Considering the fearless Heroine Yin's deep fear of cars, Cheng Yun did not hail a cab, choosing instead to walk back slowly with her under the blazing sun.
Heroine Yin could run very fast, but she walked quite slowly, probably... because her legs were short.
By the time they walked back to the hotel, Cheng Yun had long since finished his beer, while Heroine Yin was still holding that can of Sprite with both hands, lowering her head to press her lips against the rim and sipping it little by little in tiny mouthfuls.
She only thought this stuff—which she didn't know whether to call Sprite or just a beverage—was sweet, ice-cold, and extremely delicious!
A Deppon Express delivery truck was parked at the entrance. Before they even pushed open the glass door, Cheng Yun saw that the front desk was piled high with many huge pieces of cargo wrapped in kraft paper and woven bags, almost completely occupying the reception area. A deliveryman in uniform stood by the front desk blowing the AC, sweating all over from the heat, while Cheng Yan stood next to him with her head lowered, signing the delivery receipt, her cascade of black hair hanging naturally down her snow-white neck.
As Cheng Yun walked in, he asked in surprise, "The beds have arrived?"
Cheng Yan glanced at him, handed the receipt to the deliveryman with a calm expression, and said, "Mm-hmm. The cabinets, tables and chairs, and the coffee table have arrived too."
"We've got our work cut out for us." Cheng Yun felt a bit of a headache coming on.
"There are a lot of small things arriving later too; the courier just called me." As Cheng Yan spoke, she glanced at the big items piled at the front desk and immediately began rolling up her sleeves. "Come on, the two of us will carry the big ones up first, and you can haul the small ones by yourself."
"Huh?" One of Heroine Yin's heads suddenly poked out from behind Cheng Yun, sizing up the items.
"Beds and cabinets, used to furnish the dormitory rooms, which will be your quarters from now on." Cheng Yan said, casting another glance at Cheng Yun, frowning slightly as she said, "Aren't you going to get moving?"
"Can you even handle this?" Cheng Yun asked with some concern.
Cheng Yan didn't speak, just glared at him coldly. "Then if you've got the guts, carry all these up by yourself!"
"I'll do it!" Heroine Yin volunteered.
"You?" Cheng Yan looked at Heroine Yin with skeptical eyes and smiled. Heroine Yin looked a whole head shorter than her.
Without another word, Heroine Yin grabbed a bundle of bed beams thicker than her own body with one hand, hoisted it onto her shoulder, and walked briskly upstairs! She didn't even take a few steps before turning back, going so far as to free up a hand to scratch her head as she asked, "Um... where are we putting these again?"
Cheng Yan and Yu Dian were both dumbfounded.
"Oh, I get it." Heroine Yin didn't dare linger any longer and scurried upstairs in a flash.
"Well..." Cheng Yun scratched his brow. "You know how it is. When God closes a door for someone, he opens a window for her. Maybe... God opened a floor-to-ceiling window for her."
"Whoa!" Little Yu Dian parted her mouth slightly in awe.
As for Cheng Yan, she stared at Cheng Yun in bewilderment, then withdrew her gaze, apparently unable to come up with a better explanation either.
Turning back, Cheng Yun and Cheng Yan carried a bundle of bed beams up together—Cheng Yun had an easier time of it, but Cheng Yan clearly found it extremely strenuous, gritting her teeth almost the entire way to push through, which made her marvel even more at the kind of energy contained within Heroine Yin's tiny frame.
The front desk had security cameras, so Yu Dian wasn't worried about thieves, and she pitched in by carrying some of the smaller items upstairs.
With Heroine Yin's help, in less than twenty minutes, the pile of cargo at the front desk was transferred to the far end of the third-floor hallway, right where the four dorm rooms were located.
"Are we assembling them first?" Cheng Yun asked, though he turned his head to look at Heroine Yin.
"Of course we're assembling them first. Aren't you supposed to be on night shift?" Cheng Yan asked with a frown. She followed Cheng Yun's gaze to Heroine Yin, then looked back at Cheng Yun, a flash of confusion crossing her eyes.
"Let's put them together first," Heroine Yin said. "I'm also quite interested in my future... whatever-it-is employee dormitory."
"Yeah." Cheng Yun nodded then.
To make shipping easier, all the beds, cabinets, tables, and chairs were shipped in pieces. Every single bed beam, bed frame, tabletop, and chair board needed to be reassembled according to the manual. Moreover, to ensure structural stability, this process required quite a few tools and needed to be done with absolute care and attention; any slight error would affect the user experience later on.
Fortunately, the manufacturer and seller had already taken all of this into account. The assembly of the beds, cabinets, tables, and chairs was not complicated and didn't require high-level assembly skills. The manuals were also very detailed, and every single part was numbered with a sticker, so they just had to follow the sequence strictly.
Cheng Yun took out all the tools, took a deep breath, and began assembling them alongside Cheng Yan.
He assembled the beds and cabinets, while Cheng Yan took charge of the simpler, lighter tables, chairs, and coffee table.
Heroine Yin watched the commotion from the side, occasionally helping Cheng Yun out by handling some of the heavy physical labor—after all, many parts for assembling a bed were quite bulky, and hoisting them smoothly into place usually required two grown men putting their backs into it, but with Heroine Yin it was different; she had the strength of hundreds of strong men living inside her.
Because it was very hot, little Yu Dian would occasionally come upstairs to take a look and deliver water or help out. Every time she saw the cargo piled outside the hallway gradually diminishing and the messy components scattered on the room floors taking on recognizable shapes, she would marvel in amazement.
Working busily from past two o'clock all the way until six in the evening, Cheng Yun finally finished assembling the beds and cabinets for two four-person rooms, while Cheng Yan had already set up all the tables and chairs. At this point, just looking at these two rooms, aside from being a bit monotonous, they were starting to look like proper spaces.
Since most of the rooms had been booked, little Yu Dian also came upstairs to lend a hand, which counted as her pitching in.
The four of them worked up a sweat all over, and it wasn't until the takeout Cheng Yan had ordered in her spare time arrived that Cheng Yun clapped his hands, panted, and said, "Stop for today, let's stop. We'll finish up tomorrow night when we have time; let's go down and eat first."
"I need to take a quick shower first," Cheng Yan said, valuing cleanliness. "You're on night duty tonight, right? I happen to be free, so I can go ahead and assemble some cabinets."
"Then how about... I keep doing night duty tonight?" little Yu Dian said softly. "You guys can finish these up and not drag it into tomorrow. I'm free anyway. Of course, Boss Cheng, if you're too tired today and don't want to build them, just pretend I didn't say anything."
"That works too! Since our hands are still warmed up, putting them together should go a bit faster," Cheng Yun agreed with a nod.
Heroine Yin stood nearby, holding an instruction manual, still lowering her head and frowning at it intently before suddenly looking up in bewilderment. "How on earth did you people just look at this piece of paper and miraculously figure out carpentry?"
After dinner, little Yu Dian continued tapping away at the keyboard inside the front desk, while Cheng Yun and Cheng Yan went back to work.
There were differences between the facilities in the eight-person and four-person rooms, but they weren't huge, nor was it a matter of quality; it was purely because Cheng Yun didn't want all four rooms to look completely identical. Furthermore, while they were a bit clumsy and slow when they first started assembling, they picked up speed later on. Even though the bed and cabinet sets for the two eight-person rooms at night were nearly double the size, Cheng Yun and Cheng Yan only took three hours to put them together, making it barely ten o'clock by the time they finished.
Heroine Yin swept away all the wrapping paper, zip ties, ropes, and plastic foam left on the floor, leaving the rooms instantly clean, simple, and refreshing.
By this time, all four rooms had decorative wallpaper applied, beds and cabinets placed against the walls, a table in the center, and a chair for each person. Yu Dian had actually received quite a few smaller deliveries at the front desk, probably all room decorations, but Cheng Yun no longer had the energy to deal with them today.
"Phew!" He let out a long breath, surveyed the fruits of his labor, and felt quite satisfied.
It was just a pity that Anju Hotel had originally been renovated by a professional hotel decoration company, with the design plan finalized by Professor Cheng and Professor An. From Cheng Yun's perspective, although the hotel's rooms had a very modern and trendy decor style, the overall layout still followed traditional hotel specifications. Moreover, the old building they rented was ill-suited for layout modifications, and many concepts in terms of structure and design clashed with Cheng Yun's aesthetic. If he wanted to remodel according to his own ideas now, it would take a massive amount of effort, and a portion of the previous investment would go down the drain.
Therefore, he could only start by tackling these four rooms first.
Cheng Yun never expected that he would take over this hotel... how should he put it? One could only say that the affairs of the world are ever-changing!
After taking a quick shower and going downstairs to take over the shift from Yu Dian, Cheng Yun began sitting blankly at the front desk. Time ticked by bit by bit. Past eleven o'clock at night, there were even fewer guests. Finding himself bored with sitting, he simply pushed his chair back, reclined in it, closed his eyes, and began to meditate.
July 5, 2016, overcast.
Cheng Yun went to sleep very early last night and woke up early this morning, since he was starting his day shift today.
At ten o'clock sharp in the morning, Old Mage walked back in leisurely, leaning on his cane.
At this moment, both Heroine Yin and Cheng Yun were sitting at the front desk. Seeing Old Mage's outfit, both of them dropped their jaws—Old Mage was sporting a pair of khaki casual shorts and a solid red t-shirt, wearing a straw hat on his head, a pair of sunglasses perched on the bridge of his nose, genuine leather sandals on his feet, and a middle-schooler-style backpack slung over his back. It was clearly the standard outfit of a middle-aged uncle or auntie on a domestic tour group, but because he was tall, wearing it actually gave him a strange, imposing aura.
"M-Mage, where on earth did you go?" Cheng Yun's jaw dropped. "And this outfit of yours..."
"What about it?"
"Did you go on a trip to the seaside?"
"My last stop happened to be a country near the ocean, called New Zealand, I believe!" Old Mage said, taking off his backpack, setting it on the sofa, and pulling out some miscellaneous little items from inside. "On my way back, I heard people say that in your world there is a custom where people traveling away from home bring back things from their destination as gifts for friends and relatives, though by then I had already reached Jingguan."
"There is indeed a saying like that." Cheng Yun looked at the few items he had taken out, which included small conches, Christian accessories, and some trinkets that screamed of an across-the-ocean aesthetic, causing him to pause for a moment—
"So... did you buy these at the Jingguan wholesale market?"
"...Decidedly not." Old Mage glared at him with displeasure. "I spent another ten minutes going back to each place individually."
"Six-six-six." Cheng Yun could only raise a thumbs-up.
Today the thesis defense is over, but it doesn't seem very ideal; I have no idea if I can pass.
And the next few days will still involve revising this and changing that, preparing this document and that material. So annoying...
Before you continue