Chapter 3: Fifteen Yuan for a Friendship

“Right, she’s renting our place. We’re only charging her fifty thousand yuan a month. When the lease expires, let’s lower it to ten thousand! The market rent for that property is a hundred thousand!”

I shook my head.

“No. I’m not lowering it. I want to restore the original rent.”

My father slapped me hard across the face.

“You still refuse to back down? You’ve brought shame on this family!”

I held my cheek and looked calmly at him.

“Dad, don’t worry. I won’t be the one who loses in the end.”

I wasn’t going to lower the rent.

I was only restoring it to the proper market rate.

I wanted to see who would be laughing last.

A week later, Li Lian’s account had grown from a few hundred followers to two hundred thousand.

I was submitting job applications online when she called.

“We’re practically sisters. Can we keep the rent at fifty thousand a month next year? Or maybe lower it to thirty thousand? We’ve been friends for years. For the sake of our friendship, you’d only be giving up another 240,000 yuan a year!”

I burst out laughing.

Just a few days ago, she’d told me to get out. Now she could switch faces that fast.

Where did she get the nerve?

“The rent isn’t going down.”

Li Lian’s tone changed at once.

“I’m only asking you to lower it by twenty thousand a month. We’ve been friends for years. Do you really have to be so calculative?”

I kept laughing.

“Not only is the rent not going down—it’s going back to the market rate. Starting next month, it’ll be one hundred thousand yuan.”

There was silence on the other end for three full minutes.

Then Li Lian suddenly screamed.

“What? You won’t lower the rent—you’re raising it? Are you insane with greed? You ate fifteen yuan’s worth of noodles at my shop without paying, and I forgave you. Then you turn around and raise my rent! I’ll sue you!”

Sue me?

For a moment, I really wondered how I’d spent twenty years and so much money helping someone like her.

My stomach twisted with disgust.

I took a sip of coffee.

“Li Lian, do you hear yourself?”

“You’ve rented my property for five years. Don’t you know what the place next door pays? It rents for 120,000 a month—1.44 million a year—and it’s the same size as mine!”

“The unit on the other side rents for 100,000 a month, or 1.2 million a year, even though it’s twenty square meters smaller than mine!”

Li Lian fell silent.

“Because we’d been friends for years, I cut the rent on a place worth at least a hundred thousand a month down to fifty thousand for you. I’ve kept it that way for five years. Restoring it to the market rate now is perfectly reasonable.”

Li Lian continued shouting into the phone.

“Su Shu, is our friendship of more than twenty years worth less than a 600,000-yuan discount on rent each year?”

She challenged me as if she were in the right.

I laughed.

“Do you really think we’re friends? If we were, why did you call the police because I ate a fifteen-yuan bowl of noodles and hadn’t paid yet?”

Li Lian was silent for a long time.

Finally, she spoke as though she were making a generous concession.

“Fine. I’ll agree to you not lowering the rent. But it has to stay at fifty thousand a month!”

“Otherwise, you’ll lose me as a friend! Our friendship of more than twenty years will be over!”

This time I really burst out laughing.

“Li Lian, do you hear yourself?”

“I ate a fifteen-yuan bowl of your noodles and forgot to pay. You immediately called the police. You even said that fifteen yuan was hard-earned money you’d made by getting up early and staying up late, so you were completely justified in calling the police.”

“Online, you said you had to stand your ground and refuse to let so-called friends take advantage of you. You said you couldn’t let a friend use morality to pressure you. You even called me a freeloader…”

“I think you made a good point.”

I threw her own words back at her.

“So I won’t let a friend use our feelings to pressure me either—especially a friend who likes to grab such a huge bargain.”

“I lost my job because of you, and I can’t find a new one because of you. My property could rent for a hundred thousand a month, or 1.2 million a year. Why should I rent it to you for fifty thousand a month and lose 600,000 yuan every year?”

“Our twenty-year friendship was worth less to you than a fifteen-yuan bowl of noodles. So it certainly isn’t worth 600,000 yuan a year to me!”

Li Lian was left speechless, but she still tried to argue loudly.

“I’ll say it again: you were wrong not to pay the fifteen yuan for the noodles. I was right to call the police! Your losing your job, not finding another one, and getting attacked online have nothing to do with me!”

“Everything I said online is true!”

I gave a cold laugh.

“And there’s nothing wrong with restoring the rent to its market rate.”

“If you agree to pay one hundred thousand a month, I’ll keep renting the place to you. Think it over.”

Li Lian shouted into the phone again: