Early the next morning Xu Ye got up, hauled Zhang Xinzhou bodily out of bed, and after a couple of mouthfuls of something in the canteen he drove the two of them off campus.
Zhang Xinzhou sat in the passenger seat looking helpless. “Finals are almost here. Instead of revising properly in the dorm, where are you taking me?”
Xu Ye: “To rent an office.”
“An office?” Zhang Xinzhou asked, full of curiosity. “Don’t we have an office? What do we want another one for?”
Xu Ye’s answer was short and to the point. “I’m setting up an investment company. I’ve already found the man to head the investment department. Before the summer break I want the office set up and the hiring done.”
“An investment company?”
Xu Ye hadn’t formally mentioned any of this to Zhang Xinzhou, and learning it all at once left him thoroughly startled. “Where did you get the money?” he said, baffled.
At a red light, Xu Ye unlocked his phone, found the bank’s transaction message among his texts, and handed the phone straight over.
Zhang Xinzhou took it and looked, and started counting out loud without thinking. “Ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, hundred thousands, millions—Christ! When did you get this rich?”
“Made it in the market. I was running leverage.”
“You absolute bastard. First year isn’t even over and you’re a multi-millionaire. I’m feeling pretty sour about it right now. What am I supposed to do?”
Xu Ye snatched the phone back. “Boo hoo.”
Zhang Xinzhou had after all seen something of the world, and he settled down again quickly. If Yang Fei had found out Xu Ye had over thirteen million in his bank account, he’d probably have called him Dad on the spot.
“Where are you thinking of renting?”
“Jinqiao Wanchuang Center, the block just below the Huawei research institute. Ten minutes by car, twenty on an electric scooter. I had a rough look online yesterday — a hundred and forty square meters or so is fifteen thousand a month, two hundred square meters is twenty thousand a month. I’m not considering anything bigger. For now the money still goes where it counts. If the place is decent, I’ll take it today.”
It wasn’t far to begin with, and they had barely got a few sentences into the conversation before the car pulled up at Jinqiao Wanchuang’s leasing office. The moment the staff inside heard somebody wanted to rent office space, one of them picked up a set of keys and took Xu Ye off to see the units.
There were a great many office buildings inside the complex. A single building had five floors, with two levels of parking underneath.
Once they were inside the office, the staffer started in on the pitch. “The people who had this one before were in e-commerce, so the fit-out is already done. You only need to bring in desks and chairs and you can start work immediately. If you can take it today I can give you half a month’s rent free — though everything here is a one-year minimum.”
Xu Ye asked, “Roughly how many people can work in one of these at once?”
“Around thirty.”
“And the two-hundred-square-meter one?”
“Fifty, no problem. Sixty if you squeeze.”
Xu Ye made up his mind quickly. “Then take me to look at the two hundred.”
“No problem. This way, please.”
The two of them spent an hour looking at a lot of units, and in the end they settled on the two-hundred-square-meter office on the third floor.
Xu Ye signed the contract that same morning, and once he had the keys he drove Zhang Xinzhou back the way they had come.
Waiting at a red light.
Yang Fei suddenly sent Zhang Xinzhou a message. “Bro, bring me back a bottle of cola.”
Zhang Xinzhou: “Pepsi or Coke?”
Yang Fei: “Pepsi.”
Zhang Xinzhou: “Can or bottle?”
Yang Fei: “Bottle.”
Zhang Xinzhou: “Cold or room temperature?”
Yang Fei: “Cold.”
Zhang Xinzhou: “Right. Not bringing it.”
Yang Fei: “You absolute bastard. What did you have to yap all that at me for?”
Zhang Xinzhou: “Xu Ye said waiting at the lights was boring and I should mess with you.”
…
Xu Ye did bring Yang Fei a bottle of Pepsi back to the dorm, but he said nothing to him about the investment company.
Yang Fei was still far too green, and had been through too little. Xu Ye had no intention of pulling him into the investment company’s team.
For the moment, the people Xu Ye wanted to bring in, besides Lü Cheng and Zhang Xinzhou, were Jiang Wei and Li Tongwen.
Bringing Jiang Wei in was mostly because of her father, Jiang Chao. With her on the team, Jiang Chao would certainly go on looking out for him, and Xu Ye had already seen for himself what resources the man could lever. Beyond that, Jiang Wei had been running the trading company for a long time now and her ability at finance was solid. Finance was too important a post to hand to a stranger; Xu Ye wouldn’t have been comfortable with that.
As for Li Tongwen, it was mainly because of Xu Ye himself. He had always felt for this roommate who had come from a small place to a big city, and Li Tongwen’s diligence and his upright, honest character were things Xu Ye admired. Xu Ye reckoned that even if Li Tongwen knew nothing at all about investment now, all it would take was a while interning under Lü Cheng, and with his capacity for learning he should pick it up quickly.
This was the shape of the team, as Xu Ye had it for the moment.
That afternoon, while all three of his roommates were revising for finals, Xu Ye slept in. He woke past four, and had just finished doing his laundry downstairs when Lü Cheng’s call came through.
“Hello.”
“Hello. I’m a free man as of now.” A wry laugh came down the line. “After all that time at the company, I didn’t expect that when I handed in my notice, nobody would even try to keep me. Never mind, forget that. About the thing I raised with you yesterday — they’ve got back to me. The production company has crowdfunded close to three million so far and expects to need another five. Do you want to put in part of it, or…”
Xu Ye answered at once, flatly and with total finality. “We’ll put in the whole five million.”
Lü Cheng asked, “Are you sure you don’t want to think about it a bit more?”
From where Lü Cheng stood, Xu Ye had somewhere around ten million all told, and putting five million into one thing was far too much risk.
But Xu Ye’s answer was, “I trust you.”
Lü Cheng: “But…”
Xu Ye: “If we lose it, it’s on me. You don’t need to feel any pressure about it. Also, I’ve rented the office. I’ll send you the address shortly.”
Lü Cheng: “All right.”
Xu Ye: “Let’s leave it there for now. We’ll be in touch constantly these next few days.”
Lü Cheng: “Mm.”
Once the call ended, Xu Ye thought for a moment, then found Jiang Wei in his contacts and started a voice call.
Jiang Wei was in her dorm revising. Hearing her phone go, she picked it up and glanced at it, saw it was Xu Ye, and answered with a frown.
“If it’s something, say it quickly. I’m revising.”
Xu Ye laughed. “I’ve taken my money out of the market. How about dinner tonight — I’ll bring Zhang Xinzhou and Li Tongwen, and there’s something I want to tell you while we’re at it.”
Jiang Wei paused a moment before answering. “All right.”
Xu Ye: “About half an hour. I’ll drive over to your dorm building.”
Jiang Wei came back with a brisk “Mm” and hung up.
Ever since meeting Jiang Meilin and Chen Qingqing, Jiang Wei had in fact been deliberately keeping her distance from Xu Ye. She didn’t want to become the kind of person her own stepmother was.
Half an hour later.
Xu Ye drove Zhang Xinzhou, Li Tongwen and Jiang Wei to a roadside restaurant. He had meant to bring Yang Fei along as well — he had asked the other two roommates, after all, and leaving him out on his own was a little awkward — but as it turned out, Yang Fei had gone straight off to find Li Lulu.
“You three find a table. I’ll go order.”
Xu Ye went over to the owner and picked five dishes off the menu on the wall. He was hesitating over whether to add one more substantial dish when the owner made a suggestion of his own. “Young man, I’ve got fresh lamb kidneys in. How about I make you a stir-fried kidney?”
“Boss! I’m a grown man in the prime of life. Do I look like I need that?”
“Uh…”
“But those two friends of mine have both been a little run down lately. You’d better fry me one after all.” [TL: kidneys are eaten in China as a restorative for male virility, and 虚 — “depleted” — is the deficiency they are supposed to remedy.]
“You got it.”
(End of Chapter 245)