It wasn't just anger. The shame he felt was even harder to let go of.
"How did you know?"
Old Zhou was surprised by Xiao Xiao's perceptiveness.
"I guessed."
Xiao Xiao smiled.
"As expected of a top student from Yan University."
Old Zhou sighed with feeling. "You really are clever."
"That's right."
Old Zhou nodded. "The other party really did buy that wooden screen as a gift."
"And—"
"It was a birthday present."
"And the person he gave it to... was his father."
The old man reached up and rubbed his forehead.
"Mister Wang—the customer who bought the wooden screen—was celebrating his father's eightieth birthday."
"Although his father was quite old, he was in good spirits, and his favorite animal was the tiger."
"So Mister Wang took one look at Zhou Zhou's screen and liked it. He bought it on the spot for a high price."
"But then..."
Old Zhou paused before continuing with some difficulty. "At the banquet, someone pointed out that the wooden screen he'd given his father wasn't actually the work of a Qing dynasty master at all. It was just a fake."
"They said he'd been swindled."
"The one who said it was Mister Wang's younger brother."
Old Zhou let out another long sigh. How could Zhou Zhou keep running into such rotten luck?
How many antique dealers didn't boast and make things up?
And how many didn't describe their wares as if everything they had was a rare treasure?
Still, among all those people, only a few took a tumble.
Take him, for example. He'd started out as an apprentice at another antique shop, then opened his own. Over all these years, he'd had his share of setbacks, but he'd never taken a fall as hard as Zhou Zhou had this time.
How