"Mr. Jiang," came the timid voice of the girl. Her name was Nan Jin. Unlike the others, alcohol seemed to have a very limited impact on her.
Even she herself couldn't remember how many glasses of wine this was.
She is also the only one among the few people who calls Jiang Cheng Mr. Jiang instead of "Jiang Pan'an", "that one", "handsome guy", "cutie" and other random names.
After a few seconds, Jiang Cheng slowly looked away and looked at her.
Nan Jin's face hidden in the dimness seemed to be even redder, but she still mustered up the courage and asked in as calm a voice as possible: "Mr. Jiang, are you...thinking about something?"
Overflowing brilliance flowed in her eyes from time to time. She had a pair of very beautiful eyes, just like her mother.
But unlike the hard and cold look in the latter's eyes, there was a sense of cowardice and ignorance hidden in her eyes, like a lost deer.
Distant, defensive, yet endearing.
Some say alcohol is a poison, even if mixed with soft drinks.
But for Nan Jin, only such "poison" can make her open her heart.
She suffers from a relatively rare psychological problem.
Avoidant personality disorder.
It is a type of personality disorder characterized by comprehensive social inhibition, feelings of inadequacy, and extreme sensitivity to negative evaluations.
The resulting set of problems can have a significant impact on the patient's social and occupational functioning.
Such patients always feel that they lack social skills, are unattractive, and are at a disadvantage in all aspects, and thus appear overly sensitive and have low self-esteem.
Low self-esteem, combined with excessive sensitivity and fear of being rejected by others, make it particularly difficult for patients to take the initiative and establish close relationships with others.
This type of patient usually begins to show shyness, isolation, fear of meeting strangers, and inexplicable panic about sudden strange things or sounds that are very different from their peers in childhood.
Unlike Ms. Qin, who was so focused on work that she ignored her daughter's feelings, Nan Jin's mother was a "meticulous" person who cared about her daughter.
She even gave up her position as a company executive for her daughter and became a full-time mother at home.
She has to take care of everything from three meals a day to her daughter's dress, academic performance, hobbies, behaviors and habits...and so on.
She is trying her best to make her daughter the most perfect handicraft in the world.
Whether it is academic performance, dance, painting, piano... these Nan Jin are the best among their peers.
In sharp contrast to the excitement and joy of sitting in the front row, watching her daughter ascend the podium and be reflected in the spotlight, is Nan Jin's delicate but indifferent face.
Rather than saying that her mother loved her, it would be better to say that her mother loved...manipulating her.
Manipulating her to run towards a "perfect" life that does not belong to her.
Mother... she was just using herself to make up for the regrets she had owed.
Very early on, my mother, who had not yet taken over the family business, had a dream of becoming an actress.
She looks forward to one day appearing on the screen and showing her best self in front of everyone.
But after this dream was crushed by reality, it was irrigated into the soil, and finally irrigated itself.
She didn't know whether her mother saw the shadow of her past in herself.
But she knew one thing very well. According to her mother's character, even if she didn't see the shadow of her past on herself, then...she would cut out her own shadow and stick it on her body.
Strong... is her most intuitive impression of her mother.
She must do what she says, she must get what she likes and wants, and what she asks herself to do must also be done.
Only in this way will her mother love her as always.
She only loves the radiant...self.
The "ugly duckling" who has shed all his achievements and halo is not worthy of his mother's love.
It is precisely the long-term high pressure and anxiety that makes her, who is already extremely good, often fall into a cycle of doubt and self-doubt.
Her mother's intensified encouragement sounded like a death horn in her ears.
I'm blaming her for why she doesn't want to be a little better...
If she were just a little bit better, she would be one step closer to her mother's dream...
But...that was my mother's dream, not hers.
She has no interest, even fear, in showing herself on screen.
For her, those boring materials, rigorous digital characters, and cold chemical materials are more attractive to her.
She just wants to be an ordinary person, neither noisy nor noisy, hiding behind the scenes, living a quiet life by herself, with someone she loves and loves her back.
Being looked at by Mr. Jiang in her own eyes, Nan Jin became more and more uneasy. The former's silence made her wonder whether what she said was inappropriate, or... she was blaming herself for interrupting his thinking. .
"Ding."
There was a crisp collision sound, and the light red wine in the wine glass rippled, refracted by the light, like blood.
Before Nan Jin realized it, Jiang Cheng reached out and touched the wine glass in her hand lightly.
"Mr. Jiang..."
Nan Jin was stunned for a moment, and when she reacted, she panicked like a child who had done something wrong, although she didn't know why.
But at this moment, she did think so.
Just like the scavenger who interrupted Marquez's thinking because he wanted to pick up Coke cans, he realized it later but couldn't help himself.
Jiang Cheng took a sip of wine, and then sat on the sofa with the wine glass in hand. The aura around him was incompatible with this place.
"I'm waiting for someone," he said.
Because of the light, she could only see his eyes clearly.
The hustle and bustle here was out of control, but looking into the eyes of the man in front of her, she actually had a strange thought. It seemed that... all the noisy sounds ended here.
It was like a ladle of boiling water poured on the iceberg.
And...he was obviously standing, and Mr. Jiang was sitting on the sofa. He was supposed to be looking up to himself in a high position, but in the end it seemed that he was looking up to him.
He just sat there, looking out of place with everyone here.
It was clear that not long ago he was excitedly drinking with a few people, but the next second he suddenly fell silent, entrenched alone in the corner, like a colorful poisonous snake.
After putting away its fangs, it quietly waited for the next batch of prey to come.
"What kind of friend?" she said as if by mistake.
But she panicked as soon as she opened her mouth. They had only known each other for a few days, and it seemed that asking such an intimate question was a bit too much...
The next second, she saw the man in front of her tipping the empty wine glass upside down on the marble-shiny table, and making beautiful strokes in the air with his slender fingers.
"I'm waiting for someone who is willing to drink this glass of wine with me," Jiang Cheng raised his eyes and replied, "Miss Nanjin."
