Ouyang Feifei stood by the central display pillar, waving her gold-plated phone like a baton.
“Did you hear me?” Ouyang Feifei snapped at the security guards. “Get those cooks out of here! Our family spent eighty million yuan on this penthouse showroom. If their cheap polyester clothes scratch the Italian velvet carpets, who pays for it?”
Grandma Chen stopped. Her hands tightened around her canvas bag.
Her knuckles were thick and swollen from forty years of kneading dough in cold mornings. She looked down at her canvas shoes, her face reddening with shame.
“Xiao Mo...” Grandma Chen whispered, tugging Lin Mo’s sleeve. “Maybe we should go. This place is too clean for old women who smell of scallions and lard. We don’t belong here.”
The twelve cafeteria aunties shrank back toward the elevator doors. They held their clean aprons close. They had worked all morning prepping dumplings for five thousand factory workers. Now they felt like intruders under the bright lights.
Lin Mo reached out and patted Grandma Chen’s shoulder.
“Grandma Chen,” Lin Mo said in a calm, clear voice. “A bowl of your hot scallion wontons has kept three thousand workers healthy and warm every winter. A piece of green rock in a glass box has never fed a single starving child. You have more right to stand on this floor than anyone in this room.”
