There and back — three hours total.
Standing on the subway the whole way. Genuinely exhausting.
But Xu Ye could tell Chen Qingqing had been happy, which made every minute of it worth it.
He didn’t stop by the fruit shop on the way back, going straight to the dorm instead. He took an early shower, then borrowed Zhang Xinzhou’s laptop and went through the sales reports from the past few days.
By any measure, the vending machine business had gotten off the ground.
With Pudong, Xuhui, and Songjiang about to come online, and Jiang Chao’s connections potentially unlocking Yangpu District not long after — and Yangpu being home to some of Shanghai’s most prestigious universities — it still felt slightly unreal to Xu Ye that he, of all people, would ever have a realistic shot at getting his machines into somewhere like Fudan. Without a second life’s worth of foreknowledge, he’d never have imagined it.
The fruit shop was pulling in net profit of roughly 1,500 to 2,000 yuan a day — after Zhang Xinzhou’s share, Xu Ye was clearing upwards of a thousand daily just from that. Once the vending machines were installed across Songjiang campus and Shanghai Institute of Technology, conservative estimates put the net daily take at 8,000 to 9,000 yuan across all locations. Running the numbers, Xu Ye was looking at roughly 150,000 yuan a month going into his own pocket.
And from late December of this year, A-shares would climb from around 2,300 points to 3,200 in just three months — basically printing money for anyone positioned correctly. [TL: the 2014-2015 A-share bull run was one of the most dramatic in Chinese stock market history; the Shanghai Composite nearly doubled between mid-2014 and its peak in mid-2015]
Xu Ye ran a rough projection. If he poured all incoming cash flow into the market, his total assets could break two million yuan before the year was out.
Two million yuan, and I could buy a car after the winter break.
He yawned, closed Zhang Xinzhou’s laptop, and was just about to lie down when his phone buzzed with a message.
He opened WeChat. The sender was Wang Shiyu — someone he hadn’t heard from in quite a while.
Wang Shiyu: “Are you free right now?”
Xu Ye: “Something up?”
Wang Shiyu: “I want to talk to you about something.”
Xu Ye: “Now?”
Wang Shiyu: “Yeah. I’m by the experimental center — not many people around here.”
Xu Ye stared at his screen, puzzled.
This late at night, meeting somewhere quiet — what for?
Xu Ye: “If it’s not urgent, can it wait until tomorrow? I’m pretty tired.”
Wang Shiyu: “It’s important.”
Xu Ye: “Alright, I’ll be right there.”
He headed out and made his way to the experimental center. Wang Shiyu was already waiting.
She was dressed, as always, with clear intention — a black leather beret, a brown bomber jacket, a black mini skirt, and a pair of thick over-the-knee socks against the cold.
“Over here.” The campus was already quiet this late in the evening, and this spot had even less foot traffic than usual. She spotted him the moment he appeared.
He walked over. “Alright, what’s up? What did you want to talk about?”
Wang Shiyu got straight to the point. “I saw everything today.”
“Saw what?”
She watched him play dumb and smiled. “That you’re a player. You already have a girlfriend, and you’re two-timing.”
After hearing the rumors about Xu Ye and Jiang Wei, Wang Shiyu had actually made peace with it — she’d told herself she couldn’t compete, and had begun letting go. But then she’d seen Xu Ye out today with a completely different girl, all smiles and clearly very close — and the part of her that had been settling had reignited. If he’s playing two people at once, and I’ve still got a long-distance boyfriend I haven’t broken up with — we’d be a perfect match, actually.
“Wait — what are you talking about?” Xu Ye said, genuinely confused.
“Don’t act like you don’t know,” she said. “I told you, I saw it. You were out with some girl this afternoon and you literally got down on one knee for her.”
Looking at her expression, Xu Ye began to piece together what had happened. He tested the water deliberately. “And so?”
Wang Shiyu smiled. “Xu Ye — would you mind having one more girlfriend?”
He blinked. Then the full picture clicked into place.
Word had been going around campus for a while that he and Jiang Wei were together. The people close to him knew it wasn’t true, and so did Jiang Wei’s roommates — but most of the campus still believed the rumor. Wang Shiyu must have spotted him with Chen Qingqing today and concluded he was running two relationships at once. And she’d decided to use that as leverage — come to him, reveal what she’d seen, and use it to position herself as someone he’d want to keep quiet by giving her what she wanted.
He kept the innocent act going. “I’m not sure I follow.”
“Don’t play dumb,” Wang Shiyu said. “You know what I mean.”
“Are you maybe… misunderstanding something?”
Her brow furrowed. “Misunderstanding what?”
“I only have one girlfriend.”
“Jiang Wei?”
“She‘s not my girlfriend.”
“How is that possible? Half the campus knows.”
“Jiang Wei is my business partner,” Xu Ye said. “We’re running a company together, so we spend a fair amount of time in the same places. People see that and assume we’re dating — it’s all rumors. The girl you saw me with today is my actual girlfriend.”
Wang Shiyu felt the floor drop out from under her.
She’d been wrong. She’d walked straight into this thinking she had leverage, and now she’d completely exposed herself.
She scrambled to look composed. “You’re not just saying that, right? I’ll go ask Senior Jiang Wei myself.”
“Ask her. She’ll tell you the same thing.”
“Then… then… does that mean you think I’m a horrible person?” She lowered her head, voice small. “I just… I really like you.”
Xu Ye let out a small laugh. “Liking someone isn’t a crime. Thank you for that — genuinely. And I won’t say a word about tonight. Get some sleep.”
He knew that if he told her the honest version of what he thought right now, she’d spend the night spiraling into something worse. Better to leave her with something soft. They went to the same school — if they kept crossing paths, it didn’t need to be awkward.
Wang Shiyu watched him walk away, then stamped the ground hard once he was out of sight.
She could have kicked herself.
If she’d just gone to Jiang Wei first to check the facts, none of this would have happened.
Now she’d made herself into the punchline.
She’d even worn a matching set of lingerie for tonight’s meeting.
All for nothing.
…
By the time Xu Ye got back to the dorm, Zhang Xinzhou, Yang Fei, and Li Tongwen had all returned from the shop.
Yang Fei looked up with pointed sarcasm the moment Xu Ye walked in. “I figured you weren’t coming back tonight.”
Before Xu Ye could respond, Zhang Xinzhou said drily, “Yang Fei, if you’re jealous, just say so. No need for the passive-aggressive commentary.”
“I’m not jealous of anything.” Yang Fei waved him off. “You guys never learned this poem? ‘A beauty of sixteen, smooth as cream; a sword at the waist cuts down mortal men. Though heads won’t roll before your eyes — she’ll quietly hollow out your bones from inside.'” [TL: a well-known cautionary verse often quoted humorously in Chinese internet culture, warning men that beautiful women are secretly draining — roughly analogous to the English “she’ll be the death of you,” but more poetic and more dramatic]
He looked at Xu Ye with elaborate indifference. “Sooner or later your health is going to give out.”
Xu Ye said, “A beauty of sixteen, smooth as cream — smooth today, smooth again tomorrow. I’m in my prime, what have I got to fear.”
Zhang Xinzhou doubled over, tears coming out of his eyes. “Ha — ‘smooth today, smooth again tomorrow.’ That’s beautiful.”
Xu Ye turned to Yang Fei. “Hey.”
“What?”
“Stay away from Wang Shiyu going forward.”
“Why?”
“Trust me on this one.”
Yang Fei, unusually, didn’t push back. He just sighed. “I gave up on her a while ago anyway.”
“Some girls will mess up your whole life,” Xu Ye said. “Others bring you nothing but good luck. You’ve got to know the difference before you get involved.”
“I’m starting to think I’ll just never find a girlfriend.”
Zhang Xinzhou smiled. “Weren’t you calling yourself a ‘love god’ when we first started school?”
“I was talking out of my ass.”
“Look — our school’s got way more girls than guys,” Xu Ye said. “Lower your standards a little, it shouldn’t be that hard.”
“How do I lower them?”
“The ugly ones count too, you know.”
(End of Chapter 120)