The connection between Robin and the Fu family dates back over twenty years.

  Fu Luo’s mother, Fu Xiaoxin, was an engineer employed at a major state-owned military-industrial enterprise. At the time, the now highly esteemed “Mr. Robin” was nothing more than an unknown engineering graduate. After completing his bland and uneventful internship, he became one of Engineer Fu’s students.

  Back then, he didn’t have a fashionable name like “Robin.” He was simply Luo Xiaobo, with features delicate enough to resemble a young lady.

  Coupled with his gentle, soft-spoken personality, his fondness for grooming, and his rather unhealthy obsession with skincare products, he carried a natural air of effeminacy. In a macho-dominated military-industrial environment, it was obvious—aside from dropping the soap, he had little future.

  Colleagues his age found him tiring to deal with and kept a lukewarm distance. Even the senior staff didn’t think much of his style. Only Fu Xiaoxin—who had probably just given birth and was experiencing an overflow of maternal instinct due to hormonal shifts—took special care of him.

  Luo Xiaobo was the type of person who would call for help if the “household material management system” malfunctioned. Swapping out a chip in a basic domestic robot—something even junior high kids could handle in extracurriculars—he couldn’t manage it properly.

  Whether it was choosing a college major or entering a military research institute, it was clear he’d picked the wrong path.

  He relied on rote memorization and textbook regurgitation for all technical skills. Whenever a hands-on experiment was required, he’d lose sleep the night before. Even Fu Xiaoxin had to admit: her incompetent student simply didn’t belong in a research institute. She wasn’t sure if he was doing research—or if the research was doing him.

  Truth be told, Luo Xiaobo had no desire to become a civilian military officer. He lacked ambition and merely dreamed of styling people in a dynamic photo studio.

  He was lost in life, drowning in confusion. What appeared to be a glamorous life at the institute was, to him, a heavy burden and an unspoken torment. Whenever he thought about living like this forever, the pain made him wish he had never been born.

  He endured over two agonizing years at the institute—until he was on the brink of depression. At last, he made a bold decision: to walk away from it all and pursue a life in hairstyling. He submitted his resignation, determined to become an apprentice at a photo studio.

  Everyone around him was stunned, unanimously convinced that Luo Xiaobo had either gone mad or was on the wrong medication. Fu Xiaoxin tried to visit and talk him out of it several times, but eventually had to give up—he was as stubborn as a turtle who’d swallowed a lead weight.

  As it happened, Fu Xiaoxin had a distant relative—one of those “a face known across three thousand miles” types—who ran a small dynamic photography studio. She pulled some strings through that connection and arranged for Luo Xiaobo to be taken in. She even kept looking out for him through acquaintances, and that’s how “Mr. Robin” came to be.

  Today, Mr. Robin might be busy, but he has always been grateful and never lost touch with Fu Xiaoxin. Over time, his respectful “Teacher” evolved into a more affectionate “Big Sister.”

  But Fu Xiaoxin was busy, and so was Mr. Robin. After she divorced Fu Luo’s father, Wang Yizheng, she changed her daughter’s surname and never remarried. To Robin, she had once been “teacher,” and later became a sort of honorary sister—but there were no actual blood ties. Whenever he did visit, he rarely stayed long.

  As for Fu Luo, she had moved into a boarding school during middle school. So once she got older, Robin hadn’t seen her again. His impression of her remained fixed in the past—as the chubby little girl she had once been.

  Most children aren’t judged for their looks, and a plump kid tends to come across as cute. Mr. Robin never imagined that the round-faced little girl from over a decade ago would grow up into such a striking, statuesque presence.

  Robin’s mind was bubbling with questions, like air pockets rising from the bottom of a swamp. He couldn’t help but think: “What on earth did that woman, Fu Xiaoxin, feed her kid to raise her into this?”

  Over the phone, Robin didn’t even have time to ask whether Fu Luo was still fat or thin before his “Big Sister,” the engineering brute Fu Xiaoxin, barked her final verdict:“All right! As long as you’re willing to take that useless niece of yours, I’ll have her shipped over right away!”

  Now, as he faced the “shipment,” Mr. Robin finally understood what she’d meant with that “no refunds, no returns” tone.

  By the time Fu Xiaoxin arrived, the big iron-headed robots had just about finished preparing the food. Once Fu Luo picked up her knife and fork, both Robin and Xiao Zhu were once again left stunned.

  In Xiao Zhu’s experience with the fashion world, young women went to absurd lengths to stay slim. One girl had even secretly undergone illegal gene-editing surgery in an unlicensed clinic—trying to block her body’s ability to absorb fat. Her endocrine system went haywire, she developed severe vitamin D deficiencies, and her bones crumbled at the slightest tap. Multiple organ failures followed. Her autopsy had so many issues that the coroner couldn’t even determine a primary cause of death.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Most people wouldn’t go to such extremes, but dieting had remained a timeless national sport ever since the days of the King of Chu and his love of tiny waists.

  In front of this beauty—who would feel guilty just eating half a bowl of salad—empty plates began to multiply at an astonishing pace.

  The plate-clearing “iron-head” robot made constant trips to and from their table, its bearings creaking in agony from the workload. At one point, it rushed too fast and slammed headfirst into the table leg, collapsing into a miserable heap.

  Mr. Robin and his ever-gawking assistant once again learned what it meant to witness “true heroic spirit.”

  A bottomless pit?

  No, that would be an insult to bottomless pits. Please, have some respect.

  Classmate Fu’s approach to food was like an autumn wind sweeping away fallen leaves—focused, efficient, and unstoppable.

  Within ten minutes, she devoured two appetizers, a bowl of soup, two pieces of complimentary lunch bread, half a roast chicken, an entire steak, three stacks of fries, two full bowls of salad—one meat-based, one vegetarian—and four dessert plates.

  Fu Xiaoxin finally couldn’t take it anymore and gave Fu Luo a solid smack on the back.“What are you, the reincarnation of a starving ghost?”

  (She nearly followed that with “eat a pot, poop a vat,” but swallowed the second half for the sake of everyone’s mental health.)

  Fu Luo shot her a disgruntled glance, obediently put down her knife and fork, wiped her mouth, and sat up straight.

  Mr. Robin tried to untie the metaphorical bowtie on his tongue and stammered, “N-no need to hold back. L-let the kid eat… don’t let her go hungry.”

  Ms. Fu Xiaoxin was already pushing eighty, which—by modern standards—only just nudged her into middle age. Her appearance fit the part: a very average-looking middle-aged woman, not particularly fat, not especially fit. She didn’t wear makeup, but wasn’t exactly eye-searingly ugly either.

  Fu Luo’s father was reportedly a military academy graduate, though no one really knew what he did. He didn’t quite match the traditional image of a soldier—thin, quiet, a bit withdrawn. Robin had met him once in his youth and remembered him as polite, but not particularly warm.

  With parents like that, what kind of genetic mutation had produced a daughter like this?

  Robin watched as Fu Xiaoxin gave her daughter another hard slap on the head.“Cut your own hair again, huh? How many times have I told you! Even rodents don’t gnaw their teeth as often as you cut yours. What’ve you got against those two tufts of hair? Why not just shave it all off!”

  Fu Luo responded sincerely, “If I shave it all off, it’s annoying—once it starts growing back, I’d just have to shave it again.”

  This twisted logic made Fu Xiaoxin fume with rage. In the middle of a public place, she unleashed a storm of parental violence. Fu Luo, however, sat there like an immovable mountain, neither dodging nor resisting, as if her mother were merely dusting her off. She said with weary resignation, “Mom, stop picking on me all the time.”

  Ms. Fu Xiaoxin’s gaze shifted to Robin’s young and beautiful assistant, Xiao Zhu. The moment she laid eyes on the girl—tall, well-proportioned, sweet and pleasant—envy instantly consumed her. Then she looked back at the living brute she herself had given birth to, and truly experienced what people meant by “the difference between clouds and mud.” She didn’t even know how to describe the bitterness in her heart.

  Mr. Robin stiffened his face, doing his best to keep his expression from cracking.

  “I must’ve been exposed to some unidentified radiation while I was pregnant with her.”In the end, after beating her daughter to the point of exhaustion, Ms. Fu summed up her child’s entire existence in one line.

  “Sis is entrusting this creature to you. If she screws up, don’t hold back—feel free to smack her or whip her. You’ve seen it yourself: thick skin, tough meat, nearly impossible to kill.”

  Robin: “…”

  Thus ended the meal, with Fu Xiaoxin catching up with old times in between her continual verbal and physical assaults on her own daughter.

  After finishing her meal, Fu Xiaoxin left with Fu Luo. But Mr. Robin had the table cleared, then ordered another drink. He seemed to be waiting for someone.

  Fu Luo, meanwhile, looked like an oppressed servant from a bygone era—clearing the path, carrying her mother’s bag, holding her coat… and enduring random backhand slaps that could come at any time from the sky above.

  At the restaurant’s threshold, Fu Luo offered her mother an arm. Then she opened the glass door, stepped aside with a polite hand gesture, and lowered her voice:“This way, Your Majesty. May you live a thousand years.”

  “The Empress Dowager” let out a heavy “hmph,” then strutted off with regal arrogance.

  Just as Fu Luo was about to follow her, a man stepped into the restaurant.

  He appeared to be in his early thirties—tall, lean, and strikingly handsome, with features that aligned perfectly with modern beauty standards. But the frown etched between his brows, far too deep for his age, gave his entire face a strange, brooding intensity.

  Fu Luo glanced at him again, feeling as though she had seen him somewhere before.

  One was about to exit, the other about to enter. The two paused at the threshold, each gesturing for the other to go first.

  In the end, it was Ms. Fu Xiaoxin—already a good five or six meters ahead—who lost her patience. She turned back and barked at Fu Luo:“What the hell are you dawdling for? Honestly, you’ve got the makings of a top-tier doorman. Get your butt over here!”

  Fu Luo gave an apologetic nod to the man and hurried after her mother.“Here I come—rolling, as requested.”

  It was apparently not round enough, as Ms. Fu Xiaoxin responded by rising onto her toes and smacking the back of her daughter’s head.

  Fu Luo ducked her head obligingly, adjusting her height to suit her short mother’s attack range. Without missing a beat, she added,“Careful not to twist your ankle.”

  The man at the restaurant entrance turned back at the sound of their voices. He looked at the backs of the mother and daughter as they walked away.Something seemed to come to mind. The corners of his mouth lifted slightly in a smile that appeared and vanished in a flash.But once the smile faded, the gloom between his brows deepened.He walked straight over to Mr. Robin’s table.

  “Mr. Luo.”

  This time, Robin stood up to greet the man—reserved and formal.“Colonel Yang.”