As expected of a restaurant for the wealthy, the portions at this French restaurant were truly small and the prices truly high.
Su Zhiyi was just thinking about whether she could pack up the leftovers, but when she turned her head, she saw a young couple in their academy uniforms on a date at the same restaurant. By the time she noticed them, it was clear that the couple had already spotted her and Su Qinghuai; their gazes frequently landed on them as they whispered to each other. She couldn't hear what they were saying, but she was certain they were discussing her and Su Qinghuai.
Su Zhiyi didn't want to bother with her phone anymore, so she perfunctorily replied to Song Lian: "I'm going to focus on my meal now. Let's talk when I get home, okay?" Then she turned off her phone and placed it face down on the table.
When Su Zhiyi followed Su Qinghuai to pay the bill, seeing the five-digit total on the menu made her heart ache. She muttered to herself: "My salary has never even reached five digits..." So enviable, it made her green with envy.
Every employee of the Quick Time Travel Bureau is equipped with a system that serves only its designated host. Because the host's instance clearance rate was too low, System 030 also hadn't earned much salary, and was just as broke as Su Zhiyi. System 030 was silent for a moment, then chimed in: "My salary has never even reached four digits."
Before the mission was even half complete, Su Zhiyi had already begun daydreaming: "Do you think if I clear this world, how should I spend the million I get?" System 030's eyes lit up too: "Then I can get a lot of salary too. When I get my salary, I'll definitely upgrade the system first thing, so I can help the host in the next world!"
While the human and the system talked about how rich those people were, dreaming about when they themselves could transform into wealthy people. Su Qinghuai, the wealthy man they envied, didn't treat money like money at all. Without batting an eye, he was about to swipe the black card the Su family had given him to pay.
Su Zhiyi glanced at the two St. Desmond Academy students who were also approaching to pay, and immediately stopped her idle chat with the system. She snatched Su Qinghuai's black card from his hand, and when those two students saw her, she handed the card to the restaurant cashier: "Charge it, please." Her movements were so swift that her fingers inevitably brushed against Su Qinghuai's hand.
Su Qinghuai was clearly stunned, a subtle change in his expression that was hard to decipher. He gave Su Zhiyi a brief glance but didn't question her sudden move. Instead, he silently rubbed his thumb over the spot where Su Zhiyi's hand had touched. It seemed the gentle touch of the girl's fingers still lingered on his hand. He rubbed too hard, causing the skin to grow warm. And the corner of his usually tight lips lifted slightly, a subtle pleasure rising in his heart without his noticing.
The cashier respectfully took the black card with both hands, swiped it on the POS machine, and then returned it to Su Zhiyi with both hands. Su Zhiyi naturally took the black card from the cashier. Her attention wasn't on Su Qinghuai, so she naturally didn't notice how her slight action had stirred the innocent young man's heart, nor did she care about his youthful emotions. Her peripheral vision caught sight of the two students also coming to pay after their meal. Only after confirming that they had seen her swiping the black card did she secretly breathe a sigh of relief.
Maintaining her elegant and composed young lady demeanor, she tossed her bag to Su Qinghuai behind her, still holding the black card, and said lightly, "Let's go."
*
City A's slums. In the slums, there were many idle ruffians who roamed the streets all day without any proper work. Their daily activity was to harass the vendors on the streets or the residents living in the slums, demanding "protection fees" from them. They euphemistically called it collecting protection fees to protect everyone, but in reality, it was outright robbery. The slums were chaotic; those vendors and residents didn't dare to speak up and silently paid the protection fees.
Su Zhiyi also found the matter of "protection fees" in the slums strange. It had been three months since she was expelled from the Su family, and she had been living in the slums for three months, yet she had never been charged "protection fees" by these people. These people acted as if they had seen a ghost when they saw her. One second she would see those ruffians in the alley, and the next, they would spot her and turn away. Clearly she looked very rich, didn't she? Su Zhiyi couldn't understand what these people were thinking, but it was a good thing they didn't collect from her—she had no money to give them.
In a dim alley on one side of the street, two men who looked like they often collected protection fees in the slums were smoking and chatting jokingly. Su Zhiyi walked past the alley and caught their words. The man with spiky red hair, cigarette dangling from his mouth, said lazily, "Get some money to spend? Sure, where are you planning to get it?" The man with a yellow bowl cut rolled his eyes and said maliciously, "Let's just collect protection fees from the next person who passes by the alley." The two men acted on their words, rolling up their sleeves to collect fees from a passerby, but when they saw it was an elegant young lady with an air of nobility passing by the alley, the thought that had just arisen was immediately doused like cold water. "Damn, why her? Tsk, we must have chosen the wrong day to go out. Let's go, let's go, don't mess with her." The two men couldn't avoid Su Zhiyi fast enough; they turned and fled in a flash, disappearing into the alley.
Su Zhiyi glanced indifferently in the direction the two men had vanished. She had grown accustomed to these ruffians avoiding her.
She suddenly thought. She had only lived in the slums for three months, but Su Qinghuai had lived there for a full eighteen years. Had Su Qinghuai ever been charged protection fees by these people? She had asked the system about Su Qinghuai's background. Su Qinghuai had been switched at birth by the Wang family, who then abandoned him in the slums, leaving him to fend for himself. No one expected that the abandoned Su Qinghuai would be taken in by an old woman who made a living by picking trash. She worked hard to earn money to send him to school and raised him. Before being reclaimed by the Su family, Su Qinghuai had always lived in the slums. After the old woman passed away, he continued living there alone, relying entirely on scholarships and part-time jobs to support himself. If it weren't for Su Qinghuai being admitted to St. Desmond Academy as a special admit with the city's top score a year ago, catching the Su family's attention, they would never have realized that their own heir was a fake.
"You grew up in the slums, right? You know about 'protection fees,' don't you?" Su Zhiyi asked casually as if making small talk. "Were you ever charged 'protection fees'?" She even teased Su Qinghuai: "You look so gentle and weak, I don't think you could beat those men."
"I am not weak," Su Qinghuai said with a displeased frown. His first response was actually about her calling him weak.
"Mm-hmm," Su Zhiyi hummed perfunctorily. "Okay, okay, I know you're not weak." They had done things they should and shouldn't have, so of course she knew whether Su Qinghuai was weak or not.
Su Qinghuai's tightly furrowed brows relaxed a little. He took a deep breath and said, "I've never been charged protection fees by them. People in the slums all know that my foster mother was poor, barely able to make ends meet. They couldn't be bothered to collect protection fees from us."
Su Zhiyi said, "Aren't you rolling in scholarship money? Didn't they take your scholarships away?"
Su Qinghuai sighed helplessly. "Young Lady, as you know, there are people in City A who don't even know that such a backward and appalling slum exists. Similarly, the people in the slums only know that those outside the slums are all rich, but they know nothing about the outside world."
"Oh," Su Zhiyi said flatly. What Su Qinghuai said was correct. As someone who moved between high society and the lower class, Su Zhiyi couldn't agree more. People in the slums couldn't imagine the lives of the wealthy outside, and the wealthy outside couldn't imagine how the slum dwellers lived. They probably didn't even know that Su Qinghuai was studying in City A and receiving scholarships. They just assumed that Su Qinghuai, like his foster mother, made a living by picking trash.
Su Zhiyi and Su Qinghuai walked along the road in the slums. The slums of City A had a tranquility that the bustling districts never had. It wasn't uninhabited, but although people lived there, there was no vitality. The people living in the slums had become numb to their monotonous lives. Not a trace of a smile on their faces, hardly any emotional fluctuations. When they saw Su Zhiyi passing by in her exquisite and expensive attire, they would glance at her a few times but not show any envy, then continue with their own tasks. It was as if the sky pressing down on them was a heavy, dead gray. Oppressive and heavy, with every step, breathing in the murky, greasy air made it hard to breathe.
Su Zhiyi had gotten used to it. In the previous worlds she had visited, she had also lived in such places, so she adapted fairly well to this world.
She led Su Qinghuai to a dark and damp alley. At the end of the alley was a rundown residential building. The floor and walls were filthy, covered in dust and grease, and the soundproofing was poor; she could even hear a couple arguing upstairs. The building didn't even have lights, and the lighting was bad. She could only go upstairs by holding the handrail and feeling her way in the dark. Su Zhiyi's floor wasn't high; she lived on the third floor. She was the only one living on the third floor. When she first moved in, there had actually been two neighbors. One was a gambling addict, and the other was an alcoholic. But one of them struck it rich and moved out of the slums overnight, while the other got into a fight while drunk and was locked away. No one knows when he'll be released; probably not before she leaves this world. So on the third floor, she was the only resident.
She took out the key from her pocket, unlocked the iron door before her, entered, placed the key at the entrance, and took off her leather shoes. Su Zhiyi's rented room was very small and piled high with luxury jewelry and clothes, all brought from the Su family. She couldn't sell these luxury items; she needed them to maintain her facade of being rich. Moreover, the most ridiculous thing was that even if she picked out a luxury item to sell, she couldn't get the money. The system mechanism she was bound to, the "Pretend to Be Rich" system, completely disregarded her humanity and gave her no chance to exploit any loopholes. Her balance in this small world was fixed in double digits, couldn't exceed triple digits. Even if Su Qinghuai or Song Lian transferred a few thousand or tens of thousands to her, her balance would only stay at 99. Fortunately, she had these luxury items from the Su family, which allowed her to temporarily continue maintaining her rich persona on the surface.
Click. Su Qinghuai closed the door behind them. Su Zhiyi brushed aside the stray strands of hair by her ear, took her silk slip nightgown from the pile of luxury clothes, and headed toward the bathroom. "I'm going to take a shower. Sit anywhere you like, but don't touch my stuff."
"Mm." Su Zhiyi only gave Su Qinghuai that one instruction before closing the bathroom door. Soon, the sound of water trickling came from the bathroom.
Author's note:
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*This world is a fictional modern world; please don't mistake it for reality.