Chapter 63: Chapter 63: Afraid that her bestie is suffering, yet also afraid her bestie drives a Land Rover.
"Ha ha ha..." Xiang Yiren laughed heartily, clutching her belly.
"Miss Fan, your cousin is just too funny."
Fan Yi’s face turned an ashen hue. As soon as Xiang Yiren mentioned the car, Fan Yi had noticed its emblem. With her more than a decade of experience in Dahu City, she knew that the car wasn’t the cheap domestic Chery Qilin her cousin was talking about. It was an international luxury brand, a Bentley, which was much more expensive than a BMW. Although she didn’t know the exact model, its price could easily be ten times that of her base model BMW X1.
"Xiao Fan, shut up! Don’t say another word!" Fan Yi commanded her cousin.
If he kept talking, she couldn’t imagine how much more face she would lose. For someone who cared so much about her reputation, it was unforgivable. At that moment, she even felt the urge to "return" him like a faulty product, even if it meant enduring her mother’s complaints.
"My cousin, Zhang Fan, just came from a small town and doesn’t understand these things. Please forgive our ignorance," she said. "As for cutting in line earlier, that was also his fault. We’ll move the car right away."
Since Fan Yi’s attitude was good, Sun Dasheng and his group decided to let the matter drop.
Only the utterly confused Zhang Fan, grumbling in the BMW’s passenger seat, watched his cousin move the car and said discontentedly, "Sis, why do we have to give them the spot? Isn’t it first come, first served?"
"Because their car is worth ten of mine," Fan Yi said coldly, her face expressionless as she drove.
"What?" Zhang Fan was stunned. Are there really cars in this world that are ten times more expensive than a BMW?
Our hometown might be in a remote, backward mountainous area, but it’s not like we’re cut off from the world, right? How can my cousin be such a frog in a well? Does he not have internet at home? No short videos to scroll through?
She was completely bewildered.Then again, it was understandable why she couldn’t comprehend it. In an age with such readily available information, people who weren’t interested in luxury goods still had no concept of their prices. As a gaming addict, Zhang Fan knew about high-end cars, but his knowledge was limited to the Mercedes and BMWs he had seen in his town. A car ten times more expensive than a Mercedes or a BMW was truly beyond his imagination.
"Should I go apologize to him again?" Facing a super-tycoon, he instantly felt cowed. The idea that you don’t mess with people in luxury cars was etched into his very bones.
He remembered the formidable Brother Qiang from back in the day. He had more than a dozen underlings, but he still fell from grace just for crossing a mine boss who drove a BMW. It happened fast. Within just a few days, his leg was broken. And what could he do about it? Absolutely nothing. The once-imposing Brother Qiang, who used to collect protection fees from elementary schoolers, was reduced to Little Qiang, the internet cafe manager.
Such a painful lesson was deeply ingrained in Zhang Fan’s memory.
The perceptive Fan Yi understood her cousin’s apprehension perfectly. "No need. If he said he forgives you, he won’t do anything to you," she reassured him. "This is Shanghai City, not our backwater mountains. No big boss is going to get his own hands dirty dealing with you."
Her explanation made him look much better. "So there are no consequences for offending a big boss here?" he asked naively.
Fan Yi finally found a parking spot after a long search and skillfully reversed into it. After parking and unfastening her seatbelt, she glanced at her cousin.
"You’re welcome to try," she said. "No one might come at you directly, but if you cross them, you could end up dead without ever knowing how. And I guarantee it would never be traced back to them."
Zhang Fan shivered. "Is it really that scary?"
"They’ll bankrupt you, leave you jobless, penniless, and with no hope of ever getting back on your feet. Your only choice would be to leave this city," Fan Yi said in a low voice.
Zhang Fan took a deep breath. "Oh, so that’s how it is. Well, that’s a relief. As long as there’s life, there’s hope. I can always make a comeback somewhere else."
"Is that so?" Fan Yi suddenly lost the desire to say anything more. Trying to talk to him was as exhausting as trying to talk to a duck.
"Sis, where are we going?" Zhang Fan’s tone lightened up again.
Fan Yi didn’t answer. Instead, she fiddled with her phone, and Zhang Fan’s phone pinged with a notification. He looked down and exclaimed with surprise, "Sis, why did you send me a one-thousand-yuan red packet? I haven’t even spent the money you gave me last time."
Despite his words, his fingers didn’t hesitate to accept the transfer.
Getting out of the car, Fan Yi locked the doors. "Take this money and go do some shopping, buy some clothes or something. If I haven’t called you by then, go watch a movie. Just wait for my message."
Fan Yi wrapped herself in a fluffy fur coat. She then retrieved foundation from her handbag, dabbing it around her eyes a few times to cover her wrinkles. Only then did she add with a smile, "Sis, do you have something to do? When we left, you said you’d help me buy clothes."
Zhang Fan was a little disappointed.
Fan Yi shot him a look. "Can’t your sister have things to do? You’re a grown man, stop whining. If you keep it up, you can transfer that money right back to me."
"Heh heh... Since you’re busy, Sis, you go on ahead. I’ll be fine on my own," he said quickly. The thought of returning the money he had just received was completely unacceptable.
Watching her cousin’s retreating figure, Fan Yi headed in the direction she had seen Sun Dasheng and the others go.
Her best friend Lee Li’s ex-husband had piqued her curiosity. To be more precise, his money had piqued her curiosity.
She used to travel with Lee Li often, and Lee Li’s most frequent complaint was always about her husband’s ’meager’ income. It was never enough for her to travel without a care, forcing her to pinch pennies on the road. The five-star hotels, the lavish seafood feasts of Australian lobster and tuna, the luxury boutiques on the Champs-Élysées that her friends flaunted on social media—she envied it all.
Of course, Fan Yi envied those things too, so the two women had plenty to talk about in that regard.
However, Lee Li was still better off than her. She had a decent sponsor who allowed her to travel without worry. Fan Yi, on the other hand, had no such sponsor and had to float between several devoted suitors, stringing them along to pay for her daily meals. Only by doing so had she managed to save enough to buy a base model BMW X1, with a little left over for travel.
The sole difference between them: one used a marriage certificate to bleed a single man dry, while the other bled several devoted suitors through ambiguous relationships. It was hardly a question of who was more despicable.
So, seeing her best friend’s ex-husband today, suddenly a rich man after the divorce... If I could snatch him for myself, play with her man right in front of her, spend his money... could anything be more thrilling?
Don’t think ’best friend’ is such a noble term. At least, in her world, it was anything but sacred. Seeing a best friend fail was more satisfying than her own success.
Hadn’t she seen countless marriages wrecked by a ’best friend,’ only for that friend to swoop in and take her place?
What was the principle behind it? Simple: seeing your best friend have it better than you is more infuriating than your own suffering!