I officially started my first day at the small diner, taking on the role of the second waitress.
Arranging dishes, serving food, keeping the books, and calling out orders—I wasn’t good at any of it.
When I first stepped onto the floor, my heart pounded with anxiety, terrified of making a mistake.
The head waitress noticed my trembling hands and offered a comforting smile.
“Don’t be nervous,” she told me softly. “I didn’t know how to do a single thing when I first started out, either.”
There was a worker named Xiao Shun who took care of all the heavy lifting and tedious chores around the shop.
We waitresses were only expected to pour tea, hand out warm towels, and deliver the bill.
Everything else was taken off our shoulders.
I quietly observed the head waitress, feeling a sense of strange detachment.
Her cuffs were rolled up high, showing a spotless white lining without a speck of dirt.
Draped over her wrist was a white silk handkerchief embroidered with the words I Love You, Sister.
She spent the entire day touching up her makeup, constantly powdering her face and wearing a striking shade of bright red lipstick.
When lighting cigarettes for the customers, she would deliberately lean her knee against their legs.
While pouring liquor, she would occasionally take a casual sip right from the cup herself.
She drew a crystal-clear line in how she treated the patrons.
If a customer caught her fancy, she catered to their every whim with lavish attention.
If someone didn’t appeal to her, she simply lowered her eyelids and acted as if they didn’t exist.
Any table she refused to serve inevitably landed on my plate.
I had an innate fear of unfamiliar men.
Everything I had lived through taught me that love was nothing but a fragile illusion, and that men were dangerous at heart.
The male patrons who frequented the diner seemed especially fake and vulgar.
They put on a show of being generous and loyal, shouting over one another to offer seats or fight over the bill, sounding as if they were about to start a brawl.
At the tables, they slammed drinks back, playing loud drinking games and consuming alcohol like water.
They scarfed down their food like ravenous beasts, thoroughly crude in their manners.
To make matters worse, they loved making trouble out of nothing, picking fights and throwing insults just to vent their bad moods.
I kept my head pinned down, silently handing over tea cups and hot towels, never daring to make eye contact.
My cheeks burned with embarrassment, and a deep sense of humiliation washed over me.
The patrons constantly tried to strike up conversations, cracking jokes to tease me into smiling.
“Give us a smile, girl,” one would laugh.
“Why so quiet today?” another would chime in.
I felt utterly exhausted, lacking even the slightest desire to exchange pleasantries.
It wasn’t until past nine in the evening that the diner finally shut its doors.
My whole body ached with fatigue, leaving me without a single drop of energy.
When I stumbled back into my tiny rented room, I didn’t even bother taking off my clothes before collapsing onto the bed.
I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep that lasted right through until dawn.
When I woke up the next morning, my heavy heart felt just a bit lighter.
I was finally earning my own keep through honest, hard labor.
I didn’t have to depend on a single soul—I was standing firmly on my own two feet.
Determined to keep moving forward, I got up early that morning and headed straight to the diner ahead of schedule.