Chapter 11: One Good Thing After Another
For lunch, Su Ruizhe followed a recipe to stew a young chicken soup. Since it was his first time, he kept testing the tenderness of the chicken with chopsticks and tasting the soup with a spoon as he went. When it was almost done, he added sliced mushrooms to the pot—fresh mushrooms taken from his space—which would surely make the soup even more flavorful. Besides the chicken soup, he also stir-fried some vegetables and made cucumber and scrambled eggs.
When he carried the dishes into the room, Zhan Yun smiled at him. “What did you make? I could smell the aroma from way over there.”
“Chicken soup,” Su Ruizhe said with a soft smile, the cute dimples on both cheeks showing as he set the dishes on the table one by one.
The two of them ate together at the table. The chicken was tender and soft, the soup rich and fragrant; with the addition of the smooth mushrooms, the flavor was even better. The stir-fried greens and the cucumber with eggs were also delicious. They were all simple dishes, yet they whetted Zhan Yun’s appetite so much that he ate two full bowls of rice and finished all the soup.
Zhan Yun suddenly recalled a saying: If you want to capture a man’s heart, first capture his stomach. He felt that both his heart and his stomach had already been firmly captured by Su Ruizhe.
While Su Ruizhe was clearing the dishes, there was a sudden knock at the door. It turned out to be the supermarket staff delivering the home appliances. Not only did they deliver them, they also installed everything, providing impeccable service.
The air conditioner and washing machine could be put into use immediately after installation, but the television was a different matter—Su Ruizhe’s house didn’t have cable TV. In the past, when he and his grandfather wanted some entertainment, all they had was an old-fashioned radio.
Staring at the screen full of static, Su Ruizhe scratched his head awkwardly and said in a low voice, “How about I go out and get someone to install cable TV?”
“No need.” Zhan Yun waved his hand lightly and directly called the telecom service center on his phone, asking them to come install broadband and IPTV. IPTV came free with the broadband installation. In the place he rented himself, he used IPTV to watch TV and found it very convenient. Besides, Su Ruizhe didn’t have broadband here either; even using his phone to get online was inconvenient. It would be better to install broadband and buy a laptop, so he could surf the internet in bed.
Su Ruizhe felt a bit pained about the money, but as long as Zhan Yun was happy, he felt it was worth it, so he didn’t say anything and went off to wash the dishes.
When he came back, he poured some water and brought it to Zhan Yun to take his medicine.
“Little Zhe, isn’t school about to start for you?” Zhan Yun suddenly asked.
Su Ruizhe hadn’t expected him to bring this up and was momentarily stunned before answering honestly, “Yes.”
“When does it start? Don’t let it affect your studies.”
“Oh… I know.” In fact, the first day of school was today… but he had no intention of going to pay the tuition.
In his previous life, his uncle and aunt had paid his tuition. The annual tuition at No. 1 High School in the city wasn’t expensive, but once you added meal fees, miscellaneous school fees, and materials, it still came to nearly three thousand yuan. Going to school would also waste his precious time earning money, and what he learned there was of no use at all. Knowing full well that the apocalypse was about to arrive, he had no intention of wasting money and time at school anymore.
“Aren’t you going to sell vegetables today? It’s fine—you don’t need to stay here with me. I’ll manage on my own. It’s just an abdominal injury; my arms and legs are perfectly fine,” Zhan Yun said. This wasn’t his first time being injured; he had plenty of experience recuperating. With a TV and a computer, he wasn’t afraid of being bored.
At Zhan Yun’s mention, Su Ruizhe was tempted as well. He needed to seize the time to make money—there was still so much he needed to prepare…
“Then… then I’ll head out?”
“Mm.” Zhan Yun paused, then added, “You still need to go get the produce first, right? Do you have enough money? Want me to give you some?”
“Huh?”
“Haha, do you think I’m stupid? Cherry trees are famously hard to take care of. Cherries that big and that good—how could you have grown them yourself? Your family doesn’t run a cherry orchard,” Zhan Yun said, shaking his head with amusement at Su Ruizhe’s blank look. “You must have sourced them from somewhere else. With cherries this good, you could sell them for a bit more and people would still buy them.”
“Mm…” Su Ruizhe could only admit it obediently. What he had said before was actually the truth—the cherries really were grown by him, just that with the convenience of his ability, growing them was far too easy. Only now did he realize he had already given himself away. Luckily, Zhan Yun didn’t think too deeply about it.
Leaving the house in a bit of a fluster, Su Ruizhe repeated his old trick, going into an alley to prepare his cart and the fruits and vegetables he was going to sell, then headed once again to the vegetable market on East Street.
To his surprise, the moment he appeared, he was surrounded layer upon layer.
Several familiar aunties anxiously grabbed him. “Child, why didn’t you come this morning? Are the vegetables your family grows almost sold out?”
After all, a kid’s family probably wouldn’t grow vegetables in large quantities. With produce of such high quality, how could it withstand being sold in large amounts day after day?
Su Ruizhe smiled shyly. “Auntie, my family has plenty of vegetables. Don’t worry. I just had something to take care of at home this morning, so I didn’t come.”
“That’s good, that’s good.” Only then did the aunties relax and start picking out what they wanted to buy.
Remembering what Zhan Yun had said earlier, Su Ruizhe raised the price of the cherries to fifteen yuan per jin, citing that there weren’t many left at home. As soon as everyone heard that, they no longer thought it was expensive and bought as much as they could, wishing they could buy out all his cherries so they wouldn’t miss out once they were sold out.
No one knew what variety these cherries were, but they were large, sweet, and juicy—one bite after another, impossible to stop. Almost everyone present bought two or three jin each.
Su Ruizhe made a hefty profit and happily stuffed the thick wad of cash into his pocket.
After that, he made another trip to Uncle Wu’s shop and delivered another two hundred yuan’s worth of vegetables to him.
As a result, he received two pieces of good news.
First, because the vegetables he supplied were of excellent quality and flavor, the grilled vegetables at Wu Qi’s barbecue shop were selling exceptionally well. The fruit juice made from the fruit he delivered was also selling out every single day. Wu Qi therefore asked him to increase his supply and start delivering five hundred yuan’s worth of fruits and vegetables each day beginning tomorrow. Naturally, Su Ruizhe agreed with a beaming smile.
Second, Xu Ji Restaurant had also called Wu Qi, asking him to help arrange for Su Ruizhe to deliver more vegetables to them as well. Thanks to these top-quality fresh fruits and vegetables, their business had been extraordinarily brisk since opening yesterday. What’s more, customers actually preferred the vegetables and fruit dishes, often adding extra orders—these items were even more popular than the heavy meat dishes and signature entrées. Today the place was packed again, and the stock they had just brought in from Su Ruizhe was already nearly sold out, so they asked for more to be delivered as soon as possible.
Su Ruizhe was, of course, overjoyed. He felt that ever since meeting Zhan Yun, good things had been happening to him one after another. For example, the relocation compensation—his aunt had voluntarily asked to give him an extra three hundred thousand yuan. And then there were the hot-selling fruits and vegetables: with Wu Qi and Xu Ji Restaurant as two major clients, his daily income had almost doubled.
Without delay, Su Ruizhe took large bags of fruits and vegetables to Xu Ji Restaurant again. Mother Xu and her son thanked him profusely. After checking the goods, they paid him more than a thousand yuan on the spot and asked him to deliver once every day from then on.
He ducked into his space to count the money and discovered that he had made nearly two thousand five hundred yuan that day.
In a great mood, Su Ruizhe decided to wander around the wholesale market to see if he could pick up some cheap and practical items.
After making two rounds of the market, he finally chose a shop selling pure cotton underwear and bought a full two hundred sets—one hundred in his own size and another hundred in Zhan Yun’s size. He felt that this many should be enough to last ten years or so. Each set originally cost twenty yuan, but since he was buying in bulk, the shop owner gave him a discount to sixteen yuan per set, for a total of three thousand two hundred yuan.
There were plenty of cheap and good items in the wholesale market, and Su Ruizhe wished he could buy them all. Unfortunately, he didn’t have much money yet, so he would have to take it slow.
Thank you for reading 🙂 I hope you all liked my translations. If you enjoyed my work, please consider buying me a Ko-Fi 😉
