After showering and blow-drying her hair, Liu Chen walked out of the bathroom to find her mother still on the phone in the living room.
"Old Zhang, really, come to my shop tomorrow afternoon at six. I've got new arrivals, definitely new varieties. They're good for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, convenient and delicious. Truly, when you come tomorrow, I'll teach you how to make them."
With the same pitch, Liu Fang had spoken to three different people in less than five minutes.
She had even used her own aunt's name?
Liu Chen was speechless. Her mother was still the same. Once she found an opportunity she deemed good, she would rope in all the sisters in the family. Of course, her younger aunt had likely been kicked out of the sisters' circle by now.
After finishing her round of calls, seeing her daughter, dressed in a pink camisole nightgown, sit beside her, Liu Fang urged her to sleep.
Both mother and daughter slept soundly.
Waking up past three in the morning on the third day, Liu Chen was awake even before the alarm clock rang.
Just like last night, the entrance to the apartment building was pitch black. Most residential areas in the early 2000s didn't have proper property management. Having a security guard and a few cleaners was already good enough. After all, the cleaning fee per square meter was only twenty cents, so what more could one expect?
Getting into their old BYD F2, Liu Chen buckled her seatbelt and began to catch up on sleep.
After waking up, she carried a bag to the shop. Mother and daughter together unlocked the lids of the freezers, removed the lids, and took off the blankets covering them.
Liu Fang, as usual, first wiped down the freezers with a dry cloth after opening.
"Little girl, still four crates of cabbage and two crates of celery."
Upon hearing this voice, Liu Chen looked up abruptly and saw the aunt she had sold dumplings to the first time she activated her system. A big smile spread across her face.
"Good morning, Sister!"
Zhou Ying, who had guarded the dumpling stall all night and was exhausted from coming to restock, saw this young girl, about the same age as her daughter, looking at her with a smile as bright as the sun. She felt that coming to restock after a whole night of work wasn't so unbearable anymore.
Liu Fang was also pleasantly surprised to see this sister. Buying six crates of dumplings at once wasn't a big deal. After all, although their shop was small, it was still a wholesale market. But selling out six crates of dumplings in two days, meaning selling sixty jin a day, was already very good sales.
And wholesale was all about small profits and quick turnover. A stable customer with good sales was every boss's favorite.
Liu Chen, following the same prices as last time, presented the invoice with both hands. After receiving the cash, she made change.
After the aunt left with her small cart, Liu Chen sat back on the chair and asked Liu Fang, "Mom, why didn't you promote the scallion pancakes to that aunt just now?"
After all, Liu Chen knew about her mother's ambition to promote scallion pancakes. Liu Fang had even arranged to have dinner with someone from a scallion pancake manufacturer the next day, wanting to become the exclusive agent for that brand.
Of course, this had nothing to do with Liu Chen, who had tutoring until six-thirty in the evening. Comrade Liu Fang's primary focus was on her studies, and other things would be considered if there was time left.
Liu Fang sat on the chair, detangling and re-combing Liu Chen's hair, and explained, "When you promote products to customers, you also need to consider whether they need them. Look at that customer, she comes every day past three in the morning, and she looks quite tired. She's probably just finished her business and is coming to restock. Although I think scallion pancakes are delicious, I think they're not as filling as dumplings for a late-night snack, and they don't cook as quickly as dumplings."
Liu Chen recalled that in her previous life, when she promoted products for manufacturers, she would first assess the market and see which product lines could match. She wouldn't promote hot pot ingredients to someone selling lamb for stir-fry; that would be doing a good deed, not showing sincerity.
However, she hadn't expected her mother to be able to judge whether a customer needed a certain product based on just two meetings. Thinking about it this way, it was truly a pity that her mother hadn't continued to be a business owner in her past life.
Having her doubts cleared, Liu Chen took out her English vocabulary list from the bag under the table and began memorizing words.
Liu Fang tilted her head to admire the pigtails she had just tied and then asked, "By the way, you went to inquire about the tutoring class yesterday. How much is it, and how many subjects did you sign up for?"
"I signed up for three. One class is at one in the afternoon, another at three-thirty in the afternoon, and one is at five-fifty in the evening. Each class is eight hundred. Because I signed up for three at once, I won some kind of prize and got a discount. It's only two thousand." Liu Chen blurted out the prepared answer without a hint of guilt.
Liu Fang frowned slightly at the times, but she also knew that tutoring classes usually had dozens of people together, and the class times were likely spaced out like that.
"Then after lunch, put the two thousand yuan in your pocket carefully. Never mind, take a taxi then. Go straight upstairs and pay the tuition, understand?"
"Understood, Mom."
Seeing her daughter, who usually didn't talk much and often zoned out during studies, diligently memorizing words, Liu Fang felt the two thousand yuan was well spent.
Meanwhile, Sister Chen, who sold frozen pork offal across the street, watched the young girl sitting behind the table appearing to memorize words. She couldn't help but curl her lips and went to the table of the boss of the neighboring frozen beef offal shop, muttering:
"Look at Sister Liu's daughter. What's the point of pretending to memorize words in the shop so early in the morning? Anyone who sees her would think she's going to Tsinghua! Everyone knows her daughter only got less than five hundred in her last final exam. I bet she'll have a hard time getting into even a second-tier university!"
The beef offal boss's wife couldn't help but roll her eyes at this.
"At least she has a good attitude towards learning! What are you always staring at other people's daughters for? You'd be better off focusing on your own daughter's studies. Didn't you say you were going to sign her up for some tutoring class..."
Liu Chen was unaware that her action of memorizing words was causing discussion. However, even if she knew, she wouldn't care. After all, this matter didn't harm anyone and was beneficial to herself. Why give it up because of a few irrelevant whispers?
Moreover, with the improvement in her memory, she would remember the items customers mentioned more clearly, avoiding the situation from yesterday where she sometimes forgot to record an item.
This way, selling goods would be more organized and smoother.
—
Zhang Lili fried dishes while thinking about her daughter's swollen eyes from crying yesterday, feeling heartbroken. It happened to be the old lady's birthday today, and she guessed the old lady would call over her elder daughter. She always cared about appearances, so it was perfect for her to come and have the old lady teach her a lesson and make her more obedient.
"Ow..."
Zhang Lili let go of the spatula, frowned, and placed her hand in front of her. She had been scalded by oil splattering from the wok. In just a few seconds, a not-so-small blister had already formed.
After treating it with iodine, Zhang Lili finally remembered the food in the wok.
She rushed into the kitchen to find that there was no food left in the wok, only a lump of charcoal. The entire kitchen was filled with the smell of burning.
After cleaning up, Zhang Lili had to give up her plan to go out for a hair appointment that afternoon.