Xu Ye got back to school around two in the afternoon.
Only Li Tongwen and Xu Wanying were at the fruit shop. Xu Ye asked, puzzled, “Li Tongwen, where’d Zhang Xinzhou and Yang Fei run off to?”
Li Tongwen answered, “Zhang Xinzhou left right after lunch — went to see the logistics director at Second Industrial University, I think. Yang Fei’s probably sleeping in at the dorm. He added some girl through WeChat’s Shake feature on Saturday, and they were messaging until midnight last night.” [TL: 摇一摇 (“Shake”), a once-popular WeChat feature that connected strangers who happened to shake their phones at the same moment — commonly associated with random hookups and, just as often, scammers]
Xu Ye had already told Zhang Xinzhou to go feel out the logistics director at Second Industrial University when he had time. Since he’d gone this afternoon, there’d presumably been some progress.
But Yang Fei, that dog, was actually sleeping in at the dorm? And had spent last night messaging some girl he’d added through Shake until midnight? Had his brain short-circuited? Or was he just born an idiot?
Nine out of ten women you add through WeChat Shake are selling tea. [TL: a running scam of the era — accounts posing as attractive young women who spin an elaborate sob story before pressuring the mark into buying overpriced “family farm” tea leaves]
What was this dog even hoping to get?
Xu Ye couldn’t be bothered dealing with him. He sat down at the computer, pulled up the vending machine monitoring backend, and asked, “Did Jiang Wei come by the shop these last couple days?”
“She came last night. She went to Songjiang campus during the day yesterday and got everything sorted over there.”
Xu Ye didn’t need Li Tongwen to tell him that — the computer now showed sales data for another thirty-plus machines.
All three universities were sorted now. All Xu Ye was waiting on was a phone call from Jiang Wei’s father, Jiang Chao.
He sat in the shop for about an hour, then rode the scooter back to the dorm. The moment he pushed the door open, he found Yang Fei craning his neck at his laptop screen like a turtle, both hands hammering away at the keyboard.
Xu Ye deliberately kept quiet. After putting his things away, he walked up behind Yang Fei and watched him chat with a contact saved as “Miaomiao.”
A few minutes in, Xu Ye suddenly reached out and grabbed Yang Fei’s ear.
“Ow, what the — what are you doing?!”
“Sunday, not helping at the fruit shop, holed up in the dorm flirting with some internet girl — you trying to get yourself fired?”
Knowing he was in the wrong, Yang Fei gave a sheepish laugh. “I’ll unload the stock by myself tomorrow, okay? I really didn’t have time today.”
Xu Ye rolled his eyes. “You absolute moron. Chatting through a screen and you can still grin that lecherously — what if the person on the other end is a guy?“
“No way,” Yang Fei said. “She’s definitely a girl.”
“Got a photo?”
“She hasn’t sent one.”
“And you’re still talking to her?”
Yang Fei kept typing. “We only added each other yesterday. If she sent me a photo this fast, that’d be the weird part, wouldn’t it?”
“Just don’t get scammed.”
“How would I? More likely I scam her.”
“Sure.”
Xu Ye tossed the dirty clothes he’d changed out of at the hotel into the wash bucket, added a bit of detergent, scrubbed a couple of half-hearted passes by hand, and left them to soak — figuring a soak now would get them cleaner later.
Back in the dorm, the down jacket he still had on was a little too warm. He took it off, hung it on a hanger, and hooked the hanger up beside his bed.
He sat down, opened WeChat, and sent Chen Qingqing a message: “What are you up to?”
Chen Qingqing: “Spacing out~”
Xu Ye: “What about the others?”
Chen Qingqing: “Watching an EXO music video.”
Xu Ye: “Why aren’t you watching?”
Chen Qingqing: “I don’t even like them.”
Xu Ye: “Next time I’ll record a video and send it to you — you can watch me instead.”
Chen Qingqing: “Not watching!”
Xu Ye: “I just checked the forecast — looks like it’s going to rain all week.”
Chen Qingqing: “Is it?”
Xu Ye: “Remember to bring an umbrella when you go out. If it rains this weekend I won’t come over — going out in the rain is a hassle, and I can’t exactly camp out in your girls’ dorm the whole time.”
Chen Qingqing: “Oh.”
Chen Qingqing: “I hate rainy days now.”
Xu Ye: “I hate them too.”
Xu Ye: “I’ve got to go do laundry, I’ll find you again tonight.”
Chen Qingqing: “Okay~”
It took Xu Ye fifteen minutes to finish the wash, and he scrubbed his dirty shoes while he was at it. Around five, Zhang Xinzhou got back.
Xu Ye asked immediately, “How’d it go?”
Zhang Xinzhou shook his head. “I don’t know how to put it.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know how to put it?”
Zhang Xinzhou sat down, took a sip of water, and said, “Every time I’ve gone to see him, his attitude toward me has been fine. He’s accepted all the gifts I brought him. But the moment we get to the actual point, it’s like he deliberately steers around the topic. This afternoon I laid it all out — asked him straight how much money it’d take for us to get our machines into his school. And he still wouldn’t answer, said something about the school cracking down hard on conduct issues and how this kind of thing was tricky to arrange.”
“And then?”
Zhang Xinzhou spread his hands. “And then I came back.”
Xu Ye scolded him, thoroughly exasperated. “Are you dense? He was talking to you in code.”
“Code?”
“If he genuinely didn’t want to work with us, he wouldn’t have met you a second time after the first. You’ve been to see him this many times, and every time he sat and talked with you — that means he does care about this. The key is, you can’t bring up the money out in the open.”
Zhang Xinzhou said anxiously, “Then how am I supposed to bring it up? I gave him gifts, I said all the right things, and he still won’t talk business with me — what am I supposed to do?”
Xu Ye couldn’t be bothered going back and forth with him. He asked directly, “You have his WeChat?”
“I do.”
“Set up another meeting with him — we’ll go over tomorrow night. Tell him your boss is coming this time too.”
“Sure, I’ll message him right now.”
“Apologize first.”
“Huh?”
“Tell him you’re sorry first. Say young people don’t know any better, and you hope a man of his standing won’t hold it against you.”
Zhang Xinzhou was more confused than ever. “Why?”
“Just do what I said.”
Zhang Xinzhou sighed and got ready to follow Xu Ye’s instructions, but Xu Ye, not quite trusting him to do it right, snatched the phone away, checked the contact name, and drafted the message himself:
“Director Feng, my apologies for barging in on you so presumptuously today. On the way back I gave it some thought, and there are some things I truly didn’t handle with enough care. I hope a man of your standing won’t hold a young person’s mistakes against him. Separately, our boss would like to arrange to meet you again tomorrow evening. If you’re not free, we can reschedule for another day. Wishing you all the best.”
Zhang Xinzhou watched the message go out and scratched his head hard. “That’s a bit too… too… you know.”
Xu Ye was about to say something when Feng Shaoping, the logistics director at Second Industrial University, replied: “It’s understandable for young people not to handle things perfectly. I’m free tomorrow evening.”
Xu Ye typed back: “Thank you, Director Feng. Seven o’clock tomorrow evening — we’ll be sure to call on you promptly.”
He tossed the phone back to Zhang Xinzhou, rubbed his stomach, and said, “You guys going to dinner?”
Zhang Xinzhou: “I already ate on the way back.”
Yang Fei: “Dad, bring me back a meal, would you.”
(End of Chapter 132)