Shen Le wore a smile, but inside, he was trembling with fear.
Being late would definitely mean a pay cut. That went without saying. But on top of that...
Xiao Ling's performance could soothe people's tempers and bring about a sense of peace. Even if ordinary people couldn't consciously tell, it still made them feel more comfortable and improved their mood.
So, Xiao Ling not showing up on time = customers in a bad mood = customers getting into fights = losses for the restaurant?
Didn't some of those losses have to be blamed on me?
With a guilty conscience, Shen Le watched the boss lady's every move, ready to apologize, argue his case, or even bargain.
Who could have guessed that the boss lady wouldn't demand compensation or scold him? She straightened out those red bills...
Then shoved them into Shen Le's hands!
Shen Le: ???
"Xiao Ling's wages—no, the Puppet's rental fee isn't this much!"
He reflexively tried to refuse. The boss lady simply stepped forward and raised a hand.
"I said take it, so take it!"
Without any obvious movement, she had already slipped past Shen Le's raised hands, unzipped his backpack, and stuffed the money inside.
"I'm not giving it to you for nothing. I've got a job for you. These tables and chairs—"
She waved toward the dining hall.
"They're all old furniture, antiques. It'd be a shame to throw them out and buy new ones. This is your specialty, so I'll leave them all to you. You can restore them to their original condition, right?"
Tens of thousands!
Several tens of thousands!
Shen Le's mind went blank for a moment. Up to now, he'd only managed to save a little over thirty thousand yuan, and that thick stack looked like it was worth more than all the cash he had on hand.
With that money, he could build a separate concrete room in the mansion, buy a fume hood, and hire someone to string barbed wire around the mansion's walls!
The last scrap of his reason stopped Shen Le from immediately answering, "Sure!"
He walked around the boss lady and crouched by the nearest battered table, examining the wood, feeling it, and pinching it.
"What kind of wood are these tables and chairs made of?"
"Don't worry, none of it's particularly valuable." The boss lady followed at an easy pace and chuckled.
"It's all miscellaneous wood. These two tables are Elm Wood, these two are Cypress Wood, and that cabinet over there is Camphor Wood. The chairs are mostly Chinese Fir.
If you're worried, I can have someone send over some lumber."
Shen Le finally relaxed. Working with his boss on the restoration of old buildings had taught him roughly what various kinds of miscellaneous wood cost. The lumber needed to repair all these tables, chairs, and cabinets would only cost one or two thousand yuan.
Of course, that assumed he bought basic lumber, then measured and marked it himself, sawed it himself, and gradually shaped it into what he needed from scratch.
There was, of course, another issue he couldn't ignore.
"How long do I have?"
Three days?
Or two?
If the repairs took forever, would your restaurant just stay closed the whole time?
"About a month." The boss lady smiled casually.
"We have spare tables and chairs, but it'd be a shame to just throw these away. Can you take the job? If so, it's yours!"
You really think that highly of me... Without Little Ink Marker to help, a month of work would really delay your business, wouldn't it?
Fortunately, with the now-sentient Little Ink Marker at his side, Shen Le was brimming with confidence. A month would be a breeze. He could even make all new furniture in that time, let alone repair these pieces.
He lifted his chin slightly and answered calmly.
"Sure! I'll get someone to haul everything over. And you don't need to provide the lumber—I'll take care of it!"
He didn't even need to call anyone. The restaurant's waitresses poured out in a crowd and set to work bundling up the battered tables, broken chairs, and cabinet with a hole in it.
Then the whole group of lovely young women set off for Shen Le's mansion, with him surrounded in their midst and drawing countless stares from passersby...
The girls were all pretty, their skirts swaying—pure white, rose red, pink, pale green. Even without dressing up, they made a beautiful sight as they walked down the street.
And yet every one of them was carrying something: three broken tables in one hand, four chairs with broken legs in the other.
The most impressive one had a cabinet five feet tall balanced on her shoulder, and a huge bundle of lumber in her hands—the Elm Wood, Cypress Wood, Camphor Wood, and Chinese Fir the boss lady had mentioned, for repairing the furniture...
There were more than ten pieces in the bundle, each about a meter to a meter and a half long. Together, their cross-section looked to be at least twenty by thirty centimeters. Yet she carried them as lightly as if they weighed nothing, laughing and chatting the whole way.
A group of beautiful young women had the might of Lin Daiyu uprooting a willow tree. Passersby gawked. Shen Le felt so uncomfortable it was as if ants were crawling all over him. Don't come any closer!
Don't surround me like this!
The girls wouldn't stop chattering.
"Mr. Shen, which way should we go? The front gate or the back?"
"Mr. Shen, open the door!"
"Mr. Shen, where should we put everything?"
Faced with a group of Lin Daiyus capable of uprooting willow trees, Shen Le didn't dare act out of line. If they told him to open the gate, he opened it. If they told him to turn, he turned.
They went in through the back gate and piled everything into an empty room in the third courtyard, one meant for servants. Then the waitresses surrounded him.
"Mr. Shen, your mansion is beautiful!"
"Can we have a look around?"
"We don't need to see every room. Just that one—the garden! Could you let us take a look?"
"Thank you so much! Wow, this garden, the pond beside it, and the strange rocks along the pond—it's all so beautiful!"
The group of young, pretty waitresses laughed and chatted as they admired their reflections by the water. Xiao Yu and Xiao Ge even stood on the muddy ground by the pond, lifted their skirts, and spun around twice.
Their long skirts fanned out in layers like two blooming peonies, one pure white and the other pinkish purple, complementing each other beautifully.
The girls didn't linger. Like a whirlwind, they made a round of the courtyard with the pond and then took their leave.
Left alone, Shen Le eagerly unzipped his backpack, pulled out all the red bills, and started counting them one by one.
"Twenty... twenty-five... thirty-three... forty... forty-two... Huh, I think I lost count. Let's start over...
"Thirty-one... thirty-four... Ugh, I lost count again... One more time! Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen... Oh no! I dropped one!"
Shen Le finally accepted that he was utterly hopeless at counting money, still stuck at the level he'd reached as a student—
He could only play a card game where you counted to forty. If he tried one where you counted to eighty, cards were bound to slip from between his fingers...
He gathered himself, gave up on counting the money by hand, took the bills and his bank card, and went out to find an ATM.
If I feed it all into the cash slot and let it count for me, that should work, right?
He fed in one small stack, then another, then yet another. Fifteen minutes later, Shen Le stared at the number on the ATM screen, his eyes shining, and pumped his fist.
Forty-three thousand five hundred!
A huge windfall!
At the Heavenly Fragrance Restaurant, Xiao Ling earned three thousand yuan a month. Her school tours paid two thousand two hundred a month. He split the money with Xiao Ling, leaving him with two thousand six hundred a month.
Forty-three thousand five hundred was roughly the same as suddenly getting...
16.7 months' worth of pay.
He'd hit the jackpot!
What a huge sum of money!