Since Teacher Zhao had already knocked on the door, An Ning didn't continue reading. She obediently closed her book and went to wash up.
After soaking her feet and lying down on the soft bed, she began to review the day's events and only then recalled the online mix-up.
As an international metropolis, Jiangcheng could sometimes be absurdly small.
First Huo Qin, and now a lawyer she'd met only once.
She could have denied the whole Huajiao Fair incident, but thinking about how there were plenty of job opportunities out there, there was no need to lie over something like this, so she chose to tell the truth.
Judging from how quickly the other party went offline, the impact of telling the truth was just as powerful as she'd imagined.
Breathing in the fresh scent of sun-dried bedding, An Ning thought for a while, then cast the unfamiliar lawyer to the back of her mind and fell into a deep sleep.
Waking up the next day in an unfamiliar place, An Ning opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling for a while before slowly getting dressed and out of bed.
Since November had arrived, dawn came noticeably later than before.
Outside the window, it was still dark, but the alarm clock showed it was already past six-thirty.
Leaving her room, An Ning discovered she wasn't the earliest riser—Grandma Xu had gotten up even earlier and was already cooking something on the first floor.
"Xiao Ning, you're up so early? It's the weekend, dear. You're a young girl who needs to use her brain for studying—you should sleep a bit more."
Grandma Xu poured her a glass of soy milk as she spoke. "The eggs just went in; they haven't absorbed the marinade yet. I'll fish one out for you in a bit."
Then, remembering that the glutinous rice wasn't steamed yet either, she waved An Ning off. "Finish your soy milk and go back to sleep. By the time you wake up again, the food will be ready."
"Grandma Xu, I go to bed early and wake up early. Even if I go back now, I won't be able to fall asleep."
An Ning had been like this since she was little. It wasn't some self-disciplined habit she'd cultivated—she simply woke up early, and once she was awake, she couldn't get back to sleep.
Even on nights when she stayed up late, she'd open her eyes by seven at the latest.
A thoroughly old-person sleep schedule.
"Grandma Xu, are you selling breakfast?"
An Ning looked at the big pot of tea eggs and the steaming basket set on a cart. "Are you going to push it to the front of the street to set up a stall?"
"Your Uncle Xu's aunt used to live around here, and she'd help me. We used to set up a stall at the front of the street. Now she's gone back to her hometown to look after her grandson, so I run it myself. I don't go far—just set up right in front of the shop."
The shop on the first floor was a general store with a few shelves. It didn't sell cigarettes, just everyday groceries and small household items.
Business was only so-so, which was why Grandma Xu could manage a breakfast stall on the side.
As she listened, An Ning rolled up her sleeves. Before Grandma Xu could lift a finger, she grabbed a cloth pad and started helping her carry things.
"You silly girl, why are you being so polite? If your Teacher Zhao finds out, she'll scold you for neglecting your studies."
"Teacher Zhao wouldn't do that. She's the most fair-minded person—if she saw me helping you, she'd definitely praise me for being diligent. Don't worry about me, Grandma Xu. Even a student can't read from morning till night. Teacher Zhao says that would turn you into a bookworm. I've never sold breakfast before—don't think I'm a bother, just let me try."
"How could I ever think you're a bother."
With that said, Grandma Xu beamed and let An Ning help.
Weekend customers came late. An Ning waited until the tea eggs were done, ate one, plus a rice ball stuffed with fried dough sticks and pork floss, and only then did the stall's first customer arrive—a sleepy-eyed person in pajamas carrying an enamel mug, shuffling over to buy soy milk.
"Same as usual, a jug of soy milk, one rice ball with salted egg yolk… Oh, this young lady is quite pretty, Boss Xu, is she a relative of yours?"
The breakfast customer noticed An Ning and his eyes lit up.
Standing in front of the moss-covered red brick house was a delicate-looking girl with fair, tender skin and fine features. In profile, her nose was high-bridged with a cute, rounded tip.
When she ladled the soy milk, it even seemed to smell better than usual.
Grandma Xu acknowledged with a yes.
The customer added another compliment: "What a good girl, helping grandma sell breakfast so early in the morning."
An Ning wasn't noticed by just one customer—almost everyone who came to buy breakfast took a second look at her. Since most were regulars, they directly asked Grandma Xu who An Ning was.
Grandma Xu said she was her granddaughter and echoed the compliments, while An Ning smiled shyly beside her. The two worked in perfect sync, handling the customers' questions while keeping their hands busy. By the time they packed up, they exchanged a glance without saying a word, then couldn't help but laugh.
Their cheeks ached from smiling, yet they still wanted to laugh.
With An Ning's help, Grandma Xu had an easier time than usual. Normally, there would still be a line at nine o'clock, but today everything was sold out by then.
After packing up, Grandma Xu planned to rest a bit before boiling another pot of tea eggs for the noon rush.
It was An Ning's first time selling breakfast and she found it quite novel—especially since Grandma Xu's food smelled delicious and there were so many customers. She felt like she was playing a little business management game.
With everything sold out, she couldn't sit still. She helped Grandma Xu wash the utensils, and when Grandma Xu wouldn't let her do that, she took a cloth and wiped down the cart instead.
"Alright, there's nothing left for you to do."
Grandma Xu had never seen a girl like An Ning—fashionable and refined, yet quicker and more capable than even the village girls. Not only was she unafraid of hard work, she didn't mind getting dirty at all.
She pulled twenty yuan from her pocket and pressed it into An Ning's hand. "Grandma's allowance for you—go buy some candy on the street."
Wow.
An Ning tucked the money away, went upstairs to change clothes, put on a bit of makeup to look older, and headed to the bus stop, planning to check out the wholesale market as originally intended.
The bus rattled along for over an hour. An Ning arrived just in time for lunch, so she stopped at a small eatery for a plate of egg fried rice. Seeing that everyone else was carrying snake-sack bags, she spent one yuan to buy one too, rolled it up, and held it in her hand.
There were two major wholesale markets in Jiang City. The one on East Market Road mainly dealt in clothing wholesale. The one An Ning was browsing now primarily sold small accessories.
Even at noon, the market was bustling with people—some, like An Ning, carrying bags and browsing the goods, while others walked in, picked a specific shop, and left hauling their bags.
She had originally assumed wholesale markets would carry older, less distinctive goods than what was sold online, but clearly that wasn't the case. Walking through the market, she saw accessories of every style imaginable.
In particular, she noticed several shops selling counterfeit luxury brands. She had always thought piracy was a product of the internet age, but now she realized she had underestimated merchants' ability to gather information.
She had only planned to look around today, but as she browsed, she felt the urge to test the waters.
That morning while setting up the stall, she had asked Grandma Xu about it. The night market in front of the street had only been regulated this year, with very low stall fees—one hundred yuan a month. If someone only wanted to set up for a few days, they could pay a few yuan, though the spots wouldn't be as good.
Having decided to test the waters, An Ning went to the bank to withdraw some money.
After checking her balance, she realized the lawyer had transferred the payment after going offline yesterday. It seemed that Lawyer Guan's eyesight wasn't great, but his character was decent.
The money she'd spent on the domain name had been mostly replenished by two weeks of translation work, bringing her balance back up to two thousand.
She withdrew five hundred and spent it all at a jewelry shop she'd had her eye on.
In her opinion, this shop had the most "trendy" items—there were rhinestone-studded claw clips, and silver spring butterfly clips that reminded her of the ones popular in her childhood.
The shop had made over a dozen styles of butterfly clips, from silver hollowed-out designs to ones adorned with colorful beads or trailing ribbons.
The fact that they dared to make such a full range of styles meant they had no shortage of customers.
Sure enough, when An Ning asked, the shop didn't do mixed wholesale—each style had a minimum order of two hundred pairs.
The wholesale price for two hundred pairs was two yuan per pair, totaling four hundred yuan.
An Ning trusted her memory and didn't order anything else—she went straight for two hundred pairs.
With the remaining hundred yuan, she found a plastic bag seller and chose a style with cartoon prints. They cost three cents each, with a minimum order of one thousand.
She had seventy yuan left in her pocket, so she bought a fifty-cent popsicle, finished it, and took the bus back to the Xu residence.
Teacher Zhao woke up late on the weekend. By the time she came downstairs, An Ning had already gone out. When she heard her mother-in-law say that An Ning had been helping out all morning, she couldn't help but marvel.
She'd heard at school that An Ning got up at five every morning to run and memorize vocabulary. She'd never doubted it, but she hadn't expected An Ning to wake up that early on weekends either.
Before she'd even fully processed her morning surprise, she saw An Ning come back with a black bag, saying she was going to set up a street stall. The surprise she needed to process multiplied exponentially—she really had no idea where An Ning got all that energy.
And her decisiveness was frighteningly resolute.
Her own son and daughter, at An Ning's age, probably didn't even know where the wholesale market was.
Although she thought An Ning was rash and bold, neither Teacher Zhao nor Grandma Xu were the type to dampen someone's spirits. Knowing she'd already bought the goods, one went to find her a board for displaying items, and the other found a cloth to spread over it.
"Isn't this the butterfly from that TV show Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai—the one Zhu Yingtai wore in her hair? This butterfly looks like it could fly. It's so beautifully made."
Grandma Xu examined the accessories An Ning had brought back, clicking her tongue in admiration. "Xiao Ning has good taste. These shiny things will definitely catch young girls' eyes."
After preparing a small stall covered with a blue floral-print cloth, Grandma Xu thought for a moment and said, "Xiao Ning, let me do your hair like they do in the TV shows. If you wear these butterfly clips, they'll sell like hotcakes."
"That TV drama is set in ancient times. Wouldn't it look strange if Xiao Ning wore her hair like that?"
Grandma Xu loved watching TV dramas, and Teacher Zhao occasionally watched along with her, so she knew what that hairstyle looked like.
"Then let's not do anything too complicated—just two buns, one on each side. That'll look lively too."
Grandma Xu went to get a comb as she spoke. An Ning obediently sat on the stool, clutching her snake-skin bag. Teacher Zhao and Grandma Xu were so enthusiastic that she hadn't even had a chance to put down the unused bag she'd been holding since she got back.
Teacher Zhao was clumsy with her hands, so she could only watch from the side as Grandma Xu styled An Ning's hair. When it came to the final step, she handed the clip to Grandma Xu. "Pretty, pretty! It looks just like in the TV drama."
Grandma Xu also stepped back to admire her handiwork. "Xiao Ning is naturally pretty—she looks good in any hairstyle."
An Ning had never been short of praise growing up, but she was someone who could easily get flustered by compliments. Being surrounded and praised by Grandma Xu and Teacher Zhao this time made her feel a bit shy.
"It's because Grandma Xu combed my hair well."
Seeing An Ning's shyness, Teacher Zhao didn't tease her further. She nudged her up to look in the mirror. "Go take a good look at your Grandma Xu's handiwork."
An Ning went to wash her face, and only after she finished did she look up to carefully examine herself in the mirror.
Indeed, she looked quite pretty.
This hairstyle tended to make one's cheeks look puffy, but the young girl in the mirror was young, her baby-fat cheeks slightly puffed out, tender and adorable. Looking at her, even her fox eyes seemed to carry a hint of coy charm, without the usual allure.
It was still early. Since the stall was already set up, An Ning set an alarm and started on her homework. It wasn't until 5:30, after she finished dinner, that she prepared to head out.
"Don't wash the dishes. You're going to set up the accessories stall—if customers smell cooking oil on your hands, that won't be good."
Grandma Xu shooed An Ning out of the kitchen. "Go early to grab a good spot. A Wen, you keep an eye on her."
"Okay."
Zhao Wen responded, helping An Ning carry the stall out. Before An Ning could even ask, Zhao Wen went ahead to find someone to pay the stall fee and picked a good spot near the front.
"Teacher, this is my own stall—I can handle it myself."
"An adult can get things done more easily than a kid like you. I'm an old resident here. The person collecting stall fees recognizes my face, so the spot I get will be better than whatever you'd get by stumbling around asking on your own."
With the spot secured, Zhao Wen began helping An Ning set up the stall and arrange the goods. "I'll stay with you for a little while, but your stall is yours to manage. I won't be a killjoy and tell you to focus on studying instead of doing this, but don't expect me to help you hawk your wares either."
Zhao Wen spoke sternly, but looking at her, An Ning couldn't help but laugh.
She hadn't even thought about calling out to attract customers. But judging by Teacher Zhao's words, it seemed that later, when An Ning couldn't bring herself to shout, Teacher Zhao would forget what she'd said and open her mouth to help draw in customers.
The stall was originally covered with a blue floral cloth. It looked nice on its own, but when An Ning placed the butterfly hair clips on it, she noticed they didn't stand out as well against the floral pattern. Zhao Wen took a look, went back home to find a piece of black cloth, and swapped it out. The large expanse of black made every butterfly sparkle brilliantly.
By then, the sky was half dark, and the shops along the street had all turned on their lights. The butterflies adorned with rhinestones shone even brighter.
Zhao Wen nodded in satisfaction, tossed An Ning a line about doing things herself, and left.
An Ning nodded, catching from the corner of her eye that Teacher Zhao, despite saying she was leaving, hadn't gone far. She was hiding at the street corner, secretly glancing back in An Ning's direction.
An Ning couldn't help but smile again.