Dragon Raja 2; Chapter 54: Dandelion (1)

Dragon Raja 2

He pushed open the door, looked up at the pouring rain, pulled up his collar to cover his head, and dashed out with his suitcase. The Panamera’s door popped open, and he rushed into the front passenger seat, only then turning his head back. Through the rain, on the other side of the floor-to-ceiling window, the air conditioner blew away the last batch of little umbrellas. Chen Wenwen stood amidst the dandelions, as if she could fly away with those soft, white fluffs. She looked over at him, breathed on the glass, and drew a little smiling face in the fog.

“Mingfei, is it hard living alone abroad?” Chen Wenwen asked softly, without looking at Lu Mingfei, instead looking down at her plate.

“It’s alright, it’s alright. I have a roommate named Finger and a boss named Caesar. They’re both pretty cool,” Lu Mingfei’s voice echoed throughout the Aspasia restaurant.

Before the Liberation, this building was a French merchant’s villa. After Aspasia bought it, it was remodeled, keeping the old elm floors. All four walls were knocked down and replaced with floor-to-ceiling windows, and the rooms were connected to each other. Even the floor slabs were demolished, leaving an eight-meter-high dome, with a nearly hundred-year-old wooden beam suspending a huge chandelier. At the moment, the chandelier was off, and the only light in the massive space came from the candle on Lu Mingfei and Chen Wenwen’s table. They were the only guests in the entire restaurant.

Boss Caesar, or rather, the Mint Club, had ostentatiously… booked the whole place!

Chen Wenwen was wearing that familiar white dress, with white lace-trimmed socks and flat black shoes. The candlelight added a soft, warm hue to her.

Lu Mingfei, on the other hand, was dressed in a black suit, a Florentine-style shirt, and pearl-shell buttons. This outfit had been left in the back seat of the BMW, with the Mint Club’s considerate planning to match Caesar Gattuso’s usual style.

Not far to his left stood a huge ancient ship, its bow touching the ceiling. It was a sunken ship from the Ming Dynasty that Aspasia had salvaged and turned into a wine cabinet in a creative touch.

On his right was a large window. Outside, a tree-lined path stretched along a small river, with rain pounding on the glass.

Lu Mingfei had never eaten such a formal meal in his life. His back was so straight it was as if a rolling pin was lodged in his spine. With both elbows lifted, he cut the lamb chop with precision. He was worried he’d wrinkle the suit and end up having to pay for it.

There was no ordering process; preferences and allergies had already been filed. The waiter mentioned that after receiving the order, the executive chef personally selected the finest ingredients: cheese fermented in an Italian cave for five years, lamb from a six-month-old local Italian mountain goat, and fresh fish from Yokohama, Japan. Each dish was top-notch, though Lu Mingfei didn’t understand the strange names; he got the idea.

Each course also came with a different wine. In truth, Lu Mingfei wasn’t interested in these sour drinks, but this wasn’t the time to embarrass himself—he wasn’t dining with Finger. Every bite and sip… was it just food? No, it was taste! Lu Mingfei ate with poise, feeling sophisticated.

“I thought you were joking at first,” Chen Wenwen took a sip of wine. “I looked up this restaurant online—they’re applying for three Michelin stars, and the prices are sky-high.”

Lu Mingfei nodded with satisfaction. “It’s authentic Italian cuisine, more niche, so the higher prices are understandable.”

Actually, his knowledge of Italian cuisine was limited to pizza, but here, with a girl at a candlelit table, whispering to each other—who’d bring up pizza? That was essentially just a meat pie. Of course, he needed to mention foie gras, white truffles, lobster, black caviar, and other fancy things.

“The wine is really good,” Chen Wenwen said. “Mingfei, have you learned to appreciate red wine in the States?”

“Oh… Some have a richer taste, some have more pronounced fruitiness. You get it with practice.” Lu Mingfei licked his lips; they were drinking a 1997 Château Margaux.

His wine knowledge came from Finger, who occasionally ordered a bottle with late-night snacks. But Finger always ordered the cheap, sour table wines—the equivalent of loose, locally produced wines from a village store in France. As for Lafite, Latour, Margaux, or any of the five first-growth Bordeaux wines, Finger wouldn’t even glance at them—they were way out of his price range.

“I’ve never seen you in a suit before—it fits you quite well.” Chen Wenwen glanced at Lu Mingfei.

Lu Mingfei’s back straightened even more. He had worn a Korean-style suit for the literature club’s graduation party when he helped Zhao Menghua play the lowercase “i,” but it seemed Chen Wenwen had forgotten. Of course, that suit was nothing compared to this one. This was Caesar’s standard. Nono had said Caesar was picky to the extreme—he never wore off-the-rack clothes, always ordering from a small tailor shop that kept paper models of Caesar’s measurements from age five to eighteen. To order a new suit, all he had to do was make a call; it was practically the Gattuso family’s official tailor.

“If I had known it was this kind of occasion, I would’ve dressed more formally,” Chen Wenwen said.

“This is perfect,” Lu Mingfei took a bold risk, glancing up and down, from her hair to her toes, feeling quite pleased with himself.

How could it not be perfect? In his memories, Chen Wenwen was always in that white, almost translucent dress, sitting on a bench in the sunlight reading a book. Without that dress, she wouldn’t have been Chen Wenwen.

During the three years of high school, even when Lu Mingfei managed to be very close to Chen Wenwen, he always felt like he was viewing her from a distance. There were always different boys around her, surrounding her, and all of them were better than him. He felt inferior, unable to squeeze in.

Now, it was still that white dress, with a warm glow on her skin. She was just fifty, maybe forty centimeters away from him. He only needed to look up to meet her gentle eyes, to smell the mild fragrance of her hair. He could observe freely, with no reservations, like dissecting a frog in biology class—observing every millimeter. And where were those boys who used to surround her? Ha! Not one of them was here between them. Tonight, at Aspasia… he had booked the entire place!

Faint music played in the background, and Lu Mingfei felt a surge of excitement.

“This song is pretty good,” Lu Mingfei tried to sound knowledgeable about the arts.

“It’s ‘I found my love in Portofino’ by Dalida,” Chen Wenwen’s eyes lit up with delight. “Lu Mingfei… you’ve changed.”

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