Chapter 36
Ding-a-ling.
The wind chime on the bar’s door collided, a light and lilting sound.
The worn wooden floor was stained with the marks of time. A vinyl record spun slowly on the record player in the corner, a lazy blues tune flowing through the air.
“What would you like to drink?”
Amuro Tooru stood behind the bar. He had taken off his jacket and draped it over a chair, rolled up his sleeves, and skillfully picked up a shaker.
His movements were so natural that Fan An couldn’t help but ask, “Do you have a part-time job here too?”
Making coffee at the café during the day, mixing drinks at the bar at night. Could his real identity be a beverage blogger?
She had a sudden thought. “Will I one day see Mr. Amuro shaking milk tea at a Mixue Ice Cream & Tea?”
“Milk tea? It sounds like a good idea for a new product at Poirot,” Amuro said, deftly sidestepping the topic of his part-time job at the bar.
He wouldn’t say that bartending was part of the training program for Public Security officers before they infiltrated the distillery. He certainly wouldn’t say that every distillery newcomer, before getting their codename, secretly prayed that their codename would be presentable—a person cannot, at least should not, be called “Milk Beer” by their colleagues on the street.
“Lao Bai Gan,” “Er Guo Tou,” and “Mendao Lu” were also absolute no-gos.
(T/N: Strong, often cheap, Chinese liquors. “Mendao Lu” literally means “Knocks-down-a-donkey.”)
“The owner of this bar is a friend of mine,” Amuro explained.
To be precise, a Public Security informant.
The undercover agents of the world have long suffered under the distillery. The fake liquors, occasionally wanting to find a bar to drink and relieve the misery of being grabbed by the collar and shaken by Gin, who would demand, “Are you a mole? Speak! Are you?!”, would randomly pick a bar on the street and drink until they were dizzy. Then, a stunningly beautiful woman with waist-length silver hair would suddenly appear before them…
What an unspeakable night. R.I.P.
It was imperative that the red side seize control of the bar scene. They could not allow the Black Organization to continue its rampage. Give the fake liquors back a pure land!
“You can basically order any drink you can name,” Amuro introduced. “Except for Gin. The owner forgot to stock up.”
As if. It was purely intentional. So what if Gin was one of the six base spirits for cocktails? He had no place in a bar controlled by the red side.
Fan An had never tried to drown her sorrows in alcohol before. Her knowledge of alcohol basically came from her respected Mentor Scotch.
Thinking of Mentor Scotch, An’an felt a pang of longing.
“Then, a glass of Scotch whisky?” the girl asked, resting her head on her hand.
Her tone was one of pure curiosity, as if she had just randomly read a name from the menu that rolled off the tongue.
Logically, Amuro knew it was nothing. Emotionally, he remembered the pure-hate black-moonlight body-double literature circulating in the distillery, and his whole being felt unwell.
I’m sorry, Hiro. I never thought I’d come to despise my best friend’s codename so much. It’s all the fault of that body-double literature!
“Sorry, we’re out of Scotch whisky too,” Amuro tactfully refused.
“Is that so?” An’an said nothing. She read down the menu. “A glass of Rye whisky.”
Amuro: “…”
He closed his eyes. “We’re out of Rye whisky too.”
An’an: ? Does this bar actually want to do business?
Why are they out of everything?
Her finger on the menu moved down a line. “What about Bourbon? Is Bourbon whisky out of stock too?”
The girl looked like she was about to report them to the Consumer Protection Association.
Amuro coughed. “…We have Bourbon.”
He took out a shot glass and poured An’an a shot.
A small sip of alcohol. Amuro was worried she wouldn’t like the taste of the strong liquor, so he gave her a small taste first.
The rich aroma of the liquor filled her nose. The dark-haired girl leaned in and, like a kitten drinking water, tentatively stuck out her tongue.
“It’s sweet,” her eyes lit up. She downed it in one go.
“Drink slowly,” Amuro reminded her. “Bourbon is a strong liquor.”
The girl nodded, but it was clear she hadn’t heard a single word. “More, more.”
Amuro wasn’t sure of An’an’s alcohol tolerance. Just in case, he mixed the Bourbon with juice and iced tea to dilute the concentration.
An’an didn’t have a particular preference for alcohol. She just liked sweet drinks, and even more so if they had a fruity taste.
It was delicious. She chugged it down.
“The drink is good,” the girl said, her hands cupping her face. After getting a little tipsy, she started to cause trouble. “The considerate and gentle service that’s even better than a host club you promised before I came… where is it?”
Amuro hadn’t expected her to remember that. The blond young man smiled helplessly. “Am I not personally mixing drinks for you, my lady?”
“Perfunctory,” An’an said, dissatisfied. “If you treat your customers like this, you’ll be fired.”
“Think about your purpose for working at this bar. Is it for your missing father, your long-dead mother, your rebellious younger siblings, your broken home? Or are you selling yourself to pay off your expensive student loans? Or did your family fall into debt and you were sold to the owner to pay it off?”
She said with great earnestness, “Think about it, and then reflect on your work attitude.”
“My purpose for working at this bar?” Amuro said, dealing with the difficult customer’s nitpicking while skillfully peeling an apple. “None of the above.”
“I came to work at this bar to cheer up a certain girl who was in a bad mood.”
He cut a slice of crisp, sweet apple and held it to An’an’s lips.
“If she doesn’t give me a good review, I’ll have to be fired by the owner and go back to working at the café,” the blond young man’s voice was laced with a smile.
An’an bit the apple slice held to her lips, chewed, and swallowed. It was sweet.
Feeding her was particularly fun. The girl would chew the apple with both her left and right cheeks, evenly distributing the workload of her teeth.
Amuro watched as her left cheek puffed out, then her right. After feeding her a whole apple, he still wanted more. “Want more?”
“Are you feeding me like a rabbit?” An’an complained. “Yes.”
A person has to be flexible. She could be a rabbit.
Although the young lady was mischievous, she was easily satisfied. After the crisp fruit and half a glass of Bourbon, the gloomy black slime that had been writhing in the passenger seat of the Mazda had returned to its human form.
“I’ve reached my limit. I can’t drink anymore.”
An’an pushed the glass away with her index finger. She lay on the bar, her cheeks flushed a pretty red from the alcohol.
“Feeling better?” Amuro asked in a gentle voice.
“Mr. Amuro worked so hard to cheer me up. Of course I’m happy,” the girl’s eyes curved.
She raised her glass and touched the side to the back of Amuro’s hand.
“I was told before the audition that I probably wouldn’t be chosen, so I was more or less mentally prepared. But being rejected is still very disheartening.”
“But there’s nothing I can do about it,” An’an said, thinking of the male lead’s mistake, and sighed. “Life is always full of accidents.”
“On the bright side, at least I can get a villain role,” she said optimistically. “And I controlled my intake while drowning my sorrows. I didn’t get so drunk that I couldn’t find my way home. It’s not a bad ending.”
Ring, ring, ring.
The girl, resting her head on the bar, mumbled, “Who is it?” and fumbled for her phone. “Hello?”
Amuro saw An’an suddenly sit up straight, her eyes wide, with a look of disbelief, as if she had just heard Gin trying to sell her a hair care package.
“Eh… I’m playing the lead role?” An’an checked the date to make sure it wasn’t April Fool’s Day. “For real?”
“For real, for real!” the female voice on the other end of the line was even more excited than she was. “When can you come and sign the contract?”
An’an moved the phone away. She checked the number again. It was the one she had saved for Director Yuko, not her assistant sister.
She was confused. “Did you take your sister’s phone?”
“No,” beside Director Yuko, the assistant sister covered her face. “The one on the phone is my sister. Don’t be too surprised. We are sisters, after all.”
Her sister only looked composed. The moment she got excited, her true nature was revealed.
But who wouldn’t be excited?! If it had been the assistant sister making this call, she would have scared the person speechless.
“I don’t care if you call me a hypocrite—I want her!” Director Yuko’s resounding words had greatly surprised her assistant sister.
She had seen her sister show no emotion throughout the entire process, telling every auditioner to go home and wait for the notification. She had thought she hadn’t chosen anyone.
“Who is it?” the assistant sister was dying of curiosity.
Director Yuko didn’t answer her sister’s question directly. She called over the actor playing the male lead. “Regarding the choice for the female lead, I’d like to hear your opinion.”
The male lead had run scenes with every auditioner. The performances of the first half of the actors were on par. The main difference was the emotion they showed when they introduced themselves.
Director Yuko hadn’t told the male lead the correct answer. He could only guess the female lead’s psychology. “She’s fishing for a big fish. Seeing the fish take the bait, she should feel triumphant, and also relieved.”
“The male lead is smitten with her. Perhaps she also feels a sense of mockery towards him. Because ‘I’ claimed to be smitten with her without knowing her true identity, which is a very laughable thing.”
The male lead picked out a few of the auditioners’ files and said, “These few performed quite well.”
He hesitated for a moment, then spoke again. “Actually, there’s one more person. I really think she’s excellent. Her interpretation of the female lead gave me a feeling I can’t quite describe.”
Indescribable, yet unforgettable.
“But because of my mistake, her audition failed.”
The male lead couldn’t help but look at Director Yuko again with a pleading expression. “If we had given her another chance at that time… sigh, it was all my fault.”
How could he have made a mistake? He had performed it so many times, yet he had gone off-script precisely when he was facing her.
“Failed the audition?” Director Yuko said strangely, a look of almost ecstatic glee on her face.
This great director, who had been in the entertainment industry for many years and had plenty of say and the capital to be willful, took a file from her briefcase.
“Read this,” she said, handing the file to the male lead. The assistant sister leaned over to look as well.
The male lead took it and found it was a script.
“Isn’t this the audition script?” The more he looked at it, the more familiar it seemed. He skimmed through it. “What’s so special about it… huh?”
“HUH?!”
The script was crumpled in his shock. The male lead read it again and again. The black words on the white paper were like a swarm of butterflies, making him dizzy.
“[…She reaches out to the person on the shore. The male lead, as if bewitched, walks forward, misses his step, and falls into the pool with a splash. (The End)]”
The male lead was dumbfounded. “I- why did I fall into the water?”
Wasn’t he supposed to pull the female lead ashore? That’s what the script he had gotten said!
What was this new script?
“Of course you should fall into the water,” Director Yuko said with certainty.
“Pulling someone ashore implies ‘salvation’,” she retorted. “Am I trying to film a fairy tale where a female lead bent on revenge is moved by the male lead, lays down her butcher’s knife, and forgives everything?”
No, the male lead answered subconsciously in his heart. This is a thorough revenge drama. There is no softness, no forgiveness, only a towering hatred.
Ah… so that’s it.
“Yes, that’s right. That’s how it should be,” the male lead was enlightened. He understood. “I should have fallen into the water.”
It wasn’t him saving the female lead, but him being ruthlessly dragged into the water by her!
The male lead suddenly recalled his conversation with Fan An. The dark-haired girl, wringing the water from the hem of her clothes, had said:
“I think she has a special complex about water. Even if she has to use the male lead, she might not be able to resist the urge to drag him into the water and drown him.”
Director Yuko: “The male lead, after his heart skips a beat, pulls the female lead ashore. He has certainly fallen into a trap, but he has not lost the upper hand.”
“He is still standing on the shore, clean, while the female lead is dripping wet, as if she is still trapped on the day of the shipwreck.”
“This is not what she wants.”
She wants the male lead to be a mess, his hormone-driven body choking painfully on water, not only not blaming the perpetrator in the slightest, but also wanting to dig out his heart for her.
“I wanted to see who could do that.”
Director Yuko took back the real script, caressing the words on it. “Fanatical love makes one lose their reason, forget everything, and destroy themselves.”
“Just like the male lead who forgot his noble status,” she said, looking at the actor playing the male lead. “And you, who forgot the script.”
“Of all the auditioners, she was the only one who made you jump, wasn’t she?”