“So, Sister Lei, what do you think I should do?”

At eight in the evening, taking advantage of going out to throw away the trash, Song Nanshi seized the time to “seek advice” from Lei Hong, who would be getting off work and going home soon.

Looking at the girl who was several years younger than herself with anxiety written all over her face, Lei Hong said with amusement: “To be honest, I don’t think the boss is that hard to pursue. When the police do preliminary interrogations, they know that people with low tear points also have low psychological defenses, they can be broken through easily—have you forgotten how the boss cried his heart out in the kitchen the day before yesterday just because a helper’s grandmother made him a bowl of braised pork?”

“But…”

Song Nanshi’s face turned red from holding back her words, and finally she squeezed out in a small voice: “No matter how I look at it, I feel like the boss has absolutely no interest in me. If I pursue him forcefully, there must be some techniques involved, right?”

“The boss has absolutely no interest in you?” Lei Hong was stunned. “I think the boss treats you quite well. Doesn’t he teach you how to make cakes hand-in-hand?”

Song Nanshi murmured: “But the boss treats everyone equally well. He helped Captain He with his proposal, and helped Brother Han wholeheartedly prepare for his birthday. Even when treating the grandpas and grandmas from the nursing home, he would specially make mung bean soup and red bean cakes for them to take back and share with other elderly people. Compared to all this, the boss actually just sees me as an apprentice.”

“Oh?” Lei Hong raised her eyebrows. “In that case, I should also count as the boss’s apprentice, but the boss wouldn’t teach me frosting hand-in-hand.”

“That’s because Sister Lei, you’re already very good at making cakes.”

Song Nanshi became more and more dejected as she spoke, her shoulders sagging: “There were clearly several times before when I felt the atmosphere was good. Once was when the boss chased me out of the noodle shop to comfort me. I was just about to speak up, but then I said the wrong thing… And another time, I pulled the boss to my room, originally wanting to say something too, but later, he was scared away by the video I filmed…”

The girl’s delicate face was all wrinkled up by the end of her speech, which made Lei Hong laugh out loud.

She suddenly felt a bit regretful that her progress with He Jianqiu had been too fast—cutting through the mess quickly. Now thinking back on it, it felt like something was missing.

Lei Hong decided to give Song Nanshi a good helping hand.

“If you feel that the boss treats everyone well, then you need to create opportunities to test whether he truly is ‘treating everyone equally.'”

Lei Hong thought for a moment: “The day after tomorrow is the store’s day off… Xiao Song, I think you can ask the boss to teach you something more difficult than frosting.”

And so, things developed like this.

On the store’s day off, after finishing lunch, Han Sha went to the hospital to visit his daughter, leaving only the warm afternoon sunlight streaming into the first floor of No. 29.

Since there were no customers, the store was playing soft music, and Bai Yang, wearing a light-colored thin sweater, was standing by the dining table piping flowers on a 4-inch small cake, occasionally sneaking big bites from the bowl.

There couldn’t be a better opportunity than this.

When Song Nanshi came out of the kitchen, she saw exactly this scene. She nervously wiped her sweaty palms and said carefully: “Boss, are you doing flower piping?”

“Mm, Korean-style flower piping. It’s much more complex than what we usually make, but it’s beautiful. I think we can make it as a limited edition for next month’s menu, first come first served.”

Bai Yang turned around, holding a piping nail with an intricate white rose on it. He smiled: “Austin rose. This kind has to be made with bean paste—bean paste mixed with butter. It’s a bit rich, so it can’t be made too big.”

“First, ask the boss for instruction as naturally as possible.”

Song Nanshi heard Lei Hong’s guidance ringing in her ears and took a deep breath: “Boss, can I make this?”

“You want to make it?”

Bai Yang looked at her with some surprise: “This is quite difficult. When I was learning it abroad before, practicing for a whole day would make my hands swell up.”

“Remember to find something that’s relatively hard to learn, so you’ll have enough time to test the waters.”

Master leads you through the door, cultivation depends on the individual!

Song Nanshi remembered Teacher Lei’s words carefully, nodded seriously, and walked over with forced composure: “Since it takes a long time to practice before you can master it, I think it’s never wrong to start learning early.”

She naturally picked up the second piping nail from the table: “Boss, please teach me the recipe for this bean paste first.”

“200 grams bean paste, 30 grams white butter… The butter is used to change the consistency of the bean paste. During the piping process, it needs to be covered with a damp cloth, otherwise it dries out easily.”

Perhaps because he had sneaked quite a few bites from the bowl of bean paste, Bai Yang seemed to be in a good mood. He carefully moved the rose from his piping nail with piping scissors, and was about to pipe another one as a demonstration, but Song Nanshi quickly grabbed his hand.

“Second, it must be hand-in-hand—I mean physically hand-in-hand, letting him teach you.”

Song Nanshi’s heart was pounding.

She swallowed nervously: “Boss… boss, since it’s difficult, just watching probably won’t be enough to learn. How about, how about you teach me directly with my hands like last time?”

As she spoke, her hands began to tremble, just like when she was frosting last time—she had eventually turned a perfectly good 4-inch cake into a cream bomb.

At this rate, forget about roses, she’d have trouble piping even a ball.

Song Nanshi’s heart was full of QAQ, but this was, after all, the first time in her life pursuing someone. As her master said, among matters involving people, dealing with dead people was the easiest, while the boss was a living person, so difficulties naturally existed.

Since that was the case, the key point was the boss, and the rest could be treated as assembling corpses! Assembling corpses that had been run over by a large truck!

The girl cheered herself on internally, and at the same time felt warmth behind her. It turned out that while she was having this mental battle, Bai Yang had naturally complied with her request and loosely embraced her from behind, placing the piping bag in her hands.

“Boss…”

Song Nanshi felt in an instant as if her head had become a bean paste bun, already filled with bean paste.

“Pay attention. Korean-style flower piping requires higher precision, and bean paste becomes difficult to squeeze once it dries, so speed is important.”

Bai Yang grasped her hand, gently holding her fist to squeeze the piping bag while rotating the piping nail, turning the shapeless bean paste into delicate petals one by one.

“How do you feel?” Bai Yang focused intently on the rose and asked softly, “Is this kind of piping harder than cream piping?”

“I…”

The warmth of the boss’s hand on her hand was comparable to a small heater in the winter morgue. Song Nanshi felt she had stopped functioning, and in her disintegrating brain soon only Lei Hong’s final lesson remained.

“Finally, at the appropriate moment, bring up some romantic topics to test his reaction.”

Romance.

Regarding this profound topic, Song Nanshi had actually been thinking about it for several days.

In her memory, the most romantic thing she could think of from childhood to adulthood was the night her grandmother passed away, when her grandfather also passed away holding her hand, and when they were found, both still had smiles on their faces—

From then on, death was no longer frightening to Song Nanshi, but became a kind of very “romantic” honor.

What in the world could be more romantic than dying together?

Thinking of this, she took a deep breath and, maintaining her position in the boss’s “embrace,” said softly: “Boss, actually I think roses still look better in red. If I make them later, I’ll make bright red roses.”

Bai Yang was stunned: “Hm? You like red piping… Seeing how plainly you usually dress, I thought you liked white.”

“No, I’m used to wearing black and white clothes because when I worked at the funeral home before, they required it… But actually, I’ve always wanted to wear red clothes to work, but the supervisor didn’t allow it, saying the bereaved families would complain if they saw me dressed like that.”

Song Nanshi’s face grew slightly warm: “But I’ve always felt that life and death are the most romantic things under heaven, so at times like that, one should be dressed beautifully… When I was little, my grandfather and grandmother died on the same day. Even though they were happy when they passed, everyone was crying and used ugly black and white memorial photos and white chrysanthemums for them. I thought it was wrong, so…”

“So?”

Bai Yang’s hand holding hers trembled slightly.

Song Nanshi nervously pressed her lips together and said in a small voice: “So, the night before the burial, I used watercolor pencils to color the chrysanthemum petals bright rose red, and then I colored the memorial photos too.”