SES Chapter 105 Part 1

Chapter 105

Street-side diners like this—serving three meals a day plus late-night snacks—were always the rowdiest at night.

Maybe it was because during the day, with the sun shining, people still tried to hold on to some manners. But once night fell, all that restraint slipped away.

Shirts half unbuttoned, legs propped up on tables, drunken brawling, drinking contests, crude jokes—Mu Dai treated it all as nothing more than background noise for her own self-discipline.

Every folding table in the diner was open. The air was filled with shouting and rowdy dice games, servers barely able to squeeze through. Balancing a tray, Mu Dai turned sideways and said, “Excuse me, coming through.”

Someone glared at her impatiently—she glared right back. Then a drunken customer leered and reached for her chest. She caught his wrist, twisted up along his arm until he collapsed face-down on the table, then poured a full glass of beer over his head. “Here,” she said coolly, “sober up.”

The man, furious, staggered to his feet. He shook his head like a wet dog, spraying beer everywhere.

For a few seconds, the whole diner went silent. The drunk snatched up a plate of food, about to smash it on the floor.

“You dare,” Mu Dai barked.

Her voice stopped him cold—plate raised, stuck between throwing it and backing down.

Zheng Shuiyu, terrified of trouble, rushed over and tugged Mu Dai’s arm. “Quick, apologize to the customer!”

Mu Dai kept her eyes locked on the man and started untying her apron. “Want to take it outside?”

The alley outside was lit with shaky lamps. Inside, the crowd started egging them on.

“Or…” She snatched a beer bottle off the neighboring table and slammed it hard against the tabletop. The whole table stared at her, wide-eyed. “Want to chug?”

The drunk froze, embarrassed. His friends quickly stepped in to calm things down, and just like that, the tension defused. No brawl, no bottle-smashing.

The late-night chaos went on, but the atmosphere had changed—every table was suddenly a lot more well-behaved. The next time Mu Dai came out with dishes, people even pulled their stools in to give her a clear path.

Back in the kitchen, Zheng Shuiyu and the others looked at her differently.

Zheng Li said, “Mu Mu-jie, you’ve handled stuff like this before, right? You shut it down so smoothly.”

Mu Dai shook her head. “Nope.”

She thought for a second, then admitted with a touch of embarrassment, “First time.”

Zheng Li went pale. “Then how… how did you—”

Mu Dai said matter-of-factly, “People like that, one look and you know—they only respect force. I had to make a show of it. Otherwise, swat one fly and another dozen show up. Or they’d keep coming back every night. Wouldn’t that be annoying?”

Zheng Shuiyu groaned. “So you were bluffing.”

She worried aloud. “That was risky… what if he had dragged you outside?”

Mu Dai shrugged. “It’s not like I couldn’t beat him.”

“And what if he’d gone for the bottle?”

“What’s one or two bottles? That’s nothing.”

Zheng Shuiyu was left speechless. She turned and whispered to He Qiang, “Why do I still feel uneasy about this?”

He Qiang, circling the stove, said, “That’s your problem—you’ve got the small-minded shopkeeper’s mentality. You want someone all-capable, but the second you get a real badass, you’re scared of her. If you really can’t handle having her up front, then just keep her in the kitchen.”

Zheng Shuiyu had thought about keeping Mu Dai in the back kitchen, but seeing how timid and hesitant Zheng Li was, she knew the girl wouldn’t be able to handle things out front.

By almost midnight, most of the customers had left. Only one table remained—a group of rowdy-looking kids, probably eighteen or nineteen, who had brought their own beer.

Zheng Shuiyu hated customers like this the most. They barely spent any money—a plate of peanuts and a dish of stir-fried potatoes could last them two hours—hogging a table and slowing turnover, and on top of that, they were the most likely to stir up trouble.

Sure enough, one of them suddenly slammed the table and started shouting.

Head aching, Zheng Shuiyu told Mu Dai, “Go sit nearby. Make sure they don’t start breaking things.”

Mu Dai dragged over a chair and sat down a short distance away.

She had no idea what they were arguing about, but their faces were red, veins popping, and they were yelling at a chubby boy: “If you’ve got the guts, then go! If you don’t, you’re not a man!”

What kind of place could be so terrifying that refusing to go would strip someone of their manhood?

The chubby boy mumbled, the fat on his cheeks trembling, clearly torn.

The buzz-cut leader smacked the back of his head, the crack sharp and loud.

“Got any guts or not? What’s it gonna do, kill you to go once?”

The boy stammered, “I heard it’s really scary…”

“We’ve all been there! What’s scary about it? Didn’t we come back just fine?”

The boy shrank a little, looking up nervously. “But they say…”

His voice dropped, his expression fearful. “They say if you press your ear against the cement platform at midnight, you can hear a heartbeat—like someone’s inside it…”

Mu Dai cut him a sideways glance. The tone, the look, the whole act—what a waste she wasn’t in horror movies.

The buzz-cut cursed under his breath and lifted his hand again to hit him.

“Hey.”

Mu Dai’s voice was sharp, her expression one of obvious impatience, like she was ready to throw them out herself.

The buzz-cut kid flinched. The raised hand turned into a shove, grabbing the chubby boy by the collar and pushing him toward the door. “Move it, move it.”

The group clattered out, one of them slapping the meal money onto the table.

Amitabha, what a long day—it was finally over.

Outside, the chubby boy hung his head, shuffling nervously.