In the scorching heat of summer, after being baked by the sun for several days, Liu Chuanfeng and Wang Yaofa were visibly several shades darker than before.
Yet their hard work was not without reward. Their daily earnings grew steadily, and by the sixth day, the day's turnover unexpectedly reached eight thousand yuan. The reason was quite simple: by the fourth day, Liu Chuanfeng was no longer satisfied with merely selling boxed lunches. Building upon the original foundation, he added a new item—homemade iced lemon black tea, priced at just one yuan a cup.
The black tea was purchased from a small local supermarket for ten yuan a small pack. As for the lemons, he grabbed five of them for five yuan on his way back from buying vegetables. The water was Wahaha mineral water, and he had also ordered a batch of plastic cups online, complete with straws.
The cups were transparent; simple yet giving a high-end look, to the point that anyone unaware might have thought they were drinking iced Americanos.
Just like that, they could still net a profit of seventy cents per cup on average.
The crucial part was that not only did the workers love drinking this iced lemon black tea, but because the cups also looked sleek and stylish, many office workers caught wind of it and came rushing over. It was practically in high demand, to the extent that had this not brought in money a bit more slowly, Wang Yaofa would have wanted to quit selling boxed lunches altogether and focus solely on the lemon black tea.
On the eighth day, Wang Yaofa was still full of drive. Because the daily sales volume had now increased, he had to make two trips for both lunch and dinner. After all, the tricycle's cargo capacity was limited, while Liu Chuanfeng would stay behind to keep an eye on things first. Once it past eleven-thirty, Liu Chuanfeng would take charge of selling the boxed lunches, while Wang Yaofa would handle the lemon black tea.
"Chuanfeng, you know what?"
"I know nothing."
Compared to Pangzi's boundless passion, Liu Chuanfeng looked listless and drained. Starting a business was truly exhausting.
Cooking two meals a day had practically sapped all his energy. Every night when he got back, he would fall fast asleep the moment his head hit the pillow. In his past life, he used to stay up until two or three in the morning, but now he was asleep by nine at night.
He finally understood that some people suffered from insomnia simply because they were not tired enough during the day.
Still, the primitive accumulation of capital required taking things step by step, so every single day he was waiting for the day of the Brazil versus Germany match.
As a time traveler, he felt somewhat like a failure. Why were other people's entrepreneurial journeys so effortless? With a grand wave of the hand: "Money, come!"
And the money would come.
Going to bet on the football matches—forget the dates, they even remembered every single final score crystal clear.
To this end, he had even gone out of his way to check at what age memory decline began.
The internet told him it was twenty-three.
So he felt reassured again; he decided his brain wasn't malfunctioning—it was just that he had been older when he transmigrated, which was why he couldn't remember things.
Yet a soul-searching question arose.
He was reborn now; he had transmigrated, after all.
The body he was using right now was his nineteen-year-old self, but was this brain of his operating as a nineteen-year-old's or a man in his thirties?
This was a terribly complicated question. After pondering it for several nights, he had an urge to volunteer himself for scientific research.
Fortunately, reason prevailed over impulse, because he knew:
That wasn't volunteering for scientific research; that was throwing his life away.
Naturally, Wang Yaofa had no idea that his good buddy was no longer the original buddy. He pulled out his local-tycoon gold iPhone 5S: "There are quite a few people at our school who know the two of us are setting up a stall here."
"Looks like someone saw us and spread the word."
"And it even reached our class. A lot of people at school are mocking and roasting us in various chat groups."
"Some people say we ought to be studying hard instead of coming out to make money. Clearly college students, yet reeking of copper and vulgarity."
"The most crucial part is that someone said they don't know how Zhang Jingyi ever took a fancy to you. If she knew you were doing this, she definitely wouldn't confess her feelings to you ever again."
Wang Yaofa muttered as he read through the screen. In truth, most of the comments were mocking Liu Chuanfeng, while he himself was merely an afterthought, yet hearing this upset him even more than if they had insulted him directly. Wasn't earning an honest living by oneself a thousand times better than those people living off their parents day in and day out? Besides, what on earth did this have to do with Zhang Jingyi?
Liu Chuanfeng remained expressionless. Sitting at the front of the tricycle with a folding fan in hand, he lazily replied with a single "Oh."
A good buddy should respond to every single remark, though he really had nothing to say about this matter.
This place was only so big, and furthermore, it was right around the school; being seen was only natural, so Liu Chuanfeng wasn't surprised in the slightest. Moreover, many of these people were driven by jealousy to "champion" the school belle, while a small fraction felt that Liu Chuanfeng and Wang Yaofa had insulted the noble title of "college student," unable to shed the long gowns of Kong Yiji. Once they entered society in the future, they would realize what an extraordinary feat it was to successfully start a business right after graduating high school.
Rather than getting worked up over these people, he would rather figure out which exact day the Brazil-Germany match was happening.
He was very conflicted right now. On one hand, he wanted to save up a bit more money to bet on the sports lottery; on the other, he didn't want to keep suffering here.
Yet to give up now—no one would be reconciled to that. After all, with odds of several hundred to one, it would be nearly impossible to pull off such an easy money heist ever again in the future.
*Sigh*, ultimately he was just too greedy.
Liu Chuanfeng arrived at this conclusion in his heart. Moreover, there was another crucial point: how could he win such a massive prize without anyone finding out? And as for Pangzi, how could he make him believe it was purely a matter of luck rather than prescience?
Seeing that Liu Chuanfeng didn't seem very interested, Wang Yaofa assumed he was simply too tired. Over the past few days, there wasn't much he could do; his main task was hauling cargo, while everything else—washing vegetables, cooking, and packing the meals—was handled by Liu Chuanfeng alone. Over the past couple of days, apart from turning much darker, the two of them had also lost a noticeable amount of weight.
Although some words were hardly appropriate to pass between two men, Wang Yaofa considered himself a sentimental person. Even if the word sounded a bit ambiguous applied to himself, he felt it nonetheless.
And this very emotion found a concrete manifestation in the gaze of another person.
That emotion was called "heartache."
"Zhang Jingyi?"
"Why are you here?"
Wang Yaofa was the first to notice. His exclamation also drew Liu Chuanfeng's attention, and after an interval of a week, he once again laid eyes on the girl who had confessed her feelings to him.
She was around one meter seven in height. When looking at a woman, one looked at her legs first: a pair of white sneakers, with dark blue skinny jeans wrapping around her slender legs, and a pure white fitted T-shirt accentuating her narrow waist and shoulders. Her overall bodily proportions were impeccably balanced.
Furthermore, today she had tied her hair into a cute bun, exposing a slender, fair neck. Her flawless, smooth face featured snow-white skin and red lips, her pretty eyebrows sparkling with ripples, and her black-and-white distinct eyes were clear and pure, as though not a single speck of dust had ever settled in her gaze.
She truly lived up to her reputation as the undisputed campus goddess of their three high school years, occupying the white moonlight of countless youths' coming-of-age years.
Yet this white moonlight merely nodded at Wang Yaofa as a form of greeting, and then looked straight at the slightly emaciated Liu Chuanfeng sitting at the front of the tricycle, her pretty peach-blossom eyes brimming entirely with gentleness and heartache...