As the car came to a stop, Li Guangtao waved and called out from a distance, “Over here, over here! Why did you guys take so long? I’ve been here for quite a while.”
The two of them walked forward, and Li Yan casually tossed the bag into Li Guangtao’s arms. “Hold this.”
Li Guangtao caught it in a panic. “What is this?” As he spoke, he opened the bag and peeked inside. “Hiss…”
The next instant, he tightly closed it again and clutched it to his chest. “Th-this, is Little Tang, Brother An’s?!”
He made a sharp verbal detour, finding it entirely impossible to force out the words “Little Tang” anymore.
“Yeah, let’s go inside.”
Li Yan turned his head to see An Chutang staring curiously at the three-story department store. He stepped forward, draped an arm directly over the other’s shoulder, and pulled him along. “Let’s go.”
An Chutang glanced up at Li Yan’s casual expression, muttering somewhat resentfully in his heart: Straight men really have no sense of personal boundaries.
Actually, he was quite surprised at himself. Although he often acted cute and fawned over his grandfather, he was not generally an easy person to get along with. He knew his reputation outside—aloof, arrogant, sharp-tongued, and hard to approach.
Yet ever since he inexplicably arrived here and was forcibly bound by the system to this man named Li Yan, he hadn’t felt a single shred of aversion. On the contrary, perhaps because he was in an unfamiliar world and the other person counted as his only real connection, it instead gave rise to a faint sense of reliance.
“What do you want to buy? Clothes? That goes straight to the second floor.”
The department store was not small, roughly the size of a medium supermarket. However, the interior decoration was truly unspeakable; the old-fashioned, large and small counters on the first floor displayed various unpackaged side goods, rice, flour, grain, and cooking oil.
Along the way to the second floor, An Chutang watched curiously as people handed over grain stamps and paper bills worth a few cents or dimes to buy side goods weighed out and wrapped in oil paper.
He whispered to the person beside him, “I don’t have any of those tickets. Can I still buy things?”
Li Yan answered patiently, “If you see anything you like later, I have tickets here. Besides, some ready-to-wear clothes don’t require tickets right now.”
Li Guangtao, hugging the money bag, chimed in, “I’ve got some leftover tickets on me too. I’ll give them all to you later.”
Then, shifting topics, Li Guangtao chuckled foolishly. “Hehe, but I’ve really never seen Brother Yan be this patient with anyone. Little Tang, if you were a woman, the two of you might actually make a pair. Just based on your looks alone, an average girl would feel insecure looking at you two. Finding a partner really wouldn’t be easy.”
An Chutang curled his lip and stayed silent, though alarm bells rang loudly in his heart. Li Yan was already twenty-six years old, which definitely counted as an older youth in this era. What if, just as they were getting familiar with each other, the other person went and found a partner to get married to?
At that rate, not only would opportunities to meet decrease, but he would also be restricted to relying solely on skin-to-skin contact to extend his life. Wasn’t that a fast track to kicking the bucket in minutes?
“What partner!” An Chutang’s sudden outburst drew sidelong glances from the people around them. He gave a light cough and lowered his voice. “A man should focus on his own career first. Once he establishes a family, he won’t be able to roam very far when he goes out to make his way in the world.”
Li Yan only looked at him without speaking. After a momentary stun, Li Guangtao played along very cooperatively. “Right, right, right. I think so too. My mom pushes me to get married so much that I don’t even dare go home. Being single is much freer.”
With that said, the three of them arrived on the second floor.
Having held no high hopes to begin with, and disliking shopping in general, An Chutang figured he would just casually buy a few sets of clothes here and leave. To his surprise, the entire field of vision was filled with bolts of fabric!
He stood there frozen. How was he supposed to choose from this? Buy fabric and then go look for a tailor?
As if reading his thoughts, Li Yan took him by the wrist. “There are two ready-to-wear shops at the very back. Let’s head over there.”
The palm touching him through his sleeve made An Chutang feel somewhat restless. Thinking about what was said earlier about finding a partner, he simply decided to throw caution to the wind—before the other guy found someone, he was going to take advantage of every chance he could get.
With a flick and twist of his hand, he slid his palm right out of Li Yan’s grasp and slipped his own hand straight into the other’s palm to hold hands instead.
Without a second of hesitation, Li Yan tightly locked his fingers around his.
[Ding! Holding hands increases life value by one hour.]
Watching the two people walking in front holding hands, Li Guangtao couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. This was way too clingy.
Walking further in, there were indeed two stalls selling ready-to-wear clothing.
An Chutang looked left and right. Good grief, there was basically no choice at all. The colors were predominantly military green and drab gray, with even black and white being rare.
Hesitatingly, he stepped into one of the stalls that looked barely acceptable. There were no plastic mannequins; instead, three rows of iron racks stood there with all the clothes hanging on them.
Inside, two young women with permed curls were browsing the men’s section. Just as one of them gave a jacket a casual tug, a middle-aged female clerk standing by the counter hurried over.
“Hey, hey, hey! Are you buying or not? If you’re not buying, don’t go messing around touching things! This batch of clothes was shipped specially from the south. That cashmere overcoat you’re touching costs one hundred and twenty yuan! Can you afford to pay if you touch it and get it dirty?”
Seeing the two reprimanded girls simply lower their heads, roll their eyes without daring to start a fight, and cast a few lingering, regretful glances before walking straight out of the stall, An Chutang’s jaw nearly dropped in shock.
Li Yan and Li Guangtao seemed quite accustomed to this scene and led An Chutang straight up to the row of racks.
“Little Tang, come on, see if there’s anything you like?” Li Guangtao was holding the money bag, which gave him plenty of confidence when speaking.
Just as Li Guangtao’s hand was about to brush against a garment, the clerk’s face instantly drooped again. “Hey, did you guys not hear what I just said? This piece of clothing is the most expensive item in our shop. If you can’t afford it, stop touching randomly!”
Li Yan cast a cold glare sideways, causing the middle-aged woman to choke back her words instantly. Then, looking as if she felt embarrassed, she muttered under her breath, “Well, it’s true. These have been in stock for over half a month—everyone comes in to touch them twice, but none of them ever have the guts to buy.”
“I say, elder sister, how are people supposed to buy clothes without feeling the fabric or checking out the style?” Li Guangtao leaned an arm lazily against the rack, adopting a posture ready to argue it out with her.
An Chutang had no desire to waste time here. If he weren’t out of options, he definitely would have left long ago.
He extended a single index finger and disdainfully flipped open the dark gray cashmere overcoat to take a look at the front. The tactile feel on his fingertips was decent; it should be genuine cashmere, but the cut was exceptionally ordinary—completely incomparable to the custom-tailored silhouettes he wore back home.
Still, he urgently needed a few changes of clothes, so he would just have to make do for now. It looked like he needed to drag Li Yan along on a trip down south as soon as possible. That was a pilot city for reform and opening up; from what he knew, it changed by the day, so he should be able to buy some things he actually needed there.
“I’ll take this one. Help me pack it up.”
The clerk widened her eyes in astonishment. “This one is one hundred and twenty. Are you sure you want it?”
“Yeah.” With that, An Chutang pointed consecutively at a black turtleneck sweater and a beige turtleneck hanging nearby. “And these two, um…”
Seeing him head toward another rack, the clerk’s mouth slowly drifted open.
“The white shirt is alright, give me five in a medium size. And the pants…”
Now it wasn’t just the clerk who was shocked; even Li Guangtao couldn’t help swallowing hard. He knew this shop—it was the most expensive and fashionable one in the People’s Market. Almost every piece of clothing cost upwards of thirty or forty yuan, and basically only young people from well-off families would come here to buy one when getting married or going on blind dates.
Although this Young Master An didn’t lack money, this was way too extravagant. He wondered if the money they earned from doing business together in the future would even be enough to cover his spending.
By this point, the clerk had completely shed her earlier impatience. Clerks in other departments drew fixed wages, but she was different! Every single piece of clothing sold at her counter came with a commission!
Sure enough, looking closer now, this young man didn’t look like an ordinary person; even the style of the jacket he was wearing was one she had never seen before. It accentuated the waist so well—if they made a women’s version of that, people would practically tear the shop apart to grab it.
Pants weren’t so easy to buy. Bell-bottoms flared out at the cuffs like literal megaphones, while the black suit trousers fell in straight, wide, baggy tubes.
He picked and chose, ultimately selecting only a dark blue pair of work trousers that looked slightly more tailored.
“Let’s go with just these few for now.”
If worst came to worst, he could check the foreign-affairs store to see if they sold clothes there.
Beaming from ear to ear, the clerk carefully packed the clothes into paper bags one by one. “That comes to three hundred and ninety yuan in total.”
Li Guangtao walked over to the counter with his nose in the air, pulled two bundles of money out of the bag, and slapped them down on the table. “Count it. Is that enough?”
After that, An Chutang gritted his teeth and bought a few pairs of old-man undershorts at another section, feeling thoroughly depressed.
(Life Countdown: 8 hours 40 minutes.)