How Did The Young Lady Go Bankrupt? - Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Tsk

There were still several hours left before the end of the shift, and my colleague, Xiao Zhang, clearly had her head in the clouds. Every so often, she would check her watch, look up at the sky, and then lower her head to sigh.

“Tsk.”

When the eighteenth sigh within the last half-hour echoed from behind the counter, I cast a sidelong glance and clicked my tongue in disdain. There was no other reason for it, those continuous sighs were filling the small bubble tea shop with the nauseating stench of romantic infatuation.

According to her plan, Xiao Zhang was supposed to head to the station after her shift to meet the girlfriend she had been dating online for two months. Out of the twenty-three online dating prospects she’d had in the last two years, this was the only one willing to meet in person. As for the previous twenty-two, without exception, they either disappeared the moment they received red envelopes and gifts, or their true colors were revealed when they whipped out links to their own tea-selling schemes. For a time, Xiao Zhang even gained a reputation on a certain lesbian dating site, becoming a target of longing for all the “tea-selling sisters.”

Even a fool would be on guard in such a situation, yet Xiao Zhang remained unrepentant, facing every scammer with an honest heart and an even more honest wallet. She had greatly promoted the local economic development—her dedication even surpassing that of the Saintly Monk who fed his own flesh to the eagle. Her capacity to support one scammer per month was something I, Lu Zhiyao, had to admit I couldn’t match. But whenever Xiao Zhang became too immersed in her pink bubbles, my eyes would involuntarily roll upward by 65 degrees.

Being at work was already annoying enough.

“Sister Lu, you’ve been working so hard,” Xiao Zhang suddenly chirped, walking over with a beaming smile. She respectfully pulled a tea bag from her pocket, poured hot water, and presented it to me with the devotion of a eunuch encountering the Emperor.

I took a glance: it was the tea leaves the fifteenth ex-wife had sold to Xiao Zhang. It wasn’t exactly terrible, but it was nowhere near worth the price she’d paid.

I accepted the tea and took a light sip. “I appreciate the gesture, but even if you want to ask for time off, the pay will still be deducted.”

If it were someone else asking to see a girlfriend, half a day’s wages would be docked. But Xiao Zhang couldn’t afford that; losing that money meant losing the ability to order a comforting breakfast for her girlfriend. It was absolutely out of the question. Although I wasn’t the store manager, I had worked here the longest, had the most seniority, and was responsible for more things than the others. I wasn’t the boss’s lackey, and I was always too lazy to get entangled in unimportant matters. However, time-off requests weren’t under my jurisdiction anyway; Xiao Zhang had just been pinning her hopes on my influence. Seeing that I wouldn’t bend the rules, she knew there was no hope.

Thinking that it might rain later and she hadn’t brought an umbrella, she realized that if she rushed over after work, she might not only be late due to the heavy rain but also arrive drenched and disheveled. Xiao Zhang felt a surge of sorrow. She reflexively grabbed the tea she’d just poured for me and downed it in one go, sighing, “Heaven does not grant my wishes!”

I couldn’t be bothered with her. I lifted my eyelids, stood up from my chair, and went to take care of a new delivery order. Before heading to the back kitchen, I pointed at the empty tea cup and said to Xiao Zhang, “Fill that up for me again.”

Time ticked by, and Xiao Zhang paced around the shop. The heavy rain was threatening to pour, but she knew that worrying wouldn’t help, so she settled down. In any case, the meeting time was set for after her shift. As long as there was no urban flooding, she would have more than enough time to get there—at worst, she’d just take a cab and cut through the side streets.

Half an hour before the end of the shift, I suddenly spoke up.

“You’re not leaving yet?”

Xiao Zhang was startled, then immediately overjoyed. “Bu-but, it’s not time yet.”

“Who’s going to come buy bubble tea in this hellish weather? Only a fool wouldn’t leave.” I drooped my eyelids, slowly flipping through the advertising brochures on the bookshelf in the corner. “You’ve been pacing back and forth here; you’re probably topping the WeChat step leaderboard by now.”

Xiao Zhang gave a silly grin. Her words were still ambiguous, but her body had honestly shouldered her backpack. “Thanks, Sister Lu! If you ever need someone to cover a shift, just let me know. I’ll definitely help you out.”

“Begone.” I waved my hand.

“You got it!”

“Wait, hold on.”

“What is it?” Xiao Zhang turned back to see me still looking at the brochure, though my hand was pointing toward the corner of the shop.

“Take an umbrella. You don’t want the first time your girlfriend sees you to be while you’re in a hotel changing clothes, do you? Unless, of course, you planned that specifically—in which case, leave it.”

My sharp tongue—I just couldn’t break the habit of throwing in a jab with everything I said. The boss seemed to hire me precisely because of this mouth of mine; I don’t know what kind of bizarre taste he had. But Xiao Zhang had no energy to retaliate right now. She mumbled, “Then what about you?”

“Naturally, I’ll be taking a cab home.”

Without a need to fund scammers, I, Lu Zhiyao, didn’t need to be too frugal with my own salary.

Xiao Zhang pursed her lips, feeling a pang of warmth in her heart. It wasn’t because the other person was living more comfortably than she was, but because of the gesture. Everyone knew about my sharp tongue; we, the employees, were close, and we’d chat and tease each other when we were free. If there was ever an argument, I could scroll through my phone while simultaneously dismantling everyone’s points with sarcasm. There was no help for it, nobody could win an argument against me. Nobody knew why a graduate of a prestigious university like me was stuck in a run-down bubble tea shop. Logically, students from that university would look for tutoring jo, they wouldn’t look twice at a bubble tea job.

Everyone felt there was some hidden story, so nobody ever asked.

Xiao Zhang felt moved, though she didn’t say anything overly polite. She just secretly decided that she would definitely be a good lackey to Sister Lu from now on.

Not long after she left, the rain poured down. I looked out at it for a moment, then went back to flipping through the brochures. Flipping page after page, I wasn’t actually reading; I was just daydreaming, my thoughts drifting far away.

Unlike Xiao Zhang, who suffered a breakup once a month, I realized after careful thought that the last time I’d been in a relationship was back in high school. Back then, I was a naive and pure high school girl, my eyes shining like a little deer’s, filled with unrealistic hopes for the future—of course, if I told my current colleagues this, they wouldn’t believe a word of it.

I recalled my high school self and couldn’t help but feel a bit conceited.

My puppy love back then was extremely, extremely dramatic. It was just like the stereotypical lesbian tropes written by marketing accounts aiming for clicks: it was fierce, intense, and a matter of life and death. Love at first sight, secret crushes coming true, differences in status and age—every element that a soapy story should have was there. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

If any employee in this bubble tea shop knew that their “Sister Lu” had once almost gotten into a hair-pulling, slapping match with her girlfriend, their jaws would definitely hit the floor.

Why “almost”? Because after I slapped her, I ran away and didn’t let her slap me back.

Youth, after all. Looking back, the reasons for our arguments back then didn’t actually matter at all. The anger had long since dissipated with time, and as I thought of my “Ex-Wife Sister,” I felt a tiny prick of guilt. Even though she was the one who acted like an idiot first, I was the one who struck first, and I didn’t even let her hit me back.

A few years after graduating high school, I’d wanted to start a new relationship. After spending some time with a girl I’d met at a party, we’d both had the intention of getting to know each other better, but we’d gotten busy for a while, and it just fizzled out.

After drifting in thought for a while, I finally reached the end of my shift. I cleaned up, locked the shop, and headed home. The rain was still falling, though not as heavily as it had been at the start. In late autumn, such rain wasn’t common. The temperature had dropped sharply, and it was a bit cold.

I decided to make some hot soup to warm myself up; I’d just have some noodle soup for dinner.

Before I could even turn on the stove, I heard three knocks on the door.

It wasn’t the neighbor’s grandmother, who often came by to deliver her homemade pickles, nor was it the hurried knocking of a delivery driver. Having spent three years in the Student Union’s secretariat department, my sensitivity to knocking was no less than that of a Nascent Soul-stage cultivator. I immediately stood up and looked toward the door.

Judging by the sound, those three knocks weren’t too heavy or too light; they carried a very “official business” tone. The interval between each knock was slightly longer than usual, but the spacing was perfectly consistent. An image of a nitpicking, perfectionist person instantly appeared in my mind. It wasn’t that I was overthinking it—the Student Union had all sorts of oddballs.

And perhaps because I had just been reminiscing about my adolescence earlier that afternoon, why did I feel that this style was so similar to that beautiful but truly infuriating “Ex-Wife Sister” of mine?

“Who is it?” I asked aloud as I walked toward the door.

When I reached the door, I heard a response from outside, in an indifferent, lukewarm tone: “It’s me.”

I froze. Who is “me”? It wasn’t a very familiar voice; who could judge someone’s identity from a single word? Still, I could tell it was a woman outside, so opening the door probably wouldn’t hurt.

Even as I thought this, my heart began pounding as if it had anticipated something. When it came to the visitor outside, my mind seemed to have already arrived at an answer—an utterly absurd one, with a very low probability, but I couldn’t think of any other possibility.

I turned the door handle, and the door slowly creaked open. Even though I had considered this possibility beforehand, my drooping eyelids widened in surprise, and my mind went blank. I managed to swallow back an exclamation like “Oh my sweet mother,” but I couldn’t hold back the second half of the sentence:

“My Lady, why have you come?”

I regretted saying that the moment it left my lips. “My Lady” (Da Xiaojie) was a nickname I’d secretly given my Ex-Wife Sister back in high school; I had never said it out loud before. After all this time, my guard had dropped, and I’d actually blurted it out.

This nickname didn’t have any negative connotations; the reason was simple: she was truly “My Lady” in every sense of the word. Out of every ten people who secretly gave her a nickname, at least eight would surely call her “My Lady.” She wasn’t just a wealthy girl in name; her behavior was the definition of an heiress. She wasn’t an arrogant or overbearing second-generation brat, so the title wasn’t derogatory—it was quite neutral. It was a title inspired simply by her face, which always seemed to keep others at a distance. When she lifted her chin ever so slightly, her followers would want to shout, “Greetings, Milady!”

The person outside was the same as she had been years ago, yet she had matured significantly—both familiar and like a stranger. Her neck was always held perfectly straight, and she was tall, so she always looked down at people. Perhaps due to a lack of sunlight, her skin was deathly pale, and the dark blue veins on her hands were quite prominent. I knew that, according to plan, she had gone to study abroad in a northern, rainy, and humid country; she looked like a zombie that had crawled out of a medieval castle.

Ahem…although I’d describe her that way, I still had to admit that My Lady was very handsome.

My Lady was dragging a small suitcase. She had no umbrella and was clearly soaked from the rain. Her black hair was plastered against her skin, yet she didn’t look disheveled; if anything, it only made her look more pitiable. She combed her hair back with her hand, tucking the strands from her forehead behind her ears. A drop of water fell as she did so. As I watched, I felt it was exactly like a shampoo commercial shot by a famous actress on TV. The hair she lifted didn’t flatten; it held a small, perfect arc, looking like a meticulously styled, voluminous look. Her pale face, coupled with the water droplets falling every now and then, made it feel like the next second, an advertising slogan would float by: “X-Ting, you’re worth it.”

Upon hearing me call her “My Lady,” she didn’t show any strange or annoyed expression. Most of the time, this person was incredibly calm—even when we were arguing back then, she’d had that same look.

Right up until she got slapped.

Her lips moved slightly, and the jade mouth of My Lady finally issued a decree:

“I’m hungry.”

“Oh, come in first.” I instinctively stepped aside.

Even though I now held titles like “The Cheesy Bobo Mother Tiger” and “The Raw Coconut Latte Bear-like Mother-in-Law,” in high school, I had been a sycophant who even I found despicable today. Following orders was already ingrained in my bone marrow, and as I regained my senses, I felt annoyed.

But I couldn’t just kick her back out—and besides, I still owed her a slap.

“Tsk.”

In the end, that was all I could say.