After signing the contract, Liu Fang still returned the five thousand yuan to her own Chenchen.
"Since it's money your aunt gave you, you should keep it well. It's not easy for your aunt to earn money as a girl. When your aunt gets married, I'll give more dowry."
After signing the contract, Liu Fang took Liu Chen to a store selling electric tricycles near the market after work.
An electric tricycle used for carrying goods, as the name suggests, has three wheels, a handle like an electric scooter, and acceleration by pulling the right handle inwards. The left hand uses the handbrake on the outer side of the handle to brake by squeezing inwards.
However, there is one difference: the tricycle also has a foot brake under the front seat, which is for the rear wheels. When the handbrake is too slow, stomp down hard on the foot brake to stop immediately.
Behind the front seat, there are three sides that can be opened downwards, forming a space for carrying goods.
At this moment, the owner was raising these three metal plates and fastening the buckles between the two plates. As he fastened them, the owner patted the plate closest to him.
"Look, the frame of my car is made of overall thickened steel pipes, the tires are specialized high-wear-resistant tires, and even the motor is a differential motor. It's completely different from those other ones!"
Liu Chen glanced at the electric tricycle in front of her. It looked exactly the same as the models from more than a decade later...
"We don't understand all that. Just tell us how much this car costs?" Liu Fang listened to a lot of technical jargon and felt confused. She finally got to the core of the matter regarding the tricycle: the price.
"Oh, you get what you pay for. You all know that my tricycle is different from others. It's a branded product, a load-bearing king! Just like BMWs among your cars!"
Liu Chen, who had come to buy the electric tricycle on an empty stomach, saw that the boss was still praising his tricycle's quality and wasn't readily stating the selling price. He simply turned and pulled his mother to walk outside.
This wasn't the only place selling electric tricycles nearby. They could go to another store about ten meters further away.
Moreover, even if the quality of the electric tricycle was praised to the heavens, its actual lifespan was at most three years. After three years, it would break down somewhere, requiring constant repairs, wasting time and money.
The boss had laid out a full preamble and was preparing to state a high price, then offer a discount to make friends, when he noticed his customers were almost out of his shop.
"Hey! Hey! Four thousand three hundred!"
Liu Chen slowed his steps slightly but continued walking towards the exit.
"Four thousand three hundred, and I'll give you a canopy for the front seat! No less than that!"
Liu Chen squeezed his mother's hand, indicating it was about time.
Liu Fang then stopped and turned to the boss, smiling apologetically:
"Oh, kids are just impatient. Can't hold them back."
What could the boss say? Could he say that he clearly saw you cooperating with your child to leave?
"Heh heh, kids are all the same. Come, come, pick a color, and once you've picked, I'll write up an order. I'll weld the canopy on tonight, fully charge the battery, and you can drive it away tomorrow."
As for getting a license plate?
In 2008, in C City, most of the two-wheeled electric scooters running around on the roads didn't even have license plates, let alone three-wheeled electric vehicles.
After paying for the tricycle, they walked out of the store and got into their used BYD. Halfway through, Liu Fang suddenly exclaimed.
"What's wrong? What's wrong?"
Liu Chen quickly sat up and looked around the car. He didn't see any scratches.
"We have the warehouse and the tricycle, but we've been so busy finding a warehouse that I forgot to hire people. We'll have to hire tomorrow, and I don't know if we can find someone by the end of the month."
"It should be fine, there are still five days left, right? That should be enough."
In the five days since returning from Beijing, Liu Chen hadn't accumulated any more lottery tickets. This was mainly because Guo Da had helped him front some money for the property transfer. Although he said he wasn't in a hurry to get it back, Liu Chen had still transferred the money he had earned from the lottery in the past few days yesterday.
After receiving the money, Guo Da sent several emoji packs and chatted for a while about the progress of looking for second-hand properties on QQ Space. He also mentioned that he had already received his first order through QQ Space, and the client would fly from Xinjiang next week to buy a house.
So, Liu Chen currently only had thirty lottery tickets in hand. Based on the system's past lottery probability, Liu Chen still wanted to save up more. The temporary sales assistant drawn previously had four weeks left before its expiration. He aimed to save enough lottery tickets during this period, combined with the sales of the ham sausages, to reach one thousand lottery tickets.
By then, he should draw a lottery ticket for a permanent increase in a sales assistant slot, as the probability was one in a thousand, wasn't it?
"Forget it, let's not talk about this now. School starts tomorrow. Are your things ready?"
Liu Fang asked casually while parallel parking, looking in the rearview mirror.
"They're ready. My aunt said she and Wang Dong will take me tomorrow. Mom, you can just focus on minding the store."
After parking, Liu Fang opened the driver's side door, got out, and asked curiously, "Wang Dong? Why are you calling him by his name directly? Weren't you calling him Brother Wang Dong before?"
"He said so himself. He's with my aunt. If I call him Brother Wang Dong, then he'll be a generation lower than my aunt."
"Cough, cough, alright then..."
***
The next morning, a little after nine o'clock, Liu Chen, with his backpack on, got into Wang Dong's car and sat in the back seat.
Fortunately, today he didn't go to the insane extent of picking her up first and then picking his aunt. After receiving the yogurt and bread handed to him from the back by his aunt, Liu Chen first replied to Zhuzhu's message on QQ.
'I've left home. My future uncle is driving me.'
The Twelfth Middle School where Liu Chen attended was also in the city, but it was closer to the Third Ring Road. The surrounding urban landscape had a slight rural charm, and there were scattered farmland not far from the school. It would take twenty minutes to get there from Liu Chen's home without traffic congestion. However, it was past nine o'clock, and the morning rush hour in C City hadn't ended yet, so they arrived at school almost at ten.
Hu Min and Wang Dong insisted on accompanying Liu Chen until he registered, paid his tuition fees, and was seated in the classroom before they left. Unable to refuse his aunt, Liu Chen finally relented.
Appearing in the classroom wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and blue shorts, the previously noisy classroom instantly quieted down, and then erupted into even louder cheers.
"Holy crap? Is that Liu Chen?"
"Right? The photo Mi Zhuzhu posted in the group a few days ago had this t-shirt, didn't it?"
"How did Liu Chen become so good-looking? He looks even better than Sun Mei, the school beauty who just started her second year of high school!"
"He's alright, I guess? I still think Sun Mei is prettier?"
While the boys in the classroom were gathered in clusters discussing who was better looking between the school beauty and Liu Chen, the girls in the class were all silent.
Before, because Hu Qian was good-looking, academically strong, and spoke gently, everyone had never doubted what she said. However, after seeing what Liu Chen posted in the group during the summer break, this group of girls secretly created a separate group chat.
They compared notes and realized that Hu Qian often spoke ill of Liu Chen intentionally or unintentionally. For a moment, in addition to pitying Liu Chen, they felt more anger at Hu Qian for using them as pawns. After all, if they pitied Liu Chen, wouldn't that make them the bad guys?
Liu Chen didn't pay much attention to the reactions of these classmates because...
In her memory, she couldn't even recall the names of these classmates from twelve years ago. They were almost like strangers.
However, she was curious about how Mi Zhuzhu, with her red curly hair, would enter the school.