This humble Taoist priest wants to take the college entrance exam.

Chapter 100 Shi'an, I'm Sorry, Sister (Long Chapter, Requesting Monthly Tickets)
"Wanyin, it's time to leave work, aren't you going?"

"It's okay, Sister Qin. I'll finish organizing the materials for next week's meeting first."

"Okay, I'll be going now. You'll be starting work officially next week, so do your best."

"Yes, thank you so much, Sister Qin, for guiding and teaching me all these days."

"We're all colleagues, no need to be polite, bye!"

"Bye~"

Li Wanyin withdrew her gaze from her workstation and relaxed her shoulders slightly.

This is her first week at work. These past few days have mainly been focused on training and learning. In the afternoon, Li Wanyin passed the new employee onboarding assessment quite smoothly. Starting next week, she will officially begin working.

Although she has only been working for a few days, Li Wanyin has grown very quickly, not only in her work skills but also in her mindset.

There were three new recruits in the same batch who were brought in for training, but after today, she is the only one left.

Despite the friendly demeanor of the administrative supervisor, Sister Qin, towards her now, Li Wanyin has deeply experienced the cruelty of the workplace. If she hadn't performed well enough, she would have been the one called in for a talk and advised to resign today.

As an administrative specialist, her daily work is numerous and varied. Although the training was supposed to last a week, she had already been "officially working" for the first two days.

Job duties include daily office maintenance, implementation and supervision of regulations, procurement and management of office supplies, organization, filing and safekeeping of documents and materials, receipt and dispatch of various emails and letters, reservation of meeting rooms and preparation of materials, employee training and team building, etc.

Fortunately, she passed the training assessment smoothly, but she can't relax yet, since the first month is still a probationary period. After passing the probationary period, she will be rated, which will determine whether she will receive a salary of 4,500 or 6,000 yuan after becoming a full-time employee.

Of course, Li Wanyin wanted to get a salary of 6,000 yuan. Although it was only 1,500 yuan less, the difference could actually be twice as much. Assuming a fixed monthly expense of 3,000 yuan, a salary of 4,500 yuan would only leave 1,500 yuan for her to spend freely, while a salary of 6,000 yuan would leave her with 3,000 yuan. The difference in quality of life and risk resistance between the two was more than twice as much.

Li Wanyin is clever, intelligent, and hardworking, which is the main reason why her supervisor, Sister Qin, was willing to keep her and train her.

However, Li Wanyin herself did not regard promotion and salary increase as her life goal. She worked hard and conscientiously, but it was only to get through this period of financial hardship, and to take the opportunity to save some money and accumulate some social experience.

Ultimately, what she wanted was to become her own boss in the future, no matter how big or small the business was. Li Wanyin knew very well that working for someone else would never make her rich, let alone buying a house in Yunqi or raising some kind of high school boy... Pshaw!
In short, she is still young, just graduated and entered the workforce, and has no background or resources. Taking things one step at a time is the best course of action.

If you don't have any experience or a realistic plan, and you empty your savings to start a business, it's no different from gambling and hoping to get rich overnight.

This current job is really great as a transitional phase in my life.

With a well-established company system and a clear organizational structure, Li Wanyin, working in administration, could gain a good understanding of how a company actually operates. This was a blind spot in her knowledge; what she learned in her professional courses was ultimately different from reality.

What satisfies working people the most is probably the 9-to-6 work hours and weekends off. Other departments may occasionally have overtime, but the administrative staff usually leave on time, which gives her a lot of time to do her own things.

Unlike schools where there's a bell to remind you when you're done working, people started leaving the office one after another after six o'clock.

After organizing the materials needed for next week's meeting, Li Wanyin left the company at 6:20 PM, carrying her bag.

After two or three days of rain, the sun finally came out today. It was still bright outside at around 6 p.m., and the sunset at the end of the road was brilliant and beautiful.

Stepping out of the office building, thinking about the two-day weekend holiday, she felt relaxed and happy.

Arrived at the bus stop.

There are many people during the evening rush hour.

Li Wanyin turned the bag she was carrying on her back around to the front and squeezed onto the bus with the crowd.

There were definitely no seats available, so she gripped the handrail, trying to avoid the crowds. As the bus moved forward, she watched the city street scene outside the window sway and bump.

Fortunately, her apartment wasn't far from her company. About twenty minutes later, the bus pulled into the station, and she squeezed off through the back door with the flow of people.

I took out my phone to check the time; it was almost seven o'clock, and the sky was getting dark.

The farmers' market is near the community, and there are also many fresh food chain stores like 'Jin Dama' at the entrance of the community.

However, Li Wanyin rarely buys groceries at these fresh food stores because they are much more expensive than at the wet market, and are only convenient.

Don't be fooled by the loudspeaker outside the store blaring "60% off all meat, 90% off vegetables." She knows perfectly well that prices are always inflated before being discounted. When she heard about the 60% off, she thought she'd snagged a bargain and rushed to buy some. Then she noticed the price tags were completely different from what she remembered at noon. She distinctly remembered it being 38 yuan per jin (500g) at noon, but by the afternoon, the price tag showed 52 yuan per jin for ribs! Can you believe it? Even after the discount, it was still more expensive than the market price! It's all a scam.

During the past few days at work, Li Wanyin has been eating fast food downstairs from the company for lunch, and then cooking noodles at home for dinner. That's all she needs.

After all, it's not easy to cook for one person. If I cook at home, I won't be able to eat until at least eight o'clock. It's better to just cook some noodles. At most, I'll occasionally go to the market to buy some meat and some lettuce that can be stored for a long time. I'll cut the meat and freeze it in the refrigerator. When I cook noodles, I'll put some meat and some vegetables in the refrigerator.

However, she didn't cook noodles tonight. Instead, she found a fast food restaurant near the neighborhood and ordered a 12-yuan meal.

In fast food restaurants like this, where most of the customers are men, many of the guys curiously glanced at the pretty girl who walked in.

The smell of smoke inside was strong, but fortunately there were some small folding tables set up at the entrance of the shop, so Li Wanyin ate at one of the small tables outside.

While eating, she took out her phone and looked at it.

I received a message on WeChat from a colleague.

[Wanyin, do you have any plans for the weekend? A few of my colleagues and I are planning to go hiking. Do you want to come along?]
She was a male colleague, and not even from her department. Perhaps because she was pretty, soon after joining the company group, several colleagues took the initiative to add her on WeChat and try to get closer to her.

His intentions couldn't be clearer.

Since they were in the same office, it wouldn't be right not to ask her through a friend. Li Wanyin actually disliked these people trying to get close to her with ulterior motives. After all, she only cared about making money. She came to work to earn money, not to find a boyfriend. She really had no interest in talking about feelings.

However, the other party hadn't said anything offensive, and being too forceful would seem unreasonable and arrogant. Therefore, Li Wanyin mostly just responded politely, hoping the other party would back down, but it didn't seem to be very effective.

[No, I have plans for the weekend. [Grinning face]]
[Do you want to come to karaoke tonight? We're colleagues, let's get to know each other better.]
Li Wanyin frowned, her mind racing, then her eyes lit up, and she replied: [I'm going to see a movie with my boyfriend, let's get together again next time! [laughing and crying emoji]]
Heaven knows how the other person reacted when they saw this message. This male colleague, who is usually talkative and eager to get close to her, only replied with an "OK" system emoji two minutes later.

This trick still works!

Li Wanyin's eyes darted around.

As a single woman, she had no boyfriend to speak of. To prevent such advances from getting close to her in the future, just saying it wasn't enough. After thinking for a moment, she opened her photo album, clicked on her favorites, and opened the photo of her and Chen Shi'an together by the river.

Looking at Chen Shi'an in the photo, and thinking about what she would do with it later, Li Wanyin blushed and her heart raced...

Shi'an, oh Shi'an... I'm so sorry! Please lend me your things! Please help me!

Although Chen Shi'an was only eighteen years old, she did not look young, nor did she look old. You could say she was eighteen or twenty-two, the same age as her.

The only thing to be careful about is his school uniform.

Fortunately, the fat guy leaning on Chen Shi'an's shoulder covered part of the blue collar of his school uniform, so there's a lot of room for cropping in this photo!
Li Wanyin stopped eating and carefully adjusted the cropped border of the picture, so that the bottom edge of the photo only reached Chen Shi'an's shoulder, just enough to cover the blue collar with Fei Mo. To outsiders, he would only be wearing a white shirt with a black cat perched on his shoulder.

The selfie was taken by Chen Shi'an with his phone, and Li Wanyin was naturally in the picture. She stood next to him by the railing, and there was nothing to crop out about her part.

Li Wanyin really likes this [901 family photo]. The two are close, the cat is cute, and the night view is beautiful.

She didn't post it on her WeChat Moments back then because she was afraid people would misunderstand, but things are different now.

Sending it directly definitely won't work. WeChat has a group function, which Li Wanyin didn't think was very useful before, but now she finds it really useful.

She put all the company colleagues she had added on WeChat in the past few days into one group.

Only then did he edit his WeChat Moments and post the photo of the two of them [visible only to colleagues].

Ugh! So embarrassing!!

After posting, Li Wanyin refreshed her WeChat Moments. The caption read: "[Not just today, but every spring, autumn, winter and summer to come, I will stand shoulder to shoulder with you]", followed by a group photo.

Looking at Chen Shi'an smiling in the photo, and reading the words she had written, Li Wanyin felt her cheeks burning.

She silently kept refreshing her WeChat Moments, engrossed in her meal, her mouth bulging with food...

A notification popped up on my WeChat Moments.

Li Wanyin put down her chopsticks and clicked to read it. It was sent by her supervisor, Sister Qin.

[Wanyin, is this your boyfriend? Your boyfriend is so handsome! You two are a perfect match! [Thumbs up]]
I even gave it a thumbs up.

Even though she knew it was a misunderstanding, and even though she knew Chen Shi'an was just a roommate, Li Wanyin still felt incredibly pleased when she saw such a comment.

A mix of guilt, shame, and sweetness filled Li Wanyin's heart; she had never felt such complex emotions before.

She looked at Sister Qin's comment over and over again, trying to see how much of it was genuine.

Even she herself couldn't understand why she cared so much about what others thought when it was just a post to fool people on social media...

In the past few days, Li Wanyin has added more than ten people from the company as WeChat friends, including both male and female colleagues.

Regardless of whether they had any romantic feelings for her, everyone who saw the post on WeChat Moments gave it a very polite like, praising her with comments like, "Your boyfriend is so handsome," "Your boyfriend has such a great presence," "You two are a perfect match," and "Your cat is so cute." Even the colleague who had just asked her out liked the post.

Li Wanyin had no idea how many times she had refreshed this post on WeChat Moments in those short ten minutes.

Having spent so many years online and posted so many updates on social media, she had never cared about a single post like this before.

Now it's too late to regret it, since it's already been posted...

Waaah... Shi'an, Shi'an, I'm so sorry!
Li Wanyin checked the groups in her WeChat Moments again to make sure that only her colleagues could see the post before she felt a little more at ease.

If her other friends or family, especially Chen Shi'an, found out, Li Wanyin felt she would definitely jump into the Xijiang River...

……

After finishing her fast food, Li Wanyin didn't rush home. Instead, she went for a stroll along the nearby Xijiang River.

That night, Chen Shi'an and I strolled around the area, and the Xijiang Riverbank was indeed a great place to set up a stall.

It was Friday evening, just past seven o'clock, and the area was already bustling with people. Everywhere you looked, there were stalls of all sizes. Some had already started operating early, while others were just setting up their stalls.

Chen Shi'an sets up a street stall for the experience, while Li Wanyin sets up a street stall to make money.

Therefore, some preliminary investigation and preparation work is definitely necessary.

"Boss, how much is your mung bean sweet soup?"

"Three dollars."

"Then give me one, please."

Li Wanyin continued her investigation while drinking the mung bean soup she had bought.

Her desire to make money is stronger than ever before.

When a person is fully engaged in something, their mind works very quickly, and their thinking becomes much clearer.

Originally, she planned to sell sweet soup here, but after some research, she found that the competition for selling sweet soup is fierce and the potential is limited.

Since the lighting along the Xijiang River was upgraded last year, there are now more than twice as many young people strolling here as middle-aged and elderly people. Young people rarely buy a sweet soup that is inconvenient to carry while taking a walk, but almost everyone has a milk tea in hand.

Some of the milk tea was bought from brand chain stores, while others were purchased from milk tea stalls; all were made on-site.

Li Wanyin knows how to make milk tea. It looks difficult, but it doesn't actually require much skill compared to making sugar water. However, the profit margin is much higher than that of sugar water.

There are also many milk tea stalls along the Xijiang River. After observing them, Li Wanyin found that the milk tea stalls with good business basically have their own characteristics, such as high-value cups and packaging, or the owner's tea-pulling skills. Even the worst stalls have a beautiful female owner or a handsome owner as their special features.

Since it's a street stall, the customers are constantly changing, unlike a fixed store where there are always regular customers. Of course, there are regular customers, but most of them are actually new customers coming and going. And with the taste uncertain, whoever has more unique features will be able to attract more new customers.

If I wanted to set up a milk tea stall, what would be the unique selling point of my stall?

Li Wanyin pondered for the moment and decided to jot down this point that needed attention.

The profit margin for selling milk tea is much higher than that for selling sweet soup, but the barriers to entry are also higher.

First, there's the equipment and tools, such as juicers, ice makers, sealing machines, hand-cranked tea barrels, insulated refrigerators, portable workbenches, etc. Then there are packaging supplies, which definitely need to be custom-made, at least with a simple logo printed on them, and the procurement of raw materials.

The most crucial element is her skill; Li Wanyin can make all the common bubble tea, fruit tea, and lemon tea series.

The year she graduated from high school, she worked a two-month summer job at a bubble tea shop. The staff turnover rate at bubble tea shops was very high, and the work was extremely hard. Unlike high-end coffee shops where there were baristas and waiters, the bubble tea shop was so crowded that there was no room to sit. The employees had to make bubble tea, cut fruit, prepare toppings, take orders, collect cash, pack, and clean. When the work was done, the wages were settled, and it was 3,500 yuan. The summer job only paid 2,800 yuan.

However, it was during that summer job that Li Wanyin learned the entire process of making milk tea. It was really not a technical skill; it was just about memorizing recipes, practicing the operation, and being able to stand for ten hours a day.

Working for someone else to make milk tea was exhausting, but Li Wanyin was eager to try selling milk tea at her own stall.

I need to find some time to refresh my skills.

Of course, it's unrealistic to set up a stall in the short term. First, she hasn't figured out the unique features and selling points of her milk tea stall, and second, she doesn't have enough money to even buy all the equipment.

Li Wanyin is a very proactive person. Even though there are many difficulties at present, once she has determined her idea, she will start planning.

As I walked along the Xijiang River, I unknowingly arrived at the spot where I had taken a photo with Chen Shi'an that night.

Li Wanyin took out her phone and looked at the photos.

The river breeze felt cool on her face, but she felt her ear tips burning. Several more messages popped up in her WeChat Moments, but she was too embarrassed to look at them and quickly put her phone away and went home.

……

After wandering around outside for a while, it was already past 8 p.m. when I got back to my neighborhood.

Li Wanyin walked up the stairs, took out her phone, and couldn't help but check the post she had just made on WeChat Moments.

As I was looking at my phone and taking out my keys to open the door, a burst of giggling laughter suddenly came from the stairs behind me.

"Wanyin—"

"You're done!"

Li Wanyin turned around and saw the two girls who had suddenly appeared like thugs, crouching in the shadows of the stairs. They were none other than her best friends, Wu Jiayun and Yan Yufei.

The shock on her face turned into surprise, and Li Wanyin was completely confused.

"Jiayun, Feifei? What are you two doing here!"

"A surprise inspection!!"

"You, Wanyin, so you really do live with the Baduanjin Junior High School student. If I hadn't seen your voice in the video he posted about making pine nut candy the other day, I really wouldn't have believed it!"

"Didn't you say you got off work at six? We waited at your house for over an hour after seven before you finally came back! Tell me! Did you go on a date with your little boy from high school?!"

As she spoke, the two girls pounced on her.

"Let me check your phone first!"

"ah--!"

Li Wanyin finally realized what was happening, her face flushed as she tightly covered her phone.

"Damn! This is definitely something! There's something on this phone!"

"No……"

Laughter filled the stairwell.

(End of this chapter)