According to the feedback of the people who had eaten there, the only things that met the so-called "five-star" standard were the large sheets of gold-colored tiles on the walls and the jaw-droppingly expensive prices on the menu.
Still, as one of the city's most famous shrines for pretentiousness, even though it was all glitter on the surface and rotten inside, it continued to attract a steady stream of show-offs willing to be slaughtered for the sake of appearances.
…Of course, almost every person who paid a fortune here to gild their face would end up walking away, clutching their wallets and complaining through clenched teeth:"How the hell are they still in business?"
The service was slow — bad review!The drinks looked awful — bad review!There wasn’t even a single human staff member, just robots running the show — one-star review for ten thousand years!
Mr. Robin straightened his flashy bow tie with unnecessary force and shot his assistant, Xiao Zhu, a vicious glare.
Xiao Zhu, having failed his mission, could only lower his head and curl up his shoulders, pretending to be a quail that didn’t exist.
As he waited, Mr. Robin once again turned his gaze toward the restaurant’s grand entrance. He watched, helplessly, as a female customer in heels tripped over the raised threshold, while the idiotic service robot stood by, swaying its big iron head, utterly lost.
Yes, that’s right — to keep those dumb service bots from wandering off, the restaurant had actually installed a thirty-centimeter-high threshold at the front door!
It was absolutely tragic.
"Can’t they just upgrade those busted machines' systems?" Robin muttered bitterly to himself, still smarting from the twisted ankle he got on that same step.
Just as the woman was about to faceplant, a silhouette appeared in the backlight at the entrance. Before anyone could react, the figure reached out and swiftly caught the falling woman. With practiced ease, they lifted her as if she weighed nothing and placed her gently over the thirty-centimeter threshold.
“A fine warrior,” Mr. Robin said lazily, swirling his drink as he turned to Xiao Zhu. “Definitely trained. Nice reflexes.”
The female customer quickly regained her composure and thanked the person repeatedly. The figure at the entrance seemed to offer a faint smile, gracefully stepping aside to let her pass before heading into the restaurant.
"Wait a sec, boss… why is he walking toward us?" Xiao Zhu whispered, alarmed. "He nodded at you!"
Before the words were even cold, Mr. Robin stared in stunned silence as the 'warrior' strode directly toward them and stopped right in front of him.
Their heels clicked together gently, spine straight as an arrow, fingers at their sides twitching slightly — as if about to salute — but after a brief pause, they seemed to recall this wasn’t the place for it, and instead simply nodded politely.
Mr. Robin craned his neck almost to the breaking point, and deep in his soul, a weak, trembling voice screamed:"Wasn’t I supposed to be meeting my friend’s daughter? A girl called… Xiao Luoluo?"
Then the gender-enigmatic figure looked him square in the eyes, and spoke with measured clarity:"Hello, Uncle Luo. I'm Fu Luo."
Her voice was… special. Deeper than most women, but clearer than most men — delicately balanced between the two. Every syllable was crisp, as if polished, leaving no room for ambiguity.
Mr. Robin felt his worldview cracking and reached up to rub his eyes in disbelief.
Xiao Zhu glanced nervously from one to the other. With three years of assistant experience in reading moods, he concluded that…his boss was probably about to bleed from his seven orifices and ascend to heaven.
Mr. Robin was a man of loud luxury and little depth — a legendary poser with national fame, red-hot and ruthless in his rise.
He was the world’s most famous image consultant, serving high-ranking officials from multiple nations.
Now, “image consulting” was really just a glorified name for a very unnecessary job.With today’s tech, gene-level cosmetic surgery had already become cheap and accessible to the masses.
Cranial or bodily enhancements were still heavily restricted due to their long-term side effects,but altering appearance alone posed little risk — no more than an appendectomy.
Even so, genetic aesthetics had never really taken off.Public opinion wasn’t much more accepting than that of ancient people three centuries ago.People still discreetly got touch-ups now and then,but to modify yourself until your own mother couldn’t recognize you?That took a whole village full of liberal parents.
Since the dawn of civilization, humans had always chased “natural” beauty and disdained the artificial.It was practically written into our cultural DNA.
If a public figure got exposed for having a fake face,that was a scandal for the ages — a black mark they'd be metaphorically flogged for a hundred times over.
Mr. Robin, though, was an expert at “sculpting the natural.”
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He charged a fortune, and even A-list stars lined up at his feet for a consultation —most of whom he still turned away with dramatic flair and haughty disdain.
As you can imagine, his temper was far from modest.
In Xiao Zhu’s opinion, just the fact that his boss had agreed to wait in a restaurant at all was already inconceivable.And now this guest had the gall to call him 'Uncle'—a man whose face didn’t even have a single dry wrinkle!
Xiao Zhu clenched his bag tightly, bracing for his boss to throw a fit and storm out.
But miraculously, Mr. Robin—wearing a face like he’d just been struck by lightning—didn’t get mad.In fact, he exceeded expectations by squeezing out a kindly smile and speaking in a tone reserved for kindergarteners:
"Good, good… ah, Xiao Luoluo, is it? Grown so big in the blink of an eye. I didn’t even recognize you. Where’s your mom? Didn’t she come with you?"
The newcomer stood ramrod straight, like delivering a briefing:
“She’s on her way from work. According to her flight coordinates five minutes ago, she’s currently stuck in traffic over the Second Ring.Based on today’s traffic model, she’ll need approximately twenty-five more minutes to arrive.”
Mr. Robin’s eyelid twitched.
“Oh… good, good. You—uh, you don’t need to stand. Have a seat, please.”
Upon receiving the command, Fu Luo performed a standard left-face turn and, with evenly measured steps, crossed the short distance to the opposite chair.She pulled out the seat, sat down properly, all in one smooth motion — like a gust of wind in motion, like a clock in stillness.
Mr. Robin found himself staring blankly at this — well, let’s just assume it was a “young lady” for now — this mysterious creature across from him.Tongue-tied, he racked his brain but couldn’t come up with a single thing to say.
In the end, it was Xiao Zhu who gave him a subtle tug.“Boss, should we… order first?”
Snapping out of it, Mr. Robin pressed the touchpad built into the corner of the table to activate the restaurant’s ordering system.A digital menu spread across the surface.“Ah—yes, yes. Let’s order.”
So… who was this person sitting across from them?
Her ID card read as follows —
Name: Fu Luo.Gender: Female.
This precious 32nd-generation ID card was the only thing that had cleared her name after she was once mistaken for a pervert and beaten up outside a women’s restroom.
Fu Luo had just turned twenty-three this fall.
In the year 2413, after the tech boom, human lifespans now approached 200 years.A “twenty-three-year-old girl” should, without question, be in the prime of her youth —a term that conjured images of radiant vitality and poetic elegance:"In the bloom of youth," "with the dew still on her petals," and so on.
And Fu Luo, this so-called flower, stood at 175cm tall, weighed 70 kilograms, had thick brows, large eyes, and skin tanned a deep wheat tone.She wasn’t fat — she was strong.Her muscular arms broadened her shoulders like the wings of a great eagle about to take flight.
Mr. Robin estimated that her shoulder width had to be close to 44 centimeters.Her waist, by contrast, was tightly cinched — clearly the product of consistent training.Her spine was ramrod straight.In short, she had the textbook build of a man.
Three hundred and sixty degrees of unrelenting, rugged masculinity.
Fu Luo was dressed in men’s casualwear.Her hair was cropped slightly longer than a buzzcut, sticking out in all directions like a hedgehog.
A rugged military-issue watch clung to her bony wrist, the strap badly worn.One corner of the dial was chipped, and someone had glued it back on, making it look even more battered.
Did her mother not even have money to buy her a new watch?Mr. Robin sucked in a breath through his teeth as his mind involuntarily queued up a familiar jingle:“O mighty delivery rider, your rocket-steed does fly…”
As the camera-ready Adonis of the image design world sat across from this… well, gender-challenged young brute,the visual contrast was almost comical.
Xiao Zhu, ever the diligent assistant, tried to play his part.“So… what does Fu Luo like to eat?” he asked cautiously.
Fu Luo turned her gaze to him, her previously blank face softening into a faint — very faint — smile.“Don’t worry. You can order. It’s my treat today.”
Meeting her eyes directly, Xiao Zhu froze.Her features were sharply defined, striking in their boldness.Her gaze was clear and lively — and under the soft lighting, it seemed to shine.
“Kinda… handsome,” Xiao Zhu thought, flushing involuntarily.
He recalled hearing an old storytelling segment at the historical museum once.His imagination kicked in: deck her out in a lion-helmet and kirin-armor, five-colored tiger-head boots,and a black-iron halberd with nine rings…Now that would be a fearsome general! A scourge of demons, a god of fire and steel!
Mr. Robin’s molars throbbed.He remembered what Fu Luo’s mother had told him on the phone:“She’s graduated. Not very good-looking. A bit socially awkward.She’s got some time off — let her follow you around for a while as an intern.”
He’d imagined a plain-faced, quiet little girl.What he got instead…was a plasma cannon when he’d been expecting a pocket flashlight.
“So, uh… what school did you go to, Xiao Luo? What was your major?”
It didn’t have to be anything impressive.Literature, commerce, medicine, even a diploma in “Space Pig Farming Technology” would do…
Fu Luo’s expression turned serious.She answered clearly and firmly:
“Military Commission Academy. Department of Space Combat Operations.”
Xiao Zhu’s hand, which had been hovering over the menu, jerked and accidentally selected the “hell spice” level.The touch-sensitive table’s AI promptly popped up a warning:
“Kind reminder: This dish is extremely spicy and may cause diarrhea and other gastrointestinal discomforts. Please reconsider.Attention: Customers with hemorrhoids should especially take caution. Repeating: Hemorrhoids — please be careful.”
Xiao Zhu, face turning green, hurriedly closed the intrusive pop-up.
“You… space combat major…”
Mr. Robin looked solemnly at this elite from the nation's future-generals academy and spat out each word carefully:“Is here… to intern… at my… image design firm… for six weeks?”
Fu Luo paused for two seconds, then responded with complete honesty:
“It’s not an internship. Our internships are centrally arranged by the academy.I just graduated and am about to begin active service.I have a six-week leave before that… My mom made me come.”
Mr. Robin slumped into his chair like a deflated balloon.“Tell me,” he groaned, “what exactly did your mother say?”
Fu Luo repeated, in a perfectly flat tone:
“She said, ‘If you dare not go, I’ll die in front of you.My eternal resting place will be a dark, floating trash pile in the void of space.Turning into space debris is still better than watching you ruin my mood every day.’”
Mr. Robin covered his face with both hands.After a long moment, he groaned:
“Yup… that’s her style.”
If only he didn’t sound quite so tragic while saying it…