Chapter 9: Lin Jianxia's Little Entertainment Time

As soon as the bell rang for the final class of the afternoon, Lin Jianxia quickly packed her schoolbag and left the classroom without looking back.

Watching her practically flee, Jiang Yubai's mouth twitched slightly as he packed up his own things with a tinge of regret.

Ever since Lin Jianxia had stared at his draft book for a long while, she hadn't spoken a single word to him for the rest of the day. He figured the contents of the notebook were probably still too shocking for her. "I should have been more tactful," Jiang Yubai thought to himself with considerable regret.

Meanwhile, Lin Jianxia walked briskly with her schoolbag slung over her shoulders. She didn't let out a long sigh of relief until she was out of the school gates. Although she usually left immediately after school, this was her first time leaving in such a hurry. Pressing a hand over her still-racing heart, she glanced back. Only after confirming that no one was following her did she truly relax.

However, what welled up in her heart next was a distinct sense of annoyance. Though she now believed that Jiang Yubai's rent collection yesterday hadn't been specifically targeting her, the guy was clearly no good either. They had only met once, yet he already dared to set his sights on her! Who asks a younger sister about her older sister's preferences? Did he really think others couldn't see right through his little schemes? Sure enough, she knew that comment about making her a maid wasn't a joke!

"What a scumbag! A beast! A playboy!" Lin Jianxia thought, pursing her lips angrily, her chest heaving slightly.

So what if he was the landlord? She would be able to pay the rent on Friday anyway. She planned to discuss it with the store manager then to see if she could get paid earlier in the future, saving her from having to deal with Jiang Yubai's moods every day. As for this week... since she couldn't openly offend him, she would just give him the cold shoulder like she did with everyone else. As long as she kept ignoring him, he would probably get bored after a while and give up on his own. Thinking of this, Lin Jianxia took a deep breath, patted her cheeks to compose herself, and walked briskly toward the alleys.

After weaving through several turns, she soon stood in front of a bookstore named "Sisyphus." She vigilantly looked left and right one last time to ensure there were no classmates around before pushing the door open.

RING-A-LING.

The wind chimes above the door let out a crisp sound. The female owner sitting behind the counter looked up. Seeing it was her, she nodded, unsurprised. "You're here? We got quite a few books over the weekend, so you should leave at seven today." After saying this, she lowered her head and went back to tinkering with the computer.

A few seconds later, catching from the corner of her eye that the figure in front of her was still standing there motionless, the owner frowned. "Is there something else?"

Lin Jianxia hesitated for a moment before asking, "Umm... Mrs. Zhao, this week's salary will still be paid on Friday, right?"

Upon hearing this, the owner's expression imperceptibly paused for a second before she put on a smile again. "It will be paid, definitely on Friday. You think I'd withhold the wages of a little girl like you?"

Lin Jianxia instantly let out a sigh of relief, her expression brightening. "Then I'll go get to work!" She waved at the owner and hurried toward the back room of the bookstore.

In the storage room in the back, books wrapped in kraft paper were piled up like a small mountain—they were mostly new books that had arrived in bulk over the weekend. Lin Jianxia's task was to unpack this "mountain of books," sort them out, and organize them into their corresponding bookshelves one by one.

To be honest, the work was quite tedious. She was alone in the storage room. The summer heat was suffocating, and there wasn't even a fan, let alone an air conditioner. She would perform the same repetitive actions for hours on end—unpacking, flipping pages, sorting, and shelving, over and over again. When she occasionally looked up from the pages, all she could see were mountains of kraft paper and the sky growing darker outside the window.

But... Lin Jianxia actually quite liked this job. Her mother had passed away early, and her father, considering the two sisters a burden, had long severed ties with them to start a new family. After deducting the sisters' tuition fees and subtracting the bare minimum for food and clothing, their meager monthly child support left them with almost no money. In addition, she occasionally had to spare some to send to their grandmother in the countryside, so the shortfall could only be made up by her working odd jobs.

However, even though she was legally an adult, whenever the nearby shops saw her Lin Third Middle School uniform, they would mostly shake their heads and reject her. After all, few shops would risk violating child labor laws to hire a high school student. It wasn't until the summer vacation was almost over that she finally found this small bookstore. Although the pay was low, it was at least enough to cover the monthly rent and save a little to buy some good food for her younger sister. It was good enough.

Lin Jianxia squatted beside the pile of books, mechanically tearing open the kraft paper. Sweat trickled down her temples, leaving dark smudges on the edges of the cardboard boxes. One book, two books...

After unpacking an entire bundle, she would sort and check them by title, place them sequentially on the storage room shelves, and tick the corresponding boxes on the invoice. She occasionally raised an arm to wipe her cheek, quickly lowering it again to continue unpacking the next bundle. The storage room was filled only with the RUSTLE of flipping pages and her own faint breathing. The light outside the window gradually dimmed, and the small mountain of kraft paper bundles finally vanished.

Placing the last book on the shelf, Lin Jianxia let out a long sigh of relief and instinctively looked at the wall clock by the storage room door. The hour hand pointed exactly to twenty-something past six, about half an hour away from the end of her shift that the owner had mentioned. She didn't go out immediately, because the owner would most likely make her clean up for a while longer, delaying her departure until half past seven.

Lin Jianxia took out a tissue and carefully wiped her face and hands clean before turning her gaze to the nearby bookshelf. Since they were close to a school, the bookstore mostly stocked young adult romance and fantasy light novels that students loved to read; classic literature only occupied a tiny corner. She didn't have much interest in fantasy, so she searched carefully in the romance section and gingerly pulled out a book. Spreading a piece of kraft paper beneath her, Lin Jianxia sat down with her knees bent, leaning against the wall. She gently opened the novel, her eyes lighting up.

The plot of the book was actually quite childish, nothing more than the typical "domineering CEO falls in love with me" tropes, but she read it with great relish. Rushing to finish her work so she could read for a little while right before her shift ended... this was one of Lin Jianxia's few moments of personal entertainment.

As her eyes swept over the words on the page, Lin Jianxia's gaze gradually drifted away, becoming somewhat unfocused. For some reason, she couldn't get into the story she was usually able to immerse herself in. The playboy's words kept echoing involuntarily in her mind: "By the way, what does your older sister usually like? I feel like she's quite interesting."

Even though a day had passed, every time she thought of that draft book being pushed toward her, a surge of shame and annoyance would involuntarily well up in her heart.

"What the hell! What a pervert! Who gets interested after meeting just once? And 'quite interesting'? Isn't it just lust at first sight!" she thought indignantly.

But after the shame and annoyance passed, a trace of a strange feeling bubbled up from the bottom of her heart. It was light, soft, yet entirely impossible to shake off.

"Then again, Jiang Yubai's appearance really is a bit like what they write about in novels... Bah, bah, bah! He's just a lowly landlord!"

Lin Jianxia vigorously shook her head, driving those messy thoughts out of her mind and trying her best to refocus her eyes on the page. Only this time, the words in the book seemed even harder to absorb.