Love Began with the First Meeting

With the roar of the engine, the airplane Ximena was on glided into the sky, leaving a streak of white smoke. It was late in the afternoon when the same airplane touched down at A City airport.

To surprise Molly, Ximena didn't call to inform Molly of her arrival. Instead, she hailed a taxi.

"Miss, where are you going to?" the taxi driver asked.

"Grand Night Casino!" Ximena answered.

The taxi driver glanced at Ximena in the rearview mirror and shook his head secretly. As he began to drive, he couldn't help but let out a sigh when he thought about all the people that had requested to be driven directly from the airport to the casino. As a normal person, he couldn't understand the addiction of gambling, and he assumed that Ximena was just another victim of it.

When the taxi had arrived in the urban area, it was already getting dark, and the street lamps began to light up one by one. Grand Night Casino was located in Moonlight Street, which was the most bustling street in A City, especially at night. As the taxi passed through the street, the body of the taxi looked particularly colorful under the myriad of neon lights.

Ximena got out of the taxi by the side of the road in front of Grand Night Casino. First, she checked in at the hotel department of Grand Night Casino and left her luggage in a guest room. Then she went downstairs to the hall and converted some chips. She didn't know much about gambling, though she had been to the Grand Night Casino in QY Island together with Aaron several times. When Molly had visited QY Island, the two women mostly frequented amusement venues rather than the casino and the only times that they had entered Grand Night Casino was to look for Brian.

After strolling around the hall on the first floor, Ximena had finally stopped by the roulette. She sat in a vacant seat by the roulette wheel. She thought that roulette was the best choice for her since she knew nothing about gambling. After all, roulette didn't involve many gambling skills but did involve the calculation of probability.

Although she was a top ranking fashion designer, she wasn't good at calculating probabilities. That had been confirmed, by the chips that lay in front of her. Ximena had converted thousands of dollars into casino chips, and in a short time, most of her chips had been gambled away. Only a small stack remained in front of her.

"Place your bets, please!" the dealer said while looking around at everybody sitting at the table.

Ximena glanced at her remaining chips and decided to put all of them on a number she chose at random. Since she had been unlucky this evening and everybody else around her had noticed that, nobody followed her by betting on the same number. They chose all the other numbers around except for hers.

The croupier rotated the roulette wheel slightly and then spun the ball at high speed around the rim in the opposite direction. As the ball finally dropped down and began bouncing across the numbers, everyone stared on wide-eyed with their hearts in their throats, waiting for the ball to stop. The ball bounced from pocket to pocket until it finally stopped on the number that Ximena had chosen.

"Aha... Ha! Ha! Ha!..." Ximena exclaimed, bursting into laughter. She was so excited that she even stood up. Clasping her hands together happily, she said, "I won! I won!"

Everybody around her looked unhappy except for Ximena. They looked at her with eyes full of envy and jealousy.

In one go, she won back more than half of her chips. Although she wasn't a gambler, she felt delighted. However, her happiness was short-lived. Her chips went away soon. In the end, there was only a single blue chip with a number "200" left in front of her.

'I'm afraid that gambling is costly... If I continue gambling, I'll lose everything, 'Ximena thought. She held the chip between her fingers. With a slight sigh, she stood up and went to the counter for a drink. She put the casino chip on the counter and looked at the bartender helplessly and said, "Take this chip and make any cocktail you want for me."

The bartender took the chip. Then he began mixing a cocktail for her. Finally, he placed a glass on the counter and said with a smile, "This is called 'Endless Melancholy.' Please enjoy it!"

Ximena gazed at the cocktail. It had three layers. The top layer was transparent, then light blue, and finally, dark blue at the bottom of the glass. The colors suited her current disposition because Ximena was feeling blue after losing so much money. The name of the cocktail also matched its colors very much, and Ximena was sure that the bartender had served many of them to the patrons. In Ximena's opinion, the success of Grand Night Casino not only depended on Brian's ability but also on his employees' attitude towards work and their approaches towards different kinds of people.

"Why do you think I am melancholy?" Ximena asked, feeling a little annoyed. She sipped the cocktail, and it tasted a bit sweet and a bit spicy, which fitted the name perfectly.

While the bartender was busy concocting another cocktail for an order that the waiter had requested he answered, "Generally speaking, a gambler would never come to the bar to pay for a drink with the last chip that they had in their hand. Perhaps you feel it's impossible for you to win back your chips, and perhaps you feel depressed because your last chip was blue. If the latter was the case, I have to say that blue indicates melancholy. I hope you're only upset rather than melancholy." He raised his head to look at Ximena with a smile on his face.

"Then why did you give me a glass with a blue cocktail?" Ximena asked glaring at him slightly.

After lowering his eyes to look at the cocktail on the counter, the bartender said in a serious tone, "I wanted to fight poison with poison!"

"..." Ximena was left speechless.

"I'm afraid that only one cocktail would not be enough to help this lady get rid of melancholy. I recommend a glass of 'Blazing Red Lips.' That would be more suitable for her."

Upon hearing the voice, Ximena and the bartender looked in the direction that the voice was coming from at the same time. Ximena turned to see Brian a few meters behind her. He looked at her with his deep eyes and a faint smile.

"Mr. Brian Long!" the bartender greeted him with a slight bow.

With one of her arms on the counter, Ximena looked around but couldn't see Molly anywhere. Finally, she fixed her eyes on Brian. "You knew I would come?" she asked in confusion.

Brian shook his head and sat down on a stool beside her. The bartender poured a glass of wine and placed it in front of him. Brian said, "When you checked yourself into the hotel, the staff informed me then."

Ximena let out a chuckle. "Mr. Brian Long, aren't you too busy to be pestered about trivial matters such as that?"

Her words sounded a bit sarcastic but in a joking way. As the leader of the casino, if he were to be informed of all the minor details about the operation of the casino, such as who checked-in then he would probably have died at work by now.

"Only for you," Brian said with a slight smile as he picked up the glass of wine and had a sip. "In consideration of your short temper, I thought you would most likely come even if it weren't today. You would come in a day or two. I assume you wanted to surprise Mol, so you wouldn't book in at Smile Hotel. There aren't many guest rooms in Grand Night Casino, but all of them are available for VIP. Of course, staying here would be your first choice."D