34 Chapter 33
◎They have a large following, and have probably long forgotten about the sick, disabled, elderly, and children of Fengtan.
After Li Yingqiao released him, she didn't explain anything or wait for Gao Dian and the others. She turned and slipped away along another downhill path. Yu Jinyang wanted to chase after her, but he didn't know what to say or ask for an answer.
If she could give him an answer, she wouldn't have just kissed him and run away, would she? He was afraid that it was just a passing fancy and an impulse, which would make him uncomfortable; he was also afraid that he might say something outrageous and offensive in a fit of anger, and given her temper, things might not end well for them.
He wanted to wait a couple of days for her to calm down. But Yu Jinyang never expected that after that brief encounter at the train station, there would be no more.
I never expected him to hold a grudge for so long; I never expected that what he thought he couldn't get used to, he actually got used to very easily.
During his two years in Shanghai, he often thought that if she appeared in front of him the next second, he could pretend nothing had happened and not hold it against her. Later, when he decided to go to Chicago, he told himself that it didn't matter anymore. She would be doing very well anywhere, with a lot of supporters, and she probably had long forgotten about the sick, disabled, and elderly people in Fengtan.
***
Li Yingqiao searched the entire gua sha shop but couldn't find a single black umbrella. So she asked Yu Jinyang on the other end of the phone if he had remembered the color wrong. Yu Jinyang replied confidently that he hadn't, it was black.
Li Yingqiao was holding the phone, hands on her hips, looking troubled. Meng Yidong, who was giving a customer a back shave next to her, gave her an idea: "If this guy is so petty, why don't you go next door and buy him a shave?" She deliberately lowered her voice, but it was still picked up by the receiver.
"Who's this?" the person on the other end asked.
“My mother’s apprentice,” Li Yingqiao said, then hung up the phone with a smile.
Meng Yidong's voice matched her buzz cut perfectly, sounding like a deep brass instrument. She looked sharp as a blade, making people hesitant to approach her, but in reality, she was a surprisingly gentle and unassuming person. Completely oblivious to the inappropriateness of her words, she was giving someone a back rub when she saw Li Yingqiao hang up the phone and stare at her with a smile. She innocently twitched her lips in return and intensified her rubbing, scrubbing the other person's back until they cried out in pain.
"..."
She was even a beat late in apologizing; by the time the other person's flushed face had completely faded, she belatedly remembered to say, "I'm sorry, I'll be gentler."
Sure enough, after a long while, she suddenly looked up and asked Li Yingqiao, "Did I say something wrong just now?"
Li Yingqiao smiled and said, "It's okay. We've known each other since we were kids. He has a very good temper and won't be angry with you."
Meng Yidong didn't care whether he was angry or not, but still slowly said "oh".
Li Yingqiao observed her all night and found that she looked somewhat like Zhao Pingnan, even resembling him in appearance. The next second, Zhao Pingnan's WeChat notification popped up, asking her to send her location. Li Yingqiao was startled and her mind went blank.
The innocent dung beetle hops around, asking, "What?"
The other person replied, "Hehe, my mom just roasted a batch of new tea leaves, I'm bringing them over for you to try. I'm driving here myself, just give me your location, I'm almost at the Fengtan toll station."
The innocent dung beetle hops the cha-cha: "Send a location message."
The innocent dung beetle hopped around: "No, you drove all the way from Qingyi yourself? How many hours did it take?"
Zhao Pingnan: "It'll take about three hours. I'll set off right after dinner. I picked these tea leaves myself, found the contractor myself, and designed the brand myself. We're currently in talks with a brand ambassador. Wait, I'll be there soon."
The innocent dung beetle, hopping around, said, "Okay, you'll stay for a few days. I'll book you a hotel first."
Zhao Pingnan didn't say, keeping it a secret until they met.
***
When Yu Jinyang hung up the phone and pushed open the door, Yu Renjie was leaning back on the sofa with his eyes closed, resting. One leg was on the ground and the other was on the edge of the coffee table. His trousers were hanging loosely below his calves, with the fabric of his trousers hanging quietly like tassels. His cane was propped on the armrest of the sofa.
Tang Xiang was gone. The sound of running water came from the bathroom. He slipped his phone into his pocket, sat down in the spot where Tang Xiang had just been, picked up the remote from the coffee table, and turned off the TV series that was silently playing in the living room.
"I plan to take Tian Tong to visit the kindergarten tomorrow. If she can adapt, we can put her in the community kindergarten that's part of our complex, and I'll pick her up and drop her off from there. If we go back to the city, I'm afraid you won't be able to manage, and she won't be able to adapt. I'm not too comfortable with nannies or caregivers."
Yu Renjie leaned back calmly, not even bothering to open his eyelids: "You decide. Anyway, I can't even leave this neighborhood now."
Yu Jinyang smiled, his words carrying a hidden meaning: "Haven't you already gone out for a stroll in your wheelchair?"
“No,” Yu Renjie refused to admit, “What’s so great about driving a broken wheelchair?”
Yu Jinyang looked at him without saying anything more, just smiling.
Yu Renjie then opened his eyes, turned to stare at him for a moment, and said with a serious expression, "What are your thoughts on the company's affairs?"
"What?" Yu Jinyang reached for a piece of candied orange peel on the coffee table, paused for a moment, and then continued to unwrap the packaging while looking at his father slowly and deliberately, "Mom said that we lost a lot of money last year, and the cash on hand is almost gone, right? Is it because we haven't received the final payments from those two overseas accounts?"
There's an old saying: fortunes change every thirty years. However, in today's fast-paced world, TV dramas can be watched at three times the speed, and bullet comments have become a canvas for young people to express their love. The currency of time is also unstoppable—examples of CEOs in six months and ICUs in six months are commonplace.
Yu Renjie was no exception. At first, he was unwilling to admit it, but now he had to admit that he was indeed a pig that took off on the wind. In addition, the old man's good reputation in Fengtan carpentry made many locals flock to their products.
However, after 2018, new regulations issued by the EU dealt an unprecedented blow to the toy industry. Following the outbreak of the pandemic, overseas orders were frequently canceled, and the normal 90-day turnover days for companies suddenly quadrupled, with some still not recovered to this day.
Not only was their market share quickly squeezed out by companies from other Eurasian countries, but the price of imported timber also rose by 50% to 60%. The financial crisis of 1997 struck again, and the wooden toy companies in Fengtan were swept away like leaves in autumn, closing down one after another. One company, with debts of over 100 million yuan, even tried to jump off the Star Tower a few years ago, but was stopped.
Yu Renjie has been able to hold on until now because he earned too much in his early years, and he can barely maintain his situation with other passive income.
It was precisely this awkward situation that was unbearable. If he had simply gone bankrupt, he could have declared bankruptcy without any burden, paid his employees severance pay, and experienced a limited-time life of wealth. But Yu Renjie was also destined for unexpected windfalls. Whenever his accounts were in dire need of cash, he would inexplicably receive a large sum of money, enough to barely cover his expenses for a while. This half-dead situation dragged on for two years, unable to close down, until recently, when so many things happened, that he finally began to seriously consider retirement.
Yu Jinyang thought for a moment and said, "If you ask me what I think, I definitely hope you can cheer up and run the company well. We're not the best, but we're not the worst either. So many wooden toy companies died in Fengtan. It's a victory that you survived. If all else fails, we still have Ice Cream. When she grows up, she can support the three of us."
"Stop thinking about your sister supporting you all day long," Yu Renjie wanted to kick him, but he was powerless to do so now, and if he lifted his foot he would fall down, so he could only glare at him and spit, "Then I won't hide it from you, there are still three batches of water-based paint in Germany that haven't been paid for yet, and most of the time they won't be able to get them back."
"Do you know what the unsold inventory rate is on the cross-border e-commerce side right now? It's over 70%. It's all piling up in the FBA warehouses of e-commerce companies, so we can't collect the final payment at all. I also invested 10 million yuan in the development of STEAM educational toys, but the designer ran away with someone else, and several core R&D personnel also ran away one after another. I can't even hear a sound of that money being thrown into the water now."
Yu Jinyang understood his meaning and gave him a starting point: "So what do you and my mother think?"
“Your mom wants to sell the company to Li Boqing. If he wants to run it, let him do it alone. I’ll go back to Hainan with her for a while, but you just came back from Chicago, and it’s impossible for Ice Cream to really go to Hainan with us to study. Besides, Ms. Wanjuan is already 103 and still going strong. I can’t just run away like that. I’ll think about it some more.” Yu Renjie said, looking down at his empty trouser leg.
Yu Jinyang followed his gaze and looked over, his eyes never leaving the room, only his eyelids slightly lowered. For the past six months, the atmosphere at home had been like a dying money tree; no matter how much nutrient solution he poured on it, the effect was counterproductive. Only the clueless Ice Cream Cone could occasionally pierce the deathly silence, and the more so, the more agonizing it became for Yu Jinyang and Tang Xiang. The Ice Cream Cone's innocent and naive voice seemed to be sawing at their nerves.
But people are incredibly adaptable, and Yu Renjie gradually got used to it. Sometimes he would even joke to himself, "Look, it's so hard to find a man with two legs; we only have one in our family." Yu Jinyang could only smile wryly at times like this; he would rather that one wasn't him.
"Alright, stop staring. I'm perfectly fine." Yu Renjie gave him a hard pat on the back of the head, then lifted his leg and swung it up and down. "What's this? It's just one leg. Don't look so sentimental. Your mother suffered so much when she gave birth to you alone in Hainan. I couldn't be there for her, but she suffered with me. Sigh—I'm thinking about divorce again."
“Once is enough.” Yu Jinyang turned his head away helplessly. “If my mom hears this and she gets really angry and leaves, you won’t be able to catch up with her. At least wait until you get your prosthetic leg in a while. If you really feel like you’re a burden to her, then you can at least pretend to run a few steps when you chase after her.”
"...You naughty boy." Without saying a word, Yu Renjie took his cane and hit him on the calf before going inside to take a shower. Yu Jinyang winced in pain and fell onto the sofa, but he quickly stopped laughing.
Humans are truly terrifying creatures; no matter what situation they're in, they can always adapt. As a child, he never imagined such a dramatic change would occur in his family. His father, such a narcissistic man who needed his mother to praise him even for losing a few hairs before leaving for work, and who would check himself in the rearview mirror for at least ten minutes before leaving the house, could now adapt to the physical deficiencies he now suffers from.
He had kept his resignation from Chicago a secret from his family for over two weeks. It was almost a month later when his resignation was approved, he booked his flight, packed all his belongings, and flew back.
He rushed to the hospital as soon as he got out of the car, still out of breath. However, when Yu Renjie, who was lying in the intensive care unit, saw him, his first words were: "You ran all the way back from Chicago? You're so out of breath."
He couldn't respond at all. Yu Jinyang only knew that his gaze, like the heart in his chest, was uncontrollably plummeting downwards, as if into a bottomless abyss, until he saw his left leg—
“That’s all, don’t look anymore.” Yu Renjie also showed off generously, his trouser legs below the calves were empty. “When Dad gets his prosthetic leg, I’ll show you what real Popping is, it’ll be way cooler than yours.”
***
Yu Jinyang came out of the bathroom after taking a shower, his hair still dripping wet, a black towel draped crookedly around his neck. He quickly wiped himself, then quietly pushed open the door to the ice cream cone room to take a look. After confirming that she was fast asleep with the chick in her arms, he closed the door behind her.
The hair dryer was unusable, so he could only open the sliding door to the balcony again and go out, sitting on the wicker chair on the balcony, waiting for it to dry. Occasionally, water droplets would splash onto his eyelashes, seeping into his eyes the moment he blinked. The dryness and pain from the water made him subconsciously close his eyes and tilt his head back.
Just then, my phone vibrated a few times in my pocket, and my thigh went numb twice.
He pulled it out, squinted at the message despite the pain, and decided to change the "Nokia boot-up ad" wallpaper on his home screen.
After thinking about it, I changed my WeChat name as well.
After finishing the changes, she continued to absentmindedly wipe her hair with a towel.
The next second, he was speechless, and burst out laughing while wiping his hair.
Isn't this even more obvious?
What's the point of changing it? Just call it D321, so what?
So what if he went from Beijing to Shanghai? He knows a lot of people in Beijing too, you know.
[Author's Note]
Double update the day after tomorrow.
See you Friday and Saturday! 300 red envelopes for this chapter!
(I caught a cold from swimming yesterday, I need to recover a bit, double update on Friday~)
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