell me—I’ll teach him a lesson.”
Cheng Simin had scrubbed the stain in the bathroom using dish soap and then wiped away the foam with a damp paper towel. The stain was gone, but her clothes were still damp, so she unzipped her hoodie and held it near the heater to dry.
Within five minutes, she finished tidying up and stepped out of the bathroom, her jacket open.
As soon as Zhou Yan saw Cheng Simin reappear, she quickly stood up and addressed Lao Zhao. “Boss Zhao, you all keep eating. I’ll go outside and bake a few more flatbreads to pair with the drinks.”
“Swallow, the charcoal fire is smoky—it’s better if I go.”
“No need, no need—you sit. I’ll go.” Zhou Yan’s last sentence came out firm and resolute. With that, she swiftly walked out the door. Lao Zhao, who had already risen halfway, now sat back down, his face flushed, slapping the back of his neck in embarrassment.
Foremen Zhang and Li exchanged glances over Lao Zhao’s head and burst into laughter.
They flanked him—one lighting his cigarette, the other pouring him wine—their voices teasing. “Looks like Swallow didn’t fall for you.”
“If you ask me, it’s that wool sleeveless shirt. Neither masculine nor feminine.”
Lao Zhao slumped in defeat, abandoning his meat skewers and downing several glasses of red wine in quick succession. Cheng Simin noticed his sour expression and hesitated to reach for the grilled skewers on the table. Instead, she leaned toward Shi Ying and mouthed silently:
“Is your boss okay?”
Shi Ying’s phone buzzed incessantly under the table. He pulled it out, glanced at the screen, replied briefly, and gave Cheng Simin a reassuring look. After finishing his message, he set the phone aside and meticulously cleaned another dozen skewers for Cheng Simin. Noticing her gaze lingering on the bottle of sparkling wine Lao Zhao had brought, he whispered softly through the air: “Thirsty?”
Shi Ying had excelled in Chinese during his school years. Thanks to China’s exam-oriented education system, which championed rote memorization and formulaic writing, his brain was filled with eloquent phrases capable of turning lifeless objects into vivid wonders or packaging mediocrity as brilliance.
The wine descriptions provided to Cheng Simin were penned by him. The names and copywriting for the bottles were masterfully crafted within the bounds of advertising laws—buzzwords like “explosively refreshing” for bamboo lychee, or “sweet and juicy” for green grape litchi, targeting young women’s tastes perfectly.
Even reading these descriptions stirred Cheng Simin’s curiosity. Now, seeing the actual product, she was eager to try Chixia Winery’s sparkling wine and see if it truly delivered the rich, complex flavors promised in the text.
Caught red-handed in her thoughts, Cheng Simin blushed slightly. She had indulged in a drink at a stall yesterday—but drinking wasn’t a sin for women. Still, not wanting to appear overly greedy, she shot Shi Ying a glare and said, “No.”
“Oh,” Shi Ying smirked, rising to fetch an ice bucket from the fridge.
Two crystal-clear hammered glass cups appeared, each filled with ice cubes. Shi Ying picked up the bottle of wine, peeled off the foil, twisted open the wire cage, and pressed his fingers against the cork. Tilting the bottle thirty degrees away from Cheng Simin, he slowly rotated it until the cork popped quietly without spilling a drop.
As he poured himself a glass, Shi Ying glanced at Cheng Simin, coaxing her gently. “Since Sister Zhou isn’t drinking, we can share a ride home later tonight.”
“Surely you’ll give it a try? For work purposes only—a small sip won’t hurt.”
As the liquid flowed into the glass, it erupted into dense foam, filling the air with sweet fruity aromas.
Barbecue paired perfectly with beer, but sparkling wine? Cheng Simin rarely drank it, assuming it would taste similar to the fake champagne she’d tried as a child—surely no worse than beer.
Her nostrils flared slightly, her lashes fluttered, and she extended a finger, silently nudging the other glass toward him. Her voice softened with compromise: “Well… maybe just a little.”
She locked eyes with Shi Ying, her round eyes wide with earnestness, repeating his words to justify herself: “For work.”
“Of course—for work.”
The clear wine shimmered with floating ice cubes, fizzing delicately. A few ice chips cracked in the center, emitting a popping sound like candy crackles. The reflection of the bonfire outside danced faintly inside the icy glass.
Just as Cheng Simin raised her glass, Shi Ying tilted his own significantly lower—almost half her cup height—and gently tapped his rim against the base of hers.
The wine swayed in her hand, and Cheng Simin’s heart stirred subtly along with it.
Chinese drinking culture had been a required lesson in Cheng Simin’s professional life. Ever since her first group dinner after graduating college, she learned the humility of lowering her glass when clinking with others. Since then, her glass had never risen higher again.
At client dinners, leadership gatherings, or even meetings with peers, every toast carried calculated intentions. To flatter, to ingratiate, to charm—she always suppressed what little dignity she had left, unable to relax fully.
This was the first time in her life she experienced someone lowering their glass to meet hers halfway.
Being “pursued,” being “wooed”—it felt like stepping onto a cloud, leaving Cheng Simin feeling slightly weightless. To suppress the fluttering butterflies in her stomach, she lowered her gaze, steadied the trembling wine, and brought the glass to her lips.
A small sip was enough to confirm that high expectations often led to disappointment—but what awaited her was nothing short of enchantment. Fine carbon dioxide bubbles tingled delicately on her tongue, followed by a flood of sweet-tart bliss that filled her entire mouth.
Hints of green grapes’ tartness, lychee’s sweetness, nectarine’s freshness, and elderflower’s fragrance—all encapsulated in one glass.
Cheng Simin knew little about winemaking techniques or tasting skills, but relying purely on instinctual palate reactions, she covered her mouth and wildly flashed a thumbs-up at both Shi Ying and Lao Zhao.
“Oh my goodness!”
Both men echoed simultaneously: “Good?”
“It’s really good!” Cheng Simin polished off the remaining wine in her glass and immediately refilled it straight from the bottle. Sucking lightly on her tongue to savor the aftertaste, she exclaimed: “I don’t know how to describe it—it’s unlike those other sweet wines where you’re left with a strange aftertaste.”
Taking another thoughtful sip, letting the wine coat her taste buds before swallowing, she praised Lao Zhao in simple language: “It feels like multiple fruits dancing on my tongue.”
Lao Zhao, hearing praise for his wine, shook off the earlier gloom of his failed flirtation attempt. Mimicking Stephen Chow’s style from The God of Cookery, he declared, “It’s made from Muscat Ottonel. I used a special variety of muscat grapes.”
“Just grapes alone can create this flavor?” Cheng Simin assumed artificial colors and flavor enhancers must have been added.
While boasting about himself, Lao Zhao didn’t miss the chance to criticize competitors: “Of course! Not only are my grapes exceptional—they’re a variety I’ve cultivated for over a decade, grafted and improved midway. And then there’s the brewing method.”
The batch of sparkling wine Chixia Winery submitted for competition employed the most traditional secondary fermentation process.
After fermenting grape juice into base wine, yeast was added for secondary fermentation to naturally produce bubbles. Before filtering sediment, the wine was bottled upright on human-shaped racks, rotated 45° daily for eight days per cycle.
One misstep could cause bottles to explode—only skilled workers could handle this task. That skilled worker happened to be Lao Zhao himself.
“You’re absolutely right,” Lao Zhao explained. “There are plenty of unscrupulous merchants out there. Those wines with weird aftertastes contain saccharin or cyclamate—not true Asti sparkling wines. They claim to be fermented, but to cut labor and time costs, they’re essentially soda-like concoctions: alcohol mixed with artificially injected carbon dioxide.”
“What kind of amine?” Lao Zhao spoke confidently, while Cheng Simin listened, dazed.
The two foremen chimed in helpfully: “Saccharin and sodium cyclamate!”
“When we were young, who ate this stuff? Everyone said saccharin caused cancer.”
“Nowadays, it’s been repackaged as zero-calorie sugar. No matter how good synthetic flavors taste, they’re no match for natural ones. Whenever anyone comes around, I always say this!”
“Actually, cane sugar and fructose aren’t bad—except for diabetics. Oh, life is better now, but look at how many people around us are getting diabetes.”
“Xiao Shi is still young—he doesn’t understand. You two are amateurs adding plain ice cubes. For proper sparkling wine, it needs to be chilled in a dedicated wine cooler.”
“Between 4°C and 7°C is ideal.”
Zhang and Li, their eyes glazed from drinking, draped their arms around Lao Zhao’s shoulders and launched into grandiose chatter.
Lao Zhao had intended to share some of his winemaking expertise, basking in admiration from the younger crowd. But these two hijacked his lines entirely, leaving him no room to speak.
He tried interjecting several times unsuccessfully, hands braced on the table as he attempted to stand. Muttering excuses, he said, “Most of the skewers are eaten. Let me check on the flatbread—it should be ready by now.”
But before Lao Zhao could leave his seat, Zhang and Li pinned him back down. Pointing at the red wine in front of him, they teased: “Drink up, Boss Zhao. Your little schemes aren’t fooling anyone. If you’re hungry, eat some flatbread.”
Unable to escape, Lao Zhao resigned himself to staying at the table and drinking, grumbling under his breath: “Damn you two—you’re useless drunkards.”
“I regret inviting you bastards to eat.”
Across the table, the three men grew louder and rowdier, their conversation drowning in smoke and noise. Meanwhile, Shi Ying and Cheng Simin exchanged a few quiet toasts, then grabbed another bottle of sparkling wine, placing it in the ice bucket. Without speaking, Shi Ying signaled subtly to Cheng Simin with his eyes.
Silent and composed, Shi Ying traced the rim of his glass with a finger. His translucent gaze shifted from the wine to her, then toward the door outside.
Like old times, when they communicated telepathically during boring morning exercises and pretended nonchalantly to report stomachaches to the teacher, Cheng Simin instantly understood his hint. Their mutual understanding was seamless.
The next moment, both rose swiftly and simultaneously.
One excused herself to use the restroom; the other claimed a phone call. Together, they escaped from the “adults’“ table.
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