Chapter 38: Let’s Give Him a Loser’s Song

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Chapter 38: Let’s Give Him a Loser’s Song

Xiaoling’s mind was still a little muddled, so she answered whatever Li Jingkun asked. Only after saying some things did she realize they might have sounded wrong. Wasn’t she basically telling him that houses here were not selling well?

Although he certainly seemed eager to buy, he had not paid a deposit or signed a contract yet!

Li Jingkun did not take it to heart. He knew sales here were average at the moment. What he knew even more clearly, however, was how the city and its housing prices would develop over the next seven or eight years.

In ordinary fourth- and fifth-tier cities, housing prices might rise to four or five thousand yuan at most. Liuchuan City, however, was different from other cities of the same rank. A few years later, large numbers of people from the surrounding towns would move to Liuchuan because of water pollution and other problems.

Liuchuan was one of the better-developed cities in the area, with better education as well. It had not only the city’s No. 1 High School, but also several excellent private middle and primary schools. Moreover, it had no polluting factories. As a result, its housing prices would eventually surpass those of some third-tier cities, with many properties selling for more than ten thousand yuan per square meter.

That was one of the reasons Li Jingkun wanted to buy a house as soon as he had the money.

He had neither the time nor the energy to spend one or two months searching. Besides, when something was practically guaranteed to make money, there was no need to deliberate for too long. If a property suited him, he could simply buy it. If he no longer liked it later, he could always purchase another.

After showing his family around, he had essentially made up his mind.

His family actually felt that everything was happening a little quickly. But Li Jingkun had not only mentioned buying a house for the first time that day, and his third novel was about to be published as well, so buying one would not drain their finances.

“Is the apartment opposite this one 702?” Li Jingkun asked.

“Yes. The layout is identical; only the orientation is slightly different,” Xiaoling replied.

“Let’s take a look at it too.”

“All right.”

The family followed her across the hall. Sure enough, the size and design were exactly the same, and the view was excellent as well.

“What do you think of this one?” Li Jingkun asked his parents.

“It’s fine. This one is pretty good too,” his mother said. She liked both apartments. As for which direction they faced, she did not really understand any of that.

“Why don’t we buy both?”

“What?”

His suggestion startled everyone again.

Was he joking?

Did he really think he was buying vegetables?

“No. Just because we have a little money doesn’t mean we should spend it recklessly,” his mother said firmly.

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She had thought the apartment was expensive when she heard it cost nearly two hundred thousand yuan, and that the total would exceed three hundred thousand after renovation. She had urged Li Jingkun several times not to buy yet. The family already had a house, she had said. They could wait until prices came down.

But her son had his own ideas and refused to listen, so she had stopped trying to dissuade him. Buying two apartments at once, however, seemed absurd to her.

“It’s all right. We can pay for one in full and make a down payment on the other. We have enough money,” Li Jingkun said.

“There’s no need to buy so many all at once, is there? One is more than enough for us.”

“Property is cheap right now. The earlier we buy, the more we stand to gain. Besides, don’t you have two sons? Shouldn’t we have at least two homes for us to rely on? That way, my younger brother and I can each have one in the future.”

His words made both parents hesitate.

It did sound reasonable. Their family had two sons, and when they married, each would certainly need a house of his own.

Xiaoling, the sales agent standing nearby, was practically dumbfounded. To tell the truth, she did not even feel as though she had sold the apartment herself.

She had barely promoted the property, yet the client had decided to buy the very next day—and had suddenly decided to buy two apartments at once?

What kind of divine maneuver was this?

The rest of the reception felt like a dream to her. And she was not the only one who felt that way. Her colleagues and the store manager were all quite shocked.

The manager had been selling homes for many years and had encountered all sorts of unusual situations, but it was rare for someone to choose a property so quickly and buy two apartments at once.

After finally seeing Li Jingkun and his family off, her colleagues came over with complicated expressions to congratulate her. Her salary this month would probably be the highest of them all.

The person feeling the worst, naturally, was Chen Lei. He had been the one to receive Li Jingkun first.

Xiaoling felt a little embarrassed too, and for a while the two of them were awkward around each other.

But before the end of the workday, she no longer felt awkward.

Chen Lei had actually sought her out and asked whether she could give him a share of the commission from one of the apartments. After all, he claimed, Li Jingkun had been introduced to her by him.

“Heh.”

Xiaoling merely smiled, then left as soon as her shift ended.

What a delightful day. She had sold three apartments outright!

* * *

Buying a house was, of course, more troublesome than buying cabbage. That day, Li Jingkun’s family only paid the deposits and signed the contracts. There were still several procedures to complete afterward.

Even once the purchase was finalized, the apartments still needed to be renovated, and they would not be ready to move into for at least another two or three months.

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Li Jingkun left all of that to his parents. If any problems arose, they could discuss them after he returned home. After all, he still had to attend school during the day.

“Zhou Jiani has a boyfriend.”

One day, Wang Yajing sent Li Jingkun a message. He mentioned it to Song Hairong, only to discover that Song had known for quite some time—and was rather angry about it.

It turned out that Song Hairong had confessed his feelings to Zhou Jiani at the end of the previous semester. But she had told him that she only wanted to focus on her studies and was not interested in dating yet.

And yet, barely had their final year of high school begun before she had a boyfriend.

Li Jingkun was speechless, though he could understand.

What Zhou Jiani had really meant before was probably: I don’t want to date you.

“I only want to study hard” had merely been an excuse she gave other people.

Still, Song Hairong was rather pitiful. Li Jingkun had wanted to send him a song called “Cold, Cold,” but it was a duet for a man and a woman, with an old-fashioned style that did not fit the situation particularly well. In the end, he decided to give him a loser’s song, “The Empress,” as the Aurora Band’s next original song that semester.

In December, the first volume of his third novel, The Idle Mage, was published as scheduled. The initial print run was two hundred thousand copies, and his royalty rate had risen slightly, bringing him a little over five hundred thousand yuan in income.

At the New Year’s celebration, Huang Sisi performed a solo on the piano.

The Aurora Band once again performed two songs. The first was “The Remaining Summer,” and the second was “The Empress.”

“This next song is for a good friend of mine,” Li Jingkun said onstage. “He once liked a girl very much.”

The moment he said that, the audience began to hoot and cheer. After all, such topics were practically forbidden at school.

Li Jingkun had already asked the person in charge of the celebration for permission to say those words. Only after receiving approval from the school leaders had he brought it up onstage.

Besides, he was not saying very much, and he was one of the most famous students at Liuchuan No. 1 High School. The school leaders were always somewhat more lenient with him.

“But he never received the response he wanted. So I wrote this song for him—to offer a little comfort and encouragement, and to draw a not-quite-perfect ending to the final year of his high-school youth.”

His words sounded somewhat literary because many of the things he really wanted to say would not have been appropriate in that setting. So he kept them deliberately vague.

Those who knew the truth, however, understood perfectly well. Wang Yajing, Zhu Miaotong, and Song Hairong’s roommates were all laughing uncontrollably below the stage.

Thanks to Tel’s double monthly-ticket support, and to all the readers for your recommendation votes!

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