Two days later Zhang Lei went back to the dealership.
Not to work — Wang Defa's phone call had made that perfectly clear. He'd been let go. But his electric scooter was still plugged into the charging station out back, and half a winter jacket was sitting in his locker in the break room. He had to pick them up.
He arrived at ten in the morning. A customer was already browsing the lot. Zhang Lei slipped in through the back entrance, trying not to draw attention.
"Lei?"
A voice he didn't recognize. Zhang Lei looked up to see a young woman behind the counter — mid-twenties, ponytail pulled back neat and sharp, wearing the dealership's standard gray work uniform. A name badge was pinned to her chest.
"You're Zhang Lei, right?" She stood up and smiled. "I'm Su Qing. Started last week. Admin and bookkeeping — Boss Wang brought me on."
Zhang Lei blinked. Last week? The day he'd been let go — or maybe just before?
"Your scooter's still charging out back. I saw the name tag on it." Su Qing produced a key from under the counter. "Here — your stuff's in the storage room too."
"Thanks." Zhang Lei took the key.
On his way to grab the scooter, he took a look around. Seven or eight used cars sat on the lot waiting for buyers — some were familiar faces he'd washed before, others were new inventory.
Out of habit, he activated the vision.
Three seconds only.
But three seconds was enough. The silver Toyota Corolla parked closest to the entrance — gleaming on the outside, front bumper and fender panels freshly repainted with new base coat. But under the vision, a welding seam ran across the entire undercarriage from left to right. Not factory welding — the crude, rough kind where something had snapped and been rejoined.
A frame-welded car.
This vehicle had been in a major accident. The frame had fractured and been welded back together — essentially a write-off-grade wreck. Any proper inspection facility would catch it immediately, but after cosmetic restoration it was virtually invisible to the naked eye. Wang Defa's acquisition cost on something like this would be rock-bottom — thirty to fifty thousand — but he could list it at eighty thousand or more.
That spread was pure dirty money.
Zhang Lei shut off the vision and wheeled his scooter toward the exit. As he passed the silver Corolla he slowed, glancing at the price tag in the window: 88,000 yuan.
Beneath it, a note: "No accidents, no flood damage, original paint."
The corner of Zhang Lei's mouth twitched.
"Boss Wang, can I take another look at that silver Corolla?" the woman called out.
Wang Defa's voice floated from his office: "Look all you want. Quality guaranteed — don't worry about it."
Zhang Lei stopped at the entrance, scooter in hand.
That frame-welded car. Eighty-eight thousand yuan. About to be sold to a young mother with a child.
He glanced at Su Qing. Su Qing was looking at him too — probably because he'd frozen in the doorway with a strange expression on his face. She tilted her head slightly, as if asking what's wrong?
Zhang Lei looked away. He pushed the scooter out and left.
Two hundred meters down the road, he stopped again.
A frame-welded car. On the highway, if something went wrong, the entire chassis could snap in half. That little boy sitting in the back seat —
Shit.
Zhang Lei turned around.
He didn't go back inside the dealership. He waited around the corner for five minutes until the young woman came out with her child — it looked like she hadn't bought on the spot. Probably said she needed to discuss it with her family first.
"Excuse me." Zhang Lei stepped forward.
The woman looked at him warily.
"I used to work at this dealership." Zhang Lei kept his voice low. "That silver Corolla — before you buy it, get a third-party inspection on the undercarriage. Just the undercarriage. Don't trust their no-accident claim."
The woman froze. Her expression shifted from guarded to uncertain.
"Not anymore." Zhang Lei said. "I got let go."
He didn't say anything else. Turned and rode off on his scooter.
That afternoon his phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number:
"Thank you. I had my husband's friend check it with proper equipment. The frame was definitely welded. Almost bought it. Thank you."
Zhang Lei read it and deleted the message.
He didn't know if Wang Defa would figure out it was him. But a woman with a small child driving a frame-welded car onto the highway — he couldn't know about it and do nothing.
He couldn't see into people's hearts. But some things, you didn't need x-ray vision to know what was right.
That evening, while he was eating dinner, his phone buzzed again. This time it was a WeChat message from Su Qing — he didn't even remember adding her. Oh right, when she'd handed him the key, she'd said it would be convenient to stay in touch and they'd scanned each other's codes.
"The customer for that silver Corolla called to say she's not buying. Boss Wang threw a fit. Are you okay?"
Zhang Lei hesitated two seconds, then typed back:
"I'm fine."
Su Qing sent a sticker — a Shiba Inu giving a thumbs up.
Then another message: "You did the right thing."
Zhang Lei set his phone down. His enamel bowl still had half a serving of noodles in it. He stirred them with his chopsticks.
Three thousand yuan covered his father's medicine for two months. What was next? How much could he win at the card table? A man like Zhao Si wouldn't let things go easily. The dealership had cut him loose, but the waters there ran deeper than he'd realized.
Tomorrow he'd hit the card room again. That eighteen hundred had come too easy — he needed to stack up more.
At least enough to clear that twenty-thousand-yuan debt.
Zhang Lei finished his noodles.