The security guards at the Jiayi property management company worked on two shifts, each shift being twelve hours long and lasting from 7 o'clock to 7 o'clock.
Dinner was served in the canteen at 5:30 p.m.
If Liu Qing was on the day shift, he would not go to the canteen for dinner. Instead, he would return home to eat with Huo Zhenzhen. As he would pass by a market on his way back from work, he would do the grocery shopping as well.
This was because Huo Zhenzhen's company did not provide meals for the staff. She would eat out for lunch and she would have dinner together with Liu Qing when she got home at night.
If Liu Qing worked the day shift, he would cook after work.
If Liu Qing worked the night shift, he would sleep until 4:00 p.m. or 5:00 p.m. He would then get up to buy groceries and cook dinner. By the time he was done, Huo Zhenzhen would have returned from work and the two of them would have dinner together. After dinner, Huo Zhenzhen would rest at home and Liu Qing would go to work.
This time round, Liu Qing did not think about going back to cook and went straight to the canteen for dinner.
By the time he finished dinner, it was 6 o'clock.
Once the staff from the management office knocked off and the sentry post was no longer monitored, he sat in the security booth and played with his phone for almost an hour before he got off work.
For the entire period of time, Huo Zhenzhen did not send him a message or call him. She was probably waiting for him to take the initiative to apologize, after which she would throw a tantrum so that she could force Liu Qing to make an even bigger concession.
Of course Liu Qing did not take the initiative to call her.
When he got home from work, it was already 7:20 p.m. He opened the door and saw that Huo Zhenzhen was already back. She had switched on all the lights and was putting all her clothes into her suitcase. Her expression was cold as she carried on with what she was doing and she did not even turn to look at Liu Qing.
Liu Qing had already seen this scene many times. In the past, whenever he saw it, he would immediately give in. No matter whose fault it was, he would always apologize first.
Then it would be followed by a huge hole being burnt in his pocket.
This was how Liu Qing's savings for the past few years was emptied out time and time again.
This time, Liu Qing did not panic at all. As he watched her performance, he even wanted to laugh.
He had once been so obsessed with this woman.
If love was a religion, then Huo Zhenzhen was the god he worshiped and she was his only god.
He would sacrifice everything, even his own life, for this god.
But that was in the past.
Now, he was awake and free from that obsessive state.
It was just like when the once-fanatical religious believers accepted atheism. When they went back to look at the statues of their gods, they realized that those were just figures made of clay.
After seeing Huo Zhenzhen's true colors and with all his feelings for her gone, this woman no longer had any halo in his eyes. She was just a selfish and mean woman.
She was no longer worth his infatuation.
Without a word, he changed into his slippers and went into the bedroom to lie down on the bed.
In the living room, Huo Zhenzhen was making a lot of noise while packing up her things. Liu Qing switched on the light and played with his phone. He scrolled through the news and tried his best to rack his memories to remember what would happen in the next two years.
During that experience, whether it was a dream or reality, he had learned the hard way that everything in this society was built on money. If there was no money, everything—love, kinship, friendship—was nothing.
Only money was real.
He hoped that he could make more money with the prophetic abilities he had obtained through rebirth.
However, there was only one thing he could think of at the moment. He should stock up on a lot of masks so that he could earn more money when that catastrophe happened.
It was not as if he did not think about putting up a warning on the Internet to prevent that catastrophe from happening. He had held that thought for a moment before he immediately extinguished it.
One person's words carried little weight, and an online warning would not be able to attract anyone's attention.
Even if he did manage to attract everyone's attention, it probably would not be taken seriously as a warning and he would only get invited for tea.
It was not as if there were no opportunities around. It was just that with what little money he had, he could not find any suitable one.
Before he met Huo Zhenzhen, he lived in the staff dormitory and had his meals at the workplace. He did not spend much money every month and he had tens of thousands of dollars in savings.
However, after he got together with Huo Zhenzhen, they rented a house together and started to cook their own meals. Sometimes, they would go out and eat. As a result, his expenses increased and he was unable to save much money.
In the beginning, they shared the rent and living expenses between the two of them.
Later on, Huo Zhenzhen quit her job to study accountancy. Without a source of income, she had no way of paying her share of the rent or living expenses and Liu Qing paid for everything.
When Huo Zhenzhen found another job, she did not offer to co-pay the rent and living expenses. Instead, it became solely Liu Qing's responsibility. Under those circumstances, he found it amazing that he could still manage to balance out his income and expenses.
Being an office worker, Huo Zhenzhen would inevitably compare herself with her colleagues. Sometimes, she would complain that her clothes were too old-fashioned and that her colleagues teased her for it.
Under such circumstances, Liu Qing naturally had to help her out by buying clothes, shoes and bags for her.
In less than two years, he had spent all his savings.
All the money he had now was his salary for the month.
Huo Zhenzhen had basically saved up all her money. In her own words, she said, "I'm saving money for our future. Since you can't seem to hold on to money, it's up to me to have savings."
It was true that Liu Qing could not hold on to any money, but that was only because all his money was spent on her.
However, he did not dare to rebut what she said.
At that time, I thought what was yours was mine and what was mine was yours.
It was only after the breakup that I realized that what was mine might not be mine, but what was yours was yours.
It was already the month of June now. Liu Qing did some calculations. If he broke up with Huo Zhenzhen now, stopped renting the house, went back to the dormitory and lived frugally, he would at most be able to save ten or twenty thousand dollars by the end of the year. Even if he used that money to stock up on masks, he would not be able to earn much. In this city, he would still be a poor man at the bottom of society.
Even if he did something else, the situation would not get any better.
That little bit of start-up capital would not be enough for him to achieve financial freedom.
He collapsed onto the bed in a dispirited manner and sighed to himself as he thought, "So… does that mean I still have to take that step? Give up all these years of hatred and become a good-for-nothing rich second generation?"
As he thought of that, he went online and searched for a company named Tianyuan Group.
Tianyuan Group had started out as a real estate company before switching to venture capital and being a frontrunner in the world of internet financing. The company had put money into investments with extremely high returns and it currently had tens of billions of assets on paper.
The chairman of the company was a man called Su Yi. He had absolutely nothing to do with Liu Qing.
However, Su Yi's current wife, Ding Yun, was Liu Qing's biological mother.
Based on Liu Qing's memories, Su Yi would die in a traffic accident one month later and Ding Yun would inherit 60% of his shares in Tianyuan Group.
In August, Ding Yun would come looking for Liu Qing to reunite with him.
However, in that life, Liu Qing refused to acknowledge her as his mother.
He could not forget how resolute his mother was when she left after his father's accident. He could not forget his father's grief at the time. He could not forget how painfully his father had died in the end.
He felt that he would be betraying his father by reconciling with his mother.
At that time, he still believed in love. He felt that as long as he was with Huo Zhenzhen, he would be happy no matter how ordinary his life was. It did not matter if he had money or not and there was no need to make himself suffer for money.
Therefore, at that time, he rejected her and said some very nasty things that made his mother give up on any thoughts of reuniting with him.
Even in this life, Liu Qing still had a huge psychological barrier to cross with regard to the matter of reuniting with his mother.
If only he remembered the number of the first prize of any lottery draw, he would not choose to acknowledge the woman who had betrayed his father.
However…
Now that he understood the importance of money, and yet having no real means to achieve financial freedom, he felt that he had no choice.
Reality was too cruel, then why not… just be a rich second generation?