That couple was not from Yizhou, looking like they were just here on vacation with nothing to do. As for why they chose to stay right next to Yizhou University, Cheng Yun had no idea.
As it was getting close to dinner time in the afternoon, the girl came downstairs with a glowing face, affectionately holding the boy's arm.
Cheng Yun looked at them with a blank expression.
"Babe, where are we going to eat~?"
"How would I know? I'm not familiar with this place either!"
"Didn't you say there must be lots of good food around a university?" The girl pouted. "I want to have hot pot first, then roll around the snack street, pack some to-go on the way back, and order takeout in the middle of the night."
"Alright, alright." The boy sighed, his tone full of doting indulgence. "Let's ask the boss!"
"Okay!" The girl instantly perked up and looked at Cheng Yun. "Boss, is there any good food around here? Don't make it too far, um... preferably cheap and delicious."
Cheng Yun forced a smile. "Turn left out the door, walk straight to the end, about a fifteen-minute walk. With five-star hotel standards and prices universally under ten bucks, the various cafeterias at Yizhou University perfectly fit your requirements. If you can't bring yourself to brazenly fleece the socialist sheep, that's fine too; the commercial street next to the university can easily keep you from getting tired of it for half a month."
"Boss, you're so fun." Little stars flickered in the girl's eyes as she stared at Cheng Yun's fairly handsome face.
"..." Cheng Yun watched them leave lovingly.
He used to have a very pretty girlfriend too, campus-belle tier, good at everything, really, until the hard drive crashed—oh wait, they broke up for certain reasons.
A soft sound of footsteps came from behind. Cheng Yun turned his head to see Old Mage walking down from the stairway.
"It seems you are busy," Old Mage said with regret.
"Yeah, there's only me right now, so I can't get away for the time being." Cheng Yun pursed his lips. "How about you go in and study by yourself first? When my sister gets here, I'll have her cover for a bit, and then I'll come find you."
"I cannot open that door," Old Mage said, shaking his head. "No need. I have seen quite a few isolated spacetime nodes, and either way it is hard to figure much out—just a waste of time. I can only rapidly get the results I want with your cooperation."
"Except for me, can others not open it from the outside either?" Cheng Yun muttered to himself, then looked back up at Old Mage and said, "Then you go back and rest first. I'll come find you in your room when I'm free."
"Alright, thank you very much. This knowledge is an immense fortune to me."
"You're too polite."
Cheng Yun lowered his head and continued operating his phone to grind orders for Anju Hotel, while Old Mage turned and went back upstairs.
Not long after, a delivery rider wandered around outside the hotel, looked up at the sign, and pushed the door open carrying a bag of things. "Hello, takeout."
"Huh?" Cheng Yun was slightly bewildered. "I didn't order takeout."
"No way? This is Anju Hotel!" The delivery rider paused for a moment, took out the slip on the takeout packaging, and glanced at it. "You're Cheng Yan... Mister, right? The phone number is 177********, is that correct?"
"..." Cheng Yun felt somewhat awkward. "My name is Cheng Yun. This takeout was probably ordered by my sister."
"Then I'll leave it here!"
"Thanks."
"Give a good review when you have time!"
"Okay."
The delivery rider turned and walked out the door. Cheng Yun picked up the takeout and glanced at it. It was heavy, and he caught the distinct fragrance of double-peppers.
Soon enough, Cheng Yan rode over leisurely on a Mobike bicycle, locked the bike at the front door, walked in, and asked Cheng Yun, "Did you get the takeout?"
"Yeah."
"I ordered diving rabbit."
"I could smell it."
"There's also some greens."
"Mhm."
"Two bowls of rice."
"Really appreciate the effort."
"No worries, ninety-eight in total."
"You went out of your way."
"WeChat or Alipay transfer!" Cheng Yan frowned as she looked at him. "Don't try to brush me off. You're my guardian, and you still want to rip me off! How can someone as sleazy as you exist?"
"..."
Fine! Treating him like a guardian now!
With an exhausted expression and feeling very hungry, the two soon sat down on the sofa, opened the packaging, and began eating the food placed on the glass coffee table.
"After you finish eating later, go online and grind a couple of orders, and I'll transfer the money to you." Cheng Yun fished out a universal room card and put it on the table. "Go upstairs and take a few photos too, write a good review, don't brag too wildly, and don't reuse the photos. Oh right, 202 and 208 already have people."
"So sleazy." Cheng Yan accepted the room card.
"Everyone does it," Cheng Yun said with a curl of his lip. "Summer break is so long, how do you plan to spend it?"
"Mind your own business?" Cheng Yan frowned as a reflex reaction. "It's only been half a day since I last lectured you, and your parental urge is acting up again, huh!"
"I meant that if you're planning to find a part-time job for the summer, you can come over to my place. It's pretty chill here, you just sit at the counter and watch the place." Cheng Yun couldn't help sighing.
"Not planning to." Cheng Yan flatly refused.
"Why?"
"Why should I find a part-time job?" Cheng Yan countered.
"Don't students all hope to find a part-time job during the break to earn some living expenses and temper themselves along the way?"
"I don't need to."
"Why don't you need to."
Cheng Yan turned her head to look coldly at him, swallowed the food in her mouth, and only spoke after a long moment: "Because I have two properties and over a million in inheritance."
Cheng Yun was stunned, actually finding himself at a loss for words.
He understood that Cheng Yan had no heart to go out and do part-time work because their parents had just died not long ago.
"Then how do you plan to spend these two-plus months of summer vacation? You can't possibly stay cooped up at home reading books every day." Cheng Yun's tone softened, his gaze darting upstairs. "A friend told me this morning that the presence of death around us should make us more aware of how marvelous and incredible life is, thereby making us cherish every single day we are alive. I think it makes a fair amount of sense."
Cheng Yan was silent for a moment before saying, "You don't need to worry about me. I'll go to the gym, go hiking, go traveling. Just take care of yourself. I can help manage you, but don't manage me."
"Alright." Cheng Yun finally couldn't hold it in. "Actually, it's that I can't recruit a counter cashier for the time being, and I can't handle everything by myself, so I want you to come help out and let me get some rest."
"..." Cheng Yan was speechless. "Did you really have to beat around the bush?"
"Consider it?"
Cheng Yan didn't nod right away, instead looking up at him.
This guy had very deep dark circles under his eyes, and his skin looked sallow and dry. His normally decent-looking face had grown terribly weary because of it, making his entire person look thoroughly dejected.
Ever since that accident happened, he hadn't seemed to rest properly once. After finishing the funeral, he had to handle the compensation, followed by property transfers and paperwork everywhere. Preparing for the hotel's opening was no simple matter either; he had to schedule interviews with regional managers from the website, sign agreements, search everywhere for a laundry service with reasonable prices and good service, make breakfast and leave it on the table before heading out in the morning, and come back to cook for her at noon and night...
Cheng Yun hadn't mentioned any of this, but Cheng Yan knew it all.
And she still wasn't sure if this guy suffered from insomnia every night just like her, often dreaming of Mom and Dad.
"Fine, you look pretty pitiful with that overworked complexion anyway. If your attitude improves a bit, I can consider helping." Cheng Yan adjusted her mood and said coldly, "Forget about the salary. I'll stop working as soon as you find a cashier."
Cheng Yun blinked, then squeezed out an expression that even he found disgusting, and cried out, "Then I leave it to you, little sis~~"
Cheng Yan's face darkened instantly: "Gross!"
"..."
"Alright, I can consider helping you sit at the counter here, but the daily meals must be well-stocked, and you can't skimp on what I want to eat!" Cheng Yan put forward her terms sternly.
"Huh? Sit at the counter??"
"..." Cheng Yan's expression sank. "On top of that, I want sixty yuan a day in wages!"
Cheng Yun was stunned on the spot. "Didn't you say you didn't want a wage?"
"Who told you to say I was sitting at the counter!"
"You're being too unreasonable! Clearly, you were the one who said it!"
"Eighty."
"It... it even went up!" Cheng Yun was speechless. "If I find some slender, soft, cute JK online to work a summer part-time job, it's at most fifteen hundred a month. This isn't even physical labor; most of the time you're just sitting here reading books and playing on your phone."
"JK?"
"High school girl." Cheng Yun looked her up and down as he spoke. "You used to be one too, too bad it just expired."
"Then go find your JK!" Cheng Yan's pretty face seemed covered with a thin layer of frost. With that, she dropped her chopsticks. "I'm done eating, I'm going back."
"Fine, fine, fine, eighty!" Cheng Yun sighed. "Consider it your allowance."
Cheng Yan's face darkened again. Hearing him use that tone made her want to rush up and bite him hard, but seeing the exhaustion on his face, she held back.
Cheng Yun spent ten-odd minutes teaching Cheng Yan how to operate the counter equipment and the website backend. He originally wanted to make her pretend to demonstrate it once, but she impatiently waved him away.
"Alright, do you think I'm as stupid as you? Go to sleep, room 203!" Cheng Yan said with a frown. "Stop wobbling in front of my eyes with those bloodshot eyes, it's like watching a horror movie!"
"..."
Cheng Yun took the trash out to throw it away before heading upstairs.
He originally wanted to go to sleep—he was too tired—but he was afraid of suffering from insomnia again, so he walked over to room 202 across the hall and knocked on Old Mage's door.
Old Mage's elderly voice quickly came from inside: "Enter."
"..." Cheng Yun fished out the universal card, swiped open the door, pushed it open, and said, "Lord Mage, the hotel's smart locks can't be opened from the outside without a room card—"
Before he finished speaking, he froze: "Mage, what are you doing?"
Old Mage was sitting by the window, facing the light filtering through it during the dusk. He had his tattered robe spread across his knees, holding a needle and thread in his hand, and was intently passing the needle through one end of the robe and pulling it out from the other...
"Hm?" Hearing him, Old Mage looked up, some confusion in his eyes—did Earthlings not know how to mend clothes?
"Do you need me to get you a pair of reading glasses or something?" Cheng Yun twitched the corner of his mouth, showing his concern.
"No need, my eyesight is still quite good. When the weather is nice, I can see the storm cyclones on Jupiter. Besides, it is almost finished." Old Mage lowered his head and tied two knots in the thread. Without any visible movement from him, the thread snapped automatically. Then he put away the needle and thread. "Let's go. I assume you also wish to learn how to control the spacetime node as quickly as possible, but today we shall only study for one hour, and then you need to rest."
"Fair enough."
Before you continue