Make a Fortune and Become Well-off [90] - Chapter 209

The mailbox at No. 1 High School was right by the school’s front gate. After finishing her writing, all Jiang Ning had to do was put the manuscript in an envelope and drop it into the green mailbox at the entrance.

Once Jiang Ning had settled into her rented house, she was focused on continuing her novel.

She still preferred the time slot from 6 to 8 in the morning, as it was relatively safer and the internet cafes were less crowded during that time.

Perhaps it was because of the popularity of the movie Young and Dangerous, Wucheng already had a large group of idle young people with no jobs. These youths spent their time loitering, dating, or stealing bicycles to sell. The atmosphere wasn’t great to begin with. With Young and Dangerous screening, they became enamored with the movie’s depictions of brotherhood, knife fights, and swaggering gang life. They began forming gangs and frequently getting into street fights, wielding knives.

For students in schools which had closed-off management, the change in the city’s atmosphere wasn’t very noticeable since they were confined to the school grounds. However, for someone like Jiang Ning, who hadn’t yet started school and needed to go to internet cafes daily to write, the difference was quite obvious.

Wucheng’s most volatile areas, besides the dance halls, underground casinos, and skating rinks, were the internet cafes.

Fortunately, the people who ran the internet cafes in Wucheng were young men with a bit of influence. They were among the first to profit from the booming internet cafe industry, which allowed them to gather a following of young thugs. With that kind of backing, most people didn’t dare cause trouble in their cafes, so things were relatively stable inside.

However, the alley Jiang Ning had to pass through to enter the internet cafe was another story. She could visibly see an increasing number of shady characters hanging around. There were people smoking, some urinating against the walls right in front of her, and young couples making out.

Whenever she saw these people, Jiang Ning made a point to keep her gaze straight ahead and not look at them. Still, she couldn’t help but notice their lingering stares as they eyed her.

Jiang Ning once saw a young man in the internet cafe with a steel pipe hidden in his clothing. The pipe was concealed in the inner pocket of his jacket, with a hole cut into the pocket so the pipe extended down to the hem of his coat. As he approached the table to start using the computer, the hem of his coat struck the edge, making a loud clang that pulled Jiang Ning’s attention away from her writing.

The guy was very young, with dyed yellow hair, probably around 17 or 18 years old. A faint fuzz of black hair had just started to grow above his upper lip. When he saw Jiang Ning looking over, he smiled a little sheepishly and nudged the steel pipe hidden in his coat. “There’s been so many fights lately that you can’t go out without bringing something like this,” he said with a grin. “But don’t worry, they don’t hit girls.”

Jiang Ning: … Thanks, but that’s not exactly comforting.

He glanced at Jiang Ning’s computer screen. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen her typing there. At first, he had been amazed by how fast she typed, and over time, he’d gotten used to seeing her in the cafe, mostly in the mornings. He usually spent the night at the cafe and would often be woken up by the sound of her rapid typing. After seeing her there a few times, he figured out her routine: she came to the cafe every Saturday and Sunday morning to type for two hours. Now, with the winter break, he had seen her for two consecutive days.

After a year of eating dishes like braised pork and stir-fried green peppers with dried tofu, Jiang Ning had clearly grown taller. She no longer looked like a scrawny child, but more like a budding young woman, with a more slender figure and some flesh on her cheeks.

Jiang Ning knew she was good-looking. To avoid trouble, she had purposely cut her growing hair into a thick, bowl-like style, with heavy bangs covering her eyebrows. Whenever she passed through that long, dark alley, she would wrap her face in a gray scarf and wear old, tattered clothes.

Even though she now had nicer clothes, she still wore the “new clothes” her mother gave her for the New Year. These “new clothes” helped her avoid a lot of unwanted attention.

In her family, everyone was tall. Her uncles were also tall, which explained why her mother was 167 cm. As for her cousins, the eldest and second cousin were both tall women, so the clothes they used to wear now fit Jiang Ning loosely.

She wore a down jacket underneath, and on top of that, she layered one of those oversized old cotton-padded jackets. With the gray scarf around her face, she could pass through the internet cafe unnoticed.

But her eyes were bright and deep, her lashes thick and long like raven feathers, her nose high-bridged, and her skin snow-white. No matter how much she covered herself, her bright, shining eyes were impossible to hide.

The young guy next to her, the one with the dyed yellow hair, was still talking, “Are you leaving soon? I can walk you back.”

Jiang Ning glanced at him and replied coldly, “No need.”

The guy quickly explained, “I don’t mean anything by it. It’s just that things are really chaotic out there right now. I’ll just walk you out of the alley and head back. I go to No. 4 High School,” he scratched his head sheepishly, “I’m guessing you go to a nearby school too? Girls from No. 1 High School and Wuzhong High School don’t usually come to the internet cafes, so you must be from No. 2 High School, right?”

No. 4 High School mainly consisted of art and sports students, so academics weren’t strictly enforced. Most of the students were local day scholars from Wucheng, with the worst being from the nearby towns. Interestingly, the wealthiest people in Wucheng weren’t in the city itself but concentrated in three surrounding towns. Each of these towns had a “Dam” in their names, so locals referred to them as the “Three Dams”. Over time, this nickname morphed into “Three Overlords”.

Since No. 4 High School didn’t have strict rules on weekends, he often stayed at the internet cafe all night playing games and surfing the web on Fridays and Saturdays. Although No. 2 High School focused more on academics, its management wasn’t as strict as No. 1 High School and Wuzhong High School. So, he assumed Jiang Ning must be from No. 2 High School.

This girl gave off a good student vibe, despite coming to the internet cafe. She definitely wasn’t from No. 1 or Wuzhong, leaving No. 2 as the only option.

It was clear she wasn’t from No. 4 either. Whether they studied music, art, or sports, all of those required a lot of money. Even though the students at No. 4 couldn’t compete academically with No. 1 or Wuzhong, they came from well-off families. A girl like Jiang Ning, dressed so plainly, couldn’t be from his school.

Jiang Ning just smiled at him and nodded, confirming, “You guessed right.”

He immediately scratched his head and flashed a grin, showing his big white teeth. “Hehe, I knew it!”

When Jiang Ning finished writing and closed all her tabs to log out, he quickly followed suit, shutting down his computer and rising to follow her. “Hey, wait up! I’ll walk you!” He walked alongside her and introduced himself, “I’m He Qiaosheng. What’s your name?” Without hesitation, he continued, “My dad’s surname is He, my mom’s is Qiao, and I was born to them, so they named me He Qiaosheng. Don’t you think my parents were a bit lazy with that name? By the way, you still haven’t told me your name!”