49: Chapter 52 An unexpected encounter in the underground parking garage, Qian Duoduo's suspicions

When the school bell rang, Fang Jiming was grading Lu Zihao's math test.

This kid's problem-solving steps were much neater than last week, and he actually got six of the basic multiple-choice questions right.

Fang Jiming wrote a score at the top of the test paper with a red pen, hesitated for a second, and then drew an upward arrow symbol next to it.

He shoved the test paper into the drawer and glanced at a message from Chen Jianhua on his phone.

"Mr. Fang, Project Manager Zhao Tiejun from the construction team has arranged to meet in the city center at 7:00 PM tonight. He needs you to review and confirm the entry plan for the Class 17 classroom renovation."

Fang Jiming replied with an 'OK' emoji, stood up, grabbed his thermos, and walked out.

Ride an electric scooter to the city center? It's a forty-minute trip one way; by the time he arrived, the construction team would probably have finished their late-night snack.

Fang Jiming stopped at the entrance of the teaching building and looked up at the sky.

It was gloomy.

He took out his car keys, tossed them in his palm a couple of times, and turned to walk toward the narrow alley behind No. 19 Middle School.

The maybach was parked in a temporary spot under the plane tree at the end of the alley, covered in a layer of plane tree leaves.

Fang Jiming pressed the remote key, and the hazard lights flashed twice in the twilight.

He opened the car door, sat inside, and pressed the start button; the V12 engine gave a low rumble.

He adjusted the rearview mirror, shifted into reverse, and prepared to back out of the alley.

Suddenly, he saw a chubby figure in the rearview mirror that shouldn't have been there.

Qian Duoduo.

The fatty had snuck out from the back door of the teaching building with his backpack on, a lollipop in his mouth, his hands in his school uniform pockets, peering sneakily toward the alley.

Fang Jiming's hand paused on the steering wheel.

It was too late.

The maybach had already backed out halfway, its black-and-silver dual-tone rear reflecting in the streetlights.

Qian Duoduo had climbed onto the wall and was straddling it, half his body hanging outside and half inside, like a fat hamster stuck in a tree fork.

His gaze was drawn to the car's taillights.

Four letters slammed into his pupils.

maybach.

Qian Duoduo's lollipop fell.

It fell from his mouth, hit the concrete at the base of the wall, bounced once, and rolled into the drainage ditch.

He stared wide-eyed at the reversing maybach, his gaze shifting along the car body to the driver's side window.

The window wasn't closed all the way; it was cracked open.

Inside the gap sat a person wearing a grey hoodie.

His hair was a bit messy.

His left hand rested on the steering wheel.

Under his right armpit was a black stainless steel thermos.

Qian Duoduo: ( ꐦ ° Д ° )

That profile.

That thermos.

Fang! Jiming!

Qian Duoduo grabbed the edge of the wall with both hands, his fingernails nearly embedding themselves into the cement cracks. He lay flat on the wall, motionless, not even daring to breathe.

The maybach backed out of the alley, shifted into drive, and its headlights cast two beams of light into the twilight as it drove down the asphalt road toward the city center.

The red glow of the taillights grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared around the corner of the Old Street.

Qian Duoduo lay on the wall, his expression describable in four words.

Out of body experience.

His movement climbing down from the wall was three times slower than usual. He nearly twisted his ankle upon landing and had to steady himself against the wall for a long while before recovering.

"Not right."

He patted his chubby face and rubbed his eyes hard.

"I must have seen it wrong."

He pulled out his phone, opened the search box, and typed a line of text rapidly.

"How much is a maybach S680?"

The search results popped up.

Official guide price: 2.598 million to 14.988 million yuan.

Qian Duoduo stared at the phone screen, his chubby hands trembling.

His dad was a demolition beneficiary, and the 400,000-yuan BMW 3 Series at home was considered the flashiest car in Qiaonan Old Street.

The one Fang Jiming drove was a custom edition.

Fourteen million yuan on the road.

More than thirty times his dad's BMW.

Qian Duoduo slowly squatted down, leaning against the wall, covering his face with his chubby hands and muttering to himself.

"The clothes Brother Fang wears to class don't add up to more than a hundred yuan."

"His pants are those flowery shorts from Taobao that cost twenty-nine point nine with free shipping, and his flip-flops are the street market kind that cost ten yuan for three pairs."

"But he drives a fourteen-million-yuan maybach."

Qian Duoduo: ( ⊙ ᗝ ⊙ )

He remembered the scene at the school gate last time.

The man in the custom suit driving a regular maybach was so respectful to Fang Jiming, like a subordinate reporting to a boss.

At the time, he asked Fang Jiming if he had bought that building, and Fang Jiming said he was just a poor teacher and where would he get hundreds of millions in spare cash.

A poor teacher.

Driving a maybach.

Hundreds of millions.

Qian Duoduo's mouth opened, and a thought popped into his head that made his scalp tingle.

"Could Brother Fang be the crown prince of some conglomerate, thrown into No. 19 Middle School by his family to suffer and gain experience?"

"Isn't that how it's played in TV dramas? A rich young master makes a mistake and is punished by the old man to go to a poor place to suffer and train, wearing ragged clothes and mingling at the bottom, but actually, he can casually toss out a card with hundreds of millions on it."

The more he thought about it, the more right it felt.

Fang Jiming hadn't seemed like a normal substitute teacher since the first day he arrived at No. 19 Middle School.

He didn't get angry when students threw chalk at him, wasn't afraid when Brother Long blocked the school gate, and resolved the property dispute and security team issues within two days.

He dropped two million to renovate the Class 18 classroom overnight.

Construction qualifications, fire safety filings, donation notarization—the whole set of documents was clean and complete.

With this kind of spending and speed, let alone a substitute teacher, even the head of the Municipal Education Bureau couldn't pull it off.

Qian Duoduo stood up and dusted off his school uniform.

He wanted to call Zhao Dazhuang and Zhang Ming, but his finger pulled back after touching the dial button.

What if he had seen it wrong?

Qian Duoduo shoved his phone back into his pocket and walked slowly toward the school gate.

He walked a few steps, then stopped and looked back at the spot where the maybach had just been parked.

Fresh tire tracks were still visible on the concrete ground under the plane tree.

Wide and deep.

Since his family's demolition, Qian Duoduo had felt that having money was awesome; his dad was rich, so he was awesome in class.

But today he realized that Fang Jiming might be a hundred times richer than his dad.

And Fang Jiming wore 29.9-yuan shorts to work, rode an electric scooter, and he'd never even seen him buy a cup of milk tea.

"Are all rich people this low-key?"

Qian Duoduo stood in the twilight, feeling a kind of indescribable embarrassment for the first time about the thick gold chain hanging around his neck.

Qian Duoduo: ( ；⌣ ̀ _ ⌣ ́ )

Meanwhile.

On the other side, after meeting with Project Manager Zhao Tiejun in the office building garage in the city center, Fang Jiming confirmed the construction plan for Class 17.

It was already dark when he came out. He sat in the driver's seat and sent a message to Teacher Wen Ruyan.

"Teacher Wen, how is the proposal coming along?"

Teacher Wen Ruyan replied three seconds later.

"Almost done, stop rushing me."

Fang Jiming sent another one.

"Time is tight and the task is heavy. Teacher Wen, if you can't finish it, I can come to your dorm and help you with it."

The other side was silent for fifteen seconds.

Teacher Wen Ruyan: "You can try coming over if you dare."

Fang Jiming smiled, tossed his phone onto the passenger seat, started the maybach, and drove toward Nanshan Residence.

A line of small text popped up on the System Panel on the phone screen.

[ Teacher Wen Ruyan Affinity Change: 55 → 56 ]

[ Added 1 point (due to late-night work concern + slight ambiguous interaction causing heart palpitations) ]

Fang Jiming glanced at it and hummed.

"Only one point, that's so stingy."

Fang Jiming: ( ¬ _ ¬ )

He drove the car into the villa's underground garage and turned off the engine.

He sat in the dark driver's seat and thought for a while.

Would Qian Duoduo tell other students tomorrow night?

If he did, what kind of excuse should he prepare?

Fang Jiming leaned back in his seat, closed his eyes, and thought for three seconds.

Forget it.

Soldiers come, generals block; water comes, earth covers. At worst, he'd just say he borrowed a friend's car.

Anyway, with these students' IQs, lying to them was about the same as coaxing kindergarteners.

He opened the car door and got out; his footsteps echoed in the empty garage.

When he walked to the elevator, his phone vibrated again.

Qian Duoduo had posted on his Moments.

The attached image was a night view of Qiaonan Old Street, and the caption was only four characters.

"Brother Fang is awesome."

Below, Zhao Dazhuang commented: "What kind of sickness are you having again?"

Qian Duoduo replied: "You don't understand."

Fang Jiming looked at the post, his thumb hovering over the screen, but he didn't hit 'like'.

He pressed the elevator button, and the elevator doors slowly closed.

As the elevator went up, he was calculating another matter.

The renovation of the Class 17 classroom was just the first step.

What if the whole school was renovated?

Thirty-two classrooms, two million each, plus the renovation of public areas, corridors, and restrooms—a rough calculation puts it at a base of 65 million.

Sixty-five million.

For the average person, it's an astronomical figure.

For him, it was at most three hours of wages.

The problem wasn't the money; the problem was how to spend it without attracting attention.

Fang Jiming sprawled on the sofa, staring at the ceiling for five minutes.

Then, the corners of his mouth curled up.

"Don't you like to be passive-aggressive, Principal Sun?"

"Then I'll just wait for you to beg me yourself."