Qin Zhiwei opened the chat.
He typed out a message and sent it: “I’m done for the night. You asleep yet?”
Shen Xinyi replied quickly. “Not yet.”
Qin Zhiwei: “Sorry, today was really hectic.”
Shen Xinyi: “It’s fine.”
Qin Zhiwei: “The… uh, apple. Did you eat it?”
Shen Xinyi: “Not yet.”
Qin Zhiwei: “Did you see the note inside?”
He typed and deleted that message several times over before he found the nerve to send it.
The moment it was out, time seemed to slow to a crawl.
He stared at his phone. His chest thumped, as though his heart were about to launch itself out of his ribcage.
Meanwhile.
Buried under her quilt, Shen Xinyi read the message and, cheeks warm, typed back: “I saw it.”
Then, remembering what Zhang Ruowei had said that afternoon, she added another line: “But I’m not ready yet. We’ve only known each other a little while.”
Qin Zhiwei froze, then quickly screenshotted the exchange and forwarded it to Xu Ye.
“Bro. How do I reply?”
With great power came great responsibility. Xu Ye was in the middle of placating Chen Qingqing and had to coach Qin Zhiwei on his replies at the same time.
Very shortly, per Xu Ye’s instruction, Qin Zhiwei sent this:
Qin Zhiwei: “It’s okay. When I say I like you, it isn’t that I need you to be with me. It’s that when you hit a low point in your life someday, I want you not to lose heart — because at least once, someone was drawn to who you are. Someone was, and someone will be again.”
Shen Xinyi paused. “Who said this?”
Qin Zhiwei panicked instantly. He assumed she had already guessed the line was Xu Ye’s, that Xu Ye had fed it to him.
He confessed immediately. “Xu Ye said it. But what I want to say is exactly what he wrote, I swear.”
Shen Xinyi: “Bullshit — that’s Haruki Murakami!” [TL: The line circulates constantly on the Chinese internet under Murakami’s name, usually credited to Norwegian Wood or to an essay called If I Loved You that does not appear in his bibliography. Its real provenance is disputed — some readers attribute it to Yukio Mishima instead, and others doubt either man wrote it. Shen Xinyi is repeating the received attribution with total confidence, and is very likely wrong.]
Qin Zhiwei stared at the message. His head went white with static.
Qin Zhiwei: “I’m sorry.”
Qin Zhiwei: “I didn’t know.”
Qin Zhiwei: “But what I meant is exactly what that says. Really. You have to believe me.”
Shen Xinyi: “I’m tired.”
Shen Xinyi: “Going to sleep.”
Shen Xinyi: “Good night.”
Deflated, Qin Zhiwei could only reply with a good night of his own.
Then he fired off a series of messages to Xu Ye, in an entirely different tone from earlier.
Qin Zhiwei: “Xu Ye, you absolute bastard.”
Qin Zhiwei: “Why didn’t you tell me that line was Haruki Murakami.”
Qin Zhiwei: “I don’t have a shred of dignity left.”
Qin Zhiwei: “I am well and truly screwed.”
Qin Zhiwei: “Don’t you dare play dead. Answer me.”
Xu Ye: “Relax.”
Xu Ye: “What did she say?”
Qin Zhiwei: “[chat_screenshot.jpg]”
Xu Ye: “It’s fine. She’s probably laughing under her quilt right now.”
Qin Zhiwei: “What’s she laughing at?”
Xu Ye: “You, dumbass.”
Xu Ye had it exactly right.
At that very moment, Shen Xinyi was suppressing a laugh, editing Qin Zhiwei’s contact name in her phone.
She deleted two of the three characters in his name — 秦志伟 — leaving only the surname 秦, then added two characters after it: 傻子.
Which meant Qin Zhiwei, in her WeChat, had just become 秦傻子. [TL: 傻子 — “idiot,” or more affectionately “dummy.” The effect is roughly “Qin the Idiot.”]
If Xu Ye ever found out, he’d absolutely tell him: Zhiwei, the day Shen Xinyi drops the 秦 and leaves only 傻子, you two are set for life.
The next day was Christmas.
By comparison to Christmas Eve, it was a lot quieter.
Over lunch in the cafeteria, Xu Ye messaged Jiang Wei and asked her to run the full ledger — figure out exactly what the previous day’s net profit had come to across the company and the shop. He’d base each person’s bonus on the number.
There was no way he could have handled this alone. He’d been home the previous weekend too — if not for Zhang Xinzhou, Jiang Wei, and the rest running with the whole thing, the day wouldn’t have gone anything like as smoothly. Bonuses had to happen.
So on Friday at five-thirty in the afternoon, Xu Ye dropped a message in the company chat: “Company dinner tonight. Everyone meet at the Shiweitian Restaurant by the school’s south gate before seven. I’ve reserved a room on the second floor — just give my name at the counter.” [TL: 食为天, from 民以食为天 — “for the people, food is heaven.”]
As for Xu Wanying, Li Tongwen, and Yang Fei, he’d be passing the shop on his way anyway, so he planned to collect them en route.
At the dorm.
Xu Ye and Zhang Xinzhou were still putting the red packets together.
The previous day’s vending-machine take had come in at just over a hundred and ten thousand net; the shop had cleared just over thirty thousand. Together, roughly a hundred and fifty thousand. Xu Ye had decided to allocate fifty thousand of that for bonuses. A bank transfer would have been easier, but he thought cash would land harder — so that afternoon he’d sent Jiang Wei and Ruan Xiaolu to the bank to withdraw it.
The company’s core team was six: himself, Zhang Xinzhou, Yang Fei, Jiang Wei, Ruan Xiaolu, Xia Minghui.
The shop had two staff plus two restockers — four in total.
Then the agents and restockers across seven campuses, twenty-one people. There were casual part-timers on top of that, but they’d already been paid out, so they fell outside the calculation. Some of the agents were too far away to make it in tonight, so Jiang Wei would simply transfer them their share.
That came to thirty-one people. As the boss, Xu Ye wasn’t going to go through the motions of handing himself a red packet, which left exactly thirty — averaging just over ¥1,600 each. But the money couldn’t be split evenly, because some people had put in considerably more than others.
After discussion between the three shareholders — Xu Ye, Zhang Xinzhou, and Jiang Wei — they settled on three tiers: ¥2,500 at the top, ¥1,500 in the middle, ¥500 at the bottom, with the remainder going into a red packet drop in the group chat.
At six-thirty, Xu Ye stashed the red packets in his shoulder bag. He and Zhang Xinzhou stopped by the shop first to collect Li Tongwen and the others. By the time the five of them reached the restaurant, almost everyone was already there.
Once the food was all up, Xu Ye stood, raised his glass — with a soft drink in it — and said, “So. A few words first.”
The private room went quiet. Everyone turned to him.
Xu Ye kept it direct. “This past Wednesday, our company’s Christmas Eve campaign went off exactly as we hoped. More than seventeen thousand people bought a Peace Apple gift box from one of our machines, and that brought the company a substantial return. None of it would have happened without the work every one of you put in. So as the person responsible for this company — before anything else, thank you. Thank you all.”
He paused, then went on. “Before we start eating, I’ve prepared a red packet for everyone at this table. Call it the bonus for this campaign.”
Between the talk and the laughter, he put a red packet into every pair of hands, and the mood in the room lifted fast.
Once everyone was well into filling and clinking glasses, Xu Ye quietly took out his phone under the table and sent Chen Qingqing two red packets in a row.
¥5.20
¥13.14
Chen Qingqing replied almost immediately: “Why are you suddenly sending me red packets?”
Xu Ye: “Because your man is rich now.”
(End of Chapter 168)