The next morning, Bai Li rubbed his slightly throbbing temples and sat up.
The three girls were still sound asleep, sprawled out in completely unladylike positions.
Bai Li picked up his phone and checked the time — 8:00 a.m.
A new day, and his 1,000-yuan cashback limit had refreshed along with it.
Today was shaping up to be another day of lying low, doing a little flirting, and pulling in over ten thousand yuan...
Just then, the three girls on the bed began waking up one by one.
They all rubbed their eyes, looking like they hadn't gotten nearly enough sleep.
Watching their drowsy, languid expressions, Bai Li felt the laziness wash over him too.
He simply picked up his phone and, in the group chat the four of them shared, sent three red envelopes of a hundred yuan each, with the note: "breakfast money."
Ding-dong!Ding-dong!Ding-dong!
Three crisp notification chimes rang out at the same time, and all three girls looked down at their phones simultaneously.
The next second, the room erupted.
"Wow! Big bro is so generous!" Chen Tingting snapped wide awake in an instant, threw her arms around Bai Li, and planted a loud kiss on his cheek.
Lin Xiaoshuang saw that Chen Tingting had beaten her to it and immediately refused to be outdone.
Her cheeks flushing red, she leaned in and quickly pressed her lips to his other cheek, leaving a warm, damp little mark behind.
Li Jiaxin was less bold about it. She looked up at Bai Li with a complicated expression and said:
"Big bro, you should be more careful with your money — we can't eat that much anyway."
Then her tone shifted to something more worried:
"I don't really know what your financial situation is like, but I still think it'd be better to save up for a house or a car or something."
Bai Li knew she meant well, but he could hardly tell her that spending money on them was how he made money.
"It's fine, this is just pocket change — don't worry about it."
Li Jiaxin was about to keep pressing, but Bai Li cut her off:
"Actually, I also write novels. Without putting in much effort at all, I can pull in around ten thousand yuan a day..."
"And I've already got my eye on a house and a car. I'll go buy them in a little while."
The moment Bai Li finished speaking, all three girls' eyes lit up with stars, their faces full of admiration.
"Wow~ You're amazing!"
"Writing novels pays that well?! Oh my gosh..."
They believed every word without a shred of doubt, completely unaware that most writers barely scraped together a few yuan a day.
"Alright, go grab breakfast — I'm going to lounge in bed a little longer." Bai Li laughed and shooed them out of bed. "I want xiaolongbao from the place across the street. Get plenty."
"Yes, sir!"
Now that they knew Bai Li wasn't straining himself financially on their account, they happily pocketed the money.
Shortly after, the System's notification chimed in his mind.
[You have invested 100 yuan in Chen Tingting. Target's affection unchanged. 10x Critical Cashback triggered — you receive 1,000 yuan.]
[You have invested 100 yuan in Li Jiaxin. Target's affection unchanged. 10x Critical Cashback triggered — you receive 1,000 yuan.]
[You have invested 100 yuan in Lin Xiaoshuang. Target's affection unchanged. Affection Value detected above 60 — 15x Critical Cashback triggered — you receive 1,500 yuan.]
[XX Bank: Your savings account ending in 8868 has received a deposit of 3,500.00 yuan. Current balance: 326,300.00 yuan.]
Bai Li stared at the string of notifications, lost in thought.
Sure enough, simply sending red envelopes or spending money on them seemed to cap out at around 55 Affection Value at most.
Take Lin Xiaoshuang, for instance — the reason her Affection Value had broken through 60 and reached the stage of genuine admiration had nothing to do with money.
It was that day at the billiards hall, when he had stepped in front of her and shielded her from every bit of hostility and humiliation thrown her way.
Sending red envelopes directly, in their eyes, was probably just a material gesture — nice to receive, sure, but it didn't pluck the deeper strings of the heart.
To break through from friendship to genuine admiration and raise the Affection Value, he would have to truly understand them — to walk into their hearts. Throwing money at someone might get you everything on the surface, but their heart would never be yours.
As long as the heart wasn't given, no amount of money would make you anything more than a slightly generous sugar daddy.
Having worked that out, Bai Li understood clearly.
[It seems money isn't everything after all. Only sincerity can earn sincerity in return.]
The three girls, phones in hand and spirits high, finished washing up, got dressed, and dashed out the door.
Bai Li stretched out luxuriously in the blankets, still warm from the girls' body heat, savoring the rare peace and quiet.
Just then, his phone buzzed again.
He picked it up — it was a message from Zhang Qian.
[Qian with the great figure~]: [Image]
[Qian with the great figure~]: Morning, big bro~ I spotted this outfit in front of a boutique. Do you think it'd show off my figure even more? Look — I even look slimmer in the mirror~
In the photo, Zhang Qian was wearing a form-fitting black dress, standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling window of a tastefully decorated shop, taking a selfie in the reflection.
The dress was scandalously short, tracing every curve of her S-shaped figure to perfection — undeniably enticing.
Bai Li had been about to fire back some casual reply like "so hot" or "looks great,"
but when he zoomed in on the photo to get a better look at the fabric, his gaze suddenly froze.
The background of the photo was the shop's floor-to-ceiling glass window, and reflected in it, the scene across the street was perfectly visible.
Parked in front of a jewelry store on the other side of the road was a familiar white Mercedes C260.
And standing beside it, Lao Wang — the man who had been going on just yesterday about how "a real man needs to be steady and reliable" — had his arm around a woman in a red dress.
The woman had her arm hooked through Lao Wang's, laughing and swaying against him, practically gluing herself to his side.
That woman was definitely not Xia Qing.
Xia Qing had been wearing a white Chanel-style tweed jacket yesterday, and her hairstyle was different too.
Bai Li stared at the photo for a few seconds, and the corner of his mouth slowly curled into an amused smile.
That karma had come around awfully fast, hadn't it?
Just yesterday he'd been putting on the picture-perfect loving couple act, mocking Bai Li for being broke and unreliable — and now he'd turned right around and taken another woman out to buy gold jewelry?
So this was what "the steadiness of a mature man" looked like?
Bai Li tapped the screen and saved the photo.
Now this was getting interesting.