Strategy to Capture Men - Chapter 35-2

Han Yanyan got off at the entrance to Jinhao, thanked Yao Chen, returned his suit, and ran in hugging herself.

Due to having been the subject of a police raid, Jinhao was closed temporarily for the night. The staff hadn’t yet dispersed, and when the supervisor saw her, he pulled her aside to blather on.

“I just went in to deliver wine and got caught up in it,” she told him.

She changed her clothes, took her bag, and took a taxi home. When  it was time to pay the fare, she opened her wallet to find only a few thin bills within. The wallet wasn’t branded either, but made out of the sort of artificial leather an ordinary student would use, the sort of cheap goods that could be found at the market.

She had gone from extravagance to frugality. From Eldest Miss Han, who owned millions in assets, she had suddenly fallen to a waitress at a nightclub. The drop was so large that it made her a little uncomfortable.

When she got to her door, she took out the key and unlocked it, then nearly tripped over the boxes sitting there in the dark. Someone else turned on the lights in the back room, and when the lights came on, she saw several large boxes sitting on the ground.

“You’re home?” came a boy’s voice, “Why weren’t you answering the phone?” A young man in pajamas stepped out from the back room.

He was handsome and fine featured. This was ‘Waitress Han Yanyan’s’ boyfriend. Han Yanyan had mentioned him to Yan Chen prior, but now the pre-downloaded information in her head kicked in and he became a real, three-dimensional person.

She felt around in her pocket, then remembered that she had forgotten to find her phone before leaving Room 812. “I lost my phone,” she answered. “Something happened at the place where I work, it was kind of a mess and I forgot to find it afterward.” She paused, then asked, “Are you all packed?”

“Mmhmm,” her boyfriend said. “Your mother called me because she couldn’t contact you.”

“What did she say?” Han Yanyan asked.

Her boyfriend hesitated. “She said that she needed money urgently.”

“Did you give her any?”

“No, since you told me not to. I told her that you would call her back once you got home.”

Han Yanyan nodded. “Got it.”

She put down her and hung up her coat.

Her boyfriend felt like something wasn’t quite right. This scenario had played out before. Every time Han Yanyan’s mother had tried to “borrow” money from him, she would be nervous, ashamed, sad and angry. But the Han Yanyan today wasn’t displaying any such emotions. She seemed extraordinarily calm, and very different from the past.

“What happened at work?” he asked.

“No idea. A group of policemen brought us to the station for questioning.”

“You too?” her boyfriend frowned.

“It wasn’t much,” she answered. “They just asked me a few questions, then let me go.”

This only made his frown more pronounced, but he let it go and said nothing more, only asking, “Won’t you call your mother back?”

Han Yanyan looked at the clock on the wall. “It’s too late. I’ll call her back tomorrow. I’m going to go take a bath.”

Her boyfriend stayed alone in the narrow hall, gazing at the packed boxes, for quite some time.

After taking a shower and blow-drying her hair, Han Yanyan went to bed. Her boyfriend was already there, lying with his back to her. When she got into bed, their bodies touched. Though he didn’t move, she knew from his breathing that he was not asleep.

“What time do you have to be up tomorrow?” she asked. “I’ll set the alarm for you.”

The boy wriggled over, turned, and hugged her, burying his face in her neck.

He had received a letter of acceptance from a foreign university, and had already got his visa. He would fly out in two weeks, and planned to spend the last two weeks at home with his parents. All his things were already packed. Tomorrow, he would leave.

Han Yanyan stroked his back gently while combing through the information in her mind.

“Waitress Han Yanyan” was a junior in university, and in her family she had both her parents and a younger brother several years younger. They had originally been a normal working-class family; her father was a white-collar worker, and her mother had retired a few years ago to become a housewife. Because they lived in a small city, the cost of living was low and they had never wanted for food or clothing.

But who would have thought? When her younger brother was still in high school, he had been lured online into selling a kidney in order to purchase a new phone.

Although theoretically one could live on only one kidney, as the old saying said ‘it never rains but it pours’. Something went wrong with her brother’s only kidney, and now he was on dialysis for the rest of his life. Insurance would only partly cover the cost, so every month, the family had to pay several thousand to keep him on dialysis. Her younger brother hadn’t liked studying, so he had simply dropped out of school and was staying at home.

In addition to paying for his treatment, their parents were also supplementing him with other medicines. Ever since then, not only had she stopped receiving tuition and living expenses, but they had even asked her to go out and work to send money home.

And not only that, but when they found out that she had a boyfriend, they had even borrowed money from him several times. Not knowing the situation at first, he had lent them the money, but when he later noticed that something was strange, he had informed Han Yanyan.

Ashamed and angry, she had reimbursed him out of her own pocket.

He was a handsome, gentle young man. For ‘Waitress Han Yanyan’, he was likely the best thing that had happened to her in her young life, and now he was going to study abroad in a foreign country.

Though they had agreed upon a peaceful breakup, deep down in her heart ‘Waitress Han Yanyan’ didn’t want him to go.

But Han Yanyan herself was fine with it.

The boy was just a young man who hadn’t yet become independent, and his family was just another ordinary middle-class family. They simply wouldn’t be able to handle the fire pit that was the Han family. In Han Yanyan’s opinion as a neutral third party, a peaceful breakup was the best ending that these two could hope for.

What really struck her speechless was that “Waitress Han Yanyan” was an absolute carbon copy of Bai Yue from the last world. Both of them came from patriarchal families leeching off of their daughters’ with this “Han Yanyan” in a worse spot, even. The biggest thing that the she had in common with Bai Yue was that they were both soft, malleable steamed buns, trapped by kinship and family.

But this “Han Yanyan” was a little better than Bai Yue. She wasn’t expecting anyone to save her. Instead, she bowed her head and gritted her teeth, working several jobs at an early age to support herself.

But that alone wasn’t enough. Even if you could endure, bear hardships and take on hard work, if you didn’t have the mental fortitude to cut yourself off, you would never be rid of this fate.

As she was internally sighing such thoughts, the boy propped himself up on an elbow, kissed her face, and then her lips.