Chapter 8
Chapter 8: Debt-Collection Storm
It happened naturally: the old neighbors gathered in a loose crowd outside Ying Chun Convenience Store, sitting on stools, sharing watermelon, talking over one another.
They asked Xiao Ying Chun everything.
Had she found a boyfriend?
Why had she come back?
Why wasn’t her aunt running the shop anymore?
Xiao Ying Chun sighed and leaned into the role of exhausted niece. She told them how Ge Chun Yu demanded a salary to keep minding the store, and then—carefully—mentioned the unpaid wholesale debts.
The moment she did, outrage sparked like dry grass.
“That aunt of yours is vicious!”
“She used your family shop, didn’t give you a cent, and still wanted you to pay her?”
“Chun girl, don’t pay a single yuan of her debt! If you pay once, she’ll keep buying on credit under your name. It’ll never end!”
Xiao Ying Chun rubbed her forehead, acting troubled. “Some suppliers are coming tonight to collect from me. I’m worried sick.”
“Don’t worry! We’re here!”
“We’ll testify for you!”
“If they won’t be reasonable, let them sue!”
The neighbors’ sense of justice flared hot, and they settled in like a jury, waiting.
Xiao Ying Chun felt grateful—and a little guilty. She was leaning on them, wasn’t she?
Right then, a car stopped out front. Four men got out and marched straight toward the shop.
One of them called loudly, “Where’s the boss lady? Tell the boss lady to come out.”
Xiao Ying Chun was already standing by the entrance. “I’m the boss lady.”
Two men with briefcases under their arms sized her up. The man in a black polo spoke first, blunt and impatient. “Where’s your mom? I’m here to see your mom.”
Xiao Ying Chun didn’t blink. “My mother died in a car crash last year. If you’re looking for her, that’ll be hard.”
The black polo man froze.
The younger man in a blue plaid shirt stepped in smoothly, voice more polite. “I heard from Uncle Liang that you’re pulling stock and buying a lot of compressed biscuits?”
Xiao Ying Chun looked at him coolly. “And what does that have to do with you?”
The man offered a business card. “Wei Xiang. I’m the boss of Fei Xiang Wholesale. Over the past year, Ying Chun Convenience Store bought more than 30,000 yuan of goods from me on credit and never paid. I’m here to collect. These three are in the same situation.”
He didn’t waste words. Then he asked, “What’s your relationship with the previous boss lady, Ge Chun Yu?”
Xiao Ying Chun liked people who spoke clearly.
“That’s my aunt,” she said. “Last year my parents died unexpectedly, and she volunteered to run the shop for me. We signed a contract. During her management, profit and loss were her responsibility.”
She kept her voice calm and firm. “If you want to collect debt, go to her. Coming to me is useless. The contract states it.”
She reached under the counter and set the paperwork down.
Wei Xiang read it. His face tightened.
The other men looked worse by the second.
One of them snapped, “You’re family. She owes money, so you should pay.”
“And you just did a huge deal,” another added. “What’s this small amount to you?”
Xiao Ying Chun’s eyes turned cold. “She’s my aunt, not my mother. And because I did business, I’m supposed to take the blame for her?”
She lifted her chin toward the neighbors eating watermelon outside. “This shop has been here more than twenty years. Everyone here knows we’ve never cheated anyone.”
She tapped the contract. “I told our old suppliers when my aunt took over. The reason she went to you is because the old suppliers stopped extending her credit. Why did you hand over goods on credit without checking?”
The men fell silent.
They had checked—just not enough. They’d seen a chance to steal business from Uncle Liang’s circle, and they’d taken the risk.
The neighbors chimed in immediately.
“It’s true!”
“Her aunt ran the shop for a year and never paid rent!”
“She said Ying Chun couldn’t bear to lose her parents’ shop, so she let her aunt run it—profit and loss on her own!”
A chorus of testimony, loud and indignant.
Wei Xiang didn’t argue. His expression shifted, calculating now instead of angry. “Shopkeeper Xiao… if we go after your aunt, we probably won’t get the money back. How about this instead?”
He gestured broadly. “If you have big orders like this again, can you buy from us? Let us earn something too. Make up a bit of our loss.”
So that was it. Today was half debt collection, half business pitch.
Xiao Ying Chun studied him. He looked eager. The other three looked dissatisfied, but they nodded anyway.
“If I need to buy,” Xiao Ying Chun said, “I can consider you. But the goods have to be right, and your prices can’t be higher than elsewhere. Can you do that?”
Wei Xiang nodded quickly. “Yes. Absolutely.”
He took a look around the shop—small, but spotless, shelves neat, goods arranged like someone cared.
And with what he’d heard about Uncle Liang pulling citywide stock for five thousand cartons of biscuits, Wei Xiang had no doubt this young Shopkeeper Xiao had found a powerful connection.
A normal person couldn’t buy that much and pay on the spot.
This storefront might not be her real business at all. It could just be a cover.
He didn’t say any of it aloud.
They shook on it, got back into their car, and left.
Xiao Ying Chun stared after them, almost disoriented.
Was that really it?
Thinking of her aunt’s petty, calculating nature, Xiao Ying Chun felt it in her bones: this wasn’t over.
At ten that night, when she finally closed up, she realized she’d forgotten dinner.
But when she thought about how much she’d made today, she only laughed softly to herself.
She wasn’t hungry.
Xiao Ying Chun fell asleep on a cushion of sweet dreams—unaware that Fu Chen An was leading his soldiers through a night assault on Yong Zhou.