“Here is your all day breakfast set. Anything else?” Shen Si Fang, the owner of Lele Diner Café presented Jin his usual order. Si Fang had requested earlier for Jin to have dinner with him at his place in the afternoon. Jin knew it was not some congratulatory dinner due to Si Fang’s straightforward nature. He definitely had an agenda for inviting him to the café for dinner.
“Nope, thank you Boss Shen.” Jin smiled and started to dig in into the meal while Boss Shen sat beside him with two other people. Judging from the looks of their attire and demeanour, they looked to be store owners as well.
“Firstly, let me congratulate you Jin for doing really well in your first few weeks of opening. The number of cultivators coming to your place started to make our shopping street a little livelier.” Si Fang said with a lively look.
For the longest time since the pachinko fire, Tiangong Shopping District nearly went into deficit for a number of years and things finally started to pick up after Jin opened his shop. People who patronised Jin’s shop would occasionally visit the shops in the shopping street and found out that there were actually hidden gems in the district, which made it worth coming to.
“I would like to introduce you to the committee members of this shopping district. This is Kan Ke Ru, the franchise store manager for Wacdonalds and Ji Lai Fu, the boss for the general goods store, Fresh Price.” Shen Si Fang introduced them to Jin.
“Let’s cut to the chase, we like to make you the honorary member of -” Ji Lai Fu started.
“Not interested. I am sorry, too much trouble.” Jin interrupted Ji Lai Fu before he could continue. “If you are asking me to do stuff, I apologise but I am technically not under your shopping district.”
“No no no. We are hoping that you could provide some erm…promotional awareness to our shopping district. All you have to do is provide customers with a discount coupon booklet so they know that there are discounts available to our shops.” Kan Ke Ru explained, trying to defuse the sudden tense situation that Lai Fu inadvertently created.
“Why should I do that? I have nothing to gain.” Jin sipped his soup.
“While you are not part of the Tiangong Shopping District, we are providing the same incentives by allowing you to place your dungeon instance tickets for sale in the discount coupon booklet. That way, you will be able to gather more customers too.” Ke Ru tried her best to keep Jin in the conversation.
“I am sorry, I do not provide discounts for my tickets. My items on sale are of a reasonable price.” All three shop owners wanted to puke blood. Reasonable pricing? More like extortion!
“How about this? For this month edition, I will put you in the front page too.” Si Fang said to Jin in order to sweeten the pot.
“Please do consider for the sake of the shopping district. Else, this shopping street would not be able to survive.” Lai Fu tried to amend his position after being shot down previously.
“Then I will buy the entire shopping street when it goes bankrupt,” Jin said so casually, the three owners perpetually rolled their eyes up and hoped that the grim reaper would come to take their lives at this very instant. What kind of confidence does this dungeon supplier had? To begin with, if he had that much money, why would he even want to work when he could have just enjoyed his life.
Si Fang thought he was just bluffing and he tried another approach. “How about we provide you 0.5% commission of our profits for this month as a tryout.”
“This is not what we discussed!” Both owners started to shout and it startled some of the customers in Si Fang’s store. They immediately apologised and asked Si Fang to step aside for a while.
“Why are you placing so much faith in that little kid. He is too young to even know how business works!” Lai Fu snorted.
“But have you seen the influx of customers we started having? I mean look at Ke Ru. Even though Wacdonalds is an international brand in fast food, there were so little customers in the past. The profit margins were considered the lowest in Shenzhen. How has your business been for the past two weeks, Ke Ru?” Si Fang queried.
“Nearly all the tables were taken. It was like a miracle!” Ke Ru mentioned.
“And from the look of things, I am willing to bet this guy is just going to get more famous.” Si Fang’s cunningness was obvious for all to see.
“I cannot fathom why you have so much confidence in that kid. Alright, say we are willing to compromise, what if he still does not?” Lai Fu’s head started to hurt.
“We will raise the commission to about 1% and that is the most I can offer. If we are able to make it big, have more customers than before, we should have enough profit despite the discounts.” Si Fang replied.
Unknowingly to them, Jin could actually hear the whole conversation due to his technique, Playful Panda Hearing, which allowed him to have acute hearing senses and situational awareness.
“If I get a commission from them, is it added into the store’s coffers?” Jin asked Yun in his head.
“Well, If I were the System, the System will definitely say no because the System is fixed. But I am Yun. It’s still money for a little give and take event. I see no reason why you could not do so. Besides, you said it yourself. You are eventually buying the whole shopping street.”
“I meant that as a joke,” Jin replied as he tasted the scrambled egg.
“Deep inside, a part of you isn’t joking. I believe in that. Sooo…” The moment Yun stopped talking, his phone vibrated in his pants.
As he took it out, there was a notification from the mission app stating that a new mission started. “That means I have three ongoing missions.” Jin sighed a little and opened it up.
********
Mission: Scam the Tiangong shopping committee and do a makeover of the coupon booklet such that it benefits you more than them.
Secondary Mission Objectives: Get a commission of more than 1%. The higher, the better the reward will be.
Reward: Unknown, to be rated by secondary mission objective.
**********
“This Yun. I can visualise her sticking her tongue out at me right now.” Jin laughed a little and started to think how he could complete the mission. To be fairly honest, he was actually having fun disturbing them the entire time before they stepped aside to discuss.
“Time for round 2.” Jin wiped his mouth with a napkin.
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