Love Apartment: Yifei is my junior aunt

Chapter 38 Picking Up Girls in Progress

The beautiful woman who called herself Harley Quinn just narrowed her eyes slightly when she heard Zi Qiao's praise, as if trying to glimpse some shadow that only existed in her memory through him.

In the end, she simply shook her head: "Glib talker."

"If a man is smooth-talking to you, that's obviously his problem. But if every man is smooth-talking to you, shouldn't you consider toning down your charm?"

Ziqiao winked at her: "You know, whether it's a quiet bar or a noisy one, in a place like a bar, alcohol is always just a catalyst, only beauty is the addictive poison."

"If you know it's poison, you should stay far away instead of coming over like this."

"On the contrary, I'm the kind of person who likes to drink poison to quench thirst." Ziqiao took out the tools he had prepared beforehand. "To be honest, I'm a newly graduated romance profiler. I'm currently collecting a series of emotional stories to enrich my profiler skills. I think your story must be quite unexpected."

"Profiler?" The beautiful woman became interested. "Isn't that the kind of profession where you analyze criminal cases and create a profile of the perpetrator?"

"You're talking about criminal profilers, I'm a relationship profiler, specializing in analyzing the psychological profiles of couples' relationships. Of course, you can also think of us profilers as colleagues; essentially, we're all striving to maximize human happiness."

"If you're saying maximizing human happiness, then wouldn't all professions be considered the same?"

"Isn't that right? The essence of a profession is just human labor. As for what exactly we're laboring for... well, everyone's basically just busy doing nothing, so there's not much difference."

The beautiful woman watched his performance quietly, but unconsciously increased the frequency of her drinking.

"Let's get back to the point. The most important thing for someone like me is to collect all kinds of emotional stories to find common templates and individual cases," Zi Qiao casually made up. In fact, he didn't even know if the profession of love profiler actually existed, but that didn't stop him from picking up girls.

In fact, as long as the profession and hobby you make up are obscure enough, the kind of things that normal people have never even heard of, and then you use some high-sounding terms, no matter what you say, they will just think that they are ignorant and will naturally become interested in your profession or hobby.

At this point, what you need to do is find a way to gradually shift her curiosity about your profession to you as a person, which is equivalent to winning half the battle.

"That's why I love bars. The faces of the young men and women there tell stories, especially yours, Miss Harley Quinn."

The woman in the red dress toyed with her curly hair with a self-deprecating smile: "This doesn't sound like a good thing."

Ziqiao called over a bottle of red wine to the bar staff. He gently tapped the cork of the bottle before pushing it toward the woman in the red dress.

"Life is so long, don't rush to conclusions. You never know what bad things might turn into good things. For example, everything you've experienced before may seem like a bad thing, but today you've gotten a bottle of good wine and met a witty and handsome guy."

She chuckled: "Who would call themselves a witty, humorous, and handsome guy?"

"So, you've met him today." Ziqiao handed over the bottle opener. "How about it? Will you tell me your story first, or should I profile you to prove my abilities?"

The woman in the red dress gestured for her to proceed.

Hooked.

Ziqiao smiled smugly to himself. This kind of low-level linguistic trap was just like when you go to a breakfast shop and the owner asks you if you want sausage or an egg.

It seems like you're being given a choice, but it's actually subtly guiding your thinking. Anyone would subconsciously consider whether they should choose sausage or eggs, even though you could have chosen nothing at all.

Moreover, the most ingenious aspect of this language trap is that even if the other party jumps out of your trap and gives you a straightforward rejection, you have only failed to achieve your goal and are far from being considered a failure.

Because you only gave her a choice.

So Ziqiao carefully looked the beautiful woman in the red dress up and down: "First of all, you used to be fat. Now... you're single, live alone, work in the cosmetics industry, and earn a good income."

"I must have some important business to attend to today. I'm currently waiting for a female friend."

Am I right?

The woman in the red dress didn't respond immediately; instead, she used a wine opener to open the bottle of red wine and fill both of their empty glasses.

"Cheers, Mr. Lü Bu, you are very professional."

The two drank the cup to the brim, and Ziqiao asked curiously, "Don't you want to know how I figured it out?"

"I do want to, but I know that even if I don't say anything, you'll inevitably tell me." The woman in the red dress smiled brightly and charmingly. "Actually, instead of being called Lü Bu, you should change your name to Sima Zhao."

"If every passerby were as smart as you, I would definitely change my name overnight." Zi Qiao moved slightly closer to the beautiful woman. "Even if you don't want to satisfy your curiosity, you should at least let me satisfy my desire to express myself."

The woman in the red dress remained silent, simply smiling as she watched Ziqiao drink.

If a girl doesn't explicitly refuse, it means she agrees.

"Let's start with the fat guy. You still have some traces of the effects of your dramatic weight loss, and this red dress is a little too big, to be precise, it's a size too big. Fat guys usually prefer to wear looser clothes."

"You work in the cosmetics industry because the makeup you're wearing today doesn't match the scent of the cosmetics on your body. Your red dress is very new, and there are no signs that the cosmetics in your bag have been knocked over. So you must be in a job that involves frequent contact with cosmetics."

"Finally, here's your main task for today. Your dress is brand new, and your hair is freshly curled. This makeup and styling will definitely take at least an hour to complete."

"If you dressed up specifically to pick up girls at the bar, you wouldn't be sitting here quietly drinking alone, not even glancing at the handsome guys in the bar."

"The direction you most often look up is the bar's entrance, you're probably waiting for someone, there's no nervousness, no shyness, no expectation, no anxiety in your eyes, you could say there's nothing there, and most importantly, you never once took out a mirror from your bag to touch up your makeup or lipstick."

"You must be waiting for someone you know very well, so well that you don't need to put on a good image in front of her. You clearly don't need to dress up for the person you're waiting for, yet you've dressed up like this... Is your friend trying to set you up with someone?"

[In his inner world, Lu Ziqiao pointed a pointer at the blackboard: Aren't you envious of my reasoning skills? Today I'll tell you the ultimate secret of reasoning.]

That means observing, thinking, reflecting, and comparing more. The more people you meet, the more you'll realize that girls are all actually the same.

Of course, the most important thing is that you dare to speak up. Reasoning, to put it simply, is just guessing based on existing clues; and since it's guessing, there's always the possibility of being wrong.

[Speak freely and boldly. Like me now, even if I'm wrong, so what? Will it affect my ability to pick up girls?]

If Plan A doesn't work, try Plan B! As long as you dare to think and speak your mind, one day you might even become a master detective through sheer luck!

The woman in the red dress listened to Ziqiao's words with great interest: "You seem more like a detective than a profiler."

"What a coincidence, I used to be a detective and then a love profiler." Ziqiao was full of lies, not a word of truth came out of his mouth. "It's just that the detective industry is not easy to do these days. Rather than helping rich wives catch their mistresses every day, I might as well be a love profiler and help those confused young couples."

"Besides, isn't the profiler profession all about reasoning from existing information? Essentially, I didn't really change careers; it was more like a lateral move."

"But you still haven't told me how you figured out I was single and living alone."

"Well... of course it's just a guess."

Lu Ziqiao raised his glass: "To be precise, I hope you live alone."

Writing a story about picking up girls is incredibly difficult, and this one feels really strange. It's true what they say, if you don't have the skills, don't take on the task. Asking a single guy like me to write about a playboy picking up girls is just asking the impossible. I much prefer writing about pure romance.

(End of this chapter)