Chapter 852 — The Windfall of Yu Xiaoke

But Kang Jingming and Wang Shubin had overlooked one very important thing: the relationship between the male and female leads in those TV dramas was nothing at all like the relationship between him and Guan Xin. The hero's flower-sea tactic might work wonders there, but only on the premise that the heroine already had feelings for him—the two were lovers merely separated by a misunderstanding or a quarrel, or else each secretly enamored of the other with only a thin pane of paper between them, waiting to be broken. Only under those conditions did the flower-sea tactic possess such power.

The problem was that Guan Xin simply did not like Kang Jingming in the least, and had not the slightest fondness for him. How could a flower sea possibly make her fall for him? If it had been Wei Zhao who did such a thing, Guan Xin might well have accepted it gladly...

"So shall we go back and contact a florist right now?" Wang Shubin asked, seeing that Kang Jingming had agreed.

"Go back? Why go back? Can't we just buy flowers right here? This is no time to delay—the sooner the better!" Kang Jingming was in a hurry and could not bear to wait.

"All right, then let's buy them now..." Wang Shubin nodded and pushed Kang Jingming toward the hospital entrance, where at first glance they saw Yu Xiaoke selling flowers with the orphanage children!

"Ha, isn't this a flower seller right here?" Kang Jingming's eyes lit up at the sight of Yu Xiaoke. What a pretty girl! She looked a little familiar, though—as if he had seen her somewhere before. But he was here to court Guan Xin; this was no time to complicate matters. Otherwise, he really would have liked to go chat up this little flower girl.

Wang Shubin and Zhu Xiaozhang also found Yu Xiaoke rather familiar, though they could not place where they had seen her before. They paid it no mind, assuming she sold flowers outside the hospital every day and that they had simply passed her on their way in and out.

No wonder. Yu Xiaoke had previously worn a nurse's white coat, a look utterly different from her present flower-selling appearance, so Kang Jingming, Zhu Xiaozhang, and Wang Shubin failed to recognize her as the little nurse who had made fools of them that day and dumped them in the morgue.

Yet while the three of them failed to recognize Yu Xiaoke, Yu Xiaoke recognized all three of them! As a competent lady thief, Yu Xiaoke had a sharp eye, and she spotted these three fat sheep at once—though seeing them walk toward her gave her a guilty start.

Surely these three hadn't recognized her? Yu Xiaoke felt a flicker of worry, but then reflected that she had merely played a trick on them, and that they could not possibly know it was she who had stolen their wallets. So she relaxed a little and pretended not to know them.

"Hey, how much are your flowers? We want to buy a lot—do you have more?" Zhu Xiaozhang's tone carried a swaggering air, but the more he acted that way, the more he set himself up to be fleeced.

"Of course I do—as many as you want! But what kind of flowers are you looking for?" Yu Xiaoke's eyes brightened; she knew these three fools were about to hand her money.

"We want roses. How many do you have? What's in your hands now is nowhere near enough!" Zhu Xiaozhang said impatiently.

"Roses are three yuan apiece. I have as many as you want—if I run short, I'll plant more for you on the spot," Yu Xiaoke said.

Hearing Yu Xiaoke reel off such nonsense, Zhu Xiaozhang thought her unreliable and wanted to go ask at a flower shop nearby, but then he heard Kang Jingming speak.

"Ha, you're a funny one!" Kang Jingming was amused. "Then we'll buy from you! I want ten thousand roses, set up in the hospital courtyard as a sea of flowers. One hour—can you do it?"

"Sure! But you'll have to give me a deposit first..." Yu Xiaoke was delighted. She had never expected that on her very first day selling flowers she would run into such a fool, one who did not even haggle and ordered ten thousand blooms outright!

Three yuan was merely the retail price for a single rose. Even buying ten would earn a discount, and wrapping would be thrown in besides!

"A deposit is no problem, but I can't give you too much—I'll give you ten thousand, and you'll get the rest after you deliver the flowers!" Kang Jingming said. In his eyes ten thousand yuan was nothing, and having just come into a sum from Li Cihua, he was feeling flush.

Yu Xiaoke nearly burst out laughing at his words. Ten thousand yuan! Wholesaling ten thousand roses would not cost ten thousand yuan. The current wholesale price of roses at the Songshan City flower market was fifty cents apiece, and with a large order it could be pressed down to thirty cents—so three thousand yuan would be more than enough!

The fool had handed her ten thousand yuan just like that—what a windfall! Yu Xiaoke had reckoned that if they haggled she could let them have the flowers at eighty cents apiece, but these three seemed to know nothing of the market. They had not bargained at all, and had even given her a ten-thousand-yuan deposit!

Naturally, Yu Xiaoke could not let any of this show. She merely said calmly, "All right. You give me the deposit, and I'll arrange the flower delivery."

It never occurred to the three of them that flowers could be haggled over. After all, they saw Yu Xiaoke's street peddling as a fly-by-night trade, and assumed she could not make much on a single bloom; besides, for a few yuan's worth of goods, haggling would have felt beneath Kang Jingming's dignity. He was the second young master of the Kang family—how could he squabble with a street flower vendor? If word of that got out, he would be laughed out of countenance.

Kang Jingming sent Zhu Xiaozhang to a nearby ATM to withdraw ten thousand yuan and gave it to Yu Xiaoke. "There's your deposit. If you do a good job, there'll be a bonus!"

To Kang Jingming, twenty or thirty thousand yuan was nothing, so his promise of a bonus for a job well done was simply his way of making sure Yu Xiaoke did it properly.

At the mention of a reward, Yu Xiaoke's eyes lit up at once, and she even helped Kang Jingming come up with a bit of an idea: "Boss, who exactly are you waiting to welcome out? Is it your girlfriend?"

"Yes, my girlfriend! I'm going to confess my feelings to her!" Hearing Yu Xiaoke call Guan Xin his girlfriend, Kang Jingming was instantly overjoyed, his mood at its absolute peak. He nodded and said, "Why? Is something the matter?"

"If you're welcoming your girlfriend, then do you want me to prepare a banner or something like that for you?" Yu Xiaoke figured she had already made so much money off him, and had even gotten a bonus, so she might as well throw in a little something extra for him.

"Sure!" The moment Kang Jingming heard Yu Xiaoke's idea, he thought it was simply wonderful. "A banner—that's a great idea! Not bad, go and get it done. If you need money, just tell me! You're a clever girl, not bad at all, not bad at all!"