Soul Returns to Hong Kong: From Tailor Shop to Richest Woman

At nine o'clock on Sunday morning, a black Mercedes-Benz drove into the alley below the Yu Fat Building in Sai Wan.

The car stopped next to the herbal tea shop, and the driver, wearing a white shirt, got out and walked to the entrance of Lin's Tailor Shop.

"Excuse me, is Miss Lin Ying here? Brother Hao sent me to pick her up."

Lin Lanying was bending down to operate the sewing machine when she heard the sound and quickly stopped pedaling: "Yes, yes."

The curtain to the inner room was lifted, and Lin Ying came out with her schoolbag on her back. She wasn't wearing her school uniform today; instead, she was wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and a dark blue knee-length skirt that Lin Lanying had personally tailored, and her black leather shoes were polished to a shine. Her schoolbag contained textbooks, as well as several pages of diagnostic test questions that Lin Ying had handwritten overnight.

Lin Lanying pulled a steamed bun from under the counter; it was wrapped tightly in oil paper and still steaming. She stuffed it into Lin Ying's hand. "Going to someone's house for tutoring is a job for money. Eat well. You've taken their tutoring fees, so you have to teach well enough to justify the money, understand?"

"I know, Mommy," Lin Ying nodded.

Lin Ying opened the car door and sat in the back seat of the Mercedes. The door closed, shutting out the humid heat and bustling sounds of the alley. With the air conditioning blowing, Lin Ying watched the street scene outside the window recede quickly. The further east they drove, the taller the buildings and the wider the streets became, until the car smoothly stopped in front of a high-end apartment building in Causeway Bay.

Ring the doorbell, the door opens.

The living room was very spacious, with a wool carpet on the floor, a Sony stereo system in the corner, and several comic books scattered on the coffee table. A Filipino maid in uniform was wiping down a mahogany wine cabinet with a rag.

"Good morning, Miss Lin," the Filipino maid greeted her in Cantonese with an accent.

"morning."

Lin Ying had just changed into slippers when she heard Su Zhihao cursing from the balcony.

"You old hag! Yesterday you told me that 30,000 yuan would be enough to film that killing scene, and today you're telling me the explosion props aren't enough and you need more money? Do you think my money grows on trees? I'm going to the set this afternoon, and if I can't get it right, I'll chop your director's chair in half!"

"Bang!" Su Zhihao slammed his mobile phone heavily on the table, took a deep breath, turned around and saw Lin Ying. His expression changed, and he forced a smile.

"Ah Ying's here. Sit down, make yourself at home." Su Zhihao pointed to the sofa. "It's the weekend, and Uncle's been home all day. You can give him a lesson without worry. If that brat misbehaves, just call me anytime."

Lin Ying didn't sit on the sofa; she put her schoolbag on the dining table and asked, "Second Uncle, where's Su Jun?"

"He's pretending to be dead in his room; I told him you were coming on Friday, and he almost ripped the roof off!" Su Zhihao yelled down the hallway. "Ah Jun! Get out here! If you dawdle any longer, I'll cut off your allowance for this month!"

The door at the end of the corridor clicked open. Su Jun, wearing slippers, reluctantly stepped out, a smirk on his face.

Su Jun glanced at Lin Ying, walked to the dining table, pulled out a chair, and sat down, his legs shaking restlessly.

Su Zhihao nodded in satisfaction: "I'm going to the study to look at the account books. You guys work on them here. Call me if you need anything."

Once Su Zhihao left, the living room became quiet.

Lin Ying unzipped her bag and took out a pencil and several handwritten worksheets. She voiced the question that had been nagging at her: "I've been in São Paulo for months now, and I've never run into you once, not even on my way to or from get out of class or to the playground."

Su Jun rolled his eyes, leaned back, and pouted, saying, "Big sister, you're in Class One! We're in Class Five!"

"Is there a difference?" Lin Ying asked.

"The difference is huge!" Su Jun slammed his hand on the table in annoyance. "Your Class One is the principal's darling, your classrooms are all on the second floor of the main building, the air conditioning is so strong it's freezing. We, the Class Five who just pay to coast through, are all thrown into the old buildings in the old wing! The fans are creaking and groaning. You stand in front during morning exercises, we stand at the back; our mealtimes are different too! Plus, you're always running off to computer classes and math olympiad classes, how are we supposed to run into you after school?"

After listening, Lin Ying understood a bit; prestigious private schools like St. Paul's have always had a clear hierarchy in resource allocation. Students with excellent grades receive better facilities and treatment, while those with poor grades, even if from wealthy families, can only stay in the old buildings.

"Got it." Lin Ying pushed the handwritten test paper over. "Where's your brother?"

"My brother? Su Cheng has been out playing video games with the neighbors for ages. He said tutoring is my life, and he won't go along with it." Su Jun curled his lips.

"Never mind him for now." Lin Ying tapped the test paper with her knuckles. "These are the diagnostic questions I did last night. They cover topics from second to fourth grade. You do them first, and I'll see just how bad your foundation is."

"You're so mean!" Su Jun glared.

"Write."

Su Jun had no choice; his father was in the study, so he could only pick up a pencil and start doing math problems. For the first ten minutes, he could still write with his head down; after twenty minutes, his legs began to shake incessantly; half an hour later, he threw down his pencil and leaned back in his chair.

"Have you finished writing?" Lin Ying took the test paper.

Lin Ying took the test paper and glanced at it, her brows furrowing slightly. She made many mistakes in the three-digit multiplication and division problems, left blanks in the word problems involving turning points, and reversed the positions of the numerator and denominator in the fraction comparison section.

Lin Ying put down the test paper and stared at Su Jun: "Your knowledge base is at most at the second semester of second grade. You haven't even scratched the surface of third-grade math."

Su Jun retorted, his neck stiff with arrogance, "I was just careless! I'm in fourth grade!"

"Carelessness in fourth grade is called miscalculating, but what you're doing is not even understanding the question," Lin Ying pointed out directly. "Alright, let's start from the logic of multiplication and division in second grade again."

Lin Ying took out a workbook, drew apples and baskets, and used simple diagrams to break down the inverse relationship of multiplication and division for him. For the first five minutes, Su Jun was nodding along. But after ten minutes, his attention began to wander.

Su Jun stared at the comic book on the coffee table, a pencil in his hand, drawing little figures on the edge of a draft paper, humming a martial arts drama theme song under his breath.

Lin Ying put down her pen.

This was her first client, and having earned the tutoring fee, she was determined to deliver results. Su Jun was her primary performance indicator. She couldn't afford to ruin her reputation over a young master with such poor academic background.

Lin Ying took a deep breath, said nothing, and shouted directly into the study.

"Uncle Su the Second!"

The study door was quickly pulled open. Su Zhihao strode out with a stern face: "What? This brat's being disobedient?"

Su Jun, who had just been drawing little figures, shuddered, and the pencil in his hand fell to the table with a "thud".

Lin Ying pointed to the test paper: "Second Uncle, he can't sit still; he'll be distracted for eight out of ten minutes of the lecture."

Su Zhihao frowned; he glanced around, walked to the coffee table, and casually picked up a smooth wooden back scratcher. He took the back scratcher back to the dining table and slammed the wooden board down next to Lin Ying.

"Ah Ying," Su Zhihao said gruffly, pointing at the back scratcher, "you take it!"

"You're the same age and classmates at school; it won't hurt if you hit him," Su Zhihao set the rules. "If he misbehaves, you can hit his palm! As long as you don't hit his head or face, you can hit him however you like!"

Su Jun's eyes widened: "Old Dou! She's my classmate! You want her to hit me with a paddle?!"

"You still have the nerve to call yourselves classmates? He's first in the grade, and you're at the bottom!" Su Zhihao didn't tolerate him at all, turning to the kitchen and shouting, "Maria! Get two big cardboard boxes!"

The Filipino maid quickly grabbed a cardboard box and ran out.

Su Zhihao pointed to the pile of comic books on the coffee table: "Ah Jun, I'm telling you this now. If you dare to daydream even for a moment while Ah Ying is lecturing, I won't even need her to hit you. I'll have Maria pack all those messy comic books and posters in your room into boxes and sell them by weight as waste paper at a used bookstore!"

This statement hit Su Jun's weak point.

"No! Old Dou! Those are limited editions! They're out of print!" Su Jun pleaded urgently, clasping his hands together. "I'll listen! I'll listen, okay?! I promise I won't draw any more figurines!"

Su Zhihao snorted coldly and turned back to his study.

Lin Ying reached out and moved the back scratcher towards her hand: "Now, can you understand the inverse operation of multiplication?"

"Yes!" Su Jun gritted his teeth, sniffed, and picked up a pencil.

With Su Zhihao's promise and the warning about selling comics, Su Jun's math problem-solving efficiency increased significantly over the next hour.

With no way out, Su Jun began to focus. Lin Ying explained several multiplication and division conversion problems, and he followed the steps to write out the answers.

"That's all for this morning's classes." Lin Ying glanced at the clock on the wall, closed her book, and said, "Do twenty practice questions this afternoon."

Su Jun let out a long sigh of relief.

At lunchtime, the Filipino maid served the meal: stir-fried crab with ginger and scallions, steamed grouper, a platter of roasted pork, and a bowl of abalone and old chicken soup.

Su Zhihao came out of the study and sat down in the main seat, proactively ladling a bowl of soup for Lin Ying: "Aying, have some soup. That jerk must have really upset you this morning, right?"

"It's alright, they'll listen once the rules are explained." Lin Ying picked up her bowl and took a sip.

Su Jun sat to the side, shoveling rice into his mouth without even daring to lift his head.

Lin Ying put down her spoon and wiped her mouth with a tissue. She recalled the phone call she overheard Su Zhihao making when she entered the house that morning. She wanted to learn more about how various industries in Hong Kong operated in this day and age.

Lin Ying turned her head and looked at Su Zhihao, who was picking up crabs, and asked, "Second Uncle Su, are you still collecting protection money in Kowloon City?"

"Pfft!" Su Jun, who was drinking soup, sprayed it all over the tablecloth and coughed. The maid quickly brought over tissues to wipe it up.

The crab that Su Zhihao was holding fell back onto the plate with a "plop." He paused for two seconds, then burst out laughing.

"You little brat, you've got some nerve. Even your father wouldn't dare ask you something like that to my face."

Lin Ying's expression remained unchanged: "I asked seriously. This morning, when I heard you talking on the phone about the film set, the director, and extra money, you didn't seem like someone collecting debts on the street."

"I used to accept it." Su Zhihao's voice became somewhat deep. "That kind of money is not clean and it doesn't last long. Although I, Su Zhihao, haven't received much education, I know that I can't let my two sons wallow in the mud for the rest of their lives."

"So, I've been trying to clear my name recently and switch careers to making movies."

"Making a movie?" Lin Ying tapped her fingertip on the edge of the table.

"Yeah, the Hong Kong film market is booming right now; gangster and martial arts films, as long as they're made and shown in theaters, are money-printing machines." Su Zhihao scoffed. "But I only realized after I got in here that the waters of this industry are even muddier than those of Kowloon Walled City!"