8
Renting a House
Due to his limited funds, Jiang Qi could only buy Old John a few cheap sets of clothes to change into. This instantly transformed Old John—who had previously looked quite professional in his suit—back into a plain old cleaner.
Just as the card details had stated, Old John was a man with extremely low material desires. For him, having the basics was enough; he didn’t even mind sleeping on the streets and was very easy to take care of. Throughout the entire shopping trip, Old John didn’t make any requests. After Jiang Qi brought him home, he didn’t comment on the room either, remaining unusually quiet once inside.
In just one day, Jiang Qi had experienced being pulled into the world of a Murder Mystery Game, the game activating, and summoning a card character—events that would normally take two chapters to write in a regular novel. Naturally, he was exhausted when he got home. After a quick wash, he went to his room and fell asleep immediately, without even checking his phone messages.
He slept dreamlessly through the night.
The next day, what woke Jiang Qi wasn’t his phone alarm (alarms had permanently left his life after he finished his postgraduate entrance exams), but his aunt’s hearty laughter.
Jiang Qi’s aunt, Jiang Xiaohong, had discovered her talent for sales while working as an apprentice years ago. She switched careers to become a salesperson at a furniture store and later saved up to open her own small clothing store. A few of Jiang Xiaohong’s former sales colleagues were from northern China, which influenced her accent into a mixed northern-southern blend. Years of sales experience had honed her remarkably penetrating and hearty laughter—so loud that passersby could hear it from across the street, akin to Wang Xifeng’s legendary laugh that preceded her speech.
“Hahahaha, you’re telling me all the dumplings you ate before were garlic-filled? How could there be garlic-filled dumplings? The tastes of people from your place are really…”
Jiang Qi’s abrupt emergence from his room interrupted his aunt’s hearty laughter.
“Auntie, you… why are you here? You didn’t say anything in advance, I… I overslept.” Jiang Qi was somewhat bewildered by the scene before him.
Old John was sitting at the dining table, wearing the cheap shirt bought for 29.9 at the night market the previous evening. He was awkwardly holding chopsticks, using them like a fork to vigorously stab at the dumplings on his plate.
Jiang Qi took a deep breath—the scent of leek filling.
“I was cleaning your second uncle’s place and thought I’d drop by to bring you some dumplings. Really, I have to say, you’re just like Xiao Bing—staying up late and sleeping in late.”
“And you have a guest at home, yet you come out like this without even combing your hair.” Jiang Xiaohong laughed and urged Jiang Qi to go back inside and make himself presentable before coming out again.
She then turned to Old John with a smile: “Xiao Qi has always been careless since he was little. Please don’t mind him.”
Jiang Qi quickly changed his clothes and, without a mirror, used his phone’s black screen to fix his hair, making sure he met Jiang Xiaohong’s standards of presentability before emerging from his room again.
Before Jiang Qi could speak, Jiang Xiaohong took the initiative: “Xiao Qi, you silly child, you didn’t tell us elders that your school teacher was staying with you. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have brought so few dumplings.”
Jiang Qi followed his aunt’s gaze to the dining table—one bowl and one basin, both empty.
The basin was the large metal one usually used for mixing dumpling fillings, with traces of flour still visible inside. The dumplings had presumably been moved to the freezer compartment. The bowl was the oversized kind used in noodle shops for serving soup noodles, with some broth remaining at the bottom. All the dumplings from the bowl were now piled on a plate on the table—a full plate and a half—which Old John was currently eating.
“Enough for two people to eat for three days”—this perfectly matched Jiang Xiaohong’s definition of “just a small amount.”
“Well… this was rather sudden. And since Professor John is only staying temporarily, I didn’t mention it,” Jiang Qi said with an awkward laugh.
Thankfully, he had prepared Old John’s backstory in advance, or he would have been exposed today.
“Exactly, your Professor John just told us you’re helping him find a place. Put some effort into it—it’s not easy for him to travel all the way here for his research,” Jiang Xiaohong added.
Jiang Qi could only nod repeatedly. “I’m looking, I’m looking.”
Satisfied, Jiang Xiaohong peered toward Jiang Bing’s tightly shut bedroom door and asked, “Is Bingbing still not up? Did she work late again last night? Qi, you should talk to your sister. Her dark circles are worse than a panda’s from staying up every night—how can her body handle this? I heard she opened another new shop, some kind of scripted murder mystery game. Wen Luo (Jiang Xiaohong’s son) has been pestering me to go play. When he’s on break, I’ll have him bring his classmates to your sister’s shop.”
“My sister went abroad. She’s not home,” Jiang Qi explained.
“Again? Did she leave the shop to you? I’ll have to talk to her when she gets back. She’s in her twenties now, but she still acts so…” Catching herself, Jiang Xiaohong stopped, not wanting to discuss family matters in front of an outsider. She smiled at Old John instead. “Professor John, I’ll be going now. If you like the dumplings, just tell Jiang Qi and let me know. I’ll make you a few more varieties—the cabbage filling is delicious too.”
Old John pretended his Chinese wasn’t very good and responded with a silent, smiling nod, watching as Jiang Xiaohong left.
“That was my aunt, Jiang Xiaohong. She’s always like that—very enthusiastic. You’ll probably see her often from now on,” Jiang Qi said. “Earlier, I didn’t get to explain…”
Old John speared a dumpling with his fork, popped the whole thing into his mouth, chewed with difficulty, and swallowed before speaking. “I was sitting on the sofa about to watch TV when she came in carrying the basin and asked who I was.”
“I told her I was your university professor, here for research, looking for a place to stay temporarily.”
Jiang Qi breathed a sigh of relief. That was enough.
Jiang Xiaohong was an expert at spinning tales from minimal clues. With that information, she could easily fabricate a complete story on her own.
Now that the family knew about Old John, finding a place couldn’t be delayed much longer. Jiang Qi needed to find a rental—preferably within the same residential complex, cheap, simply furnished, and available for short-term lease.
Thinking this, Jiang Qi returned to his room to grab his phone and search for rental listings online.
WeChat messages were, as usual, at 99+. Jiang Qi skimmed through them briefly. At the top was the dorm group chat named [401 Shore Alliance]. Two roommates who had successfully “made it ashore” (secured stable jobs) were venting about their bosses in the group, with “Xiao Zhang” and “Xiao Liu” mentioned most frequently. To an outsider, it might sound like they were talking about their employees rather than their employers.
Another roommate, Yu Fang, had sent him a private message. Jiang Qi opened it to find a string of memes.
Yu Fang: [Lighting a cigarette.jpg]
Yu Fang: What do I do, Qi? My dad might actually kill me.
Yu Fang: [Melancholy]
As a wealthy second-generation heir, Yu Fang’s greatest hobby was nicknaming people with “zi” suffixes and jokingly calling them ‘son’—picking either the surname or given name. The four roommates in Jiang Qi’s dorm were Jiang Qi, Yu Fang, Wang Zhuo, and Zhan Ren. Unfortunately, all had two-character names with limited options.
Yu Fang’s nicknames for his roommates were: Qi-zi, Zhuo-zi, Ren-zi, and “son”—the last one often earned him a beating.
Jiang Qi: ?
Jiang Qi: That can’t be right. I remember you said last time your dad nearly beat you to death when you almost burned the house down playing with fire as a kid.
Jiang Qi: …You set your house on fire?
Yu Fang, a nationally-ranked internet surfer, replied almost instantly.
Yu Fang: If I’d burned the house down, it’d be simpler.
Yu Fang: [Image]
Yu Fang: I’m about to fail in my startup and lose everything.
Jiang Qi stared at his phone: ?
Wasn’t this completely normal?
In his family, failing at a startup and losing all the money wasn’t even worthy of being mentioned in casual pre-New Year’s Eve dinner criticism sessions.
Jiang Qi: It’s just startup failure, not that bad, right?
Yu Fang: My dad gave me two million…
Jiang Qi: …
Jiang Qi checked the calendar—it wasn’t even July yet.
They’d submitted their graduation theses in late March, defended them in early April, and left campus.
Jiang Qi: No saving you. Prepare to die.
Jiang Qi: Remember to invite me to the funeral banquet.
Jiang Qi silently put down his phone, not wanting to communicate with such an odious rich person.
After some futile searching and web surfing, Jiang Qi finally remembered there was a rental agency at the entrance of his residential compound. He promptly took his phone and went downstairs. At the compound gate, he saw his upstairs neighbor Cao Yongjun pasting up small ads.
He wasn’t very skilled at it—after three applications of glue, the ad still wouldn’t stick.
“Uncle Cao, is the glue not working?” Jiang Qi couldn’t help asking as he approached.
“That shouldn’t be. It’s only been expired for two years, right?” Cao Yongjun looked genuinely puzzled.
Cao Yongjun was somewhat famous in Jiang Qi’s compound. His son Cao Wenyang was the arch-nemesis of every child growing up there—the legendary “that amazing kid.” Cao Wenyang had been a mythical academic prodigy since childhood, always taking first place in exams. He was the top scorer in both the high school and college entrance exams, six years ahead of Jiang Qi. Coincidentally, his high school homeroom teacher had also been Jiang Qi’s.
One could say Jiang Qi had grown up entirely in the shadow of Cao Wenyang’s academic legend.
Jiang Qi glanced at the ad content: House for Rent.
“Uncle Cao, are you moving away?” Jiang Qi recalled rumors he’d heard early in the year. “Did Cao Wenyang buy a place in the capital?”
“Yes.” Cao Yongjun beamed. “Wen Yang is such a filial child. You know I have heart problems? He pulled some strings to get me an appointment with a specialist at a major hospital in the capital. It’ll be more convenient for treatment if I live there.”
“Is Aunt Qian (Cao Yongjun’s wife) going too?”
“She went last week. She’s been urging me to hurry up. I just wanted to rent out the place before leaving. Such a big house sitting empty is such a waste.”
Jiang Qi remembered Cao Wenyang’s apartment had the same layout as his. He examined the rental details: fully furnished, four bedrooms two living rooms, ready to move in, monthly rent 1800.
Quite cheap—just unaffordable.
Noticing Jiang Qi staring intently at the ad, Cao Yongjun’s eyes lit up. “Xiao Qi, do you have friends looking to rent?”
Jiang Qi nodded. “My university professor wants to short-term rent a place. He’s at my house right now, but he’s alone and doesn’t need…”
Cao Yongjun perked up immediately upon hearing it was a university teacher and quickly said, “A university teacher? One person can just rent a single room. University teachers are great! Your Aunt Cao has been worried about tenants not taking good care of the house and wouldn’t let me rent it out, but with a university teacher we can rest assured!”
“But if only one room is rented, what about the remaining…”
“The remaining rooms don’t have to be rented out. It’s enough to have someone living in the house to bring some life to it. Your Uncle Cao just doesn’t want the house to sit empty and go to waste.”
“So the teacher is at your place now? Perfect! Take him up to see the room right away.”