[Cloud Nine Café — September 16, 12:20 PM]
The café sat on a quiet street near the campus, tucked between a bookstore and a dry cleaner. It was a small establishment with maybe twenty tables inside, and the hand-painted sign above the door looked like it hadn't been updated in years.
At twenty past noon, Cloud Nine Café held twenty-two customers, one overworked barista, and the warm pull of fresh-ground coffee that had settled into the walls years ago.
The lunch crowd had filled most of the tables. Midday light flooded the windows white, flattening every shadow in the room.
Behind the counter, the espresso machine hissed through a two-second burst, went quiet, then hissed again. A woman by the window turned a page without looking up. Two students shared a laptop, their voices low enough to disappear under the ambient jazz trickling from a ceiling speaker.
The door chimed.
Four people came in. A young man in a plain jacket, walking like he had already mapped the room.
A woman in oversized sunglasses and a surgical mask that concealed nothing about herself.
A hooded girl who drifted to the young man's side and stayed within half a meter of him.
And behind them was a girl in a thin jacket, keeping a half-step back, looking around the café like she wasn't sure she was allowed in it.
The manager came out from the back before the door had finished closing.
His eyes did the quick calculation on the four customers, examining their clothing, posture and accessories.
He took in the expensive fabric of the boy's clothing, the designer bag one of the women carried despite her "disguise," and the way the hooded girl moved, which no hood could hide.
The fourth one looked shabby but he dared not underestimate her either.
By the time he opened his mouth, the yuan signs were already in his eyes.
"Welcome, welcome. Table for four?"
"We would like to rent the whole café," Lin Feng said. "For the day."
The manager blinked, and his smile faltered for just a moment before professional instincts took over.
"Ah. A private booking. Of course, of course. For an exclusive full-day reservation, with compensation for projected sales, staffing, our regular clientele's inconvenience—" he pulled a figure out of thin air and presented it like a menu item, "—ten thousand yuan."
Lin Feng considered the number.
Ten thousand yuan. Is that a lot here?
Back onEarth, ten thousand yuan for an afternoon café rental would be on the expensive side. A bit steep, maybe. But not unreasonable for a private booking.
Whatever. I don't have time to think about this right now.
"Fine." He reached for his wallet. "Ten thousand—"
Two sounds hit the café at once.
SLAM.
SLAM.
Lin Feng's hand froze mid-reach.
Two checkbooks had materialized on the counter—one from his left, one from his right.
Lin Weiwei's pen was already moving across her check, the number "10,000" appearing in elegant script. Xiao Yue's pen moved with equal speed, writing the same amount on her own check.
Both women noticed each other's actions at the same moment, and their eyes met across Lin Feng's chest.
The temperature in the café dropped several degrees.
"I'll pay." Lin Weiwei's voice came out sweet—too sweet. "Big Brother shouldn't have to worry about such things."
"No need." Xiao Yue's response was ice. "I'll handle it."
"I offered first!"
"I can afford more!"
Something dangerous flickered in Lin Weiwei's eyes. She crossed out the 10,000 on her check and wrote a new number.
The manager's eyebrows went up.
"Twenty!" Lin Weiwei's pen didn't stop.
Xiao Yue's pen moved immediately. "Thirty thousand!"
"Fifty!"
"Eighty!"
The manager's hand started trembling. His eyes had gone wide, darting between the two women like he was watching a tennis match where the ball was made of pure gold.
"One hundred thousand," Lin Weiwei said, to the manager.
"Two hundred thousand," Xiao Yue said, also to the manager, and pulled out a new checkbook.
The manager stood very still. His breathing held. In front of him, two odd-looking women were fighting over who got to overpay him.
Meanwhile, Zhang Tingting had stopped breathing somewhere around fifty thousand. She stared at the climbing numbers with the expression of someone watching three years of her family's rent change hands over a café table.
"Three hundred—" Lin Weiwei wrote the number without hesitation.
"Five hundred—" Xiao Yue countered.
"Eight hundred—" Lin Weiwei tore the page out and started clean.
"Nine hundred—"
"Nine-fifty—"
"Nine-eighty—"
"Nine-ninety—" Lin Weiwei's voice had gone thin.
The manager looked like he might faint; his legs had started shaking.
"One million—" Xiao Yue gritted her teeth. She tore the ruined check free, let it drop, and wrote the number clean on the next one.
Lin Weiwei's pen hovered over her checkbook. She wasn't looking at the number anymore. She was looking at Xiao Yue.
She was about to write one million ten thousand on a new note when Lin Feng's voice cut through the tension like a blade.
"ENOUGH." Lin Feng said. His hand came off his wallet. He stepped forward, placing himself between them and the counter.
Both women stopped.
"One hundred thousand. Total." He looked at both of them in turn. "Stop wasting money."
Lin Weiwei opened her mouth to protest. "Big Brother—"
"One hundred thousand, that's it." His tone left no room for argument. "Forty thousand from each of you. I'll pay twenty thousand myself."
Xiao Yue's eyes narrowed. "You shouldn't have to pay anything."
"I'm paying twenty thousand." Lin Feng met her gaze steadily. "That's final."
A moment of silent standoff passed between them.
Then Lin Weiwei crossed out the figure on her checkbook and wrote "40,000" with deliberate strokes.
Xiao Yue did the same.
Then both of them dropped to the floor at once.
The manager watched two ruined checks worth more than his café get picked up off his floor and said nothing.
Lin Feng paid his share without being asked twice.
The manager accepted the three payments with trembling hands, counted the zeros twice, and bowed so low one might mistake him for bowing to provincial officials.
Then he disappeared into the back with the quiet urgency of a man cashing a check before the ink dries.
-----------------------
Zhang Tingting finally found her voice.
"Lin Feng." She stepped closer, her tone careful. "Why… why did you pay that much?"
Lin Feng glanced at her. "What do you mean?"
"That's…" She hesitated. "Remember my family's noodle restaurant? The one you sponsored?"
"We barely make three hundred thousand yuan in revenue for one year. Ten thousand per month in profits is already a very good month." Her voice dropped lower. "And our shop is bigger than this café."
Lin Feng went still.
He turned slowly and looked at the menu board mounted on the wall behind the counter.
Coffee — 3 yuan. Tea — 2 yuan. Pastry — 3 yuan. Lunch Set — 6 yuan.
Three yuan for coffee?
Lin Feng stared at the menu board.
Back on Earth, a cup of coffee cost twenty to thirty yuan at any decent café. Tea was around fifteen. A lunch set would run you forty to fifty.
Here, coffee was three yuan. A lunch set was six.
Isn't this… a little too cheap?
His head started running numbers without him asking.
If coffee costs 3 yuan and a lunch set costs 6, average customer spends maybe 5 to 8 yuan. Twenty tables, campus location, fills at lunch, steady traffic the rest of the day — maybe 80 to 120 customers.
Daily revenue, 500 to 800 yuan. Monthly, around 20K. Yearly… around 200K to 250K at most.
And I just paid one hundred thousand. For one afternoon.
The "fair price" of ten thousand was already a massive scam. The REAL rental should have been… what, one thousand yuan?
His eye twitched.
That manager saw three rich idiots walk in and quoted us ten times the actual value. And I couldn't even tell because I was too busy dealing with these two.
And so we three idiots ended up taking the place for a hundred times its actual value.
No. Focus! It's an operations budget. Move on.
-----------------------
[12:40 PM]
The manager returned with receipts and a smile that had not been on his face twenty minutes ago.
"The café is yours, Young Master." He bowed low. "For as many days as you need it."
"We need it cleared." Lin Feng gestured at the remaining customers. "Everyone out. Compensate them five times whatever they spent. As for the employees, give them a full month's salary as compensation."
The manager's smile somehow grew even wider. "Of course, of course!"
He scurried off to handle the evacuation personally, flipping the sign on the door to CLOSED while he was at it.
Customers left one table at a time, each one walking out richer than they'd come in and not one of them stupid enough to ask why.
One student counted his refund, looked back at the door, and walked faster.
The staff took their payouts and vanished before anyone could change their minds.
Zhang Tingting watched the money leave the room and stopped counting.
Within a few minutes, the café was empty.
The manager stood by the door, still wearing that ecstatic expression. "Will you need anything else, Young Master?"
"Privacy." Lin Feng's voice was flat. "And the keys to the back room."
"Absolutely. Absolutely!"
The manager handed over the keys, then floated out the door to enjoy his windfall somewhere far away from whatever these rich young people were planning.
The café fell silent.
Lin Weiwei pulled the mask off and dropped it into her bag with the sunglasses. There was no one left to hide from.
Xiao Yue kept her hood up.
Lin Feng pulled out his phone.
-----------------------
[12:45 PM]
The call barely rang before Lin Qingwan's voice came through.
"Little Brother~~ Calling me in the middle of the day? This must be interesting."
"Big Sis. I need a favor."
"Oh? Tell me, tell me~~ Or wait—let me guess. You need me to deliver a larger bed? One that fits four people?"
Lin Feng pinched the bridge of his nose. "Big Sis!"
"Fine, fine. What do you need?"
"I need a surveillance team at Cloud Nine Café. Near the east campus gate. Hidden cameras, hidden microphones—the full setup."
A pause. When she spoke again, the teasing had faded into something sharper.
"What are you planning, Little Brother?"
"I'll explain later. How fast can you get them here?"
Another pause — longer this time. He could almost see her tilting her head on the other end of the line.
Then: "They'll be there within twenty minutes."
"Twenty minutes. Copy. Thank you, Big Sis. Send them to the back entrance."
"Mm. You owe me details later~~" Her voice dropped into something wicked. "Oh, and Little Brother? Three girls at once! Impressive! But remember—no protection. I expect nieces and nephews."
Lin Feng's head came around.
His eyes swept the street outside. The rooftops. The windows of nearby buildings.
Where is she?
CRUNCH. CRUNCH. CRUNCH.
The sound of potato chips came through the phone, casual and unhurried.
"Stop looking around like a headless chicken, Little Brother. You'll never find me."
He stopped looking.
"Don't forget our arrangement." Her tone shifted back to business. "I want to meet Xiao Yue tomorrow."
The line went dead.
Lin Feng stared at his phone for a long moment.
Big Sis is terrifying.
-----------------------
Zhang Tingting had been listening to the entire exchange between Lin Feng and his big sister with growing disbelief.
Hidden cameras? Hidden microphones? A surveillance team that could mobilize in twenty minutes?
Her fingers curled against the hem of her sleeve.
She'd seen Lin Feng chase Su Qingxue for four years. She'd watched him carry her bags, buy her coffee, get rejected over and over again. Everyone on campus had laughed at him behind his back—the lovesick young master who couldn't take a hint.
That Lin Feng stammered when he was nervous. That Lin Feng looked away when people stared. That Lin Feng couldn't command a goldfish, let alone a bunch of men in matching coveralls.
But this Lin Feng…
He'd just requested hidden cameras like he was ordering lunch. His voice hadn't wavered once.
When did he become like this?
And more importantly… what else can he do?
-----------------------
[1:03 PM]
The team arrived in seventeen minutes and forty seconds by Lin Feng's count. Six of them, in the gray coveralls of a commercial HVAC service, carrying toolboxes that held no HVAC tools whatsoever.
They nodded once to Lin Feng and immediately got to work.
Zhang Tingting's eyes followed their movements.
One operative pulled a camera from his case—no bigger than her thumbnail—and pressed it into the corner of a picture frame.
Another slid a microphone beneath the centerpiece on the central table, her fingers moving so fast Zhang Tingting almost missed it.
A third climbed a stepladder and adjusted a light fixture, leaving behind something tiny and dark nestled against the bulb.
No one spoke. They communicated through hand signals and brief glances, flowing around each other like they'd done this a thousand times.
How often do they do this?
Three more went past her toward the service corridor, carrying the toolboxes that had come in full and were now empty.
The other three disappeared into the staff washroom and came back in barista aprons and server outfits.
They took positions behind the counter and near the entrance, their postures shifting instantly. Shoulders relaxed. Smiles ready. Just ordinary workers waiting for customers.
Zhang Tingting blinked.
Half an hour, maybe less. They'd transformed the entire café in half an hour.
If she hadn't watched them do it, she would never have known.
The mismatched furniture sat in the same spots. The hand-painted menu board still hung behind the counter. The smell of coffee beans still lingered in the air.
Lin Feng gestured toward the back. "This way."
The back room door was already open.
Lin Weiwei followed without hesitation, her hand finding his arm. Xiao Yue fell into step on his other side, her expression bored, as if commandeering cafés and installing surveillance equipment was something she did on weekends.
Meanwhile, Zhang Tingting stood frozen for a moment before her legs remembered how to move.
The back room off the service corridor had been converted while she wasn't looking: three monitors on the desk, cabled to something under it, showing the central table from three angles. Chairs had been carried in.
Lin Feng took the center position with the best viewing angle.
Lin Weiwei took the chair on his left, close but not quite touching. Her hand rested on the armrest nearest his.
Xiao Yue moved to his right, matching the position exactly. Neither woman willing to yield an inch.
Zhang Tingting took the last chair, at the end of the row past Xiao Yue, wedged in against a stack of cardboard boxes by the door.
The screens showed the café floor. One operative wiped down the counter with slow, lazy strokes. Another arranged pastries in the display case. A third adjusted chairs that didn't need adjusting.
The operative who had been wiping the counter crossed to the front door and flipped the sign from CLOSED to OPEN. She glanced out at the street for a moment, then went back to the register.
Lin Feng checked his watch. 1:32 PM.
Less than thirty minutes until Long Tian's arrival.
-----------------------
The cooling fans hummed under the desk. On the monitors, the central table sat empty from three angles, its centerpiece squared to the middle of the cloth.
The stripe of sunlight from the corridor window had crossed one floor tile and started on the next.
Lin Weiwei had migrated from her chair's original position by degrees, until her shoulder rested against Lin Feng's arm. On his other side, Xiao Yue held his sleeve between two fingers — not gripping, just keeping custody.
Nobody had spoken in eleven minutes.
Zhang Tingting sat by the door with her hands folded in her lap, and had spent those eleven minutes trying not to do the math on what the surveillance team cost on top of the hundred thousand.
Her phone buzzed.
She looked down. The cracked screen split the message into shards.
[Mom: Tingting, are you okay? Yuting called again. She asked if you're free this afternoon. She wants you to meet her boyfriend. She said he's the one for her and he'd be perfect for you too. Isn't that wonderful?] Received: 1:43 PM
She typed I'm busy, deleted it. Typed Mom, please, then deleted it.
She locked the phone and looked up at the monitors. The table was empty. In seventeen minutes, her family's dream son-in-law would be sitting there.
"My cousin is talking to my parents again. She is still trying to invite me to see this Long Tian guy."
Lin Feng's eyes came off the monitor.
"Long Tian?"
"Yes." She turned the phone face-down in her lap. "Yuting's been calling my parents. Showing them pictures. My mom talks about him like he's already family."
Her mouth pulled to one side. "I've never even seen his face. I don't even like him. I mean… I like…"
Then she stopped and looked away from Lin Feng.
On his left, Lin Weiwei's fingers closed around his arm. On his right, Xiao Yue's two fingers on his sleeve became a fist around the fabric.
Neither woman said a word.
"You'll see him in sixteen minutes," Lin Feng said. "Through a camera. Which is the correct distance."
Zhang Tingting looked back down at her phone as the clock slowly moved toward 2 PM.
-----------------------
Ten minutes left.
The back room had fallen into silence.
Lin Weiwei was pressed so tightly against Lin Feng's left side that breathing had become uncomfortable for him. Her grip on his arm had gone from possessive to crushing.
Xiao Yue matched the pressure from the right. Neither woman spoke. Neither backed down.
Lin Feng sat perfectly still between them, doing his best to ignore the cold war across his ribcage.
Zhang Tingting sat forward in her chair.
Her knee bounced against the box beside her — whether from anxiety about Su Qingxue or from the two women flanking Lin Feng, she couldn't say.
On the monitors, the operatives moved through their routines—wiping counters, checking the register, straightening menus. Just café workers waiting for the afternoon rush.
Lin Feng's eyes stayed fixed on the front door.
Long Tian arrives first. Then Su Qingxue and Zhang Yuting after that.
And then I'll finally see how this bastard operates.
His jaw tightened.
1:55 PM.
Five minutes.
No one moved. No one spoke.
1:57 PM.
Three minutes.
Zhang Tingting's breathing had gone shallow.
1:59 PM.
One minute.
Lin Weiwei's nails dug into Lin Feng's arm. Xiao Yue's shoulder pressed harder against his.
2:00 PM.
The café door opened.
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[End of Chapter]