sjar Chapter 467 The surprise came too suddenly!
Chapter 467 The surprise came too suddenly!
When the glass door was opened, the air-conditioned air from the hamburger shop blew in with the aroma of fried chicken.
Xu Xinyue walked in with Tang Yichen supporting her back, and found that every table was placed with napkins folded into the shape of a swan - this was obviously the masterpiece of someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
“Surprise!”
Amid the sound of the streamer tube exploding, Xiaopang rushed over holding a hamburger covered with yellow mustard.
Xu Xinyue subconsciously took a half step back, her back resting against Tang Yichen's school uniform jacket, and smelled a faint cedar scent mixed with ink - the smell of a math workbook.
"You..." She looked at the crooked "Happy Birthday" ribbon on the wall and found that the letter Y was made of French fries. "How did you know today..."
"Last month, when you were filling out the club application form, you dropped your ID card in the hallway."
Tang Yichen took the strawberry milkshake from the waiter. The cream on the edge of the cup looked like Mount Fuji. "Be careful, it's hot. This is freshly beaten milk."
Xu Xinyue was holding the warm cup when she suddenly noticed the waiter coming out of the kitchen.
The guy wearing the panda mask walked in the same way as the young man in the sweatshirt at the street corner just now.
When he bent down to hand a balloon to the child at the next table, half of the black walkie-talkie was exposed at his lower back.
"Don't stare at him." Tang Yichen poked the back of her hand with a straw. "That's a new part-time student, making 25 yuan an hour."
The ketchup packets clinked in their plastic basket as the short man squeezed over with his tray.
"Xu, this is custom-made." He pointed to the chemical formula drawn in icing sugar on the hamburger wrapper. "My dad heard you like organic chemistry, so he had it made for us this morning."
Xu Xinyue took a closer look. Next to the C6H12O6 frosting pattern was a line of small text: "Thank you to the Tang Syndrome Charity Foundation for funding my father's surgery." She looked up at Tang Yichen, who was secretly eating French fries. The boy, with salt on the corner of his mouth, winked at her with his left eye.
“So you guys were like…”
"My dad was about to have a heart bypass surgery..." The dwarf scratched his short hair, which had been dyed back to black. His earrings had been replaced with medical titanium steel. "Mr. Chen not only helped me contact the experts, but also introduced me to a part-time job at a milk tea shop."
Xiao Pang suddenly poked his head out from between the two of them, holding up a half-eaten chicken wing and mumbling, "Now this guy goes to shake milk tea every day after evening study. Last week, he even made me a cup of pearls that were all the size of red beans. It was a failure."
Amidst laughter, a "waiter" wearing a panda doll costume came over with a cake.
Xu Xinyue noticed that his tray-carrying posture was too standard, as if he had received professional training.
When the candlelight illuminated the words "Happy 16" written in chocolate on the cake, a faint blue light suddenly flashed in the left ear of the doll costume.
"Make a wish." Tang Yichen's voice suddenly softened, and his bangs cast tiny shadows on his eyelashes.
Xu Xinyue clasped her hands together and heard the sound of shutter clicks coming from behind her.
Fatty was recording with his milkshake-stained phone, Shorty was adjusting a GoPro strapped to a chandelier, and the panda man...
He actually took out a miniature camera from the doll's mouth.
"I hope..." The moment she paused, Tang Yichen suddenly reached out and covered her mouth.
"It won't work if I tell you." The boy felt the coolness of the mint wipes on his palms, but his eyes were fixed on the panda man who was stealing the cream. "Can someone be more professional? The candle is almost burned out."
The panda man stood at attention, his hood clattering to the ground, revealing a handsome, angular face—the mysterious young man from before. He calmly picked up the hood as Xu Xinyue stared in shock. "Experience acting in mall promotions, double your hourly wage."
When blowing out the candle, Xu Xinyue deliberately turned her head to look at Tang Yichen.
The boy's profile was gilded by the warm yellow candlelight, and his Adam's apple rolled gently as he swallowed.
She suddenly remembered last week's chemistry class, when the sunlight fell in the same way on the half-solved balanced equation.
"Gift time!" Xiaopang pulled out a McDonald's paper bag from his schoolbag. "I bought this with the money I saved for three days of breakfast..."
Xu Xinyue unpacked the layers of the package and discovered that it was a set of compasses inlaid with rhinestones.
There is a convenience store receipt on the lid of the box: original price 198, promotional price 99.5.
"I spent half an hour haggling at the checkout counter before they gave me a discount!" Xiaopang proudly showed the recording of his bargaining on his phone. "If the lady in the queue behind me hadn't threatened to call the police, I wouldn't have gotten a discount..."
Before he could finish his words, the dwarf pushed him aside and said, "Look at mine!"
He held out a test tube rack like a treasure, each one engraved with the periodic table. "These are scraps from my dad's lab. I spent three nights grinding them..."
As Xu Xinyue picked up the bracket engraved with "Au" (gold), Tang Yichen suddenly coughed. "My gift is at home." He pulled out his phone and opened the photo album. It showed a half-finished 3D metal puzzle. "Well... the star tracker has too many parts..."
"He worked all night for three days!" The panda man suddenly interrupted, shrinking his neck under Tang Yichen's murderous gaze. "I mean...promotional dolls require understanding customer needs."
When the clerk pushed the cleaning cart past, Xu Xinyue caught a glimpse of the locator stuck to the bottom of the cart.
She pretended to adjust her bangs and saw from the reflection of the watch glass that outside the window, in front of the 711-Eleven convenience store, a man reading a newspaper was talking to his cuffs.
It's exactly the same as the way the math teacher secretly texts during class.
"Actually, the bodyguards rotate because of the shift schedule." Tang Yichen suddenly leaned in and whispered, his breath brushing against her earlobe. "Monday to Wednesday it's Night Owl, Thursday to Saturday it's Uncle Li, and Sunday..."
He pointed at the panda man who was wiping the table, "This is the mall promoter."
Xu Xinyue bit the straw to hold back her laughter, and suddenly she tasted the flavor of sea salt in the sweet strawberry milkshake.
When she looked up and wanted to say something, Tang Yichen had already turned around to grab the teriyaki chicken burger from Xiaopang's hand. The sleeves of his school uniform were rolled up to his elbows, revealing the faint puzzle scratches under his smartwatch.
Outside the glass door, the city's neon lights streamed into the night. A bodyguard in a doll costume quietly dimmed the restaurant's spotlights. In the warm yellow glow, the laughter and shouting of teenagers fighting over French fries startled sparrows foraging outside the window.
Xu Xinyue carefully folded the hamburger paper with the chemical formula engraved on it into a bookmark, and suddenly realized the first secret.
Perhaps they are like those guardians hidden in the crowd, quiet but omnipresent.