Chapter 19
When Li Ye woke up naturally, he first felt another source of heat next to him. Half of his body was being hugged. Afraid of disturbing Yao Yao who was still asleep, he carefully moved the arm that was not being hugged to reach for his phone next to the pillow and turned off the alarm clock in advance.
However, since he was being held and didn't know how to get up without getting hurt, Li Ye first calculated in his mind the changes to his schedule caused by the delayed time.
Today is a workday. Yao Yao's residence is quite far from the company, so her commute time is relatively long. In other words, Yao Yao will have to get up early for work today as well.
A minute later, the alarm clock rang from under Yao Yao's pillow. Unfortunately, it didn't wake anyone. Li Ye reached over Yao Yao's head and swiped the alarm clock away. The noise was just too much like an alarm clock.
Now Li Ye could safely remove Yao Yao's restraints, moving as gently as possible. Fortunately, the weather had warmed up considerably, allowing Li Ye to get out of bed before getting dressed.
After getting dressed, Li Ye didn't forget to tuck the blankets back in so that no one could freeze. Then, he pressed Yao Yao's cool phone case against her face, a not-too-exciting wake-up call.
It probably wasn't Yao Yao's usual wake-up time, so this trick didn't work. Li Ye put Yao Yao's phone back in its place and went to the bathroom to wash up. Ten minutes later, Li Ye returned to the bedroom with a washcloth that had been soaked in hot water. He folded the warm towel and placed it over Yao Yao's eyes.
Three minutes later, Yao Yao reached out and removed the washcloth covering her eyes. It was already starting to get a little cool, so Li Ye's wake-up call was a success.
“I usually wake up half an hour later than you, and I leave at 7:30 to catch the subway.” Yao Yao chatted while combing her hair in the bathroom. “I didn’t use my phone last night and went to bed an hour early, thinking I could wake up earlier today.”
"If your biological clock is fixed, it's quite troublesome to adjust it." Li Ye, as someone who has been through it all, was packing his backpack for the day's itinerary.
Yao Yao was brushing her teeth when she remembered something and directed someone to look for something in the coffee table drawer in the living room. "I registered your fingerprint on the front door last night, so you can come and go as you please. There are a few extra access cards for the community in the coffee table drawer. Just take one and use it. It'll only be for a few days."
"The fingerprint will be deleted after this use. In the future, uh... will there be no more instances of people coming to stay here?"
Li Ye put it more precisely: "If all goes well, there is still a possibility that I will have to stay at a friend's house this year."
"I'm ready." After washing up, Yao Yao grabbed her bag and rushed to the door to change her shoes. "It's rare for me to get up early, so I'll take you to that breakfast place where I usually don't dare to queue. I think their soup dumplings are more to my liking than XX's."
"Bang!"
The door closed, and Li Ye followed Yao Yao as they jogged toward the hidden gem breakfast shop in the residential building she had mentioned. It was indeed a winding shop with a long queue. The two of them didn't arrive very early, but they only had to wait in line for a few minutes.
She ordered a basket of soup dumplings, a basket of steamed dumplings, a plate of pan-fried buns, and two bowls of soy milk. Yao Yao had never eaten all three of these things for breakfast before.
"The point of eating together is that we can try more different things and find our favorite flavors more quickly." This was a strange remark from Yao Yao. It seemed like this girl had never had a meal buddy before.
Li Ye and Yao Yao were at a separate table. Li Ye was much more unrestrained in her eating. She ate a steamed bun in three bites, a dumpling in two bites, and then drank some soy milk to smooth down. Last night, Yao Yao was the one who was fighting over the food, but this morning, Li Ye was the one who was fighting over the food.
Concerned about her mental state in the morning, Yao Yao also began to focus on eating breakfast, quickly keeping up with Li Ye's eating speed, and thus they each finished grabbing the last pan-fried bun.
Touching her slightly swollen belly, Yao Yao said goodbye to Li Ye: "I'm going to work now, have a good day."
After watching Yao Yao enter the subway station, Li Ye took a taxi to the intersection where he had arranged to meet Zhou Yuan to wait for him.
"drop--!"
A car horn blared, drawing Li Ye's attention. A car pulled down its driver's side window, and the driver inside waved to her before turning the car around to pick her up.
The person who arrived was Zhou Yuan. After getting into the car, Li Ye noticed that there was someone else in the back row. She was an intellectual-looking older sister in a suit and glasses. She nodded and greeted her gently, and Li Ye received a business card from a real estate agent.
The older woman's surname was Qian, and she was clearly the real estate agent who had brought the two young people to see the apartments. After Li Ye got into the car and took her business card, Ms. Qian immediately went into work mode and began introducing the information about the apartments they were going to see. Or rather, she never left work mode from the very beginning.
They soon arrived at the first property. Sister Qian led the way, while Li Ye and Zhou Yuan followed at a distance, chatting as they walked.
"Where did the car come from?" Li Ye chose to start with a question he wasn't particularly curious about.
Zhou Yuan answered very seriously: "I borrowed it. It's from a friend in my dorm. I heard he's been looking into housing, so I've been borrowing it from him lately."
Knowing that Li Ye couldn't distinguish car models and didn't care what the car logo looked like, Zhou Yuan omitted another major reason why his friend lent him the car: to help his good brother win over the girl he liked. He figured that by not letting Li Ye have trouble getting a taxi lately, he was doing a good job.
"Have you eaten breakfast? Why are you up so early?" Li Ye continued to set the stage.
Zhou Yuan answered first: "I ate in the cafeteria. I told Sister Qian that we should try to be on the same floor or in the same building."
Meanwhile, Sister Qian waited patiently at the elevator entrance for the two clients, watching the young couple walk over at a leisurely pace.
After exiting the elevator, Li Ye realized that the building had four apartments per floor, and the two apartments that were introduced were indeed next to each other. After entering the apartment, he kept giving points, and a point deduction system was implemented.
The house layout is flawed and cannot be changed. Several rooms are too small, while the living room and dining room are relatively large, and the bathroom is too small. In another house, the layout is much better, but the overall area is significantly smaller.
Most importantly, Li Ye discovered a problem: "The paint on the walls is cracked, and both houses have encountered this situation. Are you sure there's no problem with the quality of the houses?"
We automatically entered the next location, another residential area not far away. In the car, Sister Qian began to introduce the two apartments, which were on the upper and lower floors of the same building.
Sandwiched between floors, and even between apartment buildings, Li Ye was already losing points before even entering the house; the lighting must be terrible. And indeed it was. At 10 a.m., the sunlight barely reached the living rooms of both apartments, one upstairs and one downstairs.
Imagine simulating the sunlight in Shanghai throughout the four seasons in your mind. The apartment buildings are built too close together, blocking all the light. Now the score is directly deducted to zero.
By the time they reached their last property of the day, it was already getting dark. This time, the apartments were divided into two units at opposite ends of the floor. Due to the unchangeable layout and the outrageous shared area, Li Ye decided to end their house-hunting trip for the day.
After dropping Sister Qian off at the nearest subway station, Zhou Yuan prepared to take Li Ye back to his residence. The two chatted in the car about their day's travels.
"The apartments we looked at today had pretty good neighborhood environments and surrounding amenities. Did you screen them beforehand?"
Li Ye wasn't surprised that Zhou Yuan would do this kind of thing, but she seemed a bit difficult to please today because she was nitpicking all the time. She hoped the agent wouldn't mind.
"Yes, let's prioritize looking at properties in the designated areas." Zhou Yuan was driving and only spoke while waiting at red lights.
As the car stopped at the entrance of the residential area, Zhou Yuan finally figured out how to comment on Li Ye's performance today. "We should keep picking until we find someone we like. It's not about nitpicking; that's someone else's job."
After a short drive, Li Ye thought the topic had long since passed, but Zhou Yuan still remembered that the two of them had looked at houses together. With his words, Li Ye felt much more relaxed and said goodbye to Zhou Yuan before getting out of the car.
"See you tomorrow afternoon, remember to pick me up here."
I went to the chain supermarket at the entrance of the community to buy groceries and restock snacks. I carried a backpack and a large bag at the same time. I took out the access card I had received that morning from my pocket, passed through the community gate smoothly, opened the iron gate of the building, and finally opened the door to my home with my fingerprint.
After entering the house, I insisted on changing into slippers, threw my backpack and the large bags full on the table in the entryway, and felt as if all my strength had been suddenly drained. I slumped onto the sofa, remembering to put a small blanket over myself to prevent catching a cold.
After setting a 15-minute countdown on his phone, Li Ye closed his eyes to relax, clearing his mind and focusing on his breathing and bodily sensations, entering a preliminary meditative state.
"Beep beep beep!"
Fifteen minutes felt like an eternity, and the countdown ended almost immediately. Li Ye pulled back the blanket, feeling refreshed, and realized he could start preparing dinner.
He would still eat with Yao Yao, chat about random things in the living room, and then go back to the second bedroom to sleep. The next morning, after Li Ye got up, he would also go to the master bedroom to wake Yao Yao up, and they would go out for breakfast together. Then they would spend half a day looking at houses, and so on.
On the fifth day after they started looking at the house, Li Ye went inside and looked at the layout of the room. His mind automatically went into the different functional divisions of the room. He grabbed Zhou Yuan's sleeve and pulled him to a corner to discuss it. This wasn't the first time Qian Jie had seen this situation in the past few days. She would stand back when it happened.
Li Ye lowered his voice and whispered, "What do you think of these two sets?"
Zhou Yuan lowered his head and leaned close to Li Ye, almost whispering, "Okay, these few are the most suitable."
Li Ye said even more quietly, "So, this one?"
Zhou Yuan lowered his voice and asked, "It's a bit more expensive here, is your budget enough?"
Li Ye and Zhou Yuan distanced themselves from each other, and Li Ye spoke in a normal voice, "Sister Qian, let's stop here for today. There are still some details to discuss regarding these two sets."
After running around for several days, and seeing that these two deals were about to be closed, Sister Qian smiled as she watched the two leave.
Sitting in the passenger seat, Li Ye asked, "Is it because you don't have enough money?"
Zhou Yuan, sitting in the driver's seat, nodded with difficulty. This was also the reason for his hesitation: "We don't have enough money later. We can only choose one: renovations or a car."
"I want to renovate together and move in together." Zhou Yuan's eyes even held a hint of grievance.
Li Ye briefly inquired about the renovation budget, and then, assuming she were in that situation, asked, "Didn't you try asking your family for help?"
Zhou Yuan shook his head and said, "This is my business, I can't ask my family for help."
“With the biggest issue of the house resolved, there’s no need to rush the renovation. It’s also not easy to ask the family for that money, otherwise it would be very troublesome if there were problems with the decision-making power in the renovation,” Li Ye continued to analyze. “However, the need to buy a car is much more urgent.”
"Zhou Yuan, do you mind a car loan?"
Zhou Yuan's expression was as if he had discovered a path falling from the sky in a dead end; his eyes lit up instantly. "I don't mind. The reminder was very useful; I'm stuck with my mortgage."
"Haha, after all, a mortgage represents the rest of an ordinary person's life, while a car loan is far less of an exorbitant amount."
Li Ye didn't mention the hypothetical scenario of borrowing money. Since Zhou Yuan didn't ask his family for money, she couldn't bring it up herself. "So it's settled then?"
Zhou Yuan took out his phone and sent a message to the intermediary expressing his clear intention to buy, and arranged a time for the transaction.
"It's settled."
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