CH 25.1

Chapter 25.1 – Modeling

This novel is only hosted on Foxaholic, copies found elsewhere are either stolen or plagiarized.

The next 2 months after Yunzhong’s exam Su Qin could relax and focus on Taobao.

Su Qin went to the internet cafe to work overtime every night and came home around 11 or 12.

Although she would take the main street on her way home and also carry the pepper water and dagger with her, she still felt uneasy. As a single girl, it’s really unsafe to always walk home like this during the night.

Once Su Qin got home, she took the few months’ salary from under the mattress to carefully count them.

Deducting the living expenses, rents, tuition fees and money given to her mother, she now has only over 6,000 left.

She didn’t dare use this 6,000 over yuan. If by any chance she couldn’t work part-time after schooling due to any circumstances that would mean she had no income to pay the tuition fees.

Holding the money, Su Qin sat on the bed for a long time and finally decided to buy a laptop.

But even after she was reborn, she still didn’t know much about the computer’s configuration or the brand. In particular, she was afraid of being scammed buying a computer in this era.

So she sent a text message to Li Chuan to ask if he was free tomorrow.

Su Qin, “Teacher Li, are you free tomorrow? It’s not safe for me to go to the internet cafe every night. I want to buy a laptop. If you are free, can you accompany me to the computer city?”

Li Chuan’s text message came quickly, “Why don’t you consider a desktop computer? It’s comparatively cheaper.”

Su Qin, “En … for convenience sake, a laptop is easier to carry.”

Since she decided to buy a computer, she basically didn’t take desktop computers into consideration. She can still bring the laptop to school, but not the desktop computer.

Li Chuan was puzzled by her behavior. He merely thought the young girl was rather spendthrift after earning some money and wanting to buy a computer for the convenience of playing games. He also thought Su Qin would have very little money left after buying a laptop.

Yet Li Chuan didn’t stop her. The young girl is spending her own hard-earned money and he has no right to preach whatever she buys.

He replied, “I have a 90% new laptop here, which I can pass on to you for 2000, including repair if there are any hardware problems later, are you interested?”

Su Qin has always been ignorant with the computer configuration, so she sent a text message to ask him, “Which brand is it?”

“Acer and the configuration is Intel CeleronM 420, 256MB RAM, and 60GB hard disk with integrated graphics card.”

Looking at the series of configuration terms on the phone screen, Su Qin subconsciously felt that this Celeron processor was indeed very low.

While attending university in her previous lifetime, she was ridiculed by her classmates for buying a Pentium processor laptop and the Celeron processor was inferior to Pentium. More than a decade later, the lowest processor on the laptops market is Core i3.

But considering this era, she believed Li Chuan would not cheat her and agreed to the deal immediately.

When Li Chuan received the young girl’s text message, he was working overtime in the company.

Li Chuan’s company has launched the ’31 Antivirus software’ recently. This free antivirus software received pretty good responses and was widely acclaimed. Without doubt, in terms of functionality, there is still room for further upgrades and optimizations.

Kneading his glabella, Li Chuan eased up his day’s stress.

He turned his head, patted Panda’s shoulder and asked him, “Do you still have your Acer laptop?”

“Yes ah, why not? Didn’t I bring it to play games yesterday?”

“Sell it to me.”

“Huh?” Panda was puzzled by Li Chuan’s behavior and muttered, “You want it? Why don’t you buy a new one?”

“That Yatou, Su Qin wants to buy a laptop, but a brand new one is too expensive. I’m afraid she can’t afford it.” Li Chuan’s slender fingers tapped on the tabletop as he spoke solemnly, “You sell it cheaply.”

Staring with eyes wide open, Panda raised his chubby hand and gestured a ‘2’ and a ‘5’, “If Little Sister Su Qin wants to buy it, then I will sell it at 2,500 but others will have to pay 3,000. I’m giving her 500 cheaper.”

Li Chuan, “2,000.”

Panda snorted, “You have to give me more year-end bonus, I can’t let you benefit at my expense.”

Li Chuan patted him on the shoulder, indicating there’s no problem.

Even if Li Chuan didn’t speak out himself, his three dorm mates-cum-partners could see that he is exceptionally accommodating to Su Qin. Free tutoring and even taking care of her livelihood, which wasn’t like doing public welfare, but more like raising a young wife.

Although Su Qin is earning wages with a considerable mature mindset, once everyone thought she was only a minor, many jokes and teasing couldn’t be spoken out. Since Li Chuan is nice to Su Qin, they will just be nice to Su Qin without saying much.

Getting along within the norm, Li Chuan and Su Qin never cross the borderline.

Even when he wanted to express the affection of a man and a woman to Su Qin, his conscience and morality stopped him. After all, the young girl is only 16 years old who is still a child with unformed perspectives. He can’t lead her on the ambiguity of a man and a woman nor drive a child astray.

He wanted to wait a little longer. Waiting for his career stability and for Su Qin to be an adult.

Thinking about this, Li Chuan couldn’t help but sigh emotionally. When he married Su Qin in his previous lifetime, he didn’t feel there was such a big age gap between them. But at this moment, their age gap was immediately reflected.

She is in high school while he is already pursuing a PhD.

She is still a naive girl while he has already started his own business.

He now has the ability to provide a better life for the girl, yet he doesn’t have the right identity. Even openly funding her schooling is a kind of luxury.

The next afternoon, Li Chuan and Su Qin arranged to meet at a milk tea store.

When he pushed the door in, there weren’t many people inside. Sitting down for just a while, the store was full of people who were mostly girls.

The school girls were either reading, doing their homework or eating BBQ inside.

This milk tea store is not big, but the drinks and snacks taste pretty good. He thought young girls should like this kind of place.

Once Su Qin pushed open the milk tea store’s door, the wind chimes at the door ‘jingled’ melodiously. Looking over, the corners of Li Chuan’s lips smiled gently but once he saw the little tail behind Su Qin, his face sank subconsciously.

With his hair permed, Yun Fei had bleached and dyed the fringe of his hair.

Dressed in a black skull T-shirt and a cross necklace around his neck with a thumb-sized chain suspended from the waistband of his ripped jeans, he was quite ‘fashionable’ and was very in line with the current trend.

The young lad is already 1.8 meters tall, dressed coolly and handsome. As soon as he entered the door, he attracted the attention of the group of girls.

Yun Fei and Li Chuan’s attractiveness are comparable, both of which are eye-catching.

Seeing the boy go to Li Chuan’s table, all the girls wailed, “Why do all the outstanding men know Li Chuan?”

Li Chuan had his degree at National Tsing Hua University and is pursuing his PhD at NJU.

His reputation during the first year of PhD was still pretty good, as he would tenderly reason whenever he rejected the female pursuers.

But since Li Chuan came back from the education support program, his attitude has changed a lot. He is not as tender with the pursuers in school as before, detachedly aloof and will mercilessly carry out hellish mental blows to those pursuers.

Many girls had started to study frantically after getting shocked by him. As a result, the girls in NJU now daren’t have any thoughts about him and fewer girls are willing to go seek oppression and humiliation.

Having said that, Li Chuan’s admirers however didn’t get lesser, instead it was increasing.

Although many girls used to like his good look, they disliked his amiable attitude towards every pursuer. After all, which girl doesn’t want her boyfriend to be ‘tender’ only to herself and aloof towards other girls? Who doesn’t want to experience the sense of accomplishment being the one who he ‘only takes a dipper drink from the three thousand miles Ruo River’?

[T/N: 弱水三千只取一瓢饮 (Ruò shuǐ sānqiān zhǐ qǔ yī piáo yǐn) – a metaphor choosing only one companion out of all potential mates.]

The more aloof Li Chuan is, the more those outstanding female students of NJU want to conquer him.

But fewer people dare to confess to him now. The girls who like him silently start to study harder. There is even a motto in the girls’ dormitory: Getting first place in every exam to someday bed Genius Li.

Secretly scrutinized the little handsome youth who sat opposite Genius Li, the girls’ gazes voluntarily blocked the young girl, Su Qin as they quietly admired the handsome guys.

Some girls took out their handphones to secretly take photos.

Su Qin lamented that no matter in whichever era, handsome guys are popular.

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Su Qin and Yun Fei seated together, while Li Chuan sized up the boy.

The boy’s style of dressing was completely different from before.

Along with the computer bag, Li Chuan handed over the laptop to Su Qin and said, “I have cleared out the laptop that you want and also included a six-month network card for you. Turn it on and see if it works.”

Su Qin opened the heavy laptop. The base panel and the screen had indeed been wiped clean. She turned her head and instructed Yun Fei, “Feifei, give the money.”

After all, 2,000 cash was not a small amount for Su Qin and she really didn’t feel safe carrying so much money herself. It just happened that Yun Fei came to play with her for the summer vacation, hence she brought him along.

Yun Fei took 2,000 yuan from the back of his jeans and handed it to Li Chuan, “Teacher Li, are they looking at you or me?”

Taking the money from him, Li Chuan coughed softly, “Looking at you.”

Recently, Yun Fei has been the center of attention everywhere he went and some girls even asked for his QQ, but he paid them no heed. However the feeling of being noticed thrilled him a bit.

Su Qin turned on the laptop to inspect it. Seeing that there was no problem, she looked up and asked Li Chuan, “Has Teacher Li had lunch yet? Let me treat you and Feifei to lunch.”

“Okay. The usual place, Fifth cafeteria?”

“En.”