The next day, he arrived at the Orchid Garden, the café he had been planning to invest, but gave it up to the Seafood Restaurant instead.
It was a typical café with a stylish, fancy environment. Most chairs were made of soft cushion that were meant to maximize comfort when customer sat down.
The air-conditioner was set at a temperature that was not too cold, but not too hot, and was refreshing to the skin.
On the walls hung some posters that wrote on inspiration quotes and other intriguing modernistic designs.
Si Chen walked over to the counter and asked the waiter to call her boss out, whilst stating his intentions for coming over.
The boss came a while later. She was a woman in her forties, and from the looks of it, she was quite the beauty when she was young, until age came down upon her.
He directly went to talk business with her, causing the woman to be pleasantly surprised. After all, she was indeed needing some cash to tide over their current circumstances.
Si Chen offered a $20000 for 80% of the ownership of the shop, and after a while of haggling and negotiation, the final deal became $25000 for 90%.
The boss, who goes by the name of Feng Ying, negotiated for more cash, while Si Chen haggled for more shares, until they reached an ultimatum.
He has to say the talks went up for a rather long period of time, and after exchanging contacts with each other, along with deciding on a date to sign the agreement, Si Chen left.
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Si Chen went back into the apartment, and checked his current balance.
In the beginning, he had $67500 in cash. He still had two deals that had yet to be confirmed, one with the OnShop website, and the other with the Orchid Garden café.
Thus, he had to deduct the investments he made from his current balance, which would amount to $45000 in total, $20000 for 80% of OnShop, and $25000 for 90% of Orchid Garden.
This leaves him with $22500. Of course, there is also the daily profits of the Seafood Restaurant and Hui Yuan Drink Store, which brings it up to around $28500 of usable cash.
The Sweet Strawberry Speciality was released to the public today, and Si Chen had not looked up on the response to this yet.
Regardless, he already had expected what this drink could bring.
School was about to begin, and he still had to deal with the matter of skipping 2 grades to the 18 year old class.
He wanted to call his teacher, but then awkwardly realized that he had forgotten his teacher's number. When he changed to a new phone, he had also changed his Sim and contact number.
No one really knew of him in school, since he had given up on studying when his brain encountered a problem, and either slept in class so that he could rest after a long day of part-time work, or he directly skipped classes.
Most of his teachers knew of his behaviour, but they weren't able to do anything about it. What could they possibly do? Call his parents and inform them about his lack of regard towards studying?"
Si Chen thought for a while, and in the end, he decided to just visit the Oakwood School. The school was open at this time, as the teachers were all busy preparing for the reopening of the school.
He figured that he should just visit the principal and request for a change in class.
With this in mind, he rummage through his wardrobe before he found an old school uniform embroidered with Oakwood School's label.
He wore it on with some difficulty, since his build had greatly changed from the past, and he was no longer that bone skinny youth.
Looking himself in the mirror, he felt that his attire looked rather comical, but the tightness of the uniform had accentuated his fit body and muscles.
He took a cab towards the Oakwood School, and reached the entrance of the school after a while. As he walked out of the cab towards the gate, there was a security guard who was positioned at the gate.
The security gate lifted his head up to look at Si Chen, and seeing his uniform, along with his youthful face, he waved his hands to allow him access.
Although the new school term had not been officially opened yet, students were still allowed to visit the school during this period of time, be it for their school projects, or to seek assistance from their teachers before official school re-opening.
Proper school attire was required for that though, which was the reason why he was wearing his old school uniform.
Striding inside, the school looked exactly as it was before. Oakwood Trees line the two sides in a neat manner, while on the main school building, the unique logo of the Oakwood School was majestically and proudly displayed to everyone.
Behind the main school building, were four other small school buildings, and were labelled by the four directions, North South East and West.
He directly went to the teacher's office, and told the assistant at the front desk that he wanted to meet the principal, and gave his name as well.
The assistant then transmitted the message to the principal, while telling him to patiently wait.
He sat down at the sofa placed at the sides of the office and did exactly that. The principal could be considered a fairly busy man, and he did not mind waiting for a while.
And while he was waiting, he called up Yang Deng to check up on the progress of the shop.
"Yang Deng, how is the customer's response to the 'Sweet Strawberry Speciality'? And how are the sales so far?" Si Chen cross his legs and carelessly placed his phone beside his right ear as he questioned.
"Boss Si, there has been many customers who had anticipated the release of this drink, and this matter had even slightly spread on social media. And after the drinks were released, the response was great throughout, although there were one of two customers who complained that the drink was too sweet. But other than that, the response was frighteningly positive throughout, and both our main and branch store are filled with customers!"
"Right now, we have barely went over our mid opening period, and our profits almost reached $1500! The hype that has been produced have driven the popularity and sales of our new drink by a huge percentage! I estimate that by the end of today, we will probably reach $3200 in profits." Yang Deng informed with an agitated tone that he had failed to suppress.
"Okay. Tell me if any anomalies occur, and inform me about the Northwest Drinks' response towards this." Si Chen digested the information and slightly nodded his head, as he instructed.