I Advise You To Like Me As Soon As Possible

Chapter 4 (2)

<Translated by Crystal>

Fu Zheng leveled a frozen glare at Ning Wan.

She didn't keep him in suspense. "Liu Guizhen isn't raising the chicken for herself. She's taking care of it for her employer, who asked her to watch it while he's abroad for a holiday. She has worked for this employer more than ten years. When she first moved here to Rong City, she had trouble fitting in with the locals and faced some prejudice. Back then she had a foreign accent, and her husband had gotten into a car accident. Her child was sick and she herself had no education. No one was willing to give her a job. Her employer took pity on her and hired her as a cleaner, paying her twice what the market rate was back then. Because of him, her family made it in Rong City.

"Just looking at her, you may think that Liu Guizhen is uneducated and poor, that money will easily buy her over. If one thousand isn't enough, then two thousand should do it. Perhaps someone from a good family like you might not know that poor little folks like us could also have a backbone?"
"Even if I couldn't buy that chicken," Fu Zheng defended, "I could use law enforcement to force the culling. Although it would difficult, it is not necessarily impossible. It is illegal to raise chickens in the community regardless."

Alas, his words did not impress Ning Wan at all. She giggled, "Fu Zheng, why are you so uncurious? Haven't you ever thought to ask Liu Guizhen what her employer wants this chicken for?"

"It's none of my business," Fu Zheng replied with a straight face.

"Of course it's your business. Liu Guizhen's employer is an artist who owns a painting studio." Ning Wan winked at him. "If you had been just a little more curious and looked him up, you would have found that he's actually quite famous. His specialty is poultry. Recently, he's been teaching drawing classes in his studio, so naturally he must have a live chicken as a model. This course is divided into two parts. Last year, he taught the drawing of heads and feathers, along with wings and tails. This year he will be continuing with how to draw torsos.

"So you see, this chicken is neither kept for food, nor as a pet, but for teaching purposes," she smiled. "It modeled just like a human anatomy model in Class 1 and quite naturally, the model cannot be so easily changed for Class 2. It has to be this particular chicken. Therefore, Liu Guizhen is very unwilling to dispose of it, fearing that she might let down her employer, and you just..."

Her shrewd gaze assessed him. "There is no way to bring in the Department of Environmental Sanitation because although the Regulations on the Administration of Urban Appearance and Environmental Sanitation stipulate that chickens are not allowed in urban areas, there is an exception made for teaching, scientific research and other special needs. Unfortunately, this bird of yours is the most honourable of chicken models. The artist, you see, is quite law-abiding. Before handing it over to Liu Guizhen, he had it specially registered."

“……”

Fu Zheng had never in his wildest dreams imagined that a chicken might have such a backstory.

Since this was a perfectly legal teaching chicken, Liu Guizhen was determined to not to be shaken by money, leading to a dead end to the issue of noise disturbance.
Fu Zheng had nothing to say. His face was black and his lips compressed. Ning Wan, however, looked like she was enjoying a cool spring breeze. She glanced at Fu Zheng. "There's no way out, isn't there? You could always beg me. "
"You're deceiving me," Fu Zheng said in a chilly tone. "You can't possibly have a way."

"And if I do?"

"If you do, I won't just call you Teacher Ning, but Father." Fu Zheng eyed Ning Wan. He felt a little uncomfortable. "If you can't do anything, you handle Shi Xiaofang tomorrow."
"Alright."