Chapter 59: Road Trip Tips
To be more precise, this was a "person" that needed to be enclosed in double quotes.
Tang Xinjue opened the car door, walked to the little boy and squatted down gently.
"Can you hear me?"
The little boy raised his head. There were no facial features on his face, only a flat skin wrapping his head. When he went to "look" at her, the skin where his eyes were originally facing Tang Xinjue looked even more terrifying.
However, Tang Xinjue looked at this face calmly, as if she was facing a normal child. When she closed the distance, her eyes did not even flicker, and she asked again and again, almost gently: "Kid, can you hear me?"
The little boy reacted, nodding.
Tang Xinjue pointed to his watch again: "Can you tell me where this watch comes from?"
The little boy swished his watch into his pocket, turned around and was about to run away!
After waving his two short hands vigorously in the air for a long time, the little boy slowly lowered his head and found that he seemed to have been standing still.
Tang Xinjue's toilet plunger had caught his jumpsuit hat at some point, and her voice was clear: "Don't be afraid, kid, I'm not a bad person."
The kid: "……"
As soon as the toilet plunger was twisted in the hat, he was forced to turn around. His arms hung weakly at his sides, and his featureless face was wrinkled, looking a little helpless.
He had no mouth, so naturally he couldn't answer, so Tang Xinjue asked another way: "Have you ever seen a jiejie* who is about the same height as me, with short hair and blue clothes? If you have seen her, nod. If you have not, shake your head."
*older sister, to call a girl older than oneself
The child nodded.
"Then does this watch come from that jiejie?"
The child seemed to take several seconds to understand the meaning of "watch" before slowly nodding.
"Where is she now?"
The child raised his arm and pointed forward (at the direction) where the car was about to continue driving.
She didn’t know if the fog had become lighter, but this time through the dark and light trees, Tang Xinjue could faintly see a green building in the distance, located on the edge of the road.
As Tang Xinjue raised her head, the child suddenly swooped into the bushes like a loach. In a blink of an eye, there was no trace of him. Because he was running in such a hurry, he even lost his clothes. His small black coat hung on his leather shoulder bag, revealing Guo Guo's watch.
Tang Xinjue: ...Am I so unwelcoming to children?
It shouldn't be. Many children liked it when she patiently persuaded* them.
*hé fēng xì yǔ, lit. gentle breeze and a mild rain, is a Chinese idiom. It means to criticize or persuade patiently and pleasantly, in a gentle and mild way.
After doubting herself for two seconds, Tang Xinjue took the kid's coat and watch back into the car and drove towards the green house in the distance.
…
As the car drove closer, the full sight of the green house came into view.
Although both were green buildings, this house was many times larger than the coffee shop at the beginning of the road. The door was also strung with wires of one word: Restaurant.
*original text [two words: 餐厅, cāntīng], which means either dining hall or restaurant.
Very concise and to the point.
A plump middle-aged woman was standing at the door of the restaurant, using a hose* to water the flower pots at the door.
*it’s an interesting point that the original word, 花洒 Huā sǎ, is modernly translated to a ‘showerhead’ - although originally it’s used to describe a nozzle for plant watering. The meaning has changed…
When the car stopped, the middle-aged woman also stopped watering, showed an exaggerated smile that almost reached her ears, and made a welcoming gesture.
Tang Xinjue had no doubt that any normal customer who passed by this place would be scared away.
When she got out of the car, she took the clothes left by the little boy in her hand and caught the flash of stiffness on the middle-aged woman's face.
Tang Xinjue smiled, casually put the clothes on her arms, and got straight to the point: "Hello, have you seen any girls around my age recently?"
The boss' eyes paused on the clothes for a moment, and when she raised her head, her business smile resumed on her face: "I haven't seen anyone before."
"Not even one?"
The boss covered her mouth and chuckled: "Xiao guniang*, what you said is really something. Would I still lie to you? This place is in a remote location, and not many people will come to eat at the end of the day. Of course, I will remember every guest who comes."
*young lady, little girl
With a smile on her face, she let Tang Xinjue walk inside.
The restaurant was very small, with four or five double tables and chairs inside, and the semi-open kitchen only had a few kitchen utensils. The soup was simmering in the pot, exuding bursts of strange aroma, which sounded like meat and some kind of mushroom.
After observing around, Tang Xinjue didn't feel any danger. When she got close to the kitchen, the boss stopped her and said, "Wait a minute, xiao guniang. Why does this thing you are holding look familiar to me?"
The boss's eyes flickered to the toilet plunger, and she forced a smile and said, "Walking around outside the kitchen with this doesn't seem right, does it?"
Tang Xinjue glanced at the toilet plunger in her hand and replied calmly: "Oh, you said this, this is my pathfinder."
Boss:"???"
"To be honest, I actually have acquired amblyopia* and cannot see things one meter away, so I can only walk with the help of a pathfinder. Because of my personal preferences, I customized the pathfinder to look like a toilet plunger."
*lazy eyes, a type of poor vision that usually happens in just 1 eye but less commonly in both eyes.
Tang Xinjue nodded and said, "What do you think? Are they similar?"
Boss:"……"
Ignoring the hesitant female boss, when she walked to the kitchen window, Tang Xinjue discovered that there was a small cubicle inside. Through the light, she could see a group of shadows hiding in the dark.
She stared at it for a moment, then lowered her eyes and said, "To be honest, I just picked up a child's coat on the road outside. I don't know who lost it..."
The shadow trembled, suddenly jumped up and ran out of the kitchen, and bumped into Tang Xinjue: it was the faceless boy!
The little boy wanted to snatch the clothes from Tang Xinjue's hand, but when he found that he couldn't snatch it away, he hugged the boss's thigh and pointed at Tang Xinjue eagerly, as if he was complaining.
The boss smiled awkwardly, picked up the child and slapped his butt twice, and then said to Tang Xinjue: "Oh, what a coincidence. The clothes you picked up belong to this naughty kid in our family. Look at this —”
The middle-aged woman wanted to take the clothes away, but Tang Xinjue suddenly stopped and asked an unrelated topic: "I saw a lot of mud and wrinkles on the clothes. Do children often play outside?"
While asking, she naturally walked out——
The moment she stepped out, the candlelight chandelier in the restaurant suddenly flickered in and out of light without the wind.
The middle-aged woman stared closely at her movements, as if she wanted to come up and grab her directly, but she was also inexplicably afraid. She said dryly: "Isn't that right? The child is still young and just likes to roll around outside and get dirty all over. Xiao guniang, why don’t you order a meal? Grandma Mayas will pay for you..."
Tang Xinjue turned a deaf ear and only smiled as she passed by: "Boss, your clothes are also very wrinkled.
"Do you like rolling around outside too?"
The lights went out completely, plunging the restaurant into darkness. In the darkness, the middle-aged woman's expression darkened: "What did you say?"
"Sorry, just a joke."
Tang Xinjue threw the clothes in her hands at the other party, and at the same time stepped forward and walked out of the restaurant.
At the same moment, the female boss who grabbed the clothes suddenly rushed out and grabbed Tang Xinjue's shoulder like lightning!
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