Cloudside Café

The Sixteenth Cup of Coffee Part 1

Before the atmosphere became awkward, Jiang Ying picked up the boxes on the table and walked to the door. She quickly said to him, “I’m tired. I’ll go back to bed first. You should rest early.”

Yun Xian watched her reach the door and lowered his head with a smile.

This day was really brimming with vibrancy.

Yun Xian laid on the bed after showering. He didn’t feel too sleepy. He didn’t want to take any sleeping pills today. He felt a little idle.

He thought about how Jiang Ying talked about being an artist with him a few days ago. Yun Xian opened up Weibo, which he rarely used, to search her name.

It was impossible for him to find Jiang Ying directly. Yun Xian thought about it and entered “Orange Sunset”.

There were several duplicate names in the list results, but it was not difficult to find her.

Yun Xian clicked on the Weibo user whose profile had “draw what you want to draw” on it, and scrolled through it.

Most of it was reposted. Occasionally, a few of her original artwork were published.

Yun Xian was not an expert about these kinds of things by fan artists. From the perspective of a normal person and from the view of someone who was her boyfriend, he thought Jiang Ying’s art was very good. The lines were smooth, the proportions were appropriate, the characters were delicately drawn, and the colors were complimentary. Anyone could see that she had a solid foundation in art.

Yun Xian read the comments at the bottom while looking at the drawing. It was all praises. He looked at it with a sense of pride in his mind. It was just like he was watching his own daughter be rewarded with a little red flower in kindergarten1.

Occasionally, there were posts that only a few fans could see that had an emoji on it and the caption was “you know”.

Know what? Is this a code word?

Yun Xian frowned and opened the comment area.

Heavens.

“AAAAHHHH! Madam, I salute you!”

“Thank you, sensei2! I’ve blown up!”

“Let me pay you my respect first!”

“I rushed over after receiving the notification for the colored version!”

“Once I saw the Three Protect One3 I knew that Orange Sunset had done a good job again!”

Yun Xian: ???

Wasn’t it an emoji bundle of a shiba inu?

He saw the words “enlarge” displayed in the lower right corner, Yun Xian clicked on the picture and swiped down a few times.

He kept swiping until the end, and finally saw something different after the first three identical pictures.

From his screen, he saw an upside down drawing. Yun Xian turned his phone around.

When he saw the details of the drawing clearly, his hand shook. The small black phone fell and hit his nose with a bang.

Yun Xian gave a low yelp of pain. He picked up his cell phone from his face and rubbed the injured part.

With a sigh of relief, he looked at the drawing on his cell phone again. For a moment, he was a little confused.

What the hell is “Three Protect One”?

——

At nine o’clock the next morning, Yun Xian and Jiang Ying were ready for the return trip.

Jiang Ying walked out of the room with her suitcase. Yun Xian was waiting for her at the stairs.

“Why aren’t you wearing glasses today?”

Before Yun Xian could answer, Jiang Ying noticed something strange on his face and asked anxiously, “What’s happened to your nose?”

Yun Xian touched the bruise. “I’m fine. I was just hit by my phone.”

Jiang Ying tiptoed up to look at his injury. His nose bridge was black and swollen. She gently breathed out a breath. “What did you do that ended up like that?”

Yun Xian touched his nose and looked away. At this time, the elevator arrived. He took Jiang Ying’s hand and stepped into the elevator. “It’s nothing. Just an accident, so don’t worry.”

The weather was great in the morning. After nine o’clock, the sun was a little harsh. Yun Xian pointed to the glove box in front of the navigator seat and said to Jiang Ying, “Jiang Ying, help me get my sunglasses.”

“Oh, okay.” She opened it. It didn’t have a lot of things: a black glasses case, a small paper bag, and a bottle of medicine.

The medicine bottle looked like some kind of healthcare product. Jiang Ying glanced at the words on it and asked casually, “Are you taking melatonin?”

Yun Xian was surprised for a moment and replied, “Yeah, I have a hard time sleeping sometimes.”

Jiang Ying took the sunglasses out of the box and handed them to Yun Xian. “Is it because of the pressure?”

“Before it was. It’s much better now.”

“When I was working on my graduation project and couldn’t sleep, I would eat. Then I would get dizzy the next morning. Do you?”

Yun Xian shook his head. “I’m fine.”

Yun Xian didn’t want this topic to continue, so he picked something else to talk about and asked, “I see that a lot of your screen names are Orange Sunset. Does it have a special meaning?”

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Footnotes

children get a red flower every time they are good and are obedientthe commenters are using the internet way of saying teacher that’s equivalent to dadaThis is a technique to overcome Weibo’s prevention against posting dirty content. You post three regular pictures, then one dirty picture.