The First Step of the Plan

A round-trip ticket from Moscow to the capital alone, even with a student discount, cost around five hundred and fifty dollars.

That meant that from now until the end of June next year—a total of eighteen months—Wang Ye had only two thousand five hundred dollars for living expenses!

Around one hundred and forty dollars a month...

Honestly, it was a little tight.

But Wang Ye knew that this was already the most his family could manage. He had no complaints at all.

In fact, his family's financial situation was not much better than Song Xiaogang's.

Both families hoped their sons would succeed. Both had gritted their teeth and scraped together the money to send their children abroad to study, hoping they would have a bright future.

After buying a phone today, his living expenses had been squeezed even further, leaving him with only two thousand two hundred dollars...

With so little money, living comfortably was out of the question. Moscow was expensive; even when buying groceries, he would have to pick the cheapest options.

Of course, Wang Ye was not about to sit around and wait for things to happen. He had been reborn, after all, and possessed more than twenty years of life experience. There was no way he could obediently stay in school and do nothing but study. If he did not find some way to make money, this chance at "rebirth" would be far too wasted!

Over the past two days, Wang Ye had already come up with a money-making plan. Buying the phone was the first step.

Carrying the phone, he hurried back to the dormitory. The moment he entered the lobby, he ran into Nalan Yaqi.

Wang Ye was bundled up tightly because he had gone out to buy something. Inside the dormitory, however, it was quite warm, and Nalan Yaqi was dressed rather lightly!

She wore a pale pink spaghetti-strap dress, exposing her long neck and slender shoulders. If Liu Xiaojie saw her, he would definitely blush at once...

Nalan Yaqi had just come out of the convenience store, carrying a large bag of chips. When she spotted Wang Ye, her eyes lit up.

She looked him over from head to toe, then said with a smile, "Oh, Wang Ye, is that padded coat a family heirloom? It looks like it has quite a few years on it."

Although Wang Ye's down jacket was indeed a little worn, Nalan Yaqi was exaggerating wildly.

Clearly, she was still holding a grudge because Wang Ye had barely acknowledged her over the past couple of days, and she was deliberately picking a fight.

But Wang Ye was not angry in the slightest. Tugging at his down jacket, he answered with a smile, "This is a branded item—Yaya. My dad bought it for me as a reward when I got into the best high school in the county."

Nalan Yaqi looked blank. Clearly, she had never heard of "Yaya."

Still, she understood one thing: this shabby coat had already been bought three years ago...

From that detail alone, she could tell that Wang Ye's family was not particularly well-off.

Otherwise, they would not have been reluctant to throw away clothes he had worn for years.

Yet Wang Ye's open attitude, his complete lack of embarrassment about his family's circumstances, made her rather admire him.

It did not matter if one's family was poor. Every family had been poor at some point—except hers, of course...

As long as someone worked hard and strove to improve, they could still rise to great heights in the future.

She no longer dwelled on what brand the coat was. Her gaze fell on the small bag in Wang Ye's hand. It was transparent, and the Nokia phone box inside was clearly visible.

"So, you bought a phone?" she asked.

Wang Ye nodded.

"Give me your number," Nalan Yaqi said bluntly.

As she spoke, she pulled a small, exquisite ivory-white phone from her pocket.

It was a Samsung A288, one of the hottest phones of 2001!

It had a flip design, dual screens, and the small outer screen was blue!

This phone was not cheap. It could buy at least two of Wang Ye's phones.

Wang Ye certainly was not going to become a simp around this girl, but he could not say he disliked her either.

After all, she was a youthful, pretty girl who had not done anything bad. If he disliked her for that, the problem would be with him...

After thinking for a moment, Wang Ye realized he had not memorized the number he had just gotten.

With an apologetic smile, he took out his phone and said, "I just got this number, so I haven't memorized it. What's your number? I'll call you."

"Okay, my number is 796..." Nalan Yaqi recited a string of digits, and Wang Ye dialed as he listened.

Soon, the pleasant polyphonic ringtone of the Samsung A288 began to ring. Nalan Yaqi hung up, tapped a few times, and added Wang Ye's number to her contacts.

"All right, bye. I'll come find you to hang out sometime..." Nalan Yaqi waved at Wang Ye, then left carrying her chips.

Wang Ye shook his head and went upstairs to his dorm room.

Song Xiaogang was busy preparing lunch in the dorm. When he saw Wang Ye, he said with a smile, "Brother Ye, eat with me at noon. I'm making two dishes, and the rice is already steaming."

When it came to cooking, Song Xiaogang was far better than Wang Ye.

His father was busy with work, so he had had to cook for himself from a young age.

Apparently, his uncle-in-law was a chef, and Song Xiaogang had studied under him for a while.

Wang Ye did not stand on ceremony. He nodded in agreement, then asked, "Hey, Xiaogang, where's that Chinese newspaper of yours? Let me take a look."

There were Chinese-language newspapers and magazines here too. The most famous was the Moscow Chinese Newspaper!

This newspaper published a new issue every day. Unlike newspapers back home, though, it was bound like a magazine rather than printed in the large broadsheet format common in China.

Its printing quality was also much worse, somewhat slapdash...

But in a foreign land, nobody could afford to be too picky. The paper was still very popular among Chinese people.

It carried important news from China and Moscow, as well as plenty of advertisements—selling goods, recruiting workers, seeking jobs, and so on.

Many international students used this paper to find part-time work.

In Moscow, there was an enormous wholesale market. Because it was near Izmailovo Metro Station, many Chinese people called it One Ant Market.

It was considered the largest international trade wholesale market in all of Eastern Europe.

Many Chinese manufacturers had stalls there, shipping clothing, shoes, luggage, accessories, and other goods from China, then wholesaling them through this massive market to customers in Russia and many other Eastern European countries.

This market alone was said to have one hundred thousand Chinese merchants!

Perhaps one hundred thousand was an exaggeration, but there really were a great many Chinese merchants there. More than half the market was Chinese!

If Chinese international students wanted part-time jobs, they generally came here to work as translators for those wholesalers.

Naturally, Wang Ye had not asked Song Xiaogang for the newspaper because he wanted to apply for a translator's job.

His Russian was certainly good enough for translation work, but he had already outgrown the meager pay translators earned.

Wang Ye had another grand plan—one that could make him a fortune!

It was just that he could not remember the phone number of the key person in that plan, so he needed to find it through this newspaper...