"Is your detective agency on the second floor?" Karasawa Makoto asked.
Gu Xing said: "That's right."
"If I go to the second floor, will you go up with me?"
"If I go up,"
Gu Xing glanced at the customers in the bookstore out of the corner of his eye, "It's too busy here."
"I see it,"
Karasawa Makoto looked at him teasingly, "If you weren't here, this bookstore would lose more than half its customers."
"The office is quieter,"
Gu Xing tried to bring the topic back, "Should I ask Rimi to take you up?"
"I just want to read here—unless you come up with me."
Gu Xing: "..."
"There is no reason to visit someone's office when the owner is not at home."
Karasawa Makoto stared at Gu Xing, "Don't worry, I put on my hat and mask so no one can recognize me."
"That's good,"
Gu Xing nodded, "You can do it yourself."
With that said, he walked to the bathroom.
"It's really... a disgusting look. How many bookstores have asked me to visit them,"
Karasawa Makoto muttered, "If any TV station broadcasts that I like to read here, Kaitan Bookstore will not become popular..."
"That's a good idea,"
Gu Xing suddenly backed out of the bathroom, "Shall we go upstairs to discuss it?"
Of course Karasawa Makoto was joking. If she really did this, how could she hide in the corner and peek at Gu Xing's side face illuminated by the sun?
"You have to think about it,"
Karasawa Makoto blinked, "My appearance fee is not cheap."
"I need money..."
Gu Xing went into the bathroom again and threw out this sentence,
"Then forget it."
…
When Gu Xing returned to the coffee counter again, Karasawa Makoto also sat back in the corner where she had been reading.
She found Gu Xing's favorite book "One Hundred Years of Solitude" from the bookshelf and read it carefully.
To be honest, she had admired the name of this book for a long time, and had tried to read it several times. However, every time she flipped through the book, she was repelled by the indistinguishable, nearly identical names and the complicated and intertwined relationships between the characters.
But Rimi said that Guangchuan Gu Xing's favorite book was "One Hundred Years of Solitude", and he read it over and over again, at least seventy or eighty times.
The right way is to know yourself and your enemy, and you can fight a hundred battles without danger. It's time to study this book from beginning to end.
Opening the pages of the book, she quickly sank in, reading the words in the book silently in her mind——
[Years later, facing the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía would recall that distant afternoon when his father took him to see the ice].
She didn't notice at all that during the afternoon when she was immersed in the world of the book, the strange detective on the coffee counter glanced at her secretly from the corner of his eye from time to time.
What she didn't even know was that when she thought she had slipped in unnoticed in the morning, the detective's eyes were tied to her body like a rope and he watched her sit down in the corner.
Throughout the morning, he didn't even look at her, but his peripheral vision kept lingering in that corner.
…
In the evening, Satomi and Chiyo invited Karasawa Makoto to have dinner together on the third floor.
Chiyo said: "You always treat us to good food. It's hard to come to our territory this time, so give us a chance."
Karasawa Makoto glanced at Gu Xing out of the corner of her eye. Seeing that there was no reaction from the other party, she said, "Okay."
Gu Xing and Qianyo were in charge of cooking in the evening, while Satomi only served as a helper.
Of course, Karasawa Makoto didn't expect Gu Xing to be able to cook delicious Chinese food. She couldn't help but marvel at it while eating and almost bit her own tongue.
"How can we have fun like this?"
Karasawa Makoto suddenly suggested, "Let's have a drink together!"
"It's rare for you to be so elegant. We will accompany you to the end."
Satomi said, immediately stood up and walked out the door.
Chiyo asked her where she was going, and she said, "Looking for wine. My family's wine collection is on the ground floor, and there is a wine cellar there."
Karasawa Makoto clapped her hands and said with a smile: "That's great, let me see what good wine Gu Xingjun has at home."
"Hey, hey,"
Gu Xing quickly stood up and stopped Rimi, "You guys, please don't make your own decisions. Have you ever asked me for my opinion..."
Tang Zedao: "Don't be so stingy."
Qiandai quickly explained for Gu Xing: "I dare not say anything else. Gu Xingjun has always been very generous."
Karasawa Makoto: "Really? But, this afternoon I talked to him about the bookstore appearance fee..."
"Drink, drink, drink,"
Gu Xing shouted to Rimi who had just left the room: "Get wine, get a few more bottles, get the best wine. If you want to drink, drink to your heart's content. I have to get you all drunk today."
Karasawa Makoto smiled and said, "I'm notorious for being a heavy drinker. Gu Xingjun, please don't take it lightly."
After a while, Satomi walked in carrying a box of unknown wine.
Makoto Karasawa looked at the words written on the box above, "Wow, it's wine from China."
Satomi: "It seems to be thirty years mao... mao..."
"This wine is cheap but not good enough to drink,"
Gu Xing quickly stood up and planned to take the box from Rimi's hand.
"I'll go pick a box for you..."
"This is it,"
Satomi had already opened the box before him, "We have never drunk Huaguo's wine, so we might as well give it a try."
Karasawa: "Before I became a star, I drank a lot of cheap wine, some of which were very delicious."
Chiyo: "I live in poverty and only drink cheap wine."
Gu Xing: "..."
…
Half an hour later, Karasawa Makoto picked up the last glass of wine that night, blushed, and told Gu Xing unsteadily,
"Gu Xingjun, you can't escape."
Gu Xing: "Huh? What do you mean?"
Karasawa Makoto looked at him dazedly, stretched out her hand again, opened it in front of him, and stretched her fingers.
Then, she clenched her fists, as if she had grasped something extraordinary.
Gu Xing was about to speak.
Karasawa Makoto swayed, and like Satomi and Chiyo, fell on the table.
"The wine of Hua Kingdom is really strong..."
She muttered like this.
——
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