At three quarters past the rabbit hour, the West Market was just lifting the frost off its bluestone slabs. Pei Hongxiu had deliberately changed into a plain pleated skirt, replacing her gold hair-dangle with an abacus bead hairpin carved by Huwa. Yet at the corner of the street, she saw Zhang Yifan leaning against a Poplar column with a faint smile, an abacus bead bouncing between his fingers into the intertwining vine pattern of her plain skirt.
"Boss Pei isn't wearing indigo today?" he raised an eyebrow, the bead rolling gently over her hairpin. "Is it for fear of being too dazzling and making my abacus beads go astray?" Pei Hongxiu glared at him, though her ivory comb remained hidden in her sleeve, dare not drawn out—today she had deliberately brought no sharp weapons, lest she lose her composure before him.
At three quarters past the snake hour, the two passed a sugar-painting stall. Pei Hongxiu stared at the abacus bead pattern on the turntable, then smiled lightly: "You rascal, if you can spin a 'heart'-shaped sugar painting, I shall..." Before she could finish, Zhang Yifan had already spun the turntable, the abacus bead bouncing into the character "ingenious" at his cuff, and the sugar-painting artisan actually scooped out a heart-shaped sugar painting with a miniature abacus bead embedded right in the center.
Chapter 117