After receiving this month’s subsistence allowance, Zhao Biezhi first counted on her fingers to figure out how to allocate the money.
You could call the company heartless—that was true enough—but if you asked whether it was breaking the law, well, not quite yet.
Her social security and medical insurance were being paid at the minimum tier, and the apartment she currently lived in was also arranged by the company—a cramped little place of barely over a dozen square meters in the suburbs. A true pigeonhole dwelling.
But regardless, she was living alone now, and for the time being, she didn’t have to worry about rent or utilities!
In this first-tier metropolis where every inch of land was worth its weight in gold, a room like this wouldn’t rent for anything less than three or four thousand yuan.
Thinking about it that way, her biggest expense was already taken care of. With the remaining two thousand yuan of her salary, she could spend frugally and still save a little each month for emergencies.
Zhao Biezhi quickly tapped open the original owner’s bank account to check. Including the freshly issued two thousand, her account held less than five thousand yuan in total.
That didn’t add up. The original owner wasn’t someone who spent money lavishly, and on top of that, she’d received quite a few scholarships during university. She shouldn’t have had only this little money, no matter how you looked at it.
After carefully searching through her memories, Zhao Biezhi discovered that the original owner would basically send money to the orphanage that had raised her whenever she had any, keeping only what she needed to get by.
“Quite good at repaying kindness, isn’t she?” she muttered under her breath. “Huh?”
Zhao Biezhi sniffed the air and caught a sour, rancid smell wafting from somewhere.
She lowered her head and smelled her clothes. “Bleh—”
It was like a stinking rag just pulled out of a sewage bucket!
She’d almost forgotten—the original owner had been talked into dieting by a malicious coworker, dieted herself right into hypoglycemia, and had been lying around dead in the apartment for days.
Casually pushing aside the straw-like hair at the back of her head, Zhao Biezhi decided she would first take a shower, then tidy up the room before heading out to find Hu Delu from Shigejie Commune—no wait, Tony—to get a fashionable new hairstyle.
After a flurry of activity, both she and the room were tidied up in good order.
Next, Zhao Biezhi quickly placed an order on Taobao for various civil service exam materials, spending over three hundred yuan in total.
After that, all she needed to do was wait for the books to arrive and start studying, then wait for the recruitment announcements to be released, choose her position, register on time, and finally go take the exam.
With the next few months’ schedule arranged, Zhao Biezhi finally breathed a sigh of relief—and at that moment, her stomach began to growl. Time for dinner.
She opened the fridge. It was completely empty.
Zhao Biezhi’s brow furrowed. She’d forgotten—the original owner had been dieting like she was practicing Bigu, fasting like a cultivator seeking immortality. Naturally, there wouldn’t be any food in the fridge.
Fine, then. It looked like she’d need to stop by the supermarket to stock up before getting her hair done.
With that thought, she put on her jacket, casually grabbed a hat and mask, and carried two bags of trash out the door.
It wasn’t because she had some celebrity image to maintain—after all, she was a complete nobody right now. The main reason was that she didn’t want to scare anyone on the street with her current appearance.
The moment she thought about it, Zhao Biezhi felt both anger and frustration at the original owner’s naivety.
The anger was because the original owner’s coworker was truly vicious, tricking her into losing weight for the camera. The frustration was that the original owner had been so gullible as to actually believe it.
Was this what they meant by the clear-eyed foolishness of college students?
But things had already come to this point, and there was no use blaming the original owner for her past decisions. Once she passed the civil service exam and landed a government job, she’d have nothing more to do with this rotten company or her former coworkers.
With this thought, Zhao Biezhi couldn’t help but press her palms together and devoutly chant, “Leaders and colleagues in heaven, amen!”
…
The neighborhood where Zhao Biezhi lived was in a relatively remote location. To reach the city center, she first had to walk forty minutes to the nearest subway station, then ride the subway for over an hour.
Fortunately, the original owner of this body had her own electric scooter, so riding to the subway station only took about ten minutes.
Climbing onto her beloved little scooter, and with today being a rare clear winter day, Zhao Biezhi’s mood lightened considerably.
There were few people on the road, and even fewer cars.
Until…
“Beep—”
A figure suddenly darted out from the street corner ahead without warning. Zhao Biezhi instinctively pressed the horn, and the person turned to look at her, eyes filled with terror.
He stood frozen in place, as if scared stiff, not moving an inch.
Zhao Biezhi immediately gripped the handles and struggled to stop the scooter. The electric bike quickly decelerated and finally came to a creaky, sluggish halt right in front of him.
Scared me to death—I almost thought I’d be involved in a fatal accident on my very first day of transmigrating into this book!
“Are you okay?” Zhao Biezhi let out a sigh of relief and looked up at the person. Their gazes met unexpectedly.
It was a young man, seemingly just barely of age.
A black mask covered most of his face, but the eyes that were revealed were clean and clear, causing Zhao Biezhi to pause for a moment.
After a few seconds, she snapped back to her senses and quickly averted her gaze.
“Are you okay?” She asked again.
The other party finally reacted, nodded haphazardly, and turned to leave.
He was wearing a black down jacket, puffy and looking very warm.
But perhaps it was a bit too warm, because not only was he sweating profusely, but he also looked somewhat bulky, waddling like a clumsy penguin.
While Zhao Biezhi was pondering this, the young man had already walked a short distance ahead. He kept his head down, staring intently at his phone’s navigation, with the volume turned up so loud that even from a distance she could hear the words “Go straight for two kilometers.”
Seeing him nearly bump into a lamppost because he wasn’t watching where he was going, Zhao Biezhi couldn’t help but laugh out loud.
She restarted her electric scooter and drove up beside him, pressing the horn.
“Hey, young man, are you heading to the subway station too?”
He stopped in his tracks and turned to look at her, his black-and-white eyes staring at her intently for a moment, as if judging whether she could be trusted.
“I’m going there too—hop on, I’ll give you a ride!” She patted the back seat of the scooter cheerfully.
The young man hesitated for a few seconds before finally nodding timidly.
He exited the navigation app, tapped away on his phone for a moment, then held it out to Zhao Biezhi.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome—serving the people.” Zhao Biezhi curved her eyes into a smile.
The back seat sank slightly as the young man sat down clumsily. Due to extreme nervousness, his ears burned a deep pink, and he didn’t know where to put his hands.
Zhao Biezhi noticed his awkwardness and kindly reminded him, “If you’re scared, you can hold onto the hem of my jacket.”
The young man didn’t answer. After a moment, Zhao Biezhi felt a slight tug on her coat. Glancing down, she saw a hand carefully reaching out from behind, tightly gripping the hem of her jacket.
Zhao Biezhi was so charmed that she was screaming internally—ahhh, what an adorable little kitten!
But on the surface, she showed nothing at all, and the rest of the ride passed in silence.
It was only a four or five minute drive to the subway station. When they arrived at the station entrance, Zhao Biezhi pulled over to the side of the road and let the young man get off first, while she planned to find a discreet spot to park her scooter.
These days, bike thieves were way too rampant—she needed to protect her little electric donkey.
The young man stood by the roadside, tilting his head and staring at Zhao Biezhi for a few seconds, then tapped away on his phone.
“I’m really grateful to you. May I ask your name?”
Zhao Biezhi tilted her head up and gave him a light chuckle. “Just call me… a public servant.”
With that, she rode off toward the entrance on the other side of the station.
The young man watched her retreating figure, momentarily stunned, his eyes unconsciously widening into perfect circles.
A public servant, huh?