Renovation

Time rewound to the early morning of June 29.

Today was overcast and windy, yet quite cool.

Little Yu Dian was still very diligent, waking up at 6:30 and taking ten or so minutes to wash up. Without putting on any makeup, she had already opened the door and sat at the front desk before seven.

Almost right at seven, Cheng Yan also came down from upstairs.

She walked to the front desk, nodded faintly at Yu Dian, and greeted, "Morning."

"Morning," Yu Dian also said softly.

"Cheng Yun was on night duty last night and won't be waking up this morning. Tell me what you want to eat right now and I'll go out and buy it," Cheng Yan said.

"I... I'm fine. Why don't you ask Sister Yin Dan later!"

"Oh, Yin Dan, that new cleaning lady Cheng Yun mentioned?" Cheng Yan narrowed her eyes. "She sounds quite young."

"Yeah, she looks about my age."

"About your age? I see." Cheng Yan nodded, then turned to look at the stairwell. "Clearly she hasn't gotten up yet."

"She should be up soon," Yu Dian said. "I knocked on her door when I came downstairs."

"I won't wait for her then, I'll just buy according to my own tastes." Finished speaking, Cheng Yan walked outside.

Heroine Yin also quickly walked downstairs, and upon seeing Yu Dian, she actually revealed a trace of a shy smile, then rubbed her hands together and said, "Um, I heard... there's breakfast in the morning, right?"

"Mn, someone went to buy it," Yu Dian said softly. "Wait a moment."

"No problem!" The heroine grinned.

Cheng Yan quickly bought breakfast back. In her hands, she carried steamed buns, fried dough sticks, and pot-helmet bread, along with three cups of congee.

Just as she walked to the entrance, she saw Heroine Yin.

At that time, Heroine Yin wore a white apron, with a walkie-talkie tucked at her waist, and was talking to Yu Dian. This posture amounted to standing sideways to her, and with a single glance, she happened to see Heroine Yin's scar-free profile.

Cheng Yan was slightly startled.

Just now when Yu Dian said Heroine Yin looked to be about her age, she had grown suspicious; very few girls this young came to a hotel to work as cleaners. And now seeing Heroine Yin's alluringly pretty profile, she grew even more suspicious.

How could there be such a cleaner!

Cheng Yan remained calm on the surface, walked in and placed the breakfast on the coffee table, and glanced inquiringly at Yu Dian.

Yu Dian was stunned, then understandingly said, "Sister Yin Dan, this is Boss Cheng Yan. This is the new cleaner, Sister Yin Dan."

"Hello." Cheng Yan smiled at her, and only then discovered the knife scar on her left cheek, involuntarily becoming somewhat baffled.

Heroine Yin reacted very quickly as well, immediately executing a fist-and-palm salute and squeezing out a polite smile. "So it's Boss Cheng Yan, long admired, long admired."

"..." Cheng Yan blankly stared at her.

Pausing for a moment, Cheng Yan then asked again, "Sister Yin Dan looks to be only twenty-two or three, right? At this age, why would you want to come and be a cleaner?"

"Actually, I've..." Heroine Yin didn't finish speaking, paused in a daze, and swallowed her words back down.

"Already what?"

"No... I said I just love cleaning! Cleaning is great! Cleaning is simple, and it even comes with room and board!"

Was she really only twenty-two or three?

Cheng Yan narrowed her eyes. "Sister Yin Dan is about the same age as Cheng Yun! Did you know Cheng Yun beforehand?"

Heroine Yin was dazed for a moment, then nodded repeatedly. "I know him, I know him! I'm his distant relative, so that's why I came to him to look for a job."

Cheng Yan: "???"

Little Yu Dian, who didn't like to talk much, couldn't bear to watch anymore, and with a blushing face, said softly, "Um... Sister Yin Dan, Boss Cheng Yan is Boss Cheng Yun's own younger sister."

"Hm?" Heroine Yin was instantly embarrassed. "Hahahaha... I was just joking, actually we're childhood playmates!"

Little Yu Dian blushed. Although she was not willing to expose someone's shortcomings, under Cheng Yan's inquiring gaze, she still had no choice but to secretly point at her head, indicating that this Sister Yin Dan's brain wasn't quite normal.

Cheng Yan nodded, understanding the situation.

No wonder such a young girl would come here to work as a cleaner! Especially since she looked quite petite and pretty, and the scar on her face wasn't difficult to remove with modern technology either. If there weren't some other problem with her, as long as she spent some money to get scar-removal surgery, wouldn't her future be bright?

So her brain was a bit abnormal...

Yet how did Cheng Yun recruit her and get to know her?

Thinking this, Cheng Yan withdrew her gaze.

"I'm not the boss, and you guys shouldn't call me the boss, just call me by my name," she said faintly. "I'm just dragged over by Cheng Yun to do odd jobs, and the unpaid kind at that."

"Oh." Heroine Yin stared at the string of bags in her hand, the rich fragrance of food attracting her.

Cheng Yan smiled slightly, sat down and said, "Let's eat breakfast first. I bought fried dough sticks, meat-sauce buns, fresh-meat buns, fresh-meat pot-helmet bread, and three cups of congee with different flavors. I don't know if you guys like to eat them."

"I like it, I like it, I like everything!" the heroine hastily said.

"..." Cheng Yan pursed her lips without speaking, silently opened the bags, and handed a portion of each to Heroine Yin.

After they finished breakfast, Aunt Tang arrived as well.

Today, according to Cheng Yun's arrangement, Heroine Yin had to first clean for a day under Aunt Tang's guidance, and only after getting familiar with the work routine could she begin independently completing the third-floor cleaning work.

When Cheng Yun came downstairs, Cheng Yan was already gone, and she had left a cold bun for him on the coffee table.

"Only one?" Cheng Yun picked up the cold bun with full grievances and gnawed on it. Little Yu Dian faced his grievances, her face red as she shrank inside the front desk without making a sound.

Just at this moment, Cheng Yan carried vegetables through the door, happened to hear his words, rolled her eyes and retorted, "Having one bun is already not bad. This morning's breakfast was twenty-three in total, and the vegetable money was thirty-six—the old rule!"

"..."

Cheng Yan ignored him further, directly passing him to go upstairs. "I bought the vegetables and brought them up for you. You can prepare to go up and stir-fry and cook after you finish gnawing your bun."

Saying this, she rubbed her belly. "I went for a run, I'm hungry."

"..."

Cheng Yun finished off the cold bun in two or three bites, helplessly going upstairs to prepare lunch. He felt that he, the boss, had been reduced to a cook.

During the cooking process, Cheng Yan consciously came over to help, casually asking him about Heroine Yin's matters, and Cheng Yun also 'confessed honestly' according to the script he had thought of long ago.

After eating lunch, Heroine Yin and Aunt Tang still had two rooms to tidy up, so they went to get busy first. As for Cheng Yun, he dragged Cheng Yan into his own room to discuss the decoration and furnishing problems of the hotel's remaining four bunk-bed rooms.

There were four rooms left in total in the hotel, two large and two small, both with independent bathrooms. The small ones could be made into four-person rooms, and making the large ones into eight-person rooms wasn't a problem at all.

If they were done according to ordinary hotel bunk-bed rooms, a few double-decker metal-frame beds plus a table would do—as long as people could live in them. But Cheng Yun clearly wanted to do it according to the standards of those stylish youth hostels, which required decorating them in a style that young people liked.

The beds were still double-deckers, metal-frame beds, but obviously they couldn't be perfunctory or pursue cheapness.

The quality had to be good!

And they had to look stylish! High-class!

As hostel rooms, unfamiliar people lived together in the rooms. Although most of the time they could trust each other, some safety measures could go unused, but they could never be lacking. Therefore, private lockers were also needed, the kind with keys, so guests could temporarily put away their personal items when going out.

These kinds of lockers came directly matched with the metal-frame beds, standing as tall as the bed, with a single locker vertically containing just four compartments. Placing them against the wall would do, as they didn't take up space and weren't expensive.

There were also metal-frame beds that came with their own drawers; in the upper and lower ladders, every single step could be pulled out to serve as a drawer. This way even the lockers could be saved.

Tables were also needed, but for everyone to have a single independent one was clearly unrealistic—cost and room space would not permit it, so they could only share. However, choosing nicer tables and placing creative calendars, vases, and similar things on top would also give a very good accommodation sensory experience.

The painting or wallpaper inside the rooms, the decorations on the walls, hanging pieces, and ornaments all had to be carefully and meticulously selected.

The bathroom was especially important!

Those who hesitated for a long time between hostels and hotels and ultimately chose hotels—at least half did so because hostel bunk-bed rooms lacked independent bathrooms. Being able to take a comfortable bath after a tiring day out and not having to queue to use the bathroom was a very pleasant thing. At the very least, Anju Hotel's bunk-bed rooms managed to have a bathroom in each room, rather than sharing just one or two for the whole hotel, which Cheng Yun felt was a not-so-small advantage.

The bathroom decorations certainly had to be pretty too. Many small items didn't cost much money, yet could similarly dot the space with a warm feeling. The shower water output had to be large; this was likewise a place that cost little yet could greatly elevate the accommodation sensory experience. The bathroom sink sometimes had to be used for washing clothes, so it likewise had to be large, and a large sink easily gave people a very high-class feeling...

In addition, a rocking chair or small tea table costing several hundred yuan could be placed on the balcony, a line for drying clothes could be strung up, and there had to be enough clothes hangers... It would be best to be able to add their own creativity on top of these things, which would require time to think about.

The two small rooms didn't have balconies, but they had bay windows, and placing a bay window cushion on the bay window could also greatly increase the warm feeling, making it even better when paired with a minimalist creative little table costing dozens of yuan.

Clothes could also be dried on the rooftop terrace...

The two siblings checked information online, drawing on the decoration styles of well-known hostels in scenic areas while thinking of things themselves. Every time they thought of an item, Cheng Yan wrote it down, and before long they had actually written a whole page. However, quite a few decoration and furnishing ideas were repetitive in terms of space, so in the end they would either choose one among them or adopt different styles for each room.

Their opinions and aesthetics were quite consistent; the things they thought up were basically modern-style decorations, containing a little bit of literary bourgeois style within minimalism, but they didn't deliberately pursue the literary bourgeois style like hostels in scenic areas such as ancient towns or the seaside did.

On the whole, they just hoped these rooms could be decorated to look pretty, allowing guests to stay comfortably.

And during this process, they also symbolically asked for Heroine Yin and little Yu Dian's opinions, since one of these rooms was going to be their future staff dormitory. But Heroine Yin expressed that she didn't care at all—she had even slept in mountain caves and forests, so having a pretty room was already quite luxurious. Little Yu Dian was also someone who had suffered hardships, and moreover she... completely lacked opinions.

Until the afternoon, the brother and sister first confirmed a portion of the items and began online shopping. As for selecting among numerous merchants' goods and comparing prices, that task was left to Cheng Yan to complete.

Hostel bunk-bed rooms were actually very fast to decorate; as long as most things were bought back and placed in their proper positions, it would work. Unlike decorating other rooms where one still had to wait several months for toxic gases to slowly dissipate, they could be put into use directly.

Today the contracting editor contacted me, saying that the contract agreement I mailed had already been received, but the page for the information confirmation form was accidentally damaged during the delivery process. I won't say more, I'm hurriedly reprinting a copy and mailing it out...

Tears streaming down my face!!

An old LV.5 author who signed a long-term contract, struggling all the way to over one hundred thousand words before being able to change the contract status—there's really no one else like me...