Sunday afternoons on the food street were already busy to begin with.

Once the lunch rush cleared, a steady stream of college students began moving through the area. Xu Ye recorded a line into a megaphone and set it on loop outside the door: “Don’t walk past without looking — grand opening, fresh fruit, prices clearly listed, come get yours while it lasts!”

Summer was peak season for fruit to begin with.

Between the megaphone and the Moments campaign, customers started trickling in after two o’clock.

“President!”

Xu Ye turned at the voice. “Zhao Xiaohui — you actually came?”

She laughed. “Our whole dorm came. You’re starting your own business, President, we had to come show our support.”

Xu Ye pulled off his best doorman impression, sweeping an arm wide. “Four lovely ladies — please, right this way.”

Zhao Xiaohui, Guo Caixia, and their two dorm mates stepped in and started browsing.

Standing off to the side, Qin Zhiwei’s surprise kept building.

It wasn’t just that Xu Ye had somehow actually become class president.

It was that since starting college, he’d become so much more… polished. The way he handled people, the way he read a room — this wasn’t the Xu Ye from high school at all.

The gap. The gap between them was getting bigger by the hour.

Zhang Xinzhou, watching the shop fill up steadily, looked a little dazed himself.

Hold on. This is only day one of the soft opening. How is there already this many people?

At this rate, they were going to make real money.

Li Tongwen, stationed at the cash register by himself, was already struggling to keep up.

“Please bear with us, everyone — it’s our first day of soft opening, we’re still getting used to the flow. We’ll be much smoother once we’re into it.”

“Also, if you scan the QR code there, you’ll be added to our group — we announce promotions there first, and we do delivery too.”

“Watermelons can be sold by the half — you don’t have to buy the whole thing. Not sweet, it’s free.”

“…”

More and more people kept coming in.

Word had reached second- and third-year students too, and plenty of upperclasswomen showed up out of curiosity. After the welcome party, Xu Ye’s performance video had been circulating all over campus — when word got out that the guy from the video had just opened a fruit shop on the food street and was running promotions, a lot of people wanted to come see for themselves.

From two in the afternoon until past five, there was a constant flow of customers.

By evening, Qingqing Fruit Shop had a line forming outside the door.

About three hundred meters down the street, the owner of Kangyuan Fruit Shop sat in his doorway, staring blankly at the queue outside the new place. He hadn’t quite processed it yet.

How had that shop gotten this popular in half a day?

“Xu Ye, Xu Ye~”

“Wang Shiyu, what are you doing here?”

“My roommate said you opened a fruit shop on the food street. I came to see if it was true.”

Xu Ye grinned. “Yang Fei, you just cut that pineapple — give Wang Shiyu a piece.”

Yang Fei immediately skewered a chunk on a bamboo stick and held it out.

Wang Shiyu took it with a cheerful little “thank you.”

Xu Ye went right back to managing the crowd. The WeChat group went from a handful of people to a dozen, then to over a hundred — all in one afternoon — and several of the higher-demand fruits were nearly sold out by closing time.

The peak rush came between six and seven-thirty, right as the sun dipped below the horizon and the air cooled enough for people to enjoy a stroll. There’s something deeply ingrained in the Chinese psyche about not being able to resist a crowd — plenty of students who hadn’t planned on buying fruit at all saw the buzz around Qingqing Fruit Shop and wandered in out of curiosity. Once inside, naturally, they bought something.

The prices were a little cheaper than the other place, and everything looked fresh enough.

Wang Shiyu had arrived around five and, for reasons unclear, hadn’t left. She’d ended up just staying and helping out. Xu Ye noticed that the moment she’d appeared, Yang Fei’s enthusiasm for the job had jumped considerably, so he didn’t say anything.

After eight, the crowd finally thinned.

Despite the air conditioning, all five of them were drenched in sweat. Xu Ye checked the time. “Should we all go grab dinner? We’ve been at this since noon — everyone must be starving.”

“What about the shop?”

Seeing Xu Ye hesitate, Li Tongwen spoke up on his own. “I had a couple of bananas earlier, I’m not that hungry yet. You all go — I’m on the payroll, I’ll stay and watch the shop.”

Xu Ye didn’t argue. He headed out with Zhang Xinzhou, Yang Fei, Qin Zhiwei, and Wang Shiyu to the same street-side eatery they’d gone to for that second group dinner.

Five people, eight dishes and a soup. For once, Xu Ye was actually generous about it.

“Come on, everyone — a toast. We can call today’s soft opening a first victory.”

“Cheers~”

“Zhang Xinzhou, remind me later to print a hiring notice to put up outside.”

“Easy — we can stop by the print shop on the way back.”

Before Xu Ye could respond, Wang Shiyu chimed in admiringly. “Xu Ye, you’re incredible — school’s barely started and you’re already running your own business. That’s seriously impressive.”

Xu Ye smiled. “Honestly, just got lucky. Everything lined up at the right moment.”

He meant it, too.

If he hadn’t come into a windfall right before school started. If he hadn’t crossed paths with Chen Jianjun outside Qingqing’s school that one afternoon. If there hadn’t happened to be a suitable storefront available for transfer. If Zhang Xinzhou hadn’t wanted in — without all of those, this fruit shop probably never would have happened.

“Hey, can we get those dishes a bit faster? We’re about to die of hunger over here.”

“Coming, coming!”

Another five minutes passed. Yang Fei was about to flag the owner down again when Xu Ye stopped him. “Let me show you the right way to speed things along at a street stall.”

He turned toward the owner. “Hey — if any of those dishes we ordered haven’t been started yet, just cancel them.”

The owner immediately shot back, “They’re all going right now, almost there!”

Sure enough, within minutes the server was bringing dish after dish to the table.

His two roommates and Qin Zhiwei had long since stopped being surprised by anything Xu Ye did. Wang Shiyu, on the other hand, was watching him with undisguised admiration — she was struck by how composed he seemed, how capable, how effortlessly in charge of things.

After grinding away since noon, everyone was ravenous, and the food disappeared fast. Only Yang Fei — putting on a show because Wang Shiyu was there — was eating with any kind of restraint.

Qin Zhiwei checked his phone after finishing, remembered he had a two-hour trip back, and immediately stood up. “Xu Ye, I need to head out — I’ll miss the last reasonable train.”

Xu Ye wiped his mouth fast. “I’ll walk you out.”

“Don’t bother.”

“Come on, just let me walk you.”

He ushered Qin Zhiwei out of the eatery and spotted his classmate Gao Bohai cruising past on an electric scooter. [TL: colloquially called 小毛驴 — “little donkey” — a common nickname for the small electric scooters ubiquitous around Chinese university campuses]

“Gao Bohai!”

Gao Bohai braked, surprised. “President! I was literally just heading to your shop.”

“Lend me your scooter for a minute. I need to drop my friend at the subway station, I’ll be right back.”

“Sure thing.”

Gao Bohai handed it over without a second thought, and Xu Ye was already pulling away from the curb with Qin Zhiwei on the back.

On the ride over, Qin Zhiwei said, a little sadly, “Xu Ye, I feel like you’re a completely different person from high school.”

Xu Ye played dumb. “Am I?”

“Yeah. I can tell how much you’ve changed — everyone around you must feel it even more.”

“Why are you getting sentimental about it?”

“I just… I’m worried the gap between us is going to keep getting wider until I can’t even keep up with you anymore.”

“Don’t worry about it. After twenty-something years of friendship, I’m taking you with me when I make it.”

Qin Zhiwei frowned. “Xu Ye, are you losing it? We just turned eighteen!”

Xu Ye slowed at a red light. He looked up at the deep blue of the night sky, and felt the corner of his mouth curve up on its own.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “We’re only eighteen~”

(End of Chapter)