Chapter 352
On Wednesday, Xiao Qi had a full day of classes. She thought about how she was going to look at apartments this weekend, and found some time to tell Li Weijin that she wouldn't be able to tutor him this weekend because she wouldn't have enough time.
Li Weijin said that the tutoring sessions couldn't be stopped at this critical point in his studies, so they would just have to reschedule the sessions to during the week.
Xiao Qi: ......Okay, the one paying is the boss.
Because she had to reschedule Li Weijin's tutoring sessions, Xiao Qi felt it was very necessary to study ahead of schedule. Although she felt that even compared to people in her own grade, her current level was enough to tutor Li Weijin and earn that money, in order to do an even better job she had to work harder.
Moreover, after meeting Brother Lin Min, Xiao Qi felt that she had been feeling somewhat complacent recently and hadn't been studying diligently enough.
After hearing from Brother Lin Min that not only had he received venture capital funding, but he had also placed 2nd in his class and 8th in his major on his midterm exams. Brother Lin Min had placed around 20th in his class and over 100th in his major when he tested into Qingmeng University. Clinical medicine was famously difficult, yet he was able to work part-time jobs to support himself while still greatly improving his grades.
Meanwhile, Xiao Qi had only placed first in her own major, and that was with the professors basically underlining the important parts of the material. Her scores in various subjects had quite a few deductions. Also, she was at Enhua University - if she had been at Qingmeng University instead, Xiao Qi suspected that her results wouldn't have been as good as Brother Lin Min's.
She had previously asked Brother Lin Min to get her a copy of the midterm exam papers for the information management major at Qingmeng University. When she attempted those papers, she found them to be much more difficult. If those had been the exam papers, forget about placing first in her major - she might not have even placed in the top ten.
This gave Xiao Qi a sense of urgency, feeling that as a student she was spending far too little time properly focused on studying, and that she needed to work even harder.
Tutoring Li Weijin could not only earn money but also facilitate her own studies, so Xiao Qi was still very willing.
Another reason was that deep down, she still had feelings for Li Weijin - purely enjoying his company.
The old Xiao Qi would have cared a lot about what other people said. In high school, she had feelings for Liu Shaowei and had believed that he liked her too. But because she cared about what people would say, she had maintained her distance. Whenever people would tease them, she would hastily refute it. In the end, right after he graduated he showed up with a girlfriend.
When Xiao Qi thought back on it now, she still felt regret. Liu Shaowei was a jerk, but she had never admitted that they were together, so she had no place to vent about being mistreated and got hurt internally.
Getting a second chance, she would openly acknowledge it. If Liu Shaowei didn't like her, she would get clarification as soon as possible. That ambiguous hanging-on had wasted her time and interfered with her studies.
Now she didn't care what other people - mainly Chu Yu - would say.
Xiao Qi discovered that as long as you were strong and outstanding enough, you could completely ignore her and not care what she said.
Xiao Qi scheduled Li Weijin's tutoring sessions for Wednesday and Friday nights during the week. She had elective courses on Tuesday and Thursday nights. Since these were make-up sessions, she chose public classrooms. There were quite a lot of students doing evening self-study in their own classroom, so it could get noisy during lectures.
Li Weijin was quite happy about it. He was very smart - teachers had been praising him since kindergarten. By middle and high school, the teachers' tone had changed to: This kid is really smart, he just doesn't apply himself.
His family circumstances made him feel like he didn't need to work hard in order just to not starve to death. He also didn't have any ideas of what he wanted to do in the future. In any case, he didn't want to be like his brother - studying hard, graduating from a top university, then getting tricked by his parents into going to work at their company early on, cleaning up messes every day, and getting so frustrated several days each month that he became mentally unstable.
Therefore, he had never applied himself fully to studying or anything else.
This time, influenced by Xiao Qi, he had actually started studying. Since his foundations were a bit weak, as he gradually filled in the gaps bit by bit, Li Weijin discovered that studying could actually be pretty interesting and gave a great sense of accomplishment, like being enriched little by little.
In the past when people mocked him as just having a pretty face and nothing else, that assessment was indeed accurate. He did just have a handsome face, and he had quite an arrogant attitude about it. But now, he discovered that studying was interesting, and many things he hadn't understood before were suddenly making sense.
Having a very outstanding female student beside him made him want to strive harder to catch up.
He felt that other than his looks, all his other advantages came from his family, and one could say that he was inferior to Xiao Qi in every way. But there was still time if he worked hard now.
And so, Li Weijin sought to catch up to Xiao Qi, while Xiao Qi felt that she still had a considerable gap with students at top universities and studied even harder. It was a very fulfilling week for both of them.
Early Saturday morning, Xiao Qi got up, preparing to go look at apartments in Dongjiao. Since she had gotten up early, she was planning to take the bus. In the mornings there were always seats available on the bus. It wasn't until around 9-10 AM that students would hit the peak commute time into the city center, and then there wouldn't be any seats left.
But when she had just stepped out of her dorm building, Bao Butler was already waiting outside the dorm entrance.
"Bao Butler, I don't have a tutoring session today. I asked your young master for the day off," Xiao Qi cautiously said.
Now when she saw Bao Butler, she felt somewhat wary, afraid of blurting things out uncontrollably like last time.
"The young master said you were busy today. He happened to be free, so he told me to come pick you up." Bao Butler stated matter-of-factly.
Xiao Qi followed Bao Butler to the car - it was that very comfortable nanny van. When she opened the car door, she saw Li Weijin sitting inside holding a Spanish textbook. Seeing her arrive, he showed a smile, his evenly spaced white teeth gleaming. She had been frequently seeing his smiles lately, and every time he smiled, Xiao Qi often momentarily forgot her train of thought.
Only after getting in the car did she think to say, "Don't you have anything going on this weekend? Running all over looking at apartments is really troublesome."
"No plans. I can study in the car, and with you here I can ask you questions directly too." Li Weijin earnestly replied.
Xiao Qi thought, fine then. She had originally planned to ask the Student Union President for help since he was the one who had gone apartment hunting with her last time. That area was still under a lot of housing development construction, so it felt kind of chaotic. But after turning down the President last time, although things between them hadn't really changed, she still felt a need to be prudent. Therefore, Xiao Qi hadn't asked the President again.
Going by herself, she actually had some misgivings too. After all, a girl shopping for an apartment - indicating she had money on-hand - might accidentally encounter bad people. Hmm, she should really arrange to start learning some martial arts like taekwondo.
Having someone go with her, Xiao Qi felt it was pretty good, only that it would be too much trouble for the other person.
Li Weijin didn't know how to sweet-talk girls, nor did he know how to whisper sweet nothings. But most of his actions made it pretty difficult for Xiao Qi to refuse him - case in point right now. He had even prepared a map of Meng City, and was asking Xiao Qi which places she planned to look at apartments and what her schedule and budget were, looking quite professional.
Since Xiao Qi had been examining the map yesterday, she was very familiar with it. Seeing the kid spread open the map, she stated her thoughts.
"I previously bought an apartment in Dongjiao. I feel like housing prices aren't high there and the area seems to have good development prospects in the future. I want to buy a few more units there. The other half of the money, I plan to buy in the former fishing village areas near the northern part of Menghai District. The property developers there are pretty big and prices aren't too expensive either."
Li Weijin hadn't ever bought property before, so he actually felt quite curious hearing about it. He hadn't expected that Xiao Qi was tutoring part-time yet had so much money to buy apartments. He knew she had prize money from competing in contests. Still, he had assumed she would only buy one apartment, and hadn't imagined Xiao Qi's goals to be so ambitious.
"What's your total budget?"
The butler also felt extremely curious hearing this question and looked over from the rearview mirror, ears pricked.
"Around 10 million. There was prize money from previously competing in a horse racing competition, plus my coach had me bet on horses he picked that were sure wins. So it got multiplied by quite a lot."
Xiao Qi explained briefly.
Butler: ......
So it was impossible for the young master of a wealthy family to like an ordinary working-class girl. He had to go home and tell his granddaughter to study hard instead of watching TV dramas and romance novels.
This girl was too amazing. Last time they chatted, it was just the butler's professionalism to probe for information about people around the young master. But the little girl was very innocent and basically told him everything. But the more she said, the more the butler was filled with solemn respect. This was no ordinary working-class girl. An ordinary girl wouldn't be able to casually win swimming championships, break marathon records, get first place in singing competitions, give the top English speech, know four or five languages, get the top academic scores, be a member of the calligraphy association, win horse racing championships...
As she went on, the young master had nothing comparable besides coming from a good family and being as good-looking as the girl.
The girl was also very rich. She had 10 million yuan before she was even 18. And you couldn't even tell at all.
A girl with 10 million yuan was working as a tutor for 500 yuan per hour. She was very down to earth and not impatient at all. The young master who previously never touched his textbooks was now studying until 2am every day.
The appraisal expert the young master brought earlier determined that a casual accessory the girl gave the young master was worth over 2 million yuan... Just thinking about the young master's colorful expression made the butler feel so good...
"10 million yuan?" Li Weijin thought for a moment before replying, "I feel like the east suburbs are a bit far. Too many buildings have been constructed, so liquidating in the short term won't be easy. And housing prices in the Menghai District fishing village have also risen, definitely more than 20,000 yuan per square meter. There's not much room left for prices to rise."
The butler didn't expect his young master to actually analyze it so knowledgably. He had never noticed this side of the young master before. He felt very gratified that the young master had grown up.
Then he heard the young master continue, "I suggest buying in the Xiao'an District. The terrain there is flat, and housing prices are extremely low right now, around 5-6,000 yuan per square meter. But there is huge potential for prices to rise."
"Pfft!" The butler accidentally turned the steering wheel too much and the car body tilted slightly, scraping against something and making a somewhat grating sound.
Xiao Qi looked up in surprise to check if anything had happened up front. It seemed fine.
She was a bit confused by the young master's words.
But Li Weijin came from a good family, so he was probably knowledgeable from exposure. His insight was probably better than her own. After all, given her own upbringing, she didn't have much experience and didn't understand a lot.
She looked down at the map to find the Xiao'an District. On the map, Xiao'an District was a district in the northern part of the city center that seemed to be developing ordinarily. She didn't recall hearing anything notable about it having development potential.
"I haven't been to the Xiao'an District before. Should we go take a look?" Xiao Qi asked uncertainly.
"Trust me, it definitely will rise in price," Li Weijin asserted categorically. His dad was buying land there, spending 5 billion to build an exhibition hall. There would definitely be demolitions, and demolitions could net profits of at least 1:1.5. There was absolutely no problem.
Xiao Qi considered for a moment, then nodded. "Alright, let's go take a look over there. I don't have much experience either."