Ning Sui has developed rapidly in recent years. The old northern part of the city had been rebuilt, with only the desolate city gate waterway remaining. The ancient streets with their dilapidated carved buildings had all been demolished. Now the city center had become the West District. In the West District, skyscrapers rose from the ground, parks were scattered about, roads were wide, and railroad tracks ran through the middle. The heavy, cumbersome green trains wound around mountains and through broken walls like a long dragon racing past while panting heavily.
The newly opened crab restaurant was near the old train station. Just as the two of them entered, a train behind them dragged its heavy dozen or so carriages chug-chugging toward the north. As the saying goes, when autumn winds rise, crab legs fatten. The crabs this season had plenty of bright yellow roe that wasn’t greasy.
“What do you want to eat?” Li Jinyu tossed the menu to her. “Blue crabs or swimming crabs?”
“Blue crabs,” Ye Meng was very familiar with this restaurant and didn’t even need to look at the menu. She said directly, “The blue crabs here are delicious.”
He nodded and called the waiter over to place the order. Ye Meng suddenly felt that this impromptu meal was a bit awkward. They sat in silence, with Li Jinyu lowering his head. Neither of them looked at each other, each playing with their phones for a while.
Shortly after sitting down, Li Jinyu stood up with his phone and walked toward the door: “I’m going out to take a call.”
When he returned, Ye Meng had already put down her phone. Her gaze followed him as he sat down, naturally cutting into the conversation: “Whose call was it?”
“Qiao Maimai,” Li Jinyu sat down and casually put his phone back in his pocket.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard her sing,” Ye Meng said.
Li Jinyu looked at her: “She has a gig tonight, wants to go?”
“Are you going?”
He turned his head slightly away, looking toward the currently empty train tracks: “I’m going to the hospital tonight to keep my grandmother company.”
Ye Meng showed a regretful expression, “Then next time you go to sing, I’ll go too.”
He helplessly hooked the corner of his mouth, reaching for the soy sauce and vinegar nearby, pouring while saying: “Why do you have to cling to me?”
“Can’t we just be friends? Or are you afraid you’ll fall in love with me?” Ye Meng took out her phone, pulled up a photo, and held the screen vertically to show him. “Look for yourself, my grandmother recently introduced me to a younger brother, younger than you, and more handsome too.”
This was true. The old lady, afraid that Ye Meng would get restless one day and excitedly pack up to return to Beijing, had indeed introduced a young man according to her preferences. However, Ye Meng didn’t know what was wrong with her lately—this young man completely fit her previous aesthetic, but she found him a bit too well-behaved and boring.
“Add your chili sauce,” Li Jinyu pushed the prepared soy sauce and vinegar toward her, laughing dismissively from outside the situation, “Then I wish you and this little brother eternal happiness and a hundred years of good marriage.”
The waiter brought the prepared crab pot to the table. Ye Meng said thank you, then said to him: “Why did you lie to me earlier about the power being out? Were you memorizing that code table? Haven’t you worked with Morse code before?”
Li Jinyu put some soy sauce in a small dish for himself and looked at her amusedly: “I’m just a singer, why would I study this?”
“Really?” Ye Meng narrowed her eyes suspiciously, “But your singing is pretty average, without emotion or technique. If you weren’t good-looking, I would have asked the boss for a refund.”
He rested a pair of chopsticks on the small soy sauce dish and leaned back, quite righteously saying: “Being good-looking is enough.”
“You’re quite good at living off your looks,” Ye Meng laughed, her curiosity driving her on. “That electric code—I studied it for a week and couldn’t memorize it, but you memorized it in ten minutes? You haven’t encountered these things before?”
Are you researching escape rooms because you genuinely like them or just to make money? You’re so smart, why have you never attended university? Her head was full of questions, feeling this younger brother was truly mysterious.
The waiter came over with the appetizers.
They were sitting at a four-person table. Li Jinyu leaned back in his chair without moving, one hand resting on the back of the neighboring chair, calmly waiting for the waiter to serve all the dishes before casually asking in an indifferent tone: “Do you know about memory palaces?”
Ye Meng was surprised. The term wasn’t unfamiliar—her former boss Gou Kai was a memory palace expert, a graduate of A University, and had once been a champion in some memory master championship. But her memory had never been good, and she was too lazy to research something that only academic overachievers would painstakingly study.
“I know, my former boss was into that,” she said honestly, piecing together her vague memories. “I heard it’s about using the most familiar scenes to memorize unfamiliar new things. Like in your mind, you have your own house, and each room can store large amounts of information?”
Li Jinyu nodded and withdrew his hand. “More or less. To simplify it further, it doesn’t have to be a house, it could be a room, a person, or even a photograph—just anything familiar to you that you can visualize with your eyes closed. When you need to memorize something, you use your associative ability to match things one by one. This way, memorizing a table in just a few minutes becomes very simple.”
Ye Meng still thought it sounded far-fetched and asked: “How do you associate?”
He didn’t seem to need to think, casually giving an example: “For instance, the number 3—what can you think of?”
“Kissing, two lips.” In emoji language, 3 represents a kiss.
“…” Li Jinyu was speechless for a moment. “Don’t you think the number 3 looks like a person’s ear? When you need to memorize content related to the number 3, you can associate it with a person’s ear. This works well for point-by-point memorization. Let’s use a common example—Maslow’s hierarchy of needs consists of: 1. Physiological needs, 2. Safety needs, 3. Social needs, 4. Esteem needs 5. Self-actualization needs. When you need to memorize this, you can use association. The third point is social needs, and isn’t socializing about using your ears to listen? So when you think of 3, you think of ears, which connects to socializing.”
“What about 1?”
“Do I need to explain physiological needs?” He put his hand back on the chair and looked at her with a half-smile.
Ye Meng suddenly coughed. “What about 2?”
Li Jinyu said: “Doesn’t 2 look like a question mark? You can think that safety is always a question mark, so 2 represents safety needs.”
“What about 4?”
“4 looks like a squatting person. Most people who like to squat are usually insecure, so we should give them equal respect. Do I need to explain 5?” He smiled.
5 was the simplest—Ye Meng had already figured it out. In internet slang, 5 often refers to oneself, which fits perfectly with self-actualization needs.
“This type of memory technique is suitable for quick memorization. If you combine it with your memory palace and use familiar scenes to deepen memory, it becomes like a photocopier, quickly imprinting new information in your mind,” Li Jinyu added.
Ye Meng felt like a new world had opened up to her. So this was the correct way to memorize: “Were you just a middle school student?”
“Do you believe everything I say?” Li Jinyu started peeling a crab leg, speaking without looking up.
“You’ve attended university, right?”
“I did, but I didn’t get my diploma. I dropped out.”
He lowered his head and bit into a crab leg, not avoiding the topic anymore, as if talking about something unrelated to himself.
Ye Meng sighed with regret.
Li Jinyu was used to it—most people had this expression when they heard he had dropped out.
But Ye Meng complained softly: “I wish I had met you earlier, maybe then I could have outscored Jiang Luzhi. Heaven knows how much I struggled to memorize political science.”
Li Jinyu paused slightly while biting the crab, gave a self-mocking laugh, grabbed a napkin, and looked at her: “Do you have to compare yourself with Jiang Luzhi?”
“Not really,” Ye Meng looked at him, her eyes resentful, “Weren’t you the one who said she’s prettier than me?”
“There are so many prettier than you, must you compare with each one?”
Ye Meng was very surprised: “Who else?”
Li Jinyu twitched the corner of his mouth, smiling without answering.
Ye Meng persisted: “Little brother, do you think Jiang Luzhi is prettier than me?”
He became annoyed again, biting the crab leg with some gritted teeth: “I told you, don’t call me little brother.”
“Fine,” Ye Meng stopped teasing him and asked seriously: “So, what’s your memory palace? What kind of scene would it be?”
She was very curious.
Li Jinyu refused to engage with her anymore. No matter how Ye Meng tried to provoke him, he maintained a stony face and wouldn’t talk.
The crab restaurant was doing good business, crowded with people and filled with misty vapor. Occasionally among the bustle, one could spot a few familiar faces. Li Jinyu noticed several men who had just entered giving them unfriendly looks repeatedly.
Li Jinyu had a very strong premonition at that moment—he should stand up and leave. He felt that Ye Meng might disrupt his life. But seeing the predatory looks from those men across the way, he worried she might get into trouble, so he just leaned back without moving, his feet sprawled casually under the table, his gaze falling lightly on her.
Ye Meng had her back to the door and was completely unaware, still looking at him. Li Jinyu was very impatient and wanted to ask her just how many men she had provoked out there. Finally, Li Jinyu leaned back in his chair and used his toe to lightly kick Ye Meng across from him, his eyes signaling her to turn and look.
The two had an inexplicable tacit understanding. Ye Meng read from his eyes not to make any sudden movements, not to attract attention, and to casually turn around for a glance. Ye Meng understood instantly, and with superb acting skills, pretended to drop her chopsticks, quickly bent down, and glanced sideways at the nine o’clock position Li Jinyu had indicated.
She quickly turned back and said in a low voice: “I’m a bit face-blind, I can’t recognize them. Do you know them?”
“They’re looking at you.”
“I don’t know them,” Ye Meng shook her head firmly again. “Could they be ex-boyfriends?”
Li Jinyu leaned forward, also lowering his voice, saying with a half-smile: “How many boyfriends have you had? Don’t you know? If you really can’t remember, call Cheng Kairan and ask, he remembers better than you do.”
Just as he finished speaking, the misty glass door was pushed open again, and Cheng Kairan appeared at the entrance wearing a very ill-fitting suit. Cheng Kairan was as thin as Li Jinyu, but their builds were completely different. He was skinny from what seemed like malnutrition, with a monkey-like frame that couldn’t fill out a suit at all. Li Jinyu, on the other hand, was slender but proportioned—he would probably look exquisite in a suit.
As soon as Cheng Kairan entered, someone pointed in this direction, and he looked over, immediately spotting the most eye-catching couple in the room.
He immediately took three steps in two and walked up to Ye Meng, saying urgently: “Why are you two eating here?”
Cheng Kairan had a crush on Ye Meng—any man could see that. Li Jinyu wasn’t particularly close to him, only occasionally helping tutor Cheng Kairan’s nominal sister to earn some extra money. Similarly, Cheng Kairan didn’t pay much attention to him. Some people know with just one glance that they don’t have compatible auras, and that they’re not the same type of people. But Cheng Kairan still showed him proper respect in town.
Li Jinyu didn’t want to—and couldn’t be bothered to—provoke him. He calmly peeled a crab leg: “We met at the escape room and had a meal together.” He lowered his head and took a bite, glancing at Cheng Kairan casually, saying roguishly: “What’s wrong, afraid I’ll steal your girl?”
Was that even a question? Cheng Kairan thought to himself.
Before Cheng Kairan could speak, Ye Meng, as if afraid Li Jinyu wouldn’t die quickly enough, feigned surprise and said to him: “What are you saying, baby? I’m your girl!”
Ye Meng had the attitude that they were now grasshoppers on the same string—how could he enjoy beauty alone?