Chapter 84: The Love-Brain Female Lead Awakens 27

“Do whatever you want. Suit yourself.”

“What if I see secrets on your phone?”

Yi Chen’an glanced at her. “Instead of worrying that there are secrets on my phone, you should worry that there are a lot of things you won’t understand.”

“…”

Sang Ruo felt like she’d just been insulted.

And the truth was, there really were some things she couldn’t understand. She couldn’t even find the words to snap back at him.

So annoying.

She stopped poking around randomly.

She only did two things in total.

First, she set four meal reminder alarms for him, including breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a late-night snack.

Then in his memo app, she stuffed in a bunch of stomach-friendly meal combinations. Whether he ordered takeout or ate at a restaurant, they’d work.

Worried that he might suddenly become indecisive, she even labeled and categorized them one by one into daily menus, so he could just follow the meal calendar if he wanted.

After that, she tucked some soda crackers she liked into his luggage too, just in case.

Yi Chen’an watched her arrange all this.

“You’re treating me like a kindergartener.”

Sang Ruo wasn’t in the mood to joke with him. “When you’re away, I can’t control what you do anyway. I’m not going to stare at you every day and make sure you follow it. It’ll all depend on whether someone behaves, and besides, it’s not my body.”

Yi Chen’an pulled her into his arms and kissed her hard. “Alright, I’ll listen to you. I won’t make you worry.”

“Hmph, I won’t worry about you at all.”

This was the first time they’d been apart for so long since getting together, and Yi Chen’an knew she was unhappy.

So he coaxed her, “When I get back this time, I won’t be as busy. I can take some time off and take you somewhere fun. You can start thinking about where you want to go.”

Sang Ruo just hmphed and gave no clear response.

Yi Chen’an’s business trip happened to fall during National Day. Since he wasn’t in Qingyang, Sang Ruo went home to spend time with her parents.

At the high-speed rail station, she ran into Tan Ye again.

That upperclassman from the same school who had bought a pair of shoes from her.

Ever since the shoe deal, Tan Ye had occasionally chatted with her. He never said anything strange, but since he knew she worked part-time in the student office, he would ask her about various things from time to time.

They only talked about proper matters, so Sang Ruo had never thought anything was off.

Before National Day, he had even specifically asked whether she was going home for the holiday. If she was, they could buy tickets for the same train and have more fun that way.

At the time, Sang Ruo had replied that she wasn’t sure.

She hadn’t expected to run into him anyway.

When Tan Ye asked about her train, there wasn’t really anything to hide, so she told him.

He wasn’t on the same train as her. His was much later.

“Let me see if I can get on the standby list and change my ticket. Wouldn’t it be great if we took the same one?”

Sang Ruo felt that he was being a little too enthusiastic.

She couldn’t be bothered to guess what he was thinking, so she said directly, “I have a boyfriend.”

Tan Ye’s gaze flickered for a moment, then he smiled and said, “Junior, I think you may have misunderstood. I just thought we’re from the same place, and it feels like fate. We’ve run into each other at the high-speed rail station several times. You’re a girl, so it’s better to have company.”

“Oh. I overthought it. Sorry.”

She had no idea whether Tan Ye was telling the truth, but in any case, she had already made it clear that she wasn’t single.

His luck was good. Right before ticket sales closed, he managed to grab a refunded ticket.

He only had a standing ticket, so he got on the same carriage as Sang Ruo.

The whole way, he remained as warm and enthusiastic as ever.

Sang Ruo simply assumed that was just his personality. Maybe she really had overthought it.

Sang Ruo was born in Qingyan, a small city with a long history.

It was also one of the more popular tourist cities.

The city had preserved many old former residences of famous people and museums dedicated to intangible cultural heritage.

There were usually plenty of people there anyway, and during a long holiday like National Day, every scenic spot, big or small, was packed shoulder to shoulder.

Old Sang had long said that driving would mean getting stuck in traffic forever on the road, so he came to pick Sang Ruo up by subway, and the father and daughter took the subway home together.

Sang Ruo always felt that what he did was a bit unnecessarily roundabout, but Old Sang had done plenty of inexplicable things before. She didn’t pay much attention to this one.

As soon as she got home, she saw that framed banknote on display in the entryway, mounted with great solemnity.

Utterly mortifying.

She didn’t even dare look at it too long, afraid her toes would dig holes right through the floor from sheer embarrassment.

After Old Sang got her home and watched her finish eating, he tucked his briefcase under his arm and was about to head out.

“Bubu, stay home and wait for your mom. Something came up at the warehouse, so Dad’s going to take a look.”

Sang Ruo truly did not want to stay home and keep looking at that painfully embarrassing masterpiece.

“I’m going too.”

Old Sang had never had any principles when it came to his daughter, so he happily took Sang Ruo along to work.

Actually, it wasn’t anything major.

The warehouse had turned up a lot of “trash” during cleanup, and the people in charge down there had come to ask how they should dispose of it.

At first, Sang Ruo had been wondering why something like dealing with trash required her dad’s attention, but when she arrived at the scene, she realized that the so-called “trash” was all Embroidery pieces.

The reason they were called trash was that these Embroidery pieces were either botched embroidery or old ones that had faded with time.

There was enough of it to fill an entire truck.

The Sang family ran a hereditary Embroidery House and also did fabric business.

They had their own factory and their own embroiderers.

Hefang Street¹, which ran along the river in Qingyan, was an old street that had already existed before liberation, and it had since been developed by the tourism bureau into a specialty district.

Her family also had a shop on Hefang Street.

It could even be counted as one of the little attractions on Hefang Street.

Every day, several embroiderers would sit in the embroidery room and demonstrate embroidery, and the tourists who came to look around and take photos would usually buy some embroidered goods before leaving.

After looking over those Embroidery pieces, Old Sang said they were useless and could just be hauled away and thrown out.

Sang Ruo felt it was such a waste to throw away so many of them.

“I think they look pretty nice. They could still be repurposed somehow.”

Old Sang said, “They’ve already been screened once. Anything that had even a palm-sized patch that could still be used was taken to make pouches. These really aren’t workable.”

Even so, Sang Ruo still felt they shouldn’t be treated as garbage and thrown away.

“Dad, is this warehouse urgently needed? If not, let me think about it some more.”

The warehouse manager answered directly, “It’s not urgent, exactly. We just figured that if they can’t be used, then keeping them here is just taking up space.”

Sang Ruo looked at Old Sang.

Old Sang said, “Alright, then we won’t throw them out for now. You can take them and play around with them. If you get tired of it, just tell Dad.”

Sang Ruo grabbed a large bag and casually stuffed some of the discarded Embroidery pieces into it to take back, about ten or so jin in total.

She just felt it would be a shame to throw them away, but she had no idea how they could actually be used.

So she took a lot of photos and sent them to the dorm group chat.

A chorus of “Wow”s erupted immediately.

Sang Ruo: “Pretty or not?”

“Pretty!”

Sang Ruo: “Want them or not?”

“Yes!”

Everyone was in complete agreement. It seemed her taste really wasn’t a problem.

But Yin Xiaoxin immediately asked in the group, “But… what can these actually be used for?”

No one said a word. She had hit the nail on the head.

So everyone turned around and asked Sang Ruo, “They are pretty, but what can we use them for?”

Sang Ruo: “That’s what I want to know too.”

So she told everyone about the warehouse.

The girls put their heads together to brainstorm.

Most of the ideas weren’t very constructive.

Sang Ruo kept thinking it over on her own.

These Embroidery pieces had no real value by themselves. To turn them into money, they had to become products, and practical ones at that.

If you couldn’t even cut enough out of them to make something as big as a pouch, then what could they be used for?

What was smaller than a pouch?

Fan pendants, rings, earrings, brooches, necklaces…

Sang Ruo felt like she was finally onto something.

The next day, she went out and bought a pile of supplies.

She even borrowed a home serger and shut herself in her room to do crafts.

After two days of experimenting, and wasting a few Embroidery pieces in the process, she finally came up with a bunch of little trinkets.

For example, she twisted metal wire into different closed shapes to use as tiny frames, each about the size of a thumb, then cut Embroidery pieces to match, stretched them over the frames, and used the serger to finish the edges along the wire.

For example, she glued Embroidery pieces onto silver sheets of different shapes.

For example, she wrapped the Embroidery pieces around stars, semicircles, circles, and other shapes to remake them into new forms.

These processed Embroidery piece semi-finished items were then matched with beads, jade, tassels, and other materials to assemble all kinds of little accessories.

Stud earrings, brooches, sweater chains, and so on.

Once she had finished products, she took photos again and showed them to her roommates.

Another chorus of “Wow”s followed.

This time, they weren’t just saying they were pretty and that they wanted them. They were already thinking about which outfits to pair them with.

Sang Ruo herself was quite pleased with the finished products. They looked even better than she had expected.

Sang Ruo took the finished pieces to Old Sang.

Old Sang was skeptical. “Will anyone really pay for this stuff?”

“Dad, you can show Mom. If you don’t trust other people’s judgment, you always trust Mom’s eye and sense of style, don’t you?”

Right after that, Sang Ruo explained her ideas for handling this batch of discarded Embroidery pieces.

“I was just messing around with these. If professionals did it, they’d definitely do a better job. I remember Qingyan already has accessory factories, so we can have someone make a few design drafts. The key is the designs. Any embroidery pattern can be used with them. It may only be a few styles, but none of our Embroidery pieces are duplicates, so we can totally market them as one of a kind. We can take the design drafts and our Embroidery pieces to an accessory factory for manufacturing, and they can produce them in batches.”

“As for sales channels, we can just put them in some corner of our own stores. They’re made from waste materials anyway, so they don’t need to be priced high. Two digits is enough. They can also attract tourists who can’t bear to spend money on proper embroidery pieces. Nobody’s going to care about spending a few dozen yuan.”

“And Dad, didn’t you run a livestream before? We can sell them there too.”

That touched on one of Old Sang’s sore spots, and he said bitterly, “I was just following the trend. Nobody bought anything. The room only got busy when I was giving out lucky bags² and cash red envelopes. As soon as they got the freebies, they left. That livestream room might as well not have existed.”

Sang Ruo said, “But our proper embroidery pieces are so expensive. Unless they’re regular customers, who would spend that much money buying them online? If we do these small accessories, we can use them in the livestream to attract traffic. They’re only a few dozen yuan, just something fun to buy. Then we can find a host who understands embroidery to explain the craftsmanship of the Embroidery pieces on the accessories. That should help keep some viewers around. Once customers get to know our quality through the small items, the larger pieces will be much easier to sell.”

“And also, we don’t necessarily have to sell only finished products. We can add another accessory DIY project at our storefront on Hefang Street. Oh, DIY means making it yourself. We can put the Embroidery pieces together with the other materials into kits. Customers can take a kit and assemble it themselves, just like what I made. When the time comes, we can promote it as an immersive experience. Asking people with absolutely no embroidery background to stitch a few lines themselves would be too much, but if it’s just mixing and matching a material kit, plenty of handy girls could manage it.”

Old Sang smacked his lips. “That actually sounds pretty convincing.”

“It is. We can’t just focus on the high-end market. The general market matters too.”

This time, Old Sang didn’t praise her blindly. Instead, he said, “Since Bubu, you’re so optimistic about this, and it was your idea in the first place, then you should be in charge of it.”

Sang Ruo had not expected this matter to end up on her shoulders.

And her dad was being a little too bold.

Old Sang said, “Relax. They’re just some old scrap Embroidery pieces anyway. Go ahead and do it. Follow what you just said. Even if we lose money, it won’t be that much. A few hundred thousand at most.”

Translator’s Notes