My Demon Friends-Chapter 494 - 474: Genius Plan

The sunlight outside was blinding, but the dorm room was somewhat dim.

People outside were wearing short sleeves and even using umbrellas to shade themselves from the sun, yet the sunless dorm room remained cold and dreary.

Baozi was wearing a coat, hunched over the desk, earnestly writing a paper for Zhou Li.

I’m not copying.

Really, I’m not.

Although for a course like "Situation and Policy," one could easily find a plethora of final essays online, and everyone was copying them—there might be only seven or eight versions for dozens of students in a class, and the teachers didn’t care at all.

Yet she still didn’t copy. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

She was seriously writing, seriously brainstorming, occasionally pulling up web pages to check how others wrote and to reference their ideas.

And her handwriting was exceptionally neat and beautiful.

Meticulous and scrupulous, writing 1,500 words this way was exhausting.

"Phew..."

Baozi put down her pen, shook her hand, took a deep breath, rubbed her eyes, then buried her head back down, stretching out her little finger to count the words she had written on the A4 paper, line by line.

"1,403, 1,404, 1,405..."

"1,482."

"1,482."

After counting, she repeated the final number, thought about it, and then began to wrap up the paper, eventually concluding at 1,531 words.

"All set!"

Little Cousin murmured softly to herself, then wrote her name and student number in the top left corner, completing the task.

Could get... 95 points?

She stood up to stretch, walked to the balcony, squinted at the sunlight outside, then walked back and sat down. She pulled out her phone and added 88.88 to the WPS spreadsheet named ’Saving to Pay Debts.’ As she watched the total amount automatically update, the realization hit her. I’m one small step closer to being debt-free! Just thinking about it brought a smile to her lips.

This smile might seem a bit eerie to those who knew her, as she seldom smiled.

Little Cousin had a genius plan that no one else knew about; even her dorm mates Brother Nan and the dimwit Cotton Swab were kept in the dark.

On that spreadsheet, apart from the 88.88 she had just added and yesterday’s 50, the rest were miscellaneous small amounts: one yuan, two yuan, at most five or eight yuan.

There were even amounts with decimals.

But these sums had accumulated to several hundred yuan.

All earned from Brother Nan and Zhou Li!

All this was because she had borrowed a thousand yuan from her cousin, Zhou Li, several days ago. But she was broke, and she didn’t want to pay it back!

So, these past few days, she had massaged Brother Nan’s shoulders and pounded her legs, and even let Brother Nan play with her face. When pleased, Brother Nan would buy her bubble tea—Baozi always said she wanted Xiancao, but Brother Nan always bought from Happy Lemon.

In doing so, she made a profit from the price difference.

She also ran errands for Brother Nan, buying beer, soft drinks, sunflower seeds, and snacks, which allowed her to charge Brother Nan a service fee. Since the prices at various supermarkets and convenience stores around the campus differed, she always bought from the cheapest and billed the highest price, making a small profit each time.

She even did homework for Brother Nan.

And ran errands and did homework for Zhou Li as well.

To avoid being caught, she completed all these tasks exceptionally well, leaving them highly satisfied. So much so, that each time they felt they were taking advantage of her and felt guilty about it.

Thinking about it made her want to laugh.

Once I’ve paid off Cousin’s thousand yuan, perhaps he won’t even realize that all this money was swindled from him and his girlfriend using various tricks—I will have, without anyone noticing, effectively welched on his thousand-yuan loan!

A flawless plan!!

That’s a thousand yuan! It’s no small amount!

Just then, Baozi suddenly felt someone poking her arm, and a faint smell of barbecue wafted into her nostrils.

Barbecue...

Such a distant memory.

Turning her head, she saw Brother Nan tilting her head, looking puzzled, and asking, "What are you giggling about by yourself?"

Baozi had already wiped the smile from her face and said woodenly, "I was thinking of something happy."

"Let’s hear it."

"I can’t."

"Stingy!"

"Sister-in-law, is there anything you want to buy? I’ll go get it for you."

"I just got back."

"Oh, then I’m going up to bed to rest."

Little Cousin got up calmly, climbed the ladder to her bed, lay down neatly, and casually pulled the quilt over her face so she could continue to laugh secretly without being seen, but she couldn’t laugh out loud.

These two fools!

At this moment, Brother Nan’s voice came from below, "Zhou Li asked me to bring you barbecue. Aren’t you going to eat it?"

Little Cousin pulled off the blanket and climbed down the ladder.

Sure enough, a bunch of skewers lay on her desk, wrapped in aluminum foil that glinted under the light. She thought she had glimpsed it when she went to bed earlier but had dismissed it as a hallucination.

"OOH!!"

"What are you ’ooh’-ing about?"

"Nothing," Little Cousin turned her head calmly. "I can smell it already. It’s really fragrant."

"Is it tasty?"

"Delicious."

"I grilled it."

"Thank you, Sister-in-law."

"Such a sensible child..."

Brother Nan stopped bothering with Baozi, went back to her seat, and began humming a song while opening her laptop.

After a few skewers, Baozi was deeply moved but still restrained her appetite. She picked up her phone and sent a message to Mianmian and Qian Qian to see when they’d be back so she could try to save a skewer for each of them.

Turning her head slightly, she heard Brother Nan singing—

"Watch me use the 808 base..."

"Then sag my pants a little..."

Such strange songs, strange tunes, but I’m already used to it. She saw that Brother Nan was browsing Taobao; the page was filled with images of big, old-fashioned iron locks. Brother Nan even occasionally looked down at her phone to compare.

There was also a picture of a big, old-fashioned iron lock on her phone, one that Baozi herself had taken.

"Brother Nan, what are you doing?"

"Qing Lian Jushi patted my head, I told him I’ll go touch your mom’s foot..." Brother Nan sang, then paused and turned to see Baozi, who was pretending not to be curious. "Oh, it’s like this: I think that rooftop is pretty nice. No one usually goes up there, so we can use it as our society’s activity space in the future. It’s more fun than borrowing a classroom. So I was thinking of buying a lock just like it to replace the old one, so we don’t have to use a hairpin and struggle every time, like we’re burglars."

"We practically are..." Baozi thought, swallowing hard before asking, "What if we get caught?"

"How would we get caught? They’d discover the key doesn’t work on the lock?" Brother Nan shook her head. "I reckon they don’t ever open that door, and the lock is so old that even if it doesn’t open, the caretaker will probably just think it’s rusted shut."

"Caught red-handed," Baozi added.

"Our luck can’t be that bad," Brother Nan paused, "and isn’t there someone to take the blame?"

"True."

To relish skewers, one must accept the risks. Baozi understood this principle. Besides, compared to chipping in money, taking the blame was a friendlier option. Thus, Baozi happily gave Brother Nan a thumbs-up, praising her for her meticulous planning.

Of course, in terms of scheming, I still have the upper hand.