I feel embarrassed.

Zhang Pa put away the business card and said thank you.

Sheng Kailai immediately poured another glass of wine and said, "I have another gathering nearby, so I won't keep you company. I'll let Ruyu drink with you. The two of you can have a good chat about the script. Order whatever you want to eat, and don't try to save money for me." With that, he stood up.

Zhang Pa had no choice but to stand up and see him off: "Take your time."

"It's fine, the driver is waiting outside." Sheng Kailai picked up his clutch and phone, exchanged a few words with Xun Ruyu, greeted Zhang Pa, and walked out, opening the door.

Xun Ruyu asked Zhang Pa to sit back down while she went to see him off, returning shortly after: "Let's drink, just the two of us."

Zhang Pa smiled and said, "Your boyfriend is really cool."

"He treats me quite well; otherwise, it wouldn't be possible for me to stay with him all this time without any official status." Xun Ruyu smiled. "Though, he is a bit narrow-minded and can't stand other men getting close to me."

Zhang Pa sighed and said, "Am I not a man? Or am I a eunuch? Or perhaps I'm absurdly ugly and look completely harmless?"

Xun Ruyu smiled and said, "Didn't you look in the mirror?" As she spoke, she picked up her phone and said, "Don't move." She took a picture and showed it to Zhang Pa. His appearance over this recent period was indeed somewhat wretched.

Zhang Pa said, "I'm quite handsome."

"Fine, you're quite handsome." Xun Ruyu continued, "He also has one good trait: he says everything straight to your face and doesn't hide things to make you guess blindly. Saying something like that on our very first meeting, were you scared?"

Zhang Pa smiled and replied, "He certainly has personality."

Xun Ruyu smiled as well and then asked, "What's your WeChat? For the convenience of staying in touch, is it registered with your phone number?"

"No, it's registered with my QQ," Zhang Pa said. "I rarely log on."

"WeChat is convenient, you can make free phone calls and things like that," Xun Ruyu said.

Zhang Pa immediately grew interested: "You can make free phone calls?"

"You didn't know?" Xun Ruyu was a bit surprised.

"Of course I didn't, nobody told me." Zhang Pa immediately took out his phone: "How do you make free calls?"

Xun Ruyu replied, "It's like voice chatting, and you can even do video chats."

Zhang Pa said, "This is good, this is good." Since you can talk for free, why make regular phone calls? That would just waste money.

After fiddling with it for a little while, they added each other as friends. Clicking on Xun Ruyu's profile to look, it was mostly pretty selfies.

Xun Ruyu was also looking at his profile: "How come there's nothing here?"

Zhang Pa casually replied, "I remember posting one or two things."

Xun Ruyu said, "Two posts. One is a restaurant advertisement, and the other is a speaker advertisement."

Zhang Pa said, "That restaurant was pretty good. Posting on WeChat gets you a plate of meat worth over thirty yuan; the speaker one was a bit ridiculous, saying that posting on WeChat enters you into a lottery to win a speaker, which had nothing to do with me at all."

Xun Ruyu laughed and said, "Are you really that desperate?"

"I'd treat you to a plate of meat. Don't you want it?" Zhang Pa tapped away at his phone screen, intending to exit WeChat, when he suddenly noticed that Princess seemed to have sent some messages.

Opening them up, there were five consecutive WeChat messages, each containing nine photos. She was traveling in the South.

The five messages included pictures of swimming, riding a yacht, eating, hotel room views, and photos taken on an airplane.

Looking at them in chronological order, the last message showed her swimming. She was wearing a one-piece swimsuit, which was relatively conservative, but the water was so clear, and the sea was so blue.

The yacht in the photos was a genuinely large yacht, looking exceptionally nice.

Zhang Pa suddenly remembered what he had told Liu Xiaomei about going to the seaside to eat barbecue, and looking back at Princess's WeChat, everyone in the photos was smiling—smiling very happily.

For some reason, he suddenly had the feeling that the life Princess was living now was something he could never provide.

Recalling Princess's boyfriend, Liu Fei, a slightly thin and handsome guy from what appeared to be a very well-off family, this trip probably involved the two of them traveling together.

He stared blankly at his phone. Xun Ruyu asked, "What's wrong? What are you looking at?"

Zhang Pa put down his phone: "It's nothing." He then brought up the main business: "As for the script, I think you should listen to me. No matter what, I'll write it first. As for you, you can decide on the main characters, such as the background and the number of people, the protagonists and supporting roles, and I'll weave the story for you."

Xun Ruyu said okay and that she would go back and ponder it carefully. "Let's strive to get the script out before New Year's Day."

New Year's Day? There were less than two months left. The time was neither too tight nor too loose, and Zhang Pa agreed with a simple "Alright."

Then came the eating. The main combatant was him, while Xun Ruyu only ate a token amount.

Zhang Pa stuffed himself quite full. Seeing that he truly couldn't eat another bite, Xun Ruyu went to pay the bill. Zhang Pa asked for doggy bags and carried five takeout containers home.

The two gatekeepers at his doorstep were still there, but they had changed their spot, moving from guarding right outside the door to the street corner, where two cars were also parked.

Zhang Pa thought about it for a moment before realizing they were guarding against out-of-town reporters. Such matters are never judged by evidence; the moment something is posted online, the homeowner is automatically the victim, while the real estate developer and the government are bound to be cursed at. The relevant departments would naturally be nervous.

Glancing a few more times at the two pitiful fellows, Zhang Pa swaggered through the door and went back to work, staying busy until the five monkeys came home.

He had Old Pei go out to buy some wine, and paired with the seafood packed up from noon, the six of them had quite a hearty meal.

Old Pei said, "Crab is still the best."

Daniu said, "Eating crab takes too much time."

Everyone ate and chatted, and before they knew it, it was 6:30 in the evening. Because they were drinking, the seafood was quickly finished, and Old Pei went back to the small grocery store to buy some ham sausages, peanuts, and other snacks so everyone could keep drinking.

At that moment, Principal Qin called, telling Zhang Pa to hurry over to the restaurant.

Zhang Pa asked, "Didn't you say I didn't need to go? Why am I going after all?"

"I told you to come, so come. Change into clean clothes and tidy yourself up a bit," the principal said.

Zhang Pa gave a bitter smile: "It's not that I won't change, it's that I don't have any."

"You don't have any? What nonsense are you talking about? How could you not have any?" The principal didn't believe it.

Zhang Pa said he really didn't. Principal Qin grew angry: "Regardless of whether you have them or not, get over here immediately."

Zhang Pa said he understood, told the five monkeys, and rushed to the restaurant.

Principal Qin was eating hotpot, with a table full of various meats and vegetables, drinking quite happily with an old man sitting opposite him.

Upon arriving, Zhang Pa greeted him first: "Principal."

Principal Qin looked over his outfit—which was truly too gruesome to behold—and said angrily, "What have you been up to? How did you manage to get yourself into this state?"

Zhang Pa said, "I didn't mean to, some things really did happen."

"You, oh you." Principal Qin made the introduction: "This is Deputy Director Qi of the Municipal Education Bureau."

Zhang Pa hurriedly said, "Hello, Director."

As a leadership official, Deputy Director Qi looked a bit aged; judging by his appearance, he should have been retired already.

Principal Qin introduced him: "In the city's entire education system, there are many people I admire, but among the leaders of the education system, I only admire Deputy Director Qi. Pour him a drink."

Zhang Pa hurriedly picked up a cup and poured the wine.

Deputy Director Qi smiled and said, "Sit down first, are you drinking before even sitting?"

"Sitting, sitting." Zhang Pa sat down beside the principal, waited for his cup to be filled, and toasted Director Qi.

Director Qi was very amiable, smiled as he clinked glasses with him, and downed more than half a cup in one gulp.

This was baijiu, and seeing the leader being so straightforward despite his advanced age, Zhang Pa had no choice but to finish his own cup in one go.

Having spent over four years kicking around in the provincial capital, today was his first time drinking at noon, drinking at night, and then drinking yet another round after the evening session—it certainly counted as rushing through a busy drinking bout.

With the cup of wine down his throat, Deputy Director Qi said, "No rush, eat something first."

Zhang Pa said okay and fished some meat out of the hotpot to eat.

Principal Qin tilted his head to look him over: "You look much worse right now than you did in the photo."

Zhang Pa said, "You have a very special way of complimenting people."

After watching him eat for a bit, Principal Qin said, "Do you know why I called you here?"

Zhang Pa said he didn't know.

The principal said, "I called you here because Director Qi wanted to see you, to see just how strong the capable soldiers under my command really are."

Zhang Pa said, "If you're going to talk like that, please allow me to hire a translator, because I really can't understand you."

Principal Qin said to Deputy Director Qi, "You see that? This fellow shows zero respect to me, the dignified principal of a school. And this is right in front of you, so he's still sparing my face; he's even more of an asshole back at school."

Zhang Pa said, "What did I do to be an asshole?"

Principal Qin ignored him and said to Deputy Director Qi, "You tell him."

Deputy Director Qi then spoke to Zhang Pa: "Many people at the Education Bureau know about your situation."

Zhang Pa said, "Am I that famous?"

"Quite famous. Principal Qin ran back and forth between the district education bureau and the municipal education bureau. As soon as our bureau chief heard he was coming, he immediately closed the door to visitors and claimed he wasn't in." Deputy Director Qi smiled and continued, "It's that people higher up don't look favorably upon you. Principal Qin met with every single bureau director in our department, and it was still useless; not a single person dared to let you resume teaching."

Zhang Pa said, "I know. The person I offended is named Miao Zili, and his father is the provincial executive vice governor."

Principal Qin was stunned: "Why didn't you tell me earlier?"

"I didn't want to tell anyone in the first place." Zhang Pa looked at him: "Principal, I toast you. Thank you." With that, he downed more than half a cup of baijiu.

Principal Qin took a sip to accompany him and asked, "What's going on? How could you manage to offend such a high-ranking leader?"

"How I offended him is a story for another time; the matter has already been resolved," Zhang Pa said. "I didn't know you'd been running around trying to fix things for me these past few days, otherwise I definitely would have told you sooner." He repeated once more, "Thank you, Principal. Sorry for the trouble."

"You didn't really cause me trouble; I helped you out of a sense of responsibility toward the students in Class 18." Principal Qin frowned and said, "But how on earth did you manage to offend *him*? No wonder no matter whose favor I asked, it didn't work, and no wonder nobody was willing to offend a provincial leader for the sake of someone like you."

Zhang Pa said, "What kind of person am I supposed to be? How depressing."

Knowing the kind of person Zhang Pa had offended, Principal Qin asked Deputy Director Qi, "Does what you said still count?"

Deputy Director Qi hesitated slightly, but after turning it over in his mind a few times, he nodded and said, "It counts."

Principal Qin thanked him, and then said to Zhang Pa, "I called you here because Director Qi wanted to meet you and see what kind of person you are."

This sentence reminded him of Sheng Kailai at noon. What kind of day was it today, that so many people wanted to see him?

Principal Qin continued, "I told Director Qi about the situation at No. 18 Middle School, explaining that you're able to keep a group of delinquent students who skip class every day from truancy, which shows you're a very competent teacher who knows how to think of the students and help them learn and grow."

Zhang Pa said, "You're exaggerating a bit. I'm just muddling along."

The principal said, "Even muddling along is done with a high sense of responsibility, and it benefits the students." (To be continued.)