Chapter 17: You’ve Been Paid a Prostitution Fee

Lu Chenzhou smiled upon seeing the situation, a slight curve on his lips. His eyes were unexpectedly clear, good-looking, and even showed a glimpse of mirth. That, combined with a sense of kindliness, actually dispelled some of his body’s natural frigidity.

Cheng Xi looked at him out of the corner of her eyes and unconsciously held her breath. Xu Po and Baldy, on the other hand, seemed used to this behavior. The latter even unhappily grumbled, “Does winning once make you this happy? Your winning streak won’t last long. We’ll slowly whittle you guys down until you lose your pants.”

Lu Chenzhou, indifferent as always, merely replied, “Speak for yourself when you win.”

Xu Po looked at Cheng Xi’s tiles. “If you were going for seven pairs, then why did you throw out so many pairs earlier?”

Cheng Xi innocently said, “I didn’t know what I was going for back then.”

Baldy thumped the table as he heard their conversation. “Just beginner’s luck afterall!”

Cheng Xi smiled as each of the two gave her a small stack of chips from the piles in front of them. She had already received plenty of chips from winning this round.

She returned the chips that Lu Chenzhou had given her initially. Baldy snickered as he saw this. “Hey, you don’t think that everything’s going to go well just because you won this round, do you?”

Cheng Xi shook her head. “I just don’t want you guys to label me as someone who squanders money.”

“Good, you should be ambitious!” Xu Po praised her as he laughed.

Even as the game continued, Cheng Xi’s technique remained poor. One round after Xu Po had won, he leaned over to look at her tiles and couldn’t help but laugh. “You even threw out your reclaimed tiles?”

She was still at a loss for how to play.

But regardless of how poor her technique was, it couldn’t mitigate her good luck. She didn’t seem to win with low-scoring tiles at all, but when she did win, it was always with a high-scoring hand. Her combinations like the previous seven pairs easily trounced everyone else at the table.

It was because of this that Xu Po said, somewhat humorously, “Are the tiles themselves favoring the pretty lady?”

Lu Chenzhou also won a few small hands, but Baldy remained the only one who hadn’t won since the start of the game. He had to call another attendant over to get some more chips, grinning at Cheng Xi as he did so. “Keep winning while you still can.”

And Cheng Xi did keep winning. At the start, Lu Chenzhou and Xu Po had won a few rounds intermittently, but after midnight, Cheng Xi had finally solidly grasped the rules of the game. At that point, even they couldn’t win anymore. The three of them looked on balefully as Cheng Xi made move after move for another two hours. No matter how little they cared, even they were growing exasperated; who didn’t want to win?

Baldy knocked his tiles over as his frustration overflowed. He directly asked Cheng Xi, “Did you really not know how to play, or were you just acting dumb?”

“I’ve never gambled before in my life,” Cheng Xi said dispassionately as she threw out a few more tiles and picked new ones up, before pushing her whole set down once again. “Set of flowers, same suit.”

The other three people in the room couldn’t even find words to respond.

Baldy couldn’t help it, and he also threw his tiles down. “Forget it, I’m not playing anymore!”

The other two shared his sentiment.

Over the course of the entire game, everyone else’s tokens had migrated in front of Cheng Xi. The club attendants came over to help her convert her tokens into earnings, and she tallied it up silently: a few million dollars. Given the current housing prices in the city, just these few hours of gambling was enough for her to buy a house near the hospital she worked at.

As she walked out of the room, she found that Lu Chenzhou and the others had already left. Luckily, the club had the contact information of all their club members, and Cheng Xi managed to get ahold of Lu Chenzhou’s number and call him. “You forgot to return the car keys to me.”

“Oh.”

“Then what am I going to do?”

“Find a solution yourself.” Given his cold tone, was he throwing a fit after losing money to her? It couldn’t be—Lu Chenzhou had always been calm and indifferent from the beginning.

Luckily, one of the attendants at the club saved her. “If you register for a membership, we can send you out for free.”

Cheng Xi was relieved. “How do I get a membership?”

The attendant helped her set one up and then asked her, “Would you prefer to keep your earnings here or have them transferred to your bank account?”

It was only then that Cheng Xi remembered that she had earned a large sum of money. “Is Mr. Lu a member here?”

“Yes.”

“Then put it all into his account.”

“All of it?”

“Yes.”

She loved money, but was even more conscientious about her money’s provenance. The money she had received today was nothing more than ill-gotten gains; to avoid any future problems, it was better to return it all.

The attendant was sure that there was some gossip hidden in there somewhere, but he didn’t pry and efficiently handled all the requested transaction.

“Do you want to leave a message to go with the transaction?”

Cheng Xi smiled lightly. “Prostitution fees.”

Given how considerate he was to send her condoms, then shouldn’t it be normal for her to be polite and settle the score?

Still holding a grudge from being abandoned, Cheng Xi had thus done a very irrational thing. She regretted her words almost as soon as she said them, but it was already too late.