It was Monday again — the most detestable day of the week.

A heavy rain had fallen in the early hours the day before, and by the time everyone woke it had softened to a drizzle, thin and steady, carried along by a north wind. If not for classes, nobody would have willingly gone out in weather like this.

Xu Ye reached the classroom with a little over ten minutes to spare. The teacher hadn’t arrived yet, and the room was a din of chatter.

He sat in the back row, munching on a pork baozi he’d bought from the cafeteria.

As he was eating, Zhang Yiyang came over from somewhere. Seeing Xu Ye had brought breakfast into the classroom too, he said, with some severity, “Xu Ye, what’s the matter with you?”

Xu Ye looked up, a little bewildered. “What’d I do?”

“Why are you also bringing breakfast into the classroom to eat?”

“Is that a problem?”

“Of course. The classroom is a place for study. If everyone acted like you, the whole room would reek of breakfast. I was even going to ask you to say something to the class about this — and here you are doing it yourself.”

Xu Ye frowned. “It’s not as serious as you’re making it sound.”

Zhang Yiyang was about to say something when the room suddenly went much quieter. He turned to find the microeconomics teacher hurrying up to the lectern, and Zhang Yiyang cut himself off, returning to his seat to sit up straight and proper.

Is this guy just too desperate to prove himself… Xu Ye shook his head with a wry smile, stuffed the unfinished baozi into his desk drawer, and, seeing the blackboard hadn’t been wiped, got up and went to the front to clean it. Turning around, he saw the microeconomics teacher unscrew the lid of his thermos to drink, only there didn’t seem to be much water left in it. Xu Ye said quickly, “Teacher, want me to go get you some hot water?”

The microeconomics teacher, in his forties or fifties, was a very genial man. He handed Xu Ye the thermos with a smile. “Traffic was bad on the way in today, what with the wind and the rain — I didn’t even have time to eat breakfast, so I’ll need to drink some hot water to tide my stomach over.”

Xu Ye jogged to the back of the room, filled the thermos to the brim with hot water, and on the way back took out the two baozi from his desk drawer that he hadn’t gotten around to eating. Reaching the lectern, he handed them over along with the thermos, smiling. “Teacher, there’s still a few minutes before class — these are baozi I bought from the cafeteria. Why don’t you have something to tide you over?”

“This…”

“I’ve already eaten.”

The teacher glanced at his watch, then smiled. “Well, thank you, then.”

Xu Ye just smiled, said nothing more, and stepped back down from the lectern. On his way back to his seat, he could plainly see that Zhang Yiyang’s face had gone green.

At noon, Xu Ye ate in the cafeteria and then went to the shop. To his surprise, Jiang Wei had gotten there even earlier than him and was, as usual, tallying accounts with the calculator — even though the backend could generate the total sales figure and had never once been wrong, Jiang Wei had still developed this habit of “counting the money” herself.

“Campus belle’s here bright and early.”

“Buzz off, don’t bother me.”

“Did you come over without eating lunch?”

Jiang Wei answered without lifting her head from the screen. “I had a corn cob this morning, I’m not hungry yet.”

Hearing that, Xu Ye stopped bothering her. He waited until she’d finished the accounts, then broke off a banana and handed it to her.

Jiang Wei looked up. “Does this cost me?”

Xu Ye said, exasperated, “It’s on the house.”

Only then did she take it. Beside them, Xu Wanying was puzzled. “Jiang Wei, when I offered you a banana just now, why’d you say you weren’t hungry?”

“I really couldn’t eat it just then.”

Xu Ye smiled. “When a girl says she can’t eat another bite, odds are she can still put away half a jin of snacks. When a guy says he can’t eat another bite, one more mouthful might genuinely burst his stomach. Xu Wanying, you don’t understand women.”

Xu Wanying giggled.

Jiang Wei peeled the banana, took a bite, then asked, “Xu Ye, why do you understand girls so well?”

“Natural talent.”

“Did you start dating really early?”

“Don’t talk nonsense, I’m a man of clean and upright conduct.”

Jiang Wei pushed him away with her hand. “Please keep your distance from me. Hearing you say things like that makes me feel sick.”

“How were the machine numbers today?”

“Shanghai Institute of Technology’s the highest, Songjiang second, and our own school’s the lowest.”

Xu Ye had anticipated as much. “The machines at the other two schools were only just installed. It’s normal for the first couple of days to run high.”

Jiang Wei turned around, changing the subject abruptly. “I think we need an office now.”

“An office?”

“Yeah. Our volume’s picked up, and even with agents hired, we need people to handle other things too — finances, for one.”

Xu Ye nodded. “The reasoning’s sound, but renting an office in Shanghai is expensive, and somewhere far off is inconvenient.”

Jiang Wei seemed to have thought this through well in advance. “Almost every school has a college student entrepreneurship center, and ours does too — it’s right by the athletic field. As long as you’ve registered a company and meet the relevant conditions, you can apply to the school. If they approve, they’ll lease an office out to you for your use — around fifty square meters or so.”

“There’s really something that good?”

Xu Ye’s interest was piqued immediately. He leaned in again, even reached to take Jiang Wei’s hand — but she was quick, snatching it back, her face full of distaste. “Talk if you’re going to talk, keep your hands to yourself.”

Xu Ye put on his most ingratiating expression. “You know all this, so you’ve clearly looked into it. And you’re a shareholder in the company now anyway — how about we just leave this to you?”

“I have a condition.”

“What condition?”

“If the office application goes through, you make me the finance lead. And you pay me a salary.”

“Hang on — you already own a piece of the company, and you still want a salary on top of that?”

Jiang Wei said, “One thing has nothing to do with the other.”

Xu Ye said, exasperated, “Jiang Wei, you really have crawled all the way into the money pit.”

“Just tell me, yes or no?”

“Yes. As if I could say no.”

Jiang Wei was a decisive, get-it-done person. Once the terms were settled, she got up to go take care of it — and on her way out, right in front of Xu Ye, made off with another bunch of bananas from the shop.

Watching her go, Xu Ye didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

A bunch of bananas didn’t cost much. Jiang Wei, as campus belle, showing up at the fruit shop every day brought the shop a certain amount of foot traffic — and that traffic was more than enough to cover a few bunches of bananas.

…

In the afternoon’s classes, Xu Ye spent the whole time slumped over his desk asleep.

He’d rediscovered that middle-school feeling — the English teacher reading aloud from the textbook at the front while he nodded off in his seat.

The moment the dismissal bell rang, Zhang Xinzhou woke him. As the two walked back to the dorm, they discussed the evening’s visit to Feng Shaoping, the logistics director at Second Industrial University…

“Are we buying stuff again tonight?”

“Yeah, buy some.”

“We’ve already spent several thousand just on cigarettes, liquor, and tea.”

Xu Ye smiled. “If this deal comes through, what’s a few thousand?”

Zhang Xinzhou frowned. “How much do you think he’ll want?”

“That depends on his appetite.”

“Give me a rough estimate.”

“My internal expectation is five figures, then some gesture of appreciation at the start of each semester. He doesn’t actually know how much our machines earn yet, so I’ll lowball the price at first — mostly it comes down to how much he wants.”

“Didn’t you say the money can’t be discussed openly?”

Xu Ye smiled. “I’ll do it my way.”

(End of Chapter 133)