Zheng Wan carefully recalled her interactions with Wang Wenzhou from her previous life, finally piecing together a general outline.
It was mainly because they hadn’t had much contact in her past life. That brief memory, compared to her long life, was like a single grain of rice in a vast paddy field—insignificant.
In her previous life, she had met Wang Wenzhou at a restaurant. At that time, she had been working diligently as a kitchen hand at the Meng family’s restaurant for over half a year. Seeing how steady and hardworking she was, Meng Jun had allowed her to move to the front of the house as a waitress.
One time, a customer deliberately looked for trouble, using the excuse that the food was too salty. Coincidentally, Meng Jun wasn’t there that day, and the customer wouldn’t let Zheng Wan go, demanding an explanation. At the time, she was so frightened she didn’t know what to do.
It was then that Wang Wenzhou, who had also come to the restaurant to eat, stepped in to resolve the situation. He essentially told the man that if the food was salty, he should just have the chef stir-fry another dish—why make things difficult for a young girl?
Initially, when the male customer was bullying Zheng Wan, no one helped her. But once Wang Wenzhou started, several regular customers also spoke up for her. The man, likely afraid of losing face if things escalated further, threw down his money, cursed about his “bad luck,” and left.
After it ended, Zheng Wan thanked Wang Wenzhou in person and even gave him a small side dish on the house. From then on, she and Wang Wenzhou knew each other.
Following that, Wang Wenzhou often came to the restaurant to eat. Sometimes he would wait for her to finish work and give her a flower, or snacks like milk candy and biscuits.
Before Zheng Wan could even develop any feelings for Wang Wenzhou, Meng Ruo snatched him away. She even bragged to Zheng Wan multiple times about the gifts he sent her. Later on, Meng Ruo cried and said she regretted it, complaining about having provoked such a scumbag, and so on.
In fact, after Meng Ruo stole Wang Wenzhou, Zheng Wan hadn’t paid much attention to him because she met Tan Lin shortly after. Tan Lin’s steady and hardworking nature made him a perfect match for her hardworking self in that life.
Therefore, Zheng Wan didn’t have a very deep understanding of Wang Wenzhou’s character. The label “scumbag” was something she had only heard from Meng Ruo.
“Zheng Wan, what are you doing here?” Wang Wenzhou asked with a look of pleasant surprise.
“The room I rented is here,” Zheng Wan replied after her initial shock.
Due to her memories from the previous life, Zheng Wan was actually quite resistant to contact with Wang Wenzhou.
“What a coincidence! I live on this floor too.” Wang Wenzhou pointed toward the other end of the corridor and said, “Right over there.”
Just then, a draft blew through the corridor, carrying the stench from Zheng Wan’s room directly into his nose.
Wang Wenzhou quickly covered his nose and said, “How did you end up renting this room? This place hasn’t been rented out for months because it’s too dirty and smelly.”
When Wang Wenzhou said this, Zheng Wan became even angrier. As expected, her mother had just randomly rented a filthy, messy place to save money, not caring whether she lived or died.
“This definitely needs a good cleaning,” Wang Wenzhou said. “You haven’t had time to buy a broom or a dustpan yet, have you? I have them over at my place; I’ll get them for you.”
That day, Wang Wenzhou was extremely enthusiastic—borrowing her the broom and dustpan, bringing her newspapers, and even helping her paste the newspapers onto the walls.
For a split second, Zheng Wan wondered if Wang Wenzhou might not be that bad. Hadn’t he also very enthusiastically helped her out of a jam in her previous life?
The reason she had thought about staying away from him earlier was entirely influenced by Meng Ruo’s words. Meng Ruo saying Wang Wenzhou was bad or a womanizer was just her side of the story. Besides, what kind of “good person” was Meng Ruo in the last life? Was everything she said one hundred percent true?
“Do you also work at the electronics factory?” Zheng Wan asked, looking at Wang Wenzhou.
Wang Wenzhou nodded.
Although Wang Wenzhou wasn’t as outstanding as You Che, he wasn’t bad either. He was a little over 1.7 meters tall with regular features. Most importantly, he always had a smile on his face, giving people the impression of having a good, easy-going personality. Furthermore, he was very articulate, and his voice was gentle.
This was actually the first time she had proactively paid attention to Wang Wenzhou’s appearance, so she stared at him for a bit too long.
“Why are you staring at me? Do you like me?” Wang Wenzhou said with a smile.
Zheng Wan lowered her head in embarrassment. To avoid being teased further, she quickly changed the subject: “So, what time does your electronics factory usually get off work?”
“What? Do you want to come to the electronics factory to pick me up?” Wang Wenzhou teased frivolously.
At this, Zheng Wan lowered her head bashfully.
The reason she asked about the electronics factory’s closing time wasn’t really to pick up Wang Wenzhou, but to find You Che. Her biggest goal at this stage was still You Che. She wasn’t so short-sighted as to lose You Che for the sake of a minor character like Wang Wenzhou.
“Just tell me,” Zheng Wan said softly in a coquettish tone.
“Unless we’re working overtime, we usually get off at five,” Wang Wenzhou said.
Having obtained the closing time, Zheng Wan thought to herself that since today was a rest day, she would go to the factory gate tomorrow to intercept You Che. You Che didn’t know her yet, and the matter of getting to know him was better done sooner than later.
Wang Wenzhou glanced at the sky as it gradually darkened and said with a smile, “It’s getting late. What do you plan to eat for dinner?”
Zheng Wan looked blankly at her empty room. She didn’t even have a bowl here, let alone a stove or a pot.
Seeing her dazed look, Wang Wenzhou said with a smile, “How about I treat you to a meal outside?”
Zheng Wan’s eyes lit up with surprise; it just so happened she only had a few yuan left on her.
Ten minutes later, Zheng Wan stared in a daze at the plain noodles in front of her. Wang Wenzhou said he was treating her to a meal, and it turned out to be a noodle stall—one bowl of plain noodles each?
In her previous life when she was a waitress at the restaurant, he had occasionally given her milk candies or packets of biscuits.
What Zheng Wan didn’t know was that Wang Wenzhou had his own calculations when chasing girls. If a girl had a decent job, he knew a little sweetness wouldn’t move her, so he would spend a bit more money. If a girl had lacked food and clothing since childhood, he knew that by giving her just a little bit of sweetness, the girl would feel very moved. If he encountered the type who pursued him instead, he would turn it around and demand things from her.
If it were a pampered young lady, he wouldn’t pursue her at all, because he knew his small amount of pocket money wouldn’t be valued by a girl from a wealthy family; spending it would be a waste. He, Wang Wenzhou, never did useless work.
And Zheng Wan was clearly categorized by him as the “lacked food and clothing since childhood” type.
On Sunday, a rest day, You Che proactively asked if she wanted to visit the department store.
Meng Ruo thought to herself that after six days of work, it wouldn’t hurt to go out for a stroll. So You Che rode his bicycle and took her to the department store.
Initially, Meng Ruo thought You Che purely wanted to accompany her shopping, and she even sighed in her heart that good men who proactively accompanied their wives shopping were truly rare.
However, once they arrived at the store, she realized he was searching for household appliances with a very specific purpose, inquiring about their prices.
In one shop, several color TVs were on display, and the price was a startling two thousand yuan.
Two thousand yuan for a color TV—if she really weren’t uninterested in such things, she would have wanted to buy one. It was too cheap; one had to know that color TVs usually cost around four thousand yuan nowadays.
But why was their color TV so cheap? Could there be a quality problem, hence the low-price clearance sale? After-sales service in this era was far inferior to what it would be thirty years later. Often, if you bought a defective product and went to the store, it was useless; the store would push the responsibility onto the manufacturer. Then it would be a multi-sided squabble.
Meng Ruo thought You Che was asking about the price because he wanted to buy one, but after asking, he didn’t buy it and went to the shop next door to ask about refrigerator prices. That price was also slashed in half, nearly fifty percent cheaper than usual—only one thousand six hundred yuan.
Then You Che asked at several more shops. The prices were all different; some refrigerators were sold for over a thousand, while others were sold for two thousand. Color TVs were sold for over two thousand in some places and over three thousand in others.
When he asked for the prices, he specifically looked at the logos on the appliances; they were indeed produced by their electronics factory.
Seeing him ask several shops for prices without buying anything, Meng Ruo asked curiously, “Is there something wrong?”
“The pricing is in chaos,” You Che murmured.
Meng Ruo nodded at this. The prices were indeed a bit chaotic, and for the exact same products, too. Meng Ruo didn’t know if they were fighting some kind of price war. In her world, similar things often happened—the same product would have different prices on different shopping websites.
But the discrepancy wouldn’t be as exaggerated as it was now, where some prices were directly halved. How could the shops make any money?
Since You Che cared so much about this, it meant this matter would inevitably affect him.
“What will happen if the pricing is in chaos?” Meng Ruo asked.
“These appliances were all produced by our electronics factory,” You Che explained the situation to her, perhaps fearing she wouldn’t understand. “The Factory Director felt that this year’s appliance sales would be as good as last year’s. At the beginning of the year, he had several production workshops step up production. As it turned out, the sales in the first half of the year were not ideal. Coupled with the fact that the factory almost never stopped production in the first half of the year, the warehouses are filled with unsold appliances.”
“A few days ago, Cao Zhanfei told me that the electronics factory’s capital chain was broken and that wages might not be paid this month. But the fact is, the wages were paid. Cao Zhanfei said the higher-ups put a lot of pressure on the Director, telling him to clear the inventory as soon as possible or face accountability. Consequently, the inventory in the warehouse was almost entirely cleared out by the supply and marketing department.”
“When I heard Cao Zhanfei say the inventory was almost cleared, I was puzzled. From the beginning of the year until now, the sluggish state of the appliance market hasn’t improved. How could so much inventory be cleared out just like that?”
“So today I specifically came to the market to take a look. The result is what you see now. The price system for appliances produced by our factory is in complete chaos. This must be related to the sales model of the supply and marketing department.”
“I have a premonition that something big might happen to the electronics factory,” You Che finally stated.
Hearing You Che’s explanation, Meng Ruo was stunned. Something big was going to happen to the electronics factory? As for how big the matter would be, Meng Ruo didn’t know. But hearing You Che’s tone, the matter was likely so large that even their Director couldn’t solve it, let alone small employees like them.
Seeing You Che deep in thought with his eyes downcast, Meng Ruo didn’t speak to disturb him. The two of them walked slowly side-by-side along the road.
As they passed the wet market, Meng Ruo turned and asked, “Should we buy some groceries to take back?”
Hearing her voice, You Che, who was still deep in thought, paused. When he came to his senses, he realized he had been so focused on the electronics factory that he hadn’t really accompanied Meng Ruo through the department store.
“I’m sorry. I said I’d accompany you to the store, but I ended up just thinking about my own affairs,” You Che apologized.
Meng Ruo was stunned by You Che’s sudden apology. Through their time together recently, she had discovered that the real You Che was not only different from what his aunt said, but also different from what she had imagined.
Meng Ruo had originally thought that a “tycoon” would be someone who didn’t bother with small details or would be unwilling to do chores and such trivial things. In her other world, she had seen many interviews with successful entrepreneurs and felt those successful moguls carried themselves quite loftily. She found it hard to imagine those high-postured tycoons from the interviews cooking or doing chores at home.
But You Che was completely different.
Not only would he proactively help share the housework, but Meng Ruo also discovered he was a very meticulous person. For instance, just now, he apologized to her because of his own neglect.
Even though she didn’t care about it at all.
Meng Ruo waved her hand magnanimously and said, “It’s fine. I didn’t plan on buying anything anyway.”
The two arrived at the market, and Meng Ruo proactively asked, “What do you want to eat? I’ll make it for you.”
You Che paused at her question and then said, “Anything is fine. I’m not a picky eater.”
“Alright, then let’s buy a block of tofu and a few eggplants. We’ll make pan-fried tofu and braised eggplants,” Meng Ruo said.
You Che nodded.
After Meng Ruo picked out a block of soft tofu, You Che immediately paid. After she picked the eggplants, he immediately paid again.
It was always like this; whenever they went out to buy groceries, if You Che was beside her, he would be very active in paying.
On the way back after buying the groceries, Meng Ruo vividly described to him how delicious the pan-fried tofu and braised eggplants she made would be.
“The tofu is fried in oil until golden brown on both sides, then simmered in sauce until cooked through and sprinkled with green onions. As for the eggplants, they’re more fragrant if braised with lard—it just so happens there’s a bit of the lard I rendered yesterday left over.”
As Meng Ruo spoke, You Che looked at her steadily with a slight smile on his lips.
The next day, You Che went to work at the electronics factory and didn’t notice anything unusual. He didn’t think much more about it. After work, he rode his bike to the food factory as usual to pick up Meng Ruo.
He walked to where his bicycle was locked. Just as he finished unlocking it and was about to ride off—
“You Che.”
Suddenly hearing someone call his name, he turned his head and saw a familiar-looking girl.
Familiar, but for a moment he couldn’t remember who she was.
You Che thought for quite a while before remembering; it seemed to be a distant relative of Meng Ruo’s.