...
The location for the lunch gathering to celebrate Jiang Mo was found by Wang Ying and the others, not far from the school. It was at an Old Beidou copper pot restaurant near Peace Gate on Qianmen West Street.
In Beidou, the most authentic hot pot should be mutton, but Wang Ying might have considered that some people might not eat mutton. So she found a place that also offered beef.
Zhou Wang followed Jiang Mo and rode two bus stops, then walked to the restaurant they had chosen. They went up to the second floor and entered a private room, where four people were already sitting: three women and one man, including Wang Ying.
When Zhou Wang and Jiang Mo pushed the door open, they were chattering about something, and Zhou Wang vaguely heard his own name.
Seeing the two enter, the young men and women stopped their discussion and turned their attention to Zhou Wang.
"Wang Ying, let me introduce everyone to you."
Wang Ying knew better than to rely on Jiang Mo, so she took the initiative as the intermediary and introduced the young men and women one by one.
"Cindy, our band’s guitarist, from Jiang Province... Zhang Jie, we usually call him Brother Jie, the drummer, from Qin Province... and the only undergraduate here, Yoyo, the bassist, she’s a local. Almost all the gigs we get in the band are through her connections."
After Wang Ying’s introductions, she smiled and pointed to Zhou Wang:
"As for this one, it’s Zhou Wang, Momo’s boyfriend, both from Yunan Province like Momo..."
"Hello, everyone."
Zhou Wang smiled and nodded at them, and they each responded in different ways.
Cindy had a typical Uyghur appearance, her features were quite nice, and her skin was very fair, though up close, there were slight blemishes. She shyly smiled in response to Zhou Wang’s greeting, seeming a bit introverted.
Brother Jie had dark skin, dressed simply, and appeared slightly uneasy when greeting Zhou Wang.
As for the last local girl named Yoyo, she was the most flamboyantly dressed among them, with wine-red dyed long hair, and her makeup was relatively heavy. Her outfit wasn’t expensive, all from affordable brands like ZARA and Uniqlo, but it still had a strong sense of style.
When greeting Zhou Wang, her smile was more reserved. After glancing at Zhou Wang, she curiously asked:
"I heard Wang Ying say, you’re an entrepreneur doing business?"
"Yeah, started back in college."
Zhou Wang smiled and nodded.
"Then you must be doing quite well?"
"What makes you think so?"
Zhou Wang was a bit surprised and genuinely curious.
Although his short video account now had over a million followers, not many related to his field knew him. At least Jiang Mo’s classmates didn’t know him, or they wouldn’t have reacted like that.
"The shoes you’re wearing are Fendi, right? I remember they cost about five or six thousand. Generally, newly graduated students can’t afford them."
Yoyo commented knowingly.
Hearing that Zhou Wang’s shoes were worth thousands, even Wang Ying glanced at Zhou Wang with some surprise.
Especially Wang Ying; she just thought Zhou Wang had a good demeanor, and his outfit felt quite comfortable. Plus, Zhou Wang seemed easygoing, and his age didn’t match her idea of what "rich people" looked like, so she hadn’t given it much thought.
... Besides, Momo usually keeps it simple, rarely wearing any decent jewelry, and they both ate at the school cafeteria just like Wang Ying, a dish and a soup. Logically, if Zhou Wang was rich, he wouldn’t treat Momo so frugally.
Zhou Wang found it amusing upon hearing this.
This girl lives up to being a local in a first-tier city; she did have some knowledge of luxury brands, at least recognizing the brand of his shoes.
But she was mistaken about one thing.
These shoes were not merely five or six thousand; they were a limited edition Fendi pair that cost over forty thousand.
Besides, the shoes were not the most expensive part of his outfit today; the Hermes fall double-layered jacket-style embroidered shirt cost seventy-two thousand, MOMOTARO JEANS’ casual denim pants came with a tariff-inclusive price of fifty-three thousand, ordered by Jiang Qingkui...
Buying Zhou Wang at least three different current-season outfits monthly was one of the tailored tasks Jiang Qingkui gave Xu Wenqian, who was diligently executing it. Recently, Zhou Wang’s new clothes were all purchased through channels Xu Wenqian found in Magic City.
Although these brands were expensive, including the most famous Hermes, they had one common characteristic: the logos were not ostentatious, making them hard for ordinary people to recognize.
Zhou Wang himself didn’t like styles like LV and GUCCI, marked everywhere with logos. So in his daily wear, these brands’ clothes were the least purchased by Xu Wenqian, only including some matchable items.
Hermes was Zhou Wang’s most passively consumed brand. According to Xu Wenqian, the shopping experience Hermes provided was the best, with an overly attentive attitude when they heard Zhou Wang was buying clothes...
Today, Zhou Wang wore a sports-style shirt, and for matching purposes, he didn’t wear the Rolex Meteorite Daytona given by Yu Duo. Instead, he switched back to the IWC Aquatimer limited sports watch.
For regular people, it would be nearly impossible to recognize that this watch was worth over four hundred thousand...
"Oh, are these shoes that expensive? A friend helped buy them, so I didn’t know."
Zhou Wang didn’t see any reason to show off in front of a few ordinary students, so he just feigned surprise and smiled.