Chapter 1
With the help of old John's true-to-life acting skills, the rehearsal went exceptionally smoothly.
Unfortunately, the lighting, curtains and background music only have their own ideas and are out of control when Old John plays himself, and Jiang Qi has to operate them manually at other times. This results in the rendering of scenes that do not involve Old John always being worse, which makes Liu Lan admire Old John even more.
After an afternoon of rehearsal, Jiang Qi felt numb, and the rehearsal had just barely ended.
When Jiang Qi went to the neighboring stir-fry restaurant to eat green pepper and shredded pork rice, he received a WeChat message from Jiang Bing about his landlord.
Before Jiang Qi could send out the "OK" emoticon, Jiang Bing called him.
"Hey, my dear brother, is the script-killing shop going smoothly?"
"It's okay, there are no customers. It feels similar to the last convenience store." Jiang Qi swallowed the food in his mouth.
"It's normal. It's the off-season now and students haven't had their holidays yet. I'm afraid you won't be able to handle it during the summer vacation." Jiang Bing said with a smile, "Lanlan said you were rehearsing a performance today. How was the rehearsal going?"
"Not bad." Jiang Qi felt pretty good about himself. "By the way, Liu Lan said that you got this exclusive book for free. How did you get it for free?"
Speaking of free stuff, Jiang Bing got excited: "It was a publisher from a new studio called Card Game who approached me. I don't know when I added their WeChat. This is their first copy, and they're promoting it. They offer free returns after a two-week trial. I agreed on the spot when I heard about this good deal."
Jiang Qi roughly understood: "Sister, I think the quality of this notebook is pretty good. If this studio has a new notebook in the future, you should consider buying it."
Jiang Bing disagreed: "What high-quality books can such a small and unknown studio produce? You have never played a script-killing game and have never seen a good book. If you buy an exclusive emotional book from a store like ours, you will lose a lot of money. You can drive two cars for free in two weeks and make a little profit, then you can return it."
Jiang Qi wanted to say a few more words, but Jiang Bing changed the subject: "I heard from my aunt that you were helping the teacher at your school..."
“…”
A routine phone call lasted about 10 minutes. After Jiang Qi hung up the phone, he sat down and began to think about how to get cards in this crappy game. While he was thinking, Old John poked the braised pork in the plate with chopsticks too hard and overturned the rice.
I didn't get any of it on my hair, so I gave Jiang Qi a braised pork and rice spa.
Jiang Qi: ...
Forget it, let’s think about these things later. The most urgent thing is to teach old John how to use chopsticks.
.
There was still no business in the store for the next few days. Liu Lan had long been accustomed to it. After the rehearsal was successfully completed, he would sit at the front desk every day reading a book and playing with his phone, having a great time.
Jiang Qi read two more books these days, and did not experience any hallucinations, nor did he enter the world in the book, nor did he get any new cards. This made Jiang Qi more certain that the only way to get cards at present was to watch the script-killing games produced by the card game studio. He himself had no interest in reading the books, so he could only study how to quickly upgrade Old John's star.
Old John still had no desires and no ambitions. He went to work and cleaned the house every day. After cleaning, he sat on the sofa in the hall and read books. Those books were all Cao Wenyang's. When Cao Yongjun cleared out the clutter at home, he wanted to clear these books away, but Jiang Qi kept them under the pretext of wanting to borrow them.
Jiang Qi had noticed when they were looking at the house before that Old John chose the smallest room just because of those books.
No one knew what Cao Yongjun had misunderstood, but on the night Old John moved in upstairs, Jiang Qi received a WeChat message from Cao Wenyang - Cao Wenyang thought Jiang Qi wanted to take the postgraduate entrance examination in a different major, so he gave him a list of books and asked him to read them in order.
When Old John was reading, Jiang Qi and Liu Lan would occasionally come over to take a look out of curiosity. In Liu Lan's words, they couldn't necessarily understand every word, and they couldn't understand them even more when they were read together.
Jiang Qi would remain silent for a while, Liu Lan would cry, but only Old John was watching attentively and would occasionally take out a piece of white paper to write down some thoughts, which made Liu Lan begin to doubt what Old John was teaching.
Finally, when Jiang Qi thought Liu Lan could not help but ask himself whether Old John was an artist or an academic, Monday arrived.
The day of publication.
Liu Lan had said before that the person who made the appointment was a regular customer of the store, but she never said what kind of regular customer he was, and Jiang Qi didn't ask.
When this regular customer, dressed like a youthful and lively girl with a pink cross-body bag, a plaid skirt, white leather shoes, and a big bow hairpin on her ponytail, walked into the store, Jiang Qi was dumbfounded.
He is more than just a regular customer, he is also an acquaintance.
Jiang Wanwan, the daughter of Jiang Qi’s uncle Jiang Xiaokang.
Jiang Wanwan is now a junior at the University of Finance and Economics in this city. She lives on campus from Monday to Friday and goes home on weekends. She has friends all over the world. When she was in high school, her biggest hobby was to go to the alley behind the school to watch bad boys fighting. Once, when she was watching the excitement, she was mistakenly thought to be a student participating in a fight by the dean of studies and was caught on the spot. It was Jiang Qi who went to the Academic Affairs Office to rescue her.
"Brother Jiang Qi!" Jiang Wanwan was even more shocked than Jiang Qi. "Aren't you preparing for the retest? My dad told me not to disturb you. I've wanted to ask you to come out and play for a long time but I never dared to."
Jiang Qi: "...I have been rejected for the retest for two months."
"Where is Sister Bing?" Jiang Wanwan started looking for Jiang Bing. When she found that Jiang Bing was not there, she met Jiang Qi's eyes. The tacit understanding between cousins for many years allowed Jiang Wanwan to quickly understand Jiang Qi's hint.
Jiang Wanwan covered her face in pain: "No way, Sister Bing's store is going to go bankrupt again."
Jiang Qi never told Jiang Wanwan anything like "maybe the store won't go bankrupt", which was nonsense that Jiang Wanwan simply couldn't believe. Jiang Wanwan looked like this every time Jiang Qi took over Jiang Bing's store that was about to go bankrupt.
When the milk tea shop, fried chicken shop, skewer shop, snack shop, and convenience store went bankrupt, Jiang Wanwan was heartbroken.
She eats a lot of milk tea, fried chicken skewers, spicy strips, potato chips and ice cream.
"If Sister Bing's store goes bankrupt, where can I go to get free copies?" Jiang Wanwan put on the mask of pain as Jiang Qi expected.
Just when Jiang Wanwan looked sad, Liu Lan came back with milk tea: "Wanwan, you came so early today."
"Lanlan, why didn't you tell me before that it was Wanwan who was playing today?" Jiang Qi asked.
Liu Lan slapped his head, revealing the confusion of a young amnesiac: "Ah, didn't I say that?"
"I always thought I did."
Jiang Qi: ...
.
Today, Jiang Wanwan brought her college classmates to play the game together. The other five people came to the store for the first time. After they went upstairs, Jiang Qi opened the system panel to check the store details and found that the popularity and satisfaction were still 0, and the task was not completed.
It seems that Jiang Wanwan's love for this store is fake.
She just simply loves to get something for free and doesn't like this store at all.
But it shouldn't be.
Jiang Qi sat at the front desk, propping up his head and thinking. Based on his understanding of Jiang Wanwan, this girl couldn't be dissatisfied. As long as it was free stuff, she would be satisfied and love it very much.
On the first day Jiang Qi took over the milk tea shop, he made the matcha milk tea so unpalatable that it could cause poisoning and death. But just because it was free, Jiang Wanwan gave it a decent review and insisted on coming to drink it.
"Could it be that... the game's definition of liking is different from what I understand?" Jiang Qi murmured, falling into deep thought.
After fruitless thinking, Jiang Qi started playing with his phone, waiting for Liu Lan to send them a message to perform.
While waiting, Jiang Qi cared about whether his rich second-generation roommate Yu Fang was beaten to death by his father. He counted how many times a day Wang Zhuo and Zhan Ren, who had passed the postgraduate entrance examination, cursed Xiao Zhang and Xiao Liu in the dormitory group. He checked the circle of friends to see what his friends had for dinner. When he was about to post a message on his circle of friends, Liu Lan's message came.
Jiang Qi stood up and waved to Old John, "Perform."
Old John put down the book and went upstairs with Jiang Qi.
The whole room was dark, and the curtain had a good light-blocking effect. Even if the door was not closed tightly, the light from outside could not shine in through the curtain. Jiang Qi quickly arranged the table, chairs and bags in the light from outside, closed the door and squatted in the corner.
Liu Lan stood in another corner and asked in a female voice: "John, do you still remember your father?"
Jiang Qi squatted in the corner, without moving, the BGM played automatically, the circular light was turned on, and old John's shadow fell on the screen, like a memory in a silent movie.
"Wow." Jiang Qi heard a girl inside exclaiming in a low voice, and lowered her voice to say to her companion, "Wanwan, your sister's store's performance is so high-end."
Old John and Liu Lan continued their performance, and no more sound came from inside.
A very quiet, dark environment makes it easiest for people to focus on the only light.
The performance is segmented, with a short break between each scene for changing actors and props. After each character's memory segment is performed, Liu Lan will go out to perform and give the cards that have not been made into an interpretation to the corresponding players, allowing them to read them in a dark environment with candlelight, making it easier to be immersed in the atmosphere.
xy
After John's recollections ended, Jiang Qi squatted in the corner waiting for the show to end.
Suddenly, Jiang Qi heard a very quiet sobbing sound.
It appears and disappears in the darkness, becoming clearer and clearer.
Jiang Qi immediately perked up.
Is anyone crying?!
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