CH 19

After the people had gone, Xia WanWan told Jiang Xiao about her worries. She suspected her mother-in-law had invited someone to play a trick on her.

“… Not exactly.” Jiang Xiao thought her idea was a little extreme. He was afraid she was overthinking things and would cause herself unnecessary worry. He tried to reassure her. “It was just a weird person. If you see him outside the gate again, don’t open the door. Just get rid of him.”

Xia WanWan: “Okay.”

Then Jiang Xiao went to the kitchen to cook, and Xia WanWan cleared the dining table. After they finished lunch they didn’t think about it again.

Jiang Xiao didn’t see Lin ChengYu in school again that afternoon. When Teacher Li, the teaching director, met with him, he said the guests had already left, and Vice Principal Chen didn’t mention it again. Maybe it had all blown over.

Wasn’t that a good thing?

However, the school was only so big and it was impossible to keep a secret. Jiang Xiao endured Ye YingYing’s gossip for a round, but he didn’t expect that Lin HeYuan was also in the mood to gossip, although his focus was different.

“Who was that? Are you in trouble?”

Jiang Xiao thought about it and said, “It was a pain in the neck, but it’s okay. He’s gone. It’s not a big deal, so don’t worry about it. What we should worry about is my math scores. How come I always make mistakes with this type of problem?”

It was still important to study.

Lin HeYuan immediately ducked his head to help him look at the question. His attention was diverted and he stopped asking about it.

In the monthly exam, Jiang Xiao wasn’t affected by the incident at all. It was like Lin ChengYu had never been there. Thanks to the help of Lin HeYuan, his grades improved by leaps and bounds, and he finally got into the top 200. In the end he lived up to the expectations of the teaching director as well as the goal he set for himself.

He and Ye Bing made an appointment to go to Liujiang again that weekend. The merchandise on his shelf was almost sold out. Several girls had approached him and requested certain items, including watches, crystal jewelry, and a good-looking school bag.

“The school bags here are too plain.” The girl described it: “I’m looking for a specific kind of bag. My cousin has one that’s really cute. It’s light pink and it has a zipper like plush ears. If you pull up the zipper it looks like a stuffed rabbit. I want the same kind, but not identical, so it doesn’t clash. Mine has to look better than hers!”

She even paid the deposit in advance, and it was a lot of money. Jiang Xiao took time to carefully understand her preferences and said he would seriously search for it.

He was acting more and more like a professional purchasing agent.

Ye Bing told him before that someone from the freight company had come to ask about the Jiang family. After that, Lin ChengYu had found him, and it was most likely through that method. Jiang Xiao said he understood. He was still going to do exactly what he needed to do. He wasn’t going to let Lin ChengYu stop him from going to Liujiang and earning money.

He’d previously planned to do another run over the New Year’s holiday. By then he should have the funds to buy something with a higher unit cost, like MP3 players. But he had to do a couple more runs before then. He needed more money to be able to afford it.

Lin ChengYu soon found out about his departure for Liujiang, but he didn’t understand yet what Jiang Xiao was doing there.

Most people weren’t very clear about Jiang Xiao’s business. Even if a lot of people bought things from him, they didn’t think it was an operation run by a junior high school student on his own. They assumed it was a small business run by adults at home, and Jiang Xiao was just helping out. If Lin HeYuan hadn’t seen Jiang Xiao check the ledger with his own hand, skillfully take inventory, and settle the accounts, he wouldn’t have thought Jiang Xiao was the one responsible.

Even when girls came to him for orders, they thought it was the adults of his family who brought back the items, and Jiang Xiao only took them to school to make the sale. They never expected that a junior high school student would act so independently, and Jiang Xiao didn’t clarify it either.

Ye Bing and Xia WanWan never talked about such things with others. Although it was common for truck drivers to deal in things on the side, it wasn’t easy to explain this to outsiders. Moreover, they frequently carried things of a personal nature for specific people, so they couldn’t discuss it casually.

Jiang Xiao’s friends, Ye YingYing and Lin HeYuan, had even more reason not to talk about it with anyone. When the Lin family’s employees made inquiries, they connected it with the difficult situation of the Jiang family, and missed the key point.

Lin ChengYu didn’t focus on this issue or ask for details. He knew a little about Jiang Xiao’s merchandise shelf and linked it with his trip to Liujiang. But he also thought Jiang Xiao was just helping the adults earn money for the family. When Lin ChengYu met Jiang Xiao in his last life, he was about nineteen years old, independent and hardworking. He might be a little younger now, but nothing seemed unusual to Lin ChengYu.

His plan was to directly change Jiang Xiao’s circumstances and bring him to his side. But now Jiang Xiao had come to Liujiang with a truck several times, which gave him a strange feeling.

Was it really true that there wasn’t enough money at home, so Jiang Xiao had to run around like this again and again?

The important thing was that Jiang Xiao had come to Liujiang. Lin ChengYu had been driven to distraction for the past few days and still couldn’t calm himself down. He immediately thought of going out to find Jiang Xiao.

When Lin ChengYu came back, he took care of things at home. Fortunately, his grandfather’s illness wasn’t serious, so he was discharged after a few days in the hospital. The Mingyue Bay project was still some time away from investment. Meanwhile Lin ChengYu and Lin Feng pretended to be in harmony with each other, putting on the appearance of a happy uncle and nephew. When Lin ChengYu returned home, he was tired of all the fakery. He lay in bed thinking of Jiang Xiao, tossing and turning, unable to fall asleep alone.

I miss him so much.

When he didn’t know where Jiang Xiao was, he thought all he had to do was find him to feel at ease. He didn’t know he was drinking poison to quench his thirst. After he saw Jiang Xiao again, he didn’t want to go. He wanted to accompany him day and night and never leave him again.

But why was Jiang Xiao so hostile?

Lin ChengYu didn’t say much about the future of the company with his grandfather. He only discussed some things with Uncle Yue. When he was first reborn he asked his grandfather to transfer Uncle Yue to him. At first, it was to watch over him. Later, he helped with the search for Jiang Xiao. It was the first time Lin ChengYu and this old subordinate of his father were so close.

At the beginning, Uncle Yue didn’t think there was anything wrong with Lin Feng. Although his ability and temperament weren’t as good as the late Lin family head, on the whole he wasn’t bad. But after Yue Cheng began to work for Lin ChengYu, he was guided by him and decided to check into it. He was surprised to find there really was something fishy.

After all, Lin Feng was Grandpa Lin’s own son. He was now secretly making moves, but it was hard to grasp his fox tail. Without concrete evidence, there were only vague suspicions, and Grandpa Lin wasn’t likely to take them seriously. At Lin ChengYu’s age, it wasn’t easy for him to get involved in the company, even with Uncle Yue’s help. He slowly began making plans for later.

Yongjiang Company was now in its prime. It took Lin Feng three or four years to bring it down, and he needed the help of outsiders. Right now both sides were in no hurry. To be fair, the Mingyue Bay undertaking was really an excellent project. It wasn’t easy to bring it down. Most of Lin Feng’s measures were sugar-coated poison pills. The sugar coating would melt away, but the bitterness would remain.

Lin ChengYu had a lot of things on his mind that he couldn’t immediately tell his grandfather or Uncle Yue.

How nice it would be if Jiang Xiao were around. Lin ChengYu wanted to share everything with him. Even if Jiang Xiao couldn’t understand it now, Lin ChengYu just needed to see him, hold his hand, and smile at him, and he wouldn’t feel so exhausted by all the plans he had to make.

Jiang Xiao didn’t come to him, so Lin ChengYu went to find him by himself.

Ye Bing’s truck left on Friday night and arrived in Liujiang early Saturday morning. When Lin ChengYu went over to look for him, Jiang Xiao was actually curled up in the truck where he’d slept all night. In the morning he woke up full of energy.

He got out of the truck with his backpack and went to the wholesale market. Lin ChengYu missed seeing him, but the Lin family had left someone at the hotel to keep an eye on things.

“The wholesale market?”

No wonder when they asked around the industrial park they couldn’t find him.

The merchants in the wholesale market were mixed together, but Lin ChengYu was familiar with Jiang Xiao’s small shelf. After he went inside, Lin ChengYu found the section where similar trinkets were sold. After searching for a while, Lin ChengYu found Jiang Xiao in a corner stall.

Lin ChengYu was carrying an insulated thermos with breakfast prepared for Jiang Xiao. He remembered that Jiang Xiao had several favorite breakfast shops in Liujiang, so he bought shrimp dumplings, small steamed buns, egg tarts, and porridge with preserved eggs and lean meat. The insulated thermos was packed in three layers, enough for two people to share.

When he caught up with Jiang Xiao, he was in the far corner of the stall, rummaging through a pile of cardboard boxes a few shelves away. He was concentrating again. He didn’t notice Lin ChengYu was there.

This shop had decent prices, and the boss was a good man aside from being a little lazy. Jiang Xiao came early that morning, just after the store opened. Some goods had arrived yesterday when there wasn’t a chance to sort through them. Jiang Xiao didn’t have time to wait for the boss to slowly take them out. After asking for permission, Jiang Xiao squatted near the boxes and picked out the goods he liked.

Lin ChengYu stood behind him, hesitating over how to say hello. After all, the last time they parted wasn’t pleasant. Before he could say anything, he heard Jiang Xiao ask the boss, “How much are you selling this new batch for? Go by the old rules, give it a little cheaper!”

The tone of his words was a bit mature. Lin ChengYu wanted to say something to attract his attention, but when he opened his mouth he couldn’t utter a syllable. At that moment he realized something, and it was like being punched in the head. “Dwanngg”, and he swayed on his feet. He almost couldn’t stand.

Jiang Xiao had just spoken very pure Liujiangese. The local dialect of Liujiang.

TL Notes:

Dun dun dun.

sugar-coated poison pill – 糖衣包着炮-弹 – sugar-coated cannon balls

small steamed buns – 小笼包 – xiao long bao – a type of Chinese steamed bun (baozi) from Jiangsu province, traditionally filled with pork (Wikipedia)