55. That Friend Who Wanted to Borrow Money

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard Fuxing EMU train. Smoking is strictly prohibited throughout the entire journey..."

10:00 AM.

The train set off again after arriving at Nanjing Station, and a middle-aged man in the same compartment woke Chen Che up.

They were getting close to Hangzhou, so he had no intention of going back to sleep. He reclined in the spacious seat and took out his phone.

Last year—or rather, last night after arriving at the hotel—he couldn't quite fall asleep, so he took a taxi out for a foot bath and a massage.

Green water foot bath, green essential oil back scrub.

Don't get any weird ideas...

In his past life, he had given up all pretense of caring. Since he was already struggling in the mire, he might as well get thoroughly stained with it. That was also the reason he never settled down to live a mundane life with Xu Jiarou.

Given a pocket that could afford it, things like foot baths and massages only ever happened zero times or an infinite number of times.

In his previous life, Chen Che couldn't say he went every day, but at least twice a month, and even more so after buying his Cadillac.

Now that he had been reborn, he was prepared to treat foot baths just like cigarettes: quit whenever possible.

Gong Bingyan had gone to South Korea to collect her graduation certificate, leaving Chen Che exceptionally lonely, empty, and cold.

With little Gong away, he would just have to endure it.

Even if he couldn't hold out, he would have to look for top-tier girl group members or internet celebrities with the same peerless figures and looks as Gong Bingyan.

Both his upper head and lower head had to agree simultaneously; he couldn't be so casual anymore. From now on, he would only play with the finest.

Unlocking the screen, Chen Che reclined in the aviation-style seat, checking his WeChat messages and replying to them one by one.

Returning to the message interface, he raised an eyebrow at an unread message from an hour ago.

[Wu Lei]:
"Brother Che, do you have any money right now?"

Without even needing to click into it to read further, Chen Che had already processed the message and fallen into deep thought.

He had changed history after his rebirth, but for now, it was only on a small scale; it hadn't reached the level of changing the world.

Wu Lei was Chen Che's junior high school classmate. Back in their middle school days when students formed cliques, he used to be Chen Che's lackey.

Chen Che had money, and because he was smart and handsome, he naturally became one of those scumbags who ruled the school as a local bully.

Of course, he had never actually bullied or harassed his classmates; he just liked putting on airs, forming cliques, and acting tough.

They were just kids back then, fond of showing off and acting cool.

By the time Chen Che transitioned from elementary to middle school, his family already had money, so he went to junior high in the county town and lived at his aunt's place.

After finishing the second year of junior high, he moved to Tianjin, so he had actually only been classmates with Wu Lei for two years.

Putting aside the fact that he had returned from the year 2024.

Actually, the Chen Che of 2018 didn't hold any particular emotional attachment to Wu Lei; after all, they hadn't seen each other in ages.

However, Chen Che remembered Wu Lei, and he also remembered that around 2018, the guy seemed to have asked to borrow money.

In his previous life, he had been working odd jobs, but his family hadn't gone bankrupt yet at that time, so he was harboring a bit of misplaced inflation and arrogance.

He had plenty of money in his card back then, but let alone lending money to Wu Lei, he hadn't even bothered to reply to him.

The main reason Chen Che still had a deep impression of Wu Lei now was because of certain events that occurred in the later years.

In provinces with poor educational resources, there were bound to be a massive number of junior high school graduates who never got the chance to attend high school or university.

Zhang Liang was one, and Wu Lei was another.

In his memories, Wu Lei was a tall, sturdy boy who, despite not talking much, was exceptionally loyal and stood by his friends.

However, Wu Lei had a rather miserable time of it.

Later on, when Chen Che and his junior high classmates gathered for Chinese New Year reunions, someone brought up Wu Lei, and his situation was tragic beyond words.

Some said that after dropping out of school, Wu Lei went to Guangdong to find his mother and ended up working in factories there.

Just how miserable was Wu Lei? He had drifted into pyramid schemes three separate times—though whether that was true or not remained unknown.

Later, that same person claimed Wu Lei had been lured abroad to engage in telecom fraud, spinning the tale with such vivid detail that it sounded almost believable.

Indeed, Wu Lei had completely lost contact; none of them could reach him, and word had it that even his father had called the police and all that.

Because it was so tragic, Chen Che remembered it vividly.

"What's wrong? Tell me."

Regardless of whether it was true or not, Chen Che didn't hesitate much. In this lifetime, he typed out a reply to Wu Lei's message.

Not long after the message was sent... *Ding-dong.*

[Wu Lei]:
"Can you lend me some money for food? My boss keeps withholding my wages, but I'll definitely pay you back once I have money."

Seeing the text sent by Wu Lei, followed by an embarrassed emoticon, Chen Che continued typing:

"How much?"

[Wu Lei]:
"100 yuan is enough, I will definitely pay it back."

I really am damned...

Seeing Wu Lei's latest message, Chen Che's pupils contracted and he let out a sigh, suddenly not knowing what to say.

It wasn't that he hadn't considered earlier that Wu Lei might currently be trapped in a pyramid scheme and trying to run a scam on him.

Yet, upon seeing the figure of 100 yuan, he still couldn't hold it together.

"Leizi, what's going on with you? How can you not even have 100 yuan to your name? Where are you right now?"

Chen Che wasn't some kind of indiscriminate do-gooder, nor would he ever blindly believe everything people told him.

As he had said before: don't listen to what people say, look at what they do.

That was his personal motto, after all.

In an era where even cases of domestic violence and infidelity could end up being completely reversed, people needed to maintain the ability to think for themselves.

It might not always bring benefits.

But it would certainly never bring harm.

This time, after Chen Che sent his message, it remained silent on Wu Lei's end for a long time, almost making it seem like he had backed down.

Just as he was about to close the chat interface, Wu Lei sent over a long paragraph of text, rambling and substantial:

"The factory owes me three months' wages. Earlier, when I was delivering food, I crashed into a car and had to take out an online loan to pay for the damages. I don't have much money now, and even eating has become a problem. I found a new job and worked for half a month, but they're also withholding my pay until the end of the month. Once it hits the end of the month, I'll definitely pay you back."

There were still 5 days left until the end of the month.

Living on steamed buns and salted pickles, 100 yuan could indeed scrape by.

"[Transfer: 1,000 RMB]"

"No need to rush back the money, go get some food first."

Chen Che still had no evidence to prove that Wu Lei was telling the truth, but once the attitude was there, the rest didn't matter.

A foot bath alone cost three to five thousand.

At least they had once been friends.

To be honest, even when his family went bankrupt overnight and owed staggering amounts of money to others, Chen Che had never fallen to the point where he couldn't afford a meal.

It was hard to truly empathize with that kind of experience.

When it came to borrowing money, Chen Che didn't hold that many reservations; whatever hardships were meant to be experienced, his family had already been through them.

Chen Tianhong handled such matters very well.

Among relatives, you help out with acute emergencies rather than chronic poverty; you only lend money when there is a genuine crisis. Once the money is lent out, it doesn't matter whether it gets paid back or not—think of it as accumulating hidden merits. His old man looked at these things with a very open mind.

Among friends, you certainly shouldn't lend money casually, but if something urgent really came up, Chen Tianhong would always insist on an IOU, regardless of the amount or how close the relationship was.

Chen Che had an uncle in his extended family who got drunk and asked Chen Tianhong to borrow money. His old man insisted on an IOU, and that uncle, having too much to drink and losing his filter, started a huge argument with Chen Tianhong.

Throwing around accusations about how they were all brothers and why make things so ugly, he made a huge scene known to the entire village, badmouthing Chen Tianhong to anyone who would listen.

Regarding this, his old man didn't bother to explain.

He just let those malicious rumors circulate.

Later on, when Chen Tianhong talked about the incident, he told Chen Che that having a few blemishes on one's reputation wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

A bad reputation could save you from 80% of troubles and petty villains; people naturally tended to bully the honest and gentle-natured.

The better your reputation, the more exhausting it was to live.

Sure enough, after that, people coming to their family to borrow money became much scarcer.

Compared to his old man, Chen Che was much more ambiguous; sometimes refusing to lend a dime, and other times stepping up with high spirits to lend money out.

Actually, after growing up, you come to realize that growing older makes people mature—which is true—but maturity isn't the fundamental essence of it.

The older generation didn't mature simply as a result of aging; rather, they were shaped by the era they were born into.

It was foreseeable that when Chen Che and many people born in the late 90s and 2000s reached the age of 50, they would probably still retain the personality and mindset of 20-year-olds. The era molds the personality.

Having been used to spending lavishly, that mindset was hard to change.

On WeChat, Wu Lei expressed his thanks.

Suddenly thinking of something, Chen Che reopened Wu Lei's chat window and typed again:

"Leizi, you haven't been doing too well lately, it seems. I have some work here in Beijing, would you be willing to come over?"

Having been through the ordeal of his family's bankruptcy, Chen Che held a strong aversion to being a legal representative, almost as if he had lingering psychological trauma.

The rebranding of Huakai Group required a new legal representative, and Lawyer Jiang was helping to look for one, but wasn't there a ready-made option right here?

(The former legal representative of Bangyuan had already been sent behind bars.)

The position of legal representative was very peculiar; Chen Che definitely couldn't take it on himself, yet the person filling that role couldn't be a stranger either.

To a large extent, the legal representative represented the company, so he and his old man had to keep a firm grip on it in their own hands.

Even though he and Wu Lei hadn't seen each other in years, whether the guy was capable or not could be decided after meeting up.

Actually, he made a pretty good candidate.

Because he was determined to take things step-by-step with the three startups he founded, him acting as the legal representative posed no problem and didn't frighten him with crises.

Yet a real estate group involved far too much...

Wu Lei's ultimate fate in the future was not a good one. Rather than ending up in that kind of situation, he might as well come over and help him out.

Though it carried a bit of risk, Huakai Group would serve as his domestic stronghold in the future, and he would never let his own house catch fire.