"Come on, come on, let me raise a toast—to Brother Yan, Zhuangzhuang, Ranran, and all of you getting better and better."
At the restaurant, Little Northeast raised his glass, looking as though he had finally let out a huge sigh of relief. "You've finally moved out. Honestly, having you guys living at Winter Turns to Spring put way too much pressure on me."
Zhuangzhuang asked with a smile, "What pressure could you possibly have?"
"Exactly. You've been collecting our rent." Shen Ranran eagerly chimed in. "You even raised the bed fees for several rooms near Brother Yan's place. Don't think we don't know."
"Yes, I made money. But lately, a whole bunch of people have come to the hostel to interview me, and they insist on making me talk about how hard it was for Brother Yan to make his fortune. Isn't that just making things difficult for me?"
Little Northeast looked deeply troubled. "Sure, Brother Yan came to Jingcheng alone to make a living, and that wasn't easy. But the actual struggle wasn't that hard. He only sold lamb skewers for about a month, and it took a whole bunch of us to skewer them. Brother Yan fed us every day, and we ate and drank well. Every meal had several dishes, with only two or three vegetable dishes at most.
"I went to see him when he had that stall in Zhongguancun. Brother Yan didn't even need to call out to customers—there'd be a whole crowd lining up, and people even fought over cutting in line. They were scrambling to buy them. Sure, grilling was smoky and hot, but it wasn't like he suffered that much, was it? What job isn't hard? Plenty of people work hard, and they don't make money.
"But those reporters insisted that Brother