Cheng Fengyang was completely oblivious to Shopkeeper Xiao Zhang's resentment. Having already shifted into work mode, he didn't even touch the tea snacks on the table and instead asked Lin Lan about the property owner's specific requirements.
"I want a beautiful display cabinet, the kind that cats can easily climb onto and sleep comfortably on, but it must have good light transmission! The area for the water bar... should be about the same as what you see in this shop. All this equipment will be for my use later. Also, there absolutely must be two bathrooms built inside, one for people and one for cats. The cat's bathroom must have a squat toilet."
As Lin Lan gestured, Cheng Fengyang took notes with pen and paper in his own notebook. When he heard the last part, he couldn't help but pause: "Why a squat toilet for the cats?"
"Because regular toilets are too high. Cats might be able to jump onto them when they're young and strong, but they won't manage when they're old." This was a drawback Lin Lan had only thought of a few days ago. For kittens that could even squat by the edge of a toilet, using a squat toilet would be even simpler. Getting them to change their bathroom habits wouldn't be difficult. "A cat's lifespan is at most about twenty years, and generally, they're gone in around ten. Since I'm raising them, I must treat them well, so these things need to be considered too."
By the end, Lin Lan's voice had unconsciously softened.
Being able to understand cat language and communicate with them without barriers was a fortunate accident she had encountered. She wanted this beautiful accident to continue.
"Lin Lan, you really love cats," Cheng Fengyang couldn't help but sigh. He saw the tenderness overflowing from her eyes when she mentioned the cats and found himself touched by that warmth. "Don't worry, I will definitely help you design the tea house that the cats will love the most!"
"Then I'll leave it to you!" Perhaps because she communicated with cats too much, Lin Lan always felt that human eyes weren't as pure as those of animals—it was just a species difference, nothing to be done. But she could see and feel the sincerity shining from this person's eyes; he was genuinely here to help her.
The two discussed the renovation details for a while longer. It wasn't until Cheng Fengyang felt his mouth was dry that he remembered the milk tea on the table. He picked it up and took a sip.
Then his eyes widened: "This is really good!" He even raised the cup in surprise to look at it. The packaging was the standard kind, no different from those chain milk tea shops outside. "I've had plenty of milk tea, and this one's taste ranks pretty high up there. How come this place couldn't make it? That shouldn't be the case!"
His blurted-out question and affirmation were like two invisible throwing knives, thwip-thwip, piercing Shopkeeper Xiao Zhang's heart all over again. He even couldn't help but clutch his chest.
Lin Lan pressed her lips together tightly, afraid she might accidentally laugh. With a stiff face, she answered, "It's just that the shopkeeper has family matters and doesn't want to run the shop anymore, so it's closing normally when the lease ends. The water bar equipment here has already been sold to me, and we'll operate until the contract ends. I've been learning how to make tea snacks from the shopkeeper these days. The taste is good, right?"
Shopkeeper Xiao Zhang behind her immediately nodded, very grateful to Lin Lan for covering for him and saving his dignity. "It's fine, it's fine. Since you're Lin Lan's friend, you're my friend too. Have as much milk tea and snacks as you like here, my treat!"
He suddenly had a change of heart. Anyway, the remaining ingredients wouldn't all be sold by moving day, and they had expiration dates. Might as well let people enjoy them.
Just then, two customers passing by came to the shop: "Boss, one Milk Salt Oolong and one Roselle Fruit Tea!" It was a young couple.
"Coming, coming!" Shopkeeper Xiao Zhang hurriedly went to serve them.
Seeing the shop getting busy, Cheng Fengyang instinctively prepared to leave. He had just begun to voice his farewell when Lin Lan stopped him, asking him to wait a moment.
"Shopkeeper, I'll handle it." Skillfully nudging Shopkeeper Xiao Zhang aside from behind the water bar, Lin Lan started using the equipment to make the milk tea.
A few minutes later, the passing customers drank through their straws with satisfaction: "So delicious! I only found out today that this shop's milk tea tastes this good. Boss, do you offer delivery? Next time, I'll specifically order from your place!"
If it were a month ago, Shopkeeper Xiao Zhang would have been thrilled to hear this. Now, he just wanted to cry, especially since the two customers were saying this to Lin Lan.
"Sorry, this shop will be closing at the end of this month," Lin Lan smiled at them, directly answering the question. Seeing their disappointed expressions, she added, "But afterwards, this place will be renovated into a Cat Tea House. You'll still be able to buy tea with the same taste. You can order anything from the menu above."
"So, it's a cat café?" Hearing this, the two customers immediately became very interested. Most young people who actively buy milk tea are not only familiar with cat cafés but some even frequent them. The girl in the couple had a look of realization. "I was wondering why such a good-tasting tea place would close. So, it's expanding into a cat café! How many cats will there be? Will there be Ragdolls?"
It's not hard to pet ordinary cats; regularly feeding strays will eventually lead to meeting some that are docile and allow petting. But those expensive pedigree cats aren't so easy to access. Besides visiting relatives or friends who have cats, the only way to get your fix is to spend a little money for a visit to a cat café.
"It's similar to a cat café, but we won't sell coffee inside, only tea and snacks," Lin Lan replied with a smile. "When the tea house opens, there won't just be Ragdolls, but also Russian Blues and Siamese. There will even be a show-quality, purebred Silver Chinchilla."
"Wow—!" the girl immediately exclaimed, her eyes lighting up. "Ragdolls, Blues, and a Chinchilla! I'm coming, I'm coming! Boss, you must notify us when it opens!"
"No problem, thank you both for being willing to support us. The tea house will definitely open this winter. If there are friends around who also like cats, you can tell them too."
Watching as Lin Lan, with just a few words, converted his shop's customers into future potential clientele for the cat café, Shopkeeper Xiao Zhang felt depressed and powerless.
Indeed, this shop no longer belonged to him. The water bar had been sold to her. The tea she made as an apprentice sold better than his. Once the lease was up, the premises would return to her hands. And now, even the customers were being taken away.
...So sad, but I mustn't cry.
Shopkeeper Xiao Zhang forced a smile. In the end, he watched as Lin Lan deftly made several more cups of fruit milk tea, took several small cakes from the warming cabinet, packed them into a takeout box, then put everything into a plastic bag and handed it to the designer young man outside the counter.
"Cheng Fengyang, thank you for coming today to help with the renovation design. Please take these little tea snacks back with you," Lin Lan said to him. He said he was willing to do it for free, but she couldn't really offer nothing in return.
Receiving these snacks made Cheng Fengyang quite happy. Not to mention he genuinely liked the taste of the milk tea, but his niece was visiting at home today, so these little cakes and such came at just the right time.
Saying thank you, the young man happily headed home with the bag of snacks.
Cheng Fengyang lived in the residential complex across the street. This time, without a dog with an injured butt needing to be carried slowing him down, he made it through the complex gates on his own two feet in just a few minutes.
Strolling leisurely along the red-brick walkway lined with excellent greenery, he stopped at a single-family Western-style house with a garden. Pushing open the outer wrought-iron gate, he walked through the yard and entered the house.
"Uncle, you're back!" The moment he stepped inside, Cheng Fengyang heard his little niece calling out to him, her short legs pattering over.
It wasn't specifically to welcome him.
"Wow! Milk tea, and cake!"
The sharp-eyed five-year-old had rushed over purely for the sweets she spotted at a glance, her eyes fixed intently on them.
"Uncle, uncle, I want some!"
While she was shouting "I want some!", the Border Collie that had been waiting by the door early on was also circling Cheng Fengyang, wagging its tail nonstop.
As Cheng Fengyang was dealing with the entanglements of the little one and the dog, Cheng Xingyu and Cheng's mother, who had heard the commotion a step later, also came out from inside.
"You're back." Seeing the things in her brother's hands, Cheng Xingyu couldn't help but smile. "From that girl? Looks like it went pretty well."
"What are you talking about, sis?" Cheng Fengyang retorted with annoyance. "We were just discussing the renovation. She really liked some of the designs I proposed, so she gave me some sweets as I was leaving, that's all."
"If she didn't like it, she probably wouldn't have given you anything." Cheng Xingyu laughed heartily. "And I didn't say anything much. Her liking your designs means you two have some similarities in aesthetic taste, right?"
Cheng's mother, listening to the conversation on the side, grew more and more intrigued. She grabbed her daughter and asked curiously, "Is it that girl who helped your husband before? The old Lin family with the building in the urban village across the street?"
"That's the one." Cheng Xingyu nodded with a smile. "Brother might not have much of an impression, but I still remember. Before our area was demolished, when both sides of the street looked the same, the Lin family with the tall building was already quite famous. I just didn't expect the one who helped my husband so much this time would be the Lin family's daughter. Your son seemed to have taken a liking to her even before he knew who she was."
"No way! Mom, don't listen to my sister's nonsense. I've barely met her a few times, okay?" Cheng Fengyang protested vehemently, though this time his tone lacked a bit of its usual conviction. He had been quite self-assured back at the square last time. "I'm not going to argue with you gossipy women anymore. I'll just leave these sweets on the table. I'm going back to my room to work on the design drawings!"
With that, he quickly put the things down, hurriedly went upstairs, and shut himself in his room.
The mother and daughter downstairs didn't stop him. Just listening to the sound of the door closing upstairs, Cheng Xingyu first poked her mother, then pointed upstairs, sneaking a smile. "See that? He's embarrassed."
Cheng's mother, on the other hand, let out a big sigh of relief and patted her chest contentedly. "Finally, he's getting a clue." She turned and looked at her daughter helplessly. "Back when he was in school, I was afraid he'd start dating too early. Now I just worry he never developed that sense and can't be 'sold off'. This is good now. He's finally making progress."
Cheng Xingyu was both amused and exasperated upon hearing this. "Mom, these things can't be rushed or forced. At the very least, with my brother's background and circumstances, there's absolutely no need to be anxious. Taking it slowly now, hasn't he already come across a quite suitable candidate?" At this point, her expression turned serious as she whispered a reminder. "Mom, you and Dad should just mention this topic once or twice in the future. You can't talk about it in his ear every day. Let them get to know each other slowly first. We don't know what the girl's attitude is either. Let things take their natural course. If you nag too much and he develops a rebellious attitude, that wouldn't be good."
Cheng's mother, who had originally been thinking of talking to her son again during dinner, was instantly awakened and nodded repeatedly. "Right, right. We'll just watch and not say anything. Xingyu, you keep an eye on the child here. I'll go call your dad and tell him about this too."
Cheng Xingyu couldn't stop her in time and could only watch helplessly as her mother hurriedly closed the door and went into the room. She couldn't help but feel resigned. "No need to be in such a hurry... I said it's just the very beginning, nothing's settled yet."
The little episode at the Cheng household passed in a flash. Across the street, in the old Lin family's convenience store, Lin's father and Lin's mother sat behind the counter. Watching the shop while cracking sunflower seeds, they unconsciously also started talking about their own daughter.
"Do you think Lanlan's plan to open that... what's it called, cat café... will work?" This was a type of shop Wang Xiuzhi had never encountered before, and she couldn't help but worry instinctively. "Can you really make money with those cats?"
"Of course it can make money. Otherwise, all those cat cafés on the street would have closed down long ago," Lin Youyu said, not sharing his wife's apprehension. "Besides, even if it really doesn't make money, it's fine. Like our little convenience store here, we don't expect to make a fortune from it. It's just something to keep us busy. If it really keeps losing money, we can just close it and rent it out to someone else."
"Right! If we lose, at worst we just rent it out to someone else again!" Having arrived at the key risk mitigation solution, Wang Xiuzhi suddenly saw the light and stopped worrying about her daughter possibly losing money if she opened the shop. "The old man always sees things more clearly!"
"Of course. You handle the small matters at home, but for the big things, you still have to rely on me." Rarely praised by his wife, Lin Youyu was quite pleased with himself. But his pride didn't last long before his wife presented him with a new challenge.
"Well then, Lanlan's dad, have you gone to the Industry and Commerce Bureau to run the errands for Lanlan? Those business licenses and such... when our daughter asked you before how to handle them, you patted your chest and said you'd take care of it for her. You haven't forgotten, have you?"
Lin Youyu's expression instantly changed from a hearty laugh to an "uh, uh, uh." Just as he was about to speak, a Husky came bounding to the door of the convenience store... followed by its owner holding the leash.
"Uncle Lin, Auntie Lin, good afternoon!" A hip-hop young man in camouflage sportswear, carrying a skateboard, greeted them with a smile.
"It's Little Xu!" Recognizing the visitor, Lin Youyu smiled back. "Going out to walk the dog again?"
"You bet. Have to go for a long run every few days, otherwise the sofa's going to get chewed up again." It was Xu Xiangfei from the fourth floor. Like everyone else, he was an office worker, but this young man seemed to have boundless energy. In their daughter's words, he was a typical goofball youth, full of wild ideas and always having the energy to act on them.
Wang Xiuzhi actually liked him quite a bit, thinking young people should be this lively and energetic. She now smiled and teased him, "Little Xu, I heard it in the hallway the other day. Your Ke Le went and bullied Little Qian's Niu Niu again, didn't he?"
This Husky was famous in the small building for its boundless energy, always provoking cats and teasing birds. From Qian Xuan's British Shorthair to Auntie Yu's parrot, if anyone in the building dared to bring their pet out and happened to run into this dog, it was destined to cause a commotion.
The problem was, whenever Xu Xiangfei went out to play after getting off work, the dog was rarely apart from him. As a result, ever since Lin Lan started picking up and keeping a lot of cats, she had directly listed him as a key person to avoid—cats are much more fragile than dogs; they can have severe stress reactions from major frights, and if not careful, can literally be scared to death.
So even though Lin Lan had been back for almost two months, despite living in the same building, the chances of them running into each other had become fewer and fewer.
Xu Xiangfei, being rather thick-skinned, didn't feel much about it, but upon hearing Auntie Lin's teasing, he immediately put on an exaggerated show of surrender and grievance: "How could that be, Auntie Lin! Every time our Ke Le faces off against Qian Xuan's Niu Niu, he's never won once. He always gets his ears boxed soundly by Niu Niu! Since you have Xue Hua at home, you must know how fast a cat can strike. The moment my Ke Le poked his head over, Niu Niu would spread her paws and give him a proper thrashing from both sides. It was so pitiful, his yelping could be heard throughout the entire building."
Wang Xiuzhi was greatly amused by Little Xu's exaggerated description: "'Ears boxed soundly' and 'a proper thrashing from both sides'—with your Ke Le's thick hide, even a dozen more swats from Niu Niu's little paws wouldn't hurt or itch him, would they?"
That was certainly true. But even if it didn't hurt, he had to cry pitifully to milk the situation for sympathy.
"Let's not talk about that anymore, Uncle Lin, Auntie Lin. There's something I need to discuss with you both." Living in the same building, Xu Xiangfei had of course heard long ago that the young landlady had been raising cats with plans to open a cat cafe. That's why he had specifically come to the Lin family's convenience store now. "Is Lin Lan still taking in pet cats? A female colleague of mine at the company is pregnant, and the Abyssinian cat she originally had at home is being forcibly demanded to be given away by her mother-in-law. My colleague hopes to find a good home for it. Do you think it would be possible?"
