10% Luck
“Sister Yao, how long do we have to watch? It’s almost eleven. Why aren’t they here yet?”
“Shut up!”
“Oh, okay. I will.”
The punk behind her kept spraying Liushen Florida Water on his body after shutting his mouth.
Smelling the light scent of the Florida Water, Li Muyao finally cleared her mind. Probably, maybe, perhaps, she could be certain that she had been here for two hours now and this wasn’t a dream.
It was something similar to being reborn in a novel!
A second ago, Li Muyao received a call. The man she met on a blind date a few days ago proposed to her.
It happened to be Li Muyao’s 32nd birthday, so she remembered it very clearly.
After failing the college entrance examination at eighteen, her brother arranged for her to be an apprentice at a beauty salon. She spent three years and was promoted from an apprentice to a beautician.
After twelve years, Li Muyao was promoted from a beautician to a senior beautician manager. In these twelve years, she bought a house with three rooms and two living rooms in a first-tier city, Yang City, and a car that cost three hundred thousand yuan. She also had more than a million yuan savings and a man she met on a blind date, who was great in all aspects, proposed to her.
As long as Li Muyao said yes, her family wouldn’t have to worry that she wouldn’t be able to get married and she could get rid of that pestering scumbag.
She would have a house, a car, money, and a man, reaching the pinnacle of her life.
Alone on the night of her birthday, Li Muyao was too excited and she accidentally drank too much. She didn’t even pick up her parents’ call and just wanted to sleep.
When she woke up, she was sitting on a bench in a small park in front of the entrance of an old hotel. There was a punk next to her with a bottle of Liushen Florida Water in one hand to repel mosquitoes and an obsolete film camera on the other, holding it in his arms like his baby.
Li Muyao thought she was dreaming, so she sat aside quietly from 9 pm until 11 pm.
She finally realized why she was crouching here with the punk right now.
Li Muyao refused to study again after failing the college entrance examination back then and she wasn’t willing to work in a factory, so she could only follow her brother to Yang City and found a beauty salon through her brother’s customer, becoming an apprentice there.
They offered her a place to stay and meals every day. She also had five hundred yuan of basic salary. She would get a 3% bonus after washing customers’ hair and giving them a haircut, and an 8% bonus after cleansing facials and beauty treatments. Meanwhile, the Li Muyao at this period must have been apprenticing for more than six months. She must have just finished celebrating the Chinese New Year and came back to work.
Because Li Muyao did something great when she was nineteen.
Bringing another apprentice who was two years younger than her, Color Hair, to the hotel to catch the adulterers.
Whose adulterer?
Her brother, Li Mufeng, had a girlfriend he had been dating for two years called Liu Xiufang. She came from the capital and was twenty-three years old. She had been in a relationship with Li Mufeng for two years. After spending the Chinese New Year in her hometown, she came back and told Li Mufeng that she was pregnant.
It was definitely a joyous thing to be pregnant.
Li Mufeng was certainly thrilled. He talked to his mother on the phone and decided to bring his girlfriend home and marry her.
However, Li Mufeng celebrated too early, as his girlfriend, Liu Xiufang, said she would only marry him if he offered her fifty thousand yuan of dowry and a house.
The house must be in Yang City. Any size would do, but it must be bought in Liu Xiufang’s name.
Fifty thousand yuan of dowry was quite a lot to Li Mufeng’s family. As for the house, their family was originally staying in a county. They had already bought a house when their father was still alive. It was a pretty nice house with four rooms and two living rooms.
But if Li Mufeng had to buy a house in a large city like Yang City, he wouldn’t be able to afford it even if he sold himself!
This was a big problem, but since Li Mufeng and his girlfriend were having a baby, they must think of something no matter how difficult it was. His mother tried to borrow money everywhere, while Li Mufeng had to work part-time jobs to earn extra money, apart from working in the kitchen in his master’s restaurant.
Since her brother was getting married, Li Muyao certainly had to do something to help. However, her salary wasn’t really high and she had only been an apprentice for six months. Adding up the basic salary and the bonuses, she only made eight hundred yuan a month. Among the eight hundred yuan, she had to send five hundred home, leaving three hundred yuan. Even though she didn’t spend much money, she could only save around two hundred yuan for herself a month.
Calculating every cent, Li Muyao had some savings after being an apprentice for more than six months, but she gave her mother five hundred yuan during the Chinese New Year, so she had only five hundred left.
Even if her mother was willing to use the money to help her brother buy a house, it was just a drop in the ocean.
While Li Muyao was thinking about how to make more money, she accidentally heard about her future sister-in-law, Liu Xiufang, going out with a middle-aged man.
Li Muyao didn’t really like her future sister-in-law, Liu Xiufang. When her brother brought his girlfriend back home the first time when she was having the college entrance examination, she had already felt uncomfortable when Liu Xiufang looked at their house with greed in her eyes. However, it was the first time Liu Xiufang visited her boyfriend’s home, after all, so she had to keep up with appearances.
Liu Xiufang entertained their mother and two younger brothers well. She even bought quite a lot of things for Li Muyao, who was about to take the college entrance examination, so Li Muyao couldn’t find any fault with her even though she didn’t like her.
However, after coming to Yang City, Li Muyao went to visit her brother sometimes and she found that Liu Xiufang’s attitude became worse and worse. Every time Li Muyao came by, she heard Liu Xiufang scolding her brother, saying that Li Mufeng made so much money but he only gave her a thousand yuan and sent the rest back home.
She said Li Mufeng didn’t love her and wasn’t giving her money.
Sometimes, she even said Li Mufeng was incapable and useless.
Liu Xiufang even resigned as a waiter at the restaurant of Li Mufeng’s master. She didn’t work at all and she always went shopping or hung out with her friends.
It wasn’t a big deal for Li Mufeng that women didn’t work. He could give a thousand yuan to his girlfriend every month anyway. If not, he could send less money back home as well.
However, after the Chinese New Year, Liu Xiufang told Li Mufeng that she was pregnant.
After the surprise, the life of everyone in the Li family was disrupted.
Money and houses were the hardest things to deal with for Li Mufeng.
And yet, Liu Xiufang wasn’t willing to give in about the dowry and the house. She even used the baby to threaten Li Mufeng.
The fights between her brother and Liu Xiufang, and the embarrassment of her mother while borrowing money everywhere, Li Muyao saw them all in her eyes. So, when someone told her Liu Xiufang cheated on her brother, she was enraged and immediately went to argue with her future sister-in-law, Liu Xiufang.
However, Liu Xiufang blamed Li Muyao instead. She said that Li Muyao, as a girl, tried to slander her so that she would marry her brother. She even said that Li Muyao wanted to hit her stomach and cause a miscarriage. For that, Liu Xiufang pointed at Li Mufeng and shouted at him, saying that he was useless and couldn’t even protect and provide for his wife and child.