704 Lost, or stolen? (1/2)
Chapter 704: Lost, or stolen?
Translator: Nyoi-Bo StudioEditor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Beep beep.
Lu Yiyun was woken up by her alarm. She reached out her hand to turn it off.
Five minutes later, her phone buzzed again.
Ding ding.
She was woken up by the phone alarm again.
It could not be turned off this time. In order not to oversleep in the morning, she had placed the phone on the table before bedtime. She could not turn off the phone alarm from bed, unless her arms were two meters long.
She rubbed her eyes, groped near the pillow for her glasses, and put them on. Jasmine was lying on her blanket, and was woken up by her movements. It jumped off the bed, meowed to say good morning, and then went to its bowl to drink water by itself.
”Good morning, Jasmine,” she said after yawning.
She got dressed, got up, washed herself, and poured a bowl of cereal. The same repetitive movements had formed a routine for her, which she was able to pull off without using her brain. She sat down at the table—which was also her desk—and scooped cereal into her mouth, her brain gradually waking up.
Jasmine was eating breakfast at her feet. In terms of food expense, Jasmine's food was much more costly than hers.
Unlike most girls her age, she skipped the makeup routine before going out; it seemed to be one step that she skipped. In fact, she saved one hour, as she could also skip the makeup removal routine when she returned home.
One hour saved each day totaled 15 days saved in a year.
Suppose that she lived 75 years––if she learned to apply makeup at 15, and stopped it at 75 as it was no longer necessary, she could save two and a half years within 60 years. That was an awful amount of time.
The thought of spending two and a half years of her life applying makeup to her face caused an urge for her to speak to her face. ”Thank you for the hard work!” she exclaimed.
She could do a lot of things during this one hour, such as painting.
She was used to painting in the pet shop now, instead of staying at home and working behind closed doors. Another reason was that, since the hero of her comics was based on Zhang Zian, it would be easier when she was drawing a brawny guy to do so next to the prototype.
She finished breakfast with Jasmine and cleaned both of their bowls. She put Jasmine into her backpack, as usual, then grabbed her graphic tablet and headed towards the pet shop one block away.
She went outside at same time as her next door neighbor. They both looked familiar to each other. She made an effort to open her mouth and say, ”Good morning,” but she could not utter the words because of her shyness. She lowered her head and covered her eyes with the hair on her forehead.
The neighbor did the same thing, and pretended to not have seen her with embarrassment.
All neighborhood relationships in modern society were more or less like this.
The apartments in the old, residential area did not have the best layout, which made them small, low, damp, and dark. Most tenants were poor, but this was fine in a way, as nobody looked down upon each other.
In fact, with the money she was making through painting and working, she could afford a better apartment, but there was no need to waste money—an apartment was only a place to sleep, anyway.
As she left the gate of her residential area, a nice smell of breakfast food came from Li's Supreme Snack Bar for Cat Fanciers.
”Good morning,” three voices greeted her.
She tilted her head to look. It was Ting Ting and Xiao Zhuang. They had been volunteering at the snack bar every day for over half a month now. As long as they could persist another ten days or so, they would succeed.
Ting Ting and Xiao Zhuang were talking to Sun Xiaomeng outside the snack bar. Maybe Sun Xiaomeng was evaluating how serious they were about adoption.
Sun Xiaomeng looked tired, with dark circles around her eyes. It appeared as though she hadn't slept well the night before.
”Good morning,” Lu Yiyun responded with a low voice.
She continued to walk in order to not interrupt their conversation. She looked around for the traffic, then ran across the street.
The shutter door of the pet shop was not open. Normally it would have been open at the hour she arrived.
She took out the key from her pocket, unlocked the door, then pushed the shutter door up with quite a bit of effort.
She pulled open the glass door and everything looked normal in the pet shop, except that it was quieter than usual. That noisy grey parrot was absent—it was apparently staying at a friend's place, along with the cats and dogs, while Zhang Zian was abroad. That friend was very fond of them. He didn't specify which friend it was, but she didn't ask, either.
She took Jasmine out of her backpack so that it could play freely in the shop. She then cleaned up the cash register thoroughly, which mainly included wiping the dust off from the keyboard, the mouse, the monitor, POS machine, and the receipt printer. After she finished, she sat down at the cashier's seat and connected the graphic tablet to start drawing.
She wanted to wait for Wang Qian and Li Kun to begin cleaning the shop so they could all do it together. They usually came later, as they always stayed up late playing online games.
She had only posted one or two episodes of the comic series on Weibo, but they were received quite well—even better than her previous series. She planned to sketch the draft of the third episode.
She made a few sloppy sketches, then erased them. She made a few more sketches and erased them again.