First Underling

Ruan Xiaozhu accompanied Wang Ye to the hotel lobby's coat check.

Wang Ye took out his down jacket, scarf, hat, and gloves and began putting them on.

Once he was dressed, Ruan Xiaozhu smiled and said, "You're a boss now, aren't you? You should really get a more presentable down jacket. The one you're wearing is just... too ugly. You were such a handsome young man, but once you put it on, you look like... like a scrap collector. Haha."

This was the second girl to look down on Wang Ye's shabby down jacket.

And indeed, the jacket had no style to speak of, making him look unusually bloated when he wore it...

Wang Ye had not cared much at first. One person saying it was one thing, but now that more than one person had pointed it out, it clearly was a problem.

They said clothes made the man, just as saddles made the horse. There was some truth to that.

If Wang Ye were already a billionaire boss, then wearing shabby clothes when he went out would only make people call him carefree and distinctive!

But the problem was, he wasn't...

He was in Moscow now, and he was planning to start something of his own, so it was necessary to "package" himself a little.

Don't think foreigners did not care about how they dressed. That was not the case—at least, not in Russia.

Even at school, one could observe the teachers and roughly tell their position and income from how they dressed.

There was no need to mention people like the principal. There was usually no chance to see them.

Whenever they occasionally appeared at school, they were surrounded by attendants, picked up and dropped off by car, and carried themselves with great pomp.

As for the vice principals, they were no less impressive.

Wang Ye had visited a vice principal's office once. He had needed to make an appointment in advance with the vice principal's beautiful female secretary. The office was practically a large suite, at least one or two hundred square meters!

As for the vice principal himself, he was refined, cultured, and easygoing—obviously a highly educated man...

People with real authority, such as department heads and directors of the foreign affairs office, all wore crisp suits, and fur coats were essential as well.

Professors also paid more attention to their image. They wore suits and ties, doing their best to look presentable. Even if their suits were old-fashioned, they were still neatly pressed!

Ordinary teachers dressed far more shabbily. That was because their income was only enough to cover daily life, leaving them no spare money to buy clothes...

Wang Ye nodded and said with a smile, "Yeah, this jacket is indeed a little old. I'll buy a new one in a couple of days."

Ruan Xiaozhu nodded in satisfaction and added, "You don't need to buy some big brand. That would be too wasteful. How about I take you shopping this weekend? I know a few decent malls. The prices aren't too high, and the styles and quality are acceptable."

Wang Ye did not refuse her kindness and readily nodded.

It was too cold outside, so Ruan Xiaozhu saw Wang Ye to the hotel entrance, where they waved goodbye.

He spent another hundred rubles on a taxi back to the school dormitory. It was already around ten at night.

In the dorm, Little Black and Song Xiaogang were still awake. Each sat at a desk with his head bent over his studies.

For preparatory students like them, the workload was still quite heavy.

After all, the preparatory program only lasted one year. It was obviously unrealistic to raise their Russian to the level of Russian university students within that single year.

But at the very least, once they entered their first year, they had to be able to understand the lectures...

By comparison, Wang Ye had it much easier. He was like someone with cheats enabled—his Russian was far ahead of everyone else's!

After all, he had studied, worked, and used Russian for more than twenty years in his previous life. It would have been strange if his proficiency were poor!

When Song Xiaogang saw Wang Ye push the door open and enter, he quickly stood up and said with a smile, "Brother Ye, you're back. I thought you weren't coming back tonight."

As Wang Ye took off his down jacket and hung it in the wardrobe, he replied with a smile, "If I didn't come back, was I supposed to sleep on the street? I don't want to end up like those drunkards, freezing to death on the roadside."

He was not joking. In Russia, quite a few people froze to death on the streets every winter after drinking too much!

Such incidents did not even count as news anymore, because they were so common...

After drinking a cup of hot water and warming up, Wang Ye took out his wallet and began tallying up what he had made over the past few days.

It was only a small-time operation, so he had not kept any accounts. Whenever someone wanted a card, he delivered it, then put the payment into his wallet.

As long as he did not lose the wallet, the money would be correct.

But now that most of the cards had been sold, he needed to count everything up and prepare to contact Liu Jun for a second batch.

Wang Ye was certain that Ruan Xiaozhu would sell out her cards quickly. After all, there were far more Chinese students at Moscow University than at People's Friendship University.

On top of that, Ruan Xiaozhu was a local fixture there and knew many people. The cards Wang Ye provided were high-quality and cheap. There was no reason they would not sell.

The few cards Wang Ye had left might not even be enough for Ruan Xiaozhu's next order...

He counted the phone cards first. He had forty-two fifty-dollar cards left, along with ten hundred-dollar cards.

When he got the stock from Liu Jun, he had taken eighty fifty-dollar cards and thirty hundred-dollar cards.

That meant he had sold a total of thirty-eight fifty-dollar cards and twenty hundred-dollar cards.

The cards he had given Ruan Xiaozhu were sold at an 80% discount, bringing in sixteen hundred dollars.

The rest were sold retail at a 10% discount, bringing in a total of seventeen hundred and ten dollars.

That came to three thousand three hundred and ten dollars. After subtracting the five hundred dollars he had returned to Song Xiaogang, he had two thousand eight hundred left.

That still was not enough...

If he sold off all the remaining cards, he could probably bring in another twenty-five or twenty-six hundred dollars, depending on whether he sold them individually or wholesaled them to his cousin Ruan Xiaozhu.

Looking at it that way, once Wang Ye finished his first deal, he would make around one thousand dollars in net profit on his initial capital of forty-five hundred dollars—the other five hundred had been borrowed.

Not bad...

But to Wang Ye, who had returned from rebirth, this amount of money was truly beneath his notice.

Still, Wang Ye understood one thing: beginnings were always difficult.

His career had only just started, so he could not rush for success. He had to take the road one step at a time...

Song Xiaogang sat by his desk, but his mind was no longer on the book in front of him.

Watching Wang Ye count cards and money beside him affected him deeply.

Song Xiaogang did not feel envy or jealousy toward Wang Ye. All he felt was admiration!

Although they were the same age, and Song Xiaogang was even a few months older than Wang Ye, he now called him "Brother Ye"...

It was not just Song Xiaogang. All the students who had arrived in the same group now called him "Brother Ye."

Among northerners, "brother" and "sister" did not always refer to age. Sometimes, they were simply terms of respect!

They were all peers, but after arriving in Moscow, what Wang Ye had demonstrated was far beyond anything the rest of them could match...