“Oh~ Thank you very much for your satisfaction, dear customer~ And congratulations to this beautiful lady for becoming our hundredth customer and winning our super special discount~”
After saying that, Zhuang Zhiyao grabbed the group of friends posing as waiters and hurried off in a noisy rush.
The few highly customized dishes that looked incredibly expensive and tasted wonderfully rich disappeared with them as well.
Xie Wanwan watched Xie Tangning rinse her mouth with a drink, then glanced at Monkey Bro, who looked as if he had nearly been poisoned to death.
Her brain went into overdrive. At last, she figured out that this restaurant seemed to be outside help specially recruited by the two of them.
Only, this outside help came at a price.
She secretly grumbled to herself, Stupid Xie Tangning! You didn’t tell me a thing!
You made me worry for nothing. You deserved to be tortured half to death!
After angrily stewing for a while, the young girl turned around, intending to interrogate Su Xiaoye, only to find her snickering.
“So you already saw through everything, Su Xiaoye! And you still tried to scare me earlier!”
Su Xiaoye hurriedly held back her smile. “That’s so unfair, my young miss~ How would I ever dare scare you?”
“I just wanted to make things a little more fun. The audience loves this sort of thing, and as guests, of course we have to cooperate!”
There was no way to argue with that logic. Xie Wanwan could only wrinkle her nose at her in protest, while Su Xiaoye lowered her head and started snickering again.
The haughty, bristling young miss looked absolutely adorable!
Once those awful friends had left, Xie Tangning began complaining furiously with Monkey Bro.
Liang Zhou was so indignant that his resentment alone could have sustained an entire army of evil spirits.
“A bunch of bastards! They practically treated me like a Japanese person!”
Xie Tangning viciously chewed on a piece of naan-wrapped meat, as if she were gnawing on those rotten friends themselves.
“Exactly! Just wait until the next winter training camp starts. I’ll make sure to destroy them. Otherwise, I’d be unworthy of my title as the training camp’s number one!”
Liang Zhou’s mind had already come up with a hundred and eighty ingenious little revenge schemes. “I’ve been resisting that damn training camp for so long, but this is the first time I’ve actually looked forward to winter training camp!”
“Qin Zhe and the others are really lucky!”
While shoveling food into his mouth like a pig, Xie Changyu listened to the two of them grumble and whine, especially to the way his little sister was gnashing her teeth.
This “background music for eating” was practically a divine masterpiece!
Only after the two of them had finished complaining did Wu Dacheng look at Xie Tangning with his cheeks puffed out.
“Boss, that wasn’t cool! You didn’t tell me about something like this in advance. Am I no longer your most loyal underling?”
Xie Tangning effortlessly deflected the accusation and threw it right back at him. “Are you asking me?”
“I thought that as my most loyal right-hand man, you had evolved to the point where you could read your boss’s mind at any time!”
“I honestly didn’t expect you couldn’t. Looks like I was just imagining things~”
Wu Dacheng: “!!!”
“Boss, don’t make things up! I was only joking just now! How could I not have seen that those few bastards were your troublemaking friends?”
“So, Boss, please don’t question my loyalty!”
Little Fatty spoke with such righteous conviction that his eyes looked as though he were about to take an oath.
There was no way Xie Tangning couldn’t see through his nonsense, but when someone offered her a convenient way out, of course she would take it!
She even tossed in a couple of soothing words, nearly flattering the boy into floating out of the galaxy.
Liang Jiaqing and the others all agreed that this afternoon tea had been incredibly satisfying—mainly because they weren’t the ones who had been pranked!
Naturally, they didn’t forget to invite the cameramen to eat as well. Brother Lin and Brother Li had been fed by them so many times that they no longer felt the slightest bit embarrassed.
They simply set their cameras on tripods, sat down, and ate with particular enthusiasm!
Xie Tangning and Xie Changyu went all out feeding their two cameramen, using serving chopsticks to pile food into their bowls nonstop.
Brother Li and Brother Lin were moved all over again and reaffirmed their determination to remain lifelong solo fans.
As for how many people they were solo fans of, that was beside the point! In any case, they were both devoted exclusively to Xie Tangning and Xie Changyu.
After Qin Shuchun and the others had finished messing with their dear friends, they ordered quite a few more dishes according to the number of people in the production crew, making sure not to waste any food.
There was more than enough for the guests and cameramen to enjoy a lavish “afternoon tea” together.
So when Director Zhang stepped into the restaurant, he was greeted by the sight of the guests and cameramen sitting around one table and frantically devouring delicious food.
The dozen or so burly, double-door-sized bodyguards he had seen in the livestream just moments earlier were nowhere to be found.
The scene was so far beyond his expectations that Director Zhang thought he had walked into the wrong show. He instinctively backed out.
Seeing this strange behavior, the assistant director abruptly dragged him back inside.
“What are you doing now? Your precious guests are right here. Where do you think you’re going?”
After being yanked so hard, Director Zhang finally came to his senses a little, but he remained baffled and stunned.
“???”
“What happened? Weren’t you guys caught in a scam restaurant?!”
Director Zhang was covered in question marks. To be fair, he genuinely had no idea what had happened during the past ten minutes.
The market was crowded, making it inconvenient to drive in.
During the walk from where he had gotten out of the vehicle to the restaurant, he had hurried straight over and completely missed the ending of this reunion between old acquaintances.
So he had truly been kept in the dark from beginning to end, looking as foolish as Zhu Bajie.
The only person who had watched everything from start to finish was the assistant director, who was doing his best to keep a straight face and pretend he knew nothing, hoping to fool Director Zhang.
Xie Tangning looked at Director Zhang with an innocent expression. “Huh? Director, what are you talking about?”
“Would you like to sit down and have a few bites? The food’s actually pretty good!”
Liang Zhou also began blinking innocently. “Director Zhang, weren’t you at the final wrap-up house? Since when did you learn how to teleport?”
Shen Hao had noticed the worried look on Director Zhang’s face just now and realized that the director had definitely misunderstood the situation.
Then again, perhaps it wasn’t a misunderstanding at all. This whole scene had clearly been staged for Director Zhang by those two little troublemakers, Xie Tangning and Liang Zhou. Shen Hao had no idea why an old fox like Director Zhang had fallen for it.
But fall for it he had.
“So you saw the livestream and thought we were being strong-armed by a scam restaurant, then rushed over here without stopping!”
“Oh my~ Director Zhang really does care about us!”
“Just look at Director Zhang’s deep love for us. What are you waiting for? Hurry up and thank him!”
When it came to making snide remarks and provoking Director Zhang, Shen Hao could do it without even trying.
The two masterminds, Xie Tangning and Liang Zhou, along with Xie Changyu, cooperated perfectly. They immediately stood up and bowed to Director Zhang.
“Thank you, Director Zhang!”
Director Zhang: “…”
Fine, fine, so this was how a bunch of little bastards wanted to play it?
After decades of experience in the industry, he had never expected to fall into a ditch and get tricked by a few little rascals.
This was truly a first.
Seeing that he was still standing there without saying anything, the assistant director couldn’t help patting him on the shoulder.
“What are you standing there for? Tell them they’re welcome!”
Director Zhang turned his head and stared at him. His eyes clearly conveyed two words: What is wrong with you?
Looking at his good colleague’s smug grin, what else could he not understand?
“You sly dog! You teamed up with these little troublemakers to fool me, didn’t you?”
“Tell me! Was this restaurant something you specifically arranged for them? How dare you openly let them off the hook! Don’t forget, you’re the assistant director!”
