The car belonged to the beauty salon. Yu Shu only found out that high-end beauty salons provided pickup and drop-off services when she was researching travel tips online.
The beauty salon was open 24 hours and had chains all over the country. Yu Shu signed up for a membership card without hesitation, depositing 500,000 yuan upfront.
500,000 yuan...500,000 yuan...
Just two days ago, her frame of monetary reference was still "yuan". Now it had suddenly turned into "10,000 yuan". Thinking about this made her heart thump wildly in her chest again.
All the customers in the beauty salon were famous socialites and ladies of high society. Yu Shu walked in with her back straight and eyes looking straight ahead, trying her best to give off an air of having seen the world, not revealing a hint of timidness.
The professional beauty technicians came up with a full set of skincare and weight loss plans for her, with 3 courses in total, each course lasting 2 months. She could continue the treatments at their chain stores in other cities.
When she heard the estimated cost, her eyebrows jumped a little, but she didn't agonize over it too much and nodded in agreement.
She was completely fed up with her enlarged pores and acne-scarred face.
While enjoying a full body aromatherapy oil massage, Yu Shu thought to herself that the massage felt so comfortable that she should bring her mother here to enjoy it too.
It would probably take quite some time to erode away Madam Ye’s iron will. As for the money’s origins, she would have to come up with a reasonable excuse to explain it - heh, it seemed like that was her only worry at the moment!
Money is so wonderful.
"If one day I become very rich
The first choice I make
Won't be to travel the world
Lying on the biggest, softest sofa in the world
Eating and then sleeping, waking up and eating again, living like this for a year...”
With music playing in the room, Yu Shu hummed along to the song while swinging her wine glass, utterly content in body and spirit as she soaked in the bathtub.
Do you see the bubbles in the bathtub? They aren’t from bath foam - they came from Yu Shu, who was so happy that she was bubbling over with joy.
She spent a week eating, sleeping, repeating this lazy routine. Alarm clocks disappeared from her life and she slept until she naturally awoke every day. She didn’t have to get up early to squeeze onto buses and subways or work herself to exhaustion. If she wanted to go out in the morning she could stroll around scenic spots, check-in on social media at various fancy restaurants. If she didn’t want to go out she would order room service or delivery food, watch TV shows and dramas and read novels or play games in her room. Otherwise she’d watch livestreams and shop online, take a nap after lunch, then head to the beauty salon later in the afternoon.
The amount of money she was spending in the beauty did not go to waste. After just one short week, the skin on her entire body became smoother, more delicate and fair. Her face hardly ever got oily anymore too.
For the 1,387th time, she marveled to herself that money is so wonderful!
After her bath, Yu Shu received a WeChat message from a shop assistant at a luxury boutique saying that two bags perfectly suited to her had just arrived and asking when she would have time to come take a look in the store.
Since Yu Shu didn’t have plans for the day anyway she readily decided to go shopping, following along with what the shop assistant wanted.
This time Yu Shu did not obediently purchase everything the shop assistant recommended to her like last time. Instead she chose items that she truly liked and suited her personally.
Yu Shu browsed a bit more around other shops in the mall. Over in the menswear section, she spotted the exact down jacket Shen Gege was wearing. She thought the jacket looked quite warm and decided to get the same one for her dad and younger brother too. She asked for the price and it was 28,000 yuan.
Yu Shu sucked in her breath loudly – suddenly she realized that she hadn’t become rich overnight, but instead the whole country had experienced an unprecedented level of inflation!
Despite her astonishment, she did not hesitate to buy two jackets in her dad and brother’s sizes.
“You have very good taste, Miss. This design just arrived yesterday. Our store is currently the only one in China with this style.”
Had Shen Gege bought hers overseas?
Yu Shu needed to get a passport made. She would apply for one together with her parents so that she could take them on overseas trips in the future.
On her mental spreadsheet recording future plans, Yu Shu added another item.
When it comes to shopping, a woman will find it hard to end once she starts. Yu Shu bought down jackets for her whole family, along with thermal underwear, wool sweaters, shoes and everything else to keep them warm. Once back at the hotel she arranged for courier pickup, to be shipped directly to her family.
Before long, Yu Shu received a video call from Ye Ping.
She jumped up from her hotel bed and hurried over to stand in front of a blank wall to accept the call.
Yu Shu would video chat with Ye Ping at least twice a week when she was in university. After graduating, she was so busy struggling to make ends meet that video calls became few and far between. The last video call was over half a year ago on her birthday, while she was sitting on an office stairwell. The call had been interrupted halfway through by her supervisor.
“Baby girl!” As the call connected, it was Ye Ping’s smiling face filling up the screen. She held up her phone to display herself wearing the new down jacket Yu Shu had sent. “You bought the right stuff this time. It’s so warm when I wear this out to my street stall. I won’t get cold anymore, thanks to my darling. You spent quite a bit, right?”
“Not much, they’re just copies.”
“Why does it show it was shipped from Beijing? Are you in Beijing?”
“No, a friend bought them for me. They were the one who filled in my name when shipping.”
“Which friend is so nice as to go through all this trouble? I really must thank them properly.”
“You don’t know them. Just some friend I met at university.”
Lie after lie tumbled smoothly from her lips. Not daring to let her mom probe further, Yu Shu quickly changed the subject, “Where’s Dad and Yu Yang?”
“Yu Yang’s at school. No break for high school seniors, they still have normal classes on weekends. Let me show you your dad, he’s in the kitchen.” Ye Ping picked up her phone and walked to the kitchen, patting Yu Feng on the shoulder. “Your daughter wants to talk to you!”
In the cramped, dimly-lit kitchen Yu Feng was wearing an old patched cotton jacket. He sat on a small stool, peeling potatoes with a plastic bucket filled halfway with the peeled slices.
Seeing her dad’s rough hands on the potato peeler, and his crutch leaning against the wall, tears instantly sprang to Yu Shu's eyes. When her mom patted Ye Ping earlier she also caught a glimpse of her badly chapped hands, fingers swollen up like carrots from the cold.
Upon seeing her cry the two people on the other end of the call panicked. Ye Ping tried to console her, “Like father like daughter, you’re both crybabies when it comes to missing each other. Do you remember, when you were little Yu Yang wasn’t born yet and your dad went away for migrant work? At the train station cafeteria he missed you so much that he sobbed his eyes out. I heard the cafe owner was so exasperated that they gave your dad a free fried egg!”
This old family story was still brought out now and then at the dinner table. Would she pull it out again this time?
Yu Shu had only lived as a “left-behind child” in her rural hometown for half a year when she was little. Afterwards her parents brought her to stay with them wherever they went to find work. She was never apart from them again until leaving for university. Although they weren’t well-off and had Yu Yang later on, Yu Shu never suffered true hardship growing up. Her parents couldn’t provide a comfortable lifestyle but she never went cold or hungry for lack of clothing or food. The money they spent on her education was never stinted on.
The more Ye Ping teased her, the harder Yu Shu cried. Yu Feng couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Anxiously scratching his ear he looked utterly helpless.
To hell with that “boiling frog” bullshit!
“You...you’re forbidden from...going out to sell...anymore. I have money now...I’ll support you.” Hiccups punctuated Yu Shu’s words as she wept.
“Oh really, how much money is it? Let your rich lady mother take a look at how wealthy our little heiress has become!”
Yu Shu took a screenshot of the remaining balance in her “petty cash” account and sent it over: “This much. If you stay home and be couch potatoes I’ll spend however much you want. But if you still insist on going out to hawk your wares, I’ll squander every cent on eating, drinking and being merry until the account’s wiped clean!”
She had spent a portion of the 2 million yuan, leaving around 1.2 million in that account still.
*sob sob*...
This was the “petty cash” account.
The thought made Yu Shu burst out laughing through her tears. She reached for some tissues to wipe her nose.
Her sudden movement revealed a glimpse of the hotel suite’s luxurious view behind her but her parents were far too shocked to notice such details. Their attention was completely captured by the bank account balance she had sent.
“One...ten...hundred...thousand...ten thousand...hundred...million...”
“One...ten...hundred...thousand...ten thousand...hundred million...”
“One...ten...hundred...thousand...ten thousand...hundred...million...”
They counted the digits several times over, reading it once then rubbing their eyes before counting again. Were their old eyes failing them? Was this a hallucination?
Ye Ping asked tremulously, “Darling daughter, this picture...it’s photoshopped, right?”
Yu Shu maintained a numb expression. “It’s real.”
Ye Ping and Yu Feng looked even more numb than she did. “Did you do something illegal?”
“No, I earned this money writing novels.” Yu Shu lied glibly, reciting the excuse she had mentally prepared countless times.
A few days ago while reading a wildly popular novel, Yu Shu chanced upon a post analyzing how much income famous authors make from their writing. Inspiration struck and she researched deeply into the industry.
Authors who earn millions per month are few and far between, as rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns. But so what? Her parents didn't understand, so she could fool...cough cough, as long as she could get them to accept this well-intentioned lie.
Yu Shu simply explained to them that in her spare time, she wrote novels on a website, and they suddenly became popular a few months ago. This money was the manuscript fee.
Yu Shu talked for a long time, talking until even she believed it herself. Her parents finally believed it too.
"Very good, very good, really good!" Ye Ping wiped away her tears. "You've written good compositions since you were little. I didn't expect that when you grew up you'd become a novelist."
Yu Shu felt guilty. "I don't dare, I'm just a small-time writer."
Yu Shu transferred 200,000 to Ye Ping's card. "First pay back all the debts. Keep the rest for you two to spend slowly. From now on I'll give you 20,000 per month. Yu Yang's school fees will also be paid by me. Don't worry about it anymore."
The family owed about 100,000 yuan. That was the year her dad got into a car accident and they had borrowed money from relatives. Time had flown and it had already been six or seven years.
Ye Ping glanced at her soft-hearted idiot of a husband. "No need to give us money. The rest is enough for us two for a long time. That hard earned money of my daughter's, no one else should expect to get any of it."