Chapter 317 — I Don't Get It!

"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.

"It's nice... but a bit expensive, isn't it..." Tang Zhi still could not quite bring herself to take things from Wei Zhao. Kang Xiaofeng's coaxing a moment ago notwithstanding, she still felt she shouldn't accept it...

"Right then," Wei Zhao smiled and said to the clerk, "We'll take three of these."

"Why not... buy that one for three hundred-something we saw before?" When she saw Wei Zhao was determined to buy, Tang Zhi hesitated, then pointed toward a phone priced at just over three hundred that the clerk had shown them earlier.

"Come on... Kang Xiaofeng is giving his to Xiaofen. If it's too shabby, he'll be too embarrassed to hand it over," Wei Zhao said in a low voice.

"Oh..." Tang Zhi could only nod at that, though a faint oppression settled over her heart... She owed Wei Zhao more and more now... and how was she ever going to repay it all?

From the barbecue recipe, to the way he had stood up for her and her mother and driven off those fellow vendors who had tried to bully them, to Xiao Fen's medical fees—though Kang Xiaofeng had a hand in that, most of it had been on her account... So Tang Zhi could not pretend to know nothing about it.

He had saved her again... and now he wanted to buy her a cell phone too. Tang Zhi truly did not know, if things went on like this, whether her relationship with Wei Zhao would grow ever more entangled and unclear. Did he really like her...

While she hesitated, Wei Zhao had already bought three cell phones and picked out two phone cards, one with a number ending in Xiao Fen's birthday and one ending in Tang Zhi's, both chosen by Liu Xinlan.

Wei Zhao swiped his card, then handed out the phones: one for Tang Zhi, one for Kang Xiaofeng. Liu Xinlan already had a rather old-style phone, so there was no need to buy her one, and the remaining phone Wei Zhao kept for himself.

His previous expensive phone had broken as well, so this time Wei Zhao simply bought a cheap one... No matter how costly a phone was, once it took a soak in water it was finished, and given the rather dangerous nature of Wei Zhao's work, he had simply chosen a cheap phone.

If the one he was using now, Shen Yushu's, had not been so thoroughly feminine that he would have been too embarrassed to take it out in public, Wei Zhao would have made do with it.

Tang Zhi gave a faint sigh... Let it be owed, then... She owed so much already that one cell phone more made little difference... Yet once she got into the car, she said to Wei Zhao in a voice so low it was barely audible, "Thank you..."

"Heh..." Wei Zhao laughed, turned his head, and looked at Tang Zhi with a teasing glint. "Then how will you thank me?"

"Wh—what do you mean, how will I thank you..." Tang Zhi started, her face flushing red as she remembered what she had promised him yesterday in the hospital, and her heart began to race.

"Yesterday in the hospital, I believe you still owe me a kiss..." Wei Zhao said in a lowered voice.

Sure enough, that was exactly what he meant. Tang Zhi was overcome with embarrassment. "Wh—what, I do not know what you are talking about... I do not understand a word of it..."

"Heh..." Wei Zhao turned away and started the car. Seeing how endearingly flustered Tang Zhi looked, he could not bear to tease her any further. To make this girl, who guarded herself like a hedgehog, open her heart to him completely was truly no easy task...