The Landlady and The Amnesiac

48

Luo Bei always felt that Zhou Jianguo was a very contradictory and strange person.

Just like she told her grandmother before, his temperament was like those in command of a company, but he was carrying a snakeskin bag and haggling with the lady boss.

He said he only has a primary school education, but various signs show that he is much stronger than her, who graduated from university. Although education does not necessarily represent a person’s ability in the real society, the aura on Zhou Jianguo’s body is not from an ordinary background. His speech occasionally contains vocabulary that she cannot understand. If he didn’t have a strong knowledge background, he couldn’t reach that level at all.

Upon careful reflection, those things that puzzled her seemed to have an answer.

Why does he say he doesn’t like to use a bank card or electronic payment? Why does he put unmanned stores under her name? Even the new car, is it because he doesn’t care? No, it’s not. Zhou Jianguo is a person who cherishes his own hard work. He has almost invested all his enthusiasm in the unmanned store business. Would he hand over the store to someone he barely knew?

There is only one possibility, that he has no choice but to do so.

Why? Because his name and identity are all fake.

It should have been a shocking thing for her, but Luo Bei accepted it calmly. Everyone has secrets that cannot be told to others. She understands this. If she had found out that Zhou Jianguo was using a false identity when she first met him, she would have spoken out directly. After all, she is a landlady and cannot accept such a tenant.

But now the situation is different. Luo Bei is already very familiar with Zhou Jianguo. From his words and deeds in daily life, she can see what kind of person he is. After weighing the pros and cons, Luo Bei decided to pretend not to know about this matter for the time being. How they used to get along before, they will continue to do so in the future.

Perhaps he has some difficulties that he cannot speak of, so let him take the initiative to confess.

At that moment, her phone rang. It was Zhou Jianguo calling.

He was at the construction site, naturally there was noise, “Luo Bei, what’s up? I was just talking to the foreman about quitting my job.”

Luo Bei looked at the small row of red characters on the ticket booking website page and slowly said, “I pressed the wrong button just now, there’s nothing wrong. You’re quitting your job?”

“Yeah, but I can’t explain it over the phone. Let’s talk about it when we meet.”

“Okay, bye.”

Zhou Jianguo asked Grandma Luo to make a bottle of spaghetti sauce. He’s been busy lately and didn’t have time to cook, so he bought a bag of spaghetti from the supermarket, poured the sauce over it after it was cooked, then boiled an egg in water. This was his dinner.

He always takes good care of his life. When Luo Bei came to his room, it was very clean and tidy. Zhou Jianguo sat on a chair and ate a big plate of spaghetti. After he finished eating, he quickly washed the dishes and utensils clean before saying to Luo Bei, “I didn’t tell you earlier because things weren’t confirmed yet. I quit my job because I found a new one. It’s not far from your company, quite close actually. It’s a car beauty shop owned by a relative of one of my colleagues. I’m going there as an apprentice, so my salary will definitely be lower than on the construction site. But here’s my plan, after I learn how the car beauty shop operates, we can start our own. Then I’ll work for myself.”

Luo Bei was shocked, “Car beauty shop?”

“Well, I’ve thought about it. If things go smoothly, maybe just a few months. By then, we can pool our resources and I can look for other part-time jobs to try to cover the costs. We’ve been selling sugarcane for some time now, made some money and bought a vending machine to put in a hotel. If business is good, we can make over ten thousand in profits a month. Plus, we still have a few tens of thousands of yuan on hand. If we can’t sell sugarcane anymore, we’ll switch to selling other fruits on our electric tricycle. Hopefully, we can open the shop before Chinese New Year.”