Chapter 317 — I Don't Get It!
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
"What Tang Zhi? She doesn't even have a cell phone!" Wei Zhao shot Kang Xiaofeng a glare. "I'm reading the weather report."
"Oh..." Only then did Kang Xiaofeng remember that Wei Zhao had said he was taking Tang Zhi to buy a phone at noon today - and that he himself had been planning to pick up one for Xiaofen as well.
At noon, the four of them - Wei Zhao, Tang Zhi, Kang Xiaofeng, and Liu Xinlan - left school together. Now that Wei Zhao had his beat-up van, there was no reason to take a taxi anymore. The vehicle was hardly anything to look at, but it beat nothing at all, and it was a good deal more convenient every way.
"Tang Zhi, Kang Xiaofeng wants to buy Xiaofen a phone so they can stay in touch more easily. What about you?" Wei Zhao asked, driving, glancing across at Tang Zhi in the passenger seat.
This time Kang Xiaofeng readily ceded the front seat to Tang Zhi and squeezed into the back with Liu Xinlan.
"Me? I'm not buying one... I wouldn't have any use for a phone..." Tang Zhi shook her head. Given her family's circumstances, where would she find the spare cash for a phone?
A phone itself wasn't terribly expensive, but on top of the handset you had to buy a SIM card, and then there were the monthly charges - all told, a considerable drain. So Tang Zhi turned him down flat.
"The boss is paying!" Kang Xiaofeng cut in. "Xiaofen's phone was a gift from the boss too, sister-in-law. If you refuse and he buys only one for Xiaofen, she'll never accept it! Please, just do us this favor!"
At Kang Xiaofeng's words, Tang Zhi couldn't help but let out a laugh - buying someone a phone, and having to beg them to take it... Still, Tang Zhi recalled how, back at the night market, Wei Zhao had bought her a dress and then turned around and asked her for fifty yuan afterward.
Thinking back... sometimes life is truly strange. She had loathed him so fiercely then, hated him to death, and now here she sat quietly in his car, right beside him...
Still fuming, she had shoved the dress to the back of her closet the day she brought it home and never worn it... Still, when she got home tonight, she ought to be able to dig it out...
At the thought, Tang Zhi pressed her lips together in a smile... If he had simply given her the dress back then, would she have accepted it? The answer was no. But now, with Wei Zhao offering to buy her a phone and Kang Xiaofeng having talked her around a little, she let it pass without objection...
Wei Zhao parked the van outside a mobile phone store, and all four climbed out.
The sales clerk saw that all four were in school uniforms and knew at once they were students; she promptly brought out several cheap phone models.
As it happened, Kang Xiaofeng wanted a cheaper phone himself - he had no intention of letting Wei Zhao shell out thousands for a smartphone.
"What price range are you looking for?" the sales clerk asked.
Kang Xiaofeng was about to say two or three hundred yuan, but the call was really Wei Zhao's to make, so he turned and looked at him instead.
Wei Zhao knew Kang Xiaofeng wanted something cheap - yesterday's plan had been two or three hundred yuan. But Wei Zhao did not want to buy Tang Zhi anything too cheap; if Xiaofen got a phone for two or three hundred, it wouldn't do for him to spring for a cheap one for Tang Zhi... Giving them different treatment could cause hard feelings if Xiaofen took it the wrong way.
"Something around a thousand yuan," Wei Zhao said after a moment's thought, naming a figure. Tang Zhi would never accept anything too dear, so this range should be about right.
"The Nokia 5233, then. It's very popular with students - inexpensive and fully featured. It only lacks the 5230's GPS navigation, but that's not something you students would use anyway." The clerk produced a handset and launched into her pitch: "And it's cheaper than the 5230 - only 833 yuan."
"What do you think?" Wei Zhao pushed the phone across to Tang Zhi, asking her opinion.