Chapter 43

Chapter 5: The store opening affair

"Our class is a mixed bag. Some of you used to attend City First Middle School, others came from No. 2 Middle School or No. 3 Middle School, and some transferred from even farther away." On the day military training ended, their homeroom teacher, Xiao Rihua, addressed them. "I don't care how impressive you were at your old schools or what scores you got on the high school entrance exam. To be honest, I haven't looked at the score sheet the school gave me. What I need is a fresh set of results. Starting tomorrow, we'll hold a round of exams lasting three days. These exams will determine your rankings in the class for the new term."

Everyone immediately started complaining. Their vacation had only just ended, and they had undergone a week of military training. They had been counting on relaxing during the three days off afterward, only for their homeroom teacher to deliberately turn that time into exams. A wild, unbroken defiance stirred in their hearts. They had barely caught their breath from the excitement of finishing military training, and now they had to go home for another little round of revision.

Although they were unhappy, competition within No. 1 High School was fierce. Besides, their rankings in the new class would depend on these results. No one wanted to rank behind someone else. Their personal reputations were at stake.

On the No. 8 bus, Su Can did not head straight home. Instead, he rode two stops farther and got off at Municipal Government Station, outside his family's new store.

A clean sign reading "Xiahai Cultural Supplies" hung above the storefront. Inside, a dazzling array of goods filled the store, with customers standing at every merchandise counter. Business was clearly good. His mother, Zeng Ke, handled payments, while his father answered the crowd's questions beside her. His eldest uncle, his aunt, and his older cousin Zeng Na sat on tall stools, chatting with Zeng Ke from time to time.

When she saw Su Can approach, his aunt answered his greeting with a warm smile.

His eldest uncle, Zeng Qu anming, deserved some credit for making this large storefront look fully stocked rather than sparse. After paying for a year's lease and the initial inventory, Zeng Ke had little money left. There was no way the goods she had bought could fill a store of some eighty square meters, so the shelving along most of the walls had looked empty. This would undoubtedly give the first customers the impression that the store had little stock and was not particularly professional.

If his mother wanted to establish herself on this street, the first impression she made on local customers would certainly matter a great deal. Zeng Qu anming had therefore personally lent her another hundred thousand yuan. Not only had this filled out the store's inventory, but the exterior and interior had also been remodeled to look more attractive and tasteful. With that, the whole interior had suddenly filled out.

His eldest uncle had already withdrawn his money from the stock market. With the broader market falling, he had no intention of jumping back in. Remembering Su Can's contribution, he had been willing to put a hundred thousand yuan into Zeng Ke's store. Even his aunt, Yin Shuying, had no objection.

In the month and a half since the store opened, daily sales before the renovation had been around three or four hundred yuan, rarely reaching five hundred. After the renovation, daily sales had reached anywhere from five hundred to six or seven hundred, occasionally even hitting eight hundred.

This would have been unimaginable to them before. His parents' fixed monthly salaries had each been around five or six hundred yuan. Who could have known that two days of sales at the store could equal their former combined monthly wages? The shock and impact this had on them were easy to imagine.

Of course, sales did not equal profit. Still, this experience alone had brought his parents' thinking and horizons to a new level. They had never looked at profits and losses from this perspective before, or even at the meaning of their hard work and lives.

His mother, Zeng Ke, gave Su Can five yuan and told him to buy two ice creams from the food store next door, including one for his older cousin. Su Can brought back two ice cream bricks and handed one to Zeng Na with a smile. She hesitated before taking it, then ate with a certain restraint.

Su Can paid her no further attention. Since there was still some time before the store closed for dinner, he opened the account book and went through it entry by entry.

The stationery store did not use a cash register at the counter. One of the most important reasons was that POS machines were expensive in this era, easily costing seven or eight thousand yuan, or even over ten thousand. That was rather too expensive for Su Can's family at this stage of starting a business anew. In Zeng Ke's view, buying more stock was better than buying a POS machine. Besides, every sale was recorded in the account book and totaled each day, so it was not that cumbersome.

He calculated the overall sales. At an average of five hundred yuan a day, monthly sales came to roughly fifteen thousand. After accounting for costs and calculating the profit, the store could currently earn around one to two thousand yuan a month. For his mother, Zeng Ke, that was already much better than drawing a fixed salary at her old workplace while worrying every day about being laid off.

When his eldest uncle treated them to dinner, Su Can was surprised to find Mei Lan and her husband, Jia Zheng, at the table too. The two kept toasting his uncle and saying flattering things to his parents, all revolving around one fact: they, too, intended to use the small storefront they had rented to open a cultural supplies store. Presumably, this was because they had seen how well his parents' store was doing.

In the future Su Can had lived through before his rebirth, Mei Lan and Jia Zheng had obstructed his family at every turn when they tried to open their little store. They had even demanded that his family sign an agreement forbidding them from operating the same kind of stationery store, until the two sides fell out openly and the dispute became bitter. It was only then that these two

people's true colors had been exposed.

Watching Jia Zheng now, constantly offering pleasing remarks, his crafty face turning this way and that as he adjusted to the situation, and tentatively proposing that they open a stationery store, was genuinely rather funny.

"I think opening a stationery store would be good for you, too. It would even feel a little like a family business," Su Can said. This rather surprised his frowning eldest uncle and his parents.

Mei Lan and Jia Zheng were naturally overjoyed. Their praise of Su Can's grades when they first sat down had merely been polite flattery. Their real purpose lay elsewhere, and they had not taken Su Can seriously, much less known what he had done over the vacation.

Yet these words from Su Can immediately gave the family pause, all because he had changed so much over the past few months. Even the family's authority figure, his eldest uncle Zeng Qu anming, now attached great importance to what he said. He knew that although his nephew was still a sixteen-year-old middle school student, there were times when even adults might not match his thinking.

Su Can had his reasons for agreeing to Mei Lan and Jia Zheng's plan. Having his parents run a stationery store had also drawn on their experience from his previous life. Ultimately, they had been the first to discover this market, and he had merely borrowed their idea. It would be too narrow-minded of him to shut them out because of that.

Besides, guiding was better than blocking. Now that Mei Lan and Jia Zheng had laid on a meal to seek everyone's opinions, they could still discuss things pleasantly at the table. If the couple set their minds on doing it, their disregard for family ties meant they would not care about his eldest uncle's standing either.

Mei Lan and Jia Zheng had not expected Su Can to voice his support. Riding that momentum, they found an opening and pushed his parents and eldest uncle into more or less agreeing as well.

When it came time to settle the bill after dinner, Jia Zheng said, "I'll pay. This is my treat!" He rummaged in his trouser pocket for a long while, then realized everyone present had taken him at his word. Unfortunately, having already made the gesture, he could hardly take it back, so he had no choice but to grit his teeth and pay.

After paying, he cast an unreadable glance at Su Can, thinking, I was worried that old fossil Zeng Qu anming would be unhappy, that he'd think I was jumping on the bandwagon and muscling in to compete. But your foolish boy Su Can brought it up himself, so you can't blame me. This meal wasn't money wasted. One day, I won't have to humble myself before you, Zeng Qu anming, let alone listen to your irritating nagging and lectures!

On the way back, his aunt Yin Shuying kept complaining that Su Can was a fool.

Through this series of events, they had already seen that Mei Lan and Jia Zheng said one thing to people's faces and did another behind their backs, and liked playing underhanded little tricks.

Over the matter of renting that small storefront, Jia Zheng had actually bypassed his aunt and contacted her superior beforehand. He had not expected that director to tell her the whole story, even saying that he looked down on petty people who took precautions against their own relatives. The decision was entirely in Yin Shuying's hands. His aunt had already been very unhappy with them today, but Su Can's intervention had left them without reasonable grounds to object, so they could only agree.

"You're usually such a clever boy. What got into you today?" Back home, his mother was also annoyed by the underhanded behavior his aunt had described and scolded Su Can.

"That older cousin of yours, Jia Zheng, is full of schemes. Your aunt and uncle were already unhappy with him. Why did you help them today?" His father, Su Licheng, could not hold back either. From Su Can's earlier behavior, he had realized that his son had grown up and become sensible. He had begun treating him more like a man, rarely criticizing him or interfering with his ideas and actions. Today, however, he had to speak up.

Su Can smiled at his parents. "According to the principles of urban economics, having the same kind of store open next door doesn't necessarily mean our business will be taken away. It can actually stimulate the market and bring greater returns. When our store grows bigger, plenty of people will envy us, and someone will open a store beside ours anyway. In that case, what harm is there in agreeing to their plan?"

Zeng Ke and Su Licheng stared blankly at Su Can. This was the first time they had encountered this theory. In the past, they would certainly have said, "What does a child like you know?" But now they both tacitly accepted it, though they still sighed. "Even so... well, Mei Lan and her husband..."

"I know what Mei Lan and Jia Zheng are like, too. But Dad, Mom, do you think simply refusing to allow it would stop them?" Seeing his parents fall into thought, with the answer clearly being no, Su Can continued, "Even if we turn them down, they'll never willingly settle for being beneath us. Plenty of storefront leases along that stretch of road are about to expire. They can find another place and compete against us just the same. Rather than that, we might as well let them stay in that little storefront next to ours. On the one hand, they'll help draw customers to the market here. On the other, we have more capital, a larger store, and greater competitiveness, so we can keep them firmly in check."

That was Su Can's thinking. Keeping them under control was better than letting Jia Zheng and his wife acquire funds after some time, find a large storefront, and create a situation where the two sides competed head-on.

Beneficial, reasonable competition could stimulate development, but vicious competition would lead to collapse.

Mei Lan and her husband were ambitious people. Rather than letting them grow strong, it was better to let them walk into this little trap themselves, restraining their development so they would struggle to become powerful competitors.

Besides, Su Can also knew that his family's store, the only one along this stretch with the greatest strength and a professional operation, would soon encounter an opportunity. With that opportunity, Mei Lan and her husband would find it difficult to amount to much or pose a threat.