"I love you, Daoming Si!" The words rang across the room, loud and clear. Everyone turned to look at the tiny girl in the pink cheongsam, of whose mouth the words had just come out off. Everyone was stunned, but no one was more stunned than Daoming Si himself, and someone else.
As she watched Si envelope Shancai in a warm embrace, Xiaozi felt that those words had cut through her like a jagged sword, or like the ends of the pineapple which used to adorn her ex-fiancé's head. "Ex-fiancé", she thought bitterly to herself. "Why isn't it me whom he loves?" She felt the sharp, searing pain all over again, the very same pain the day that Si had rejected her in the hot spring hotel. "How is Shancai better than me?" She struggled to maintain her composure and finally managed to plaster a smile on her face, even though her heart was breaking into a million pieces.
The night felt laboriously long, with everyone congratulating Si and Shancai and all Xiaozi wanted to do was leave. But she couldn't, not without raising everyone's suspicions of why she was being a party-pooper. "Thank heavens for alcohol", she thought, as she downed glass after glass.
"What a total schultz" thought Meizuo, chuckling to himself as he watched her throw back the wine like she was drinking lemonade. "Don't tell me she's not over him yet." Laughing, he sat next to her on the couch. "Hey, take it easy with that. We don't want to have to carry you out of here." Xiaozi looked at him half-dazed. "Oh shut up, this is my party and I'll drink if I want to." "Actually, it's Ximen's party and it's supposed to be a tea party? Not that many of us are drinking much tea though" came his reply with a chuckle.
Xiaozi was annoyed. Can't he just leave her to drink and wallow in her own misery? "Look, just leave me alone, ok?" She suddenly felt the urge to fling her glass of wine into the impeccable white shirt that Meizuo was wearing. Restraining herself, she moved away from him and to the balcony, her long hair flying in the wind. Meizuo glanced over at her and the sight of her in her cheongsam with her hair caught in the wind made him catch his breath. For now, he would wait. But in the future, who knows...