"Are you paying now or in a few days?" One of the young men wiped rain from his face, then ran his palm over his shaved scalp. Ever since he went bald, he'd found it surprisingly convenient.
Jing An hesitated. This was something he should discuss at home. Jing Shu stood to the side with a cold smile. "Keep acting. Let's see how far you take it."
Director Zhang stopped the young man. "Don't rush them. At least let them think it over. But whether they pay now or later, they still have to pay. In a few days, we'll calculate it as… hmm, at least two hundred square meters."
"About the fee, you'll issue a receipt as proof, right?" Jing An asked at last.
"Of course," the young man said. "See, the internal files already list a policy requiring fees for self-built houses. Your records will show illegal construction and self-built housing fees."
Jing An felt it was pricey, but if it was written from above, it couldn't be fake, could it?
Director Zhang kept his smile patient, already counting in his head. An extra 100 virtual coins a month, a cut for the two men under him, and the rest would be enough to marry a daughter-in-law. Life wouldn't feel so tight.
Seeing the little play reach its final act, Jing Shu stepped forward before Jing An could waver. "Dad, let's wait a few days until the official fee collection begins. We'll pay then."
"Hey, you silly girl, don't know what's good for you. In a few days it'll be 200 virtual coins a month," the young man snapped.
"Two hundred? Go on then, tear all this down." Jing Shu's tone was pure disdain. "Easy to fool, men who have no real sense of money or virtual coins and don't know how to bargain. If Mom were here and heard '200 virtual coins,' she'd flip the table."
"You think I won't? Just wait. I'll bring people over and have the whole thing demolished," the other young man boasted.
Jing Shu rolled her eyes. "I wasn't going to expose you, but fine. You're a 'residential allocation clerk' and a 'residential allocation director.' Sure, people beg you for good placements, I get that.
But what right do you have to collect virtual coins? Don't think I don't know. The state opened the transfer system to a small batch of officials first for trial operation. You're strutting around like peacocks, trying to collect money on the state's behalf?"
"T trial operation?" Jing An, who also worked at the Livestock Breeding Center, had no idea.
Jing Shu covered her face. Being a foreknower had its headaches. It was like understanding a magic trick and then listening to a magician lie with a straight face. Instead of marveling, you start thinking, "Your expression needs work. There's a hole in the trick here. Fix that and your show would be tighter."
She nodded. "Yes. Only certain official posts have access to the transaction system in big data for testing. It won't be long before it opens to everyone. Inside info. In the future, even unpaid mortgages can be paid through big data by yourself."
The three men froze. Exposed. Someone actually knew what they were doing. Shame and fury flushed their faces. Director Zhang's cheek muscles stiffened. He tried to sound fierce and failed.
"Even so, you built in a public area. You have to pay virtual coins. Think you can dodge it?"
Jing Shu laughed in anger. She hadn't seen brazen like this in a while. "You're in charge of Banana Community, right? Inside the community, if you say it's illegal, it's illegal. The state says one virtual coin per square meter. We'll pay. But the back hill? Please. That's beyond your control. Go ahead and report us."
Report them? The courts were underwater. These days, even crimes weren't going to trial. The police grabbed people directly and put them to unpaid work.
"What, you'll drag a cop out to the wilderness to arrest us for putting up a shack where no one lives?"
As for the coal shed inside the community, that had to follow the rules, and it had to be built close to the villa. Later, anything burnable would be precious. If it were up on the back hill, people would pry the coal out, house and all.
Jing An's jaw dropped. He often wondered why his daughter's information was always more up-to-date than her parents'. Now he caught up.
"So you're saying we only need to pay 4 virtual coins a month for the coal shed?"
Jing Shu nodded. "They can't control the back mountain." Fine. She'd revealed enough to count as inside news.
Jing An ground his teeth. He'd never imagined government people would try to fleece him like this. "Aren't they afraid we'll report them?"
"You pay 100 virtual coins and think you got a deal, so you won't talk. They won't talk either. The state does say one virtual coin per square meter, paid to the local government. But because management is chaotic, they each collect in their own lanes and can't overstep. Even if you later refuse to pay, they can't do much."
In the second year of the apocalypse, this kind of thing happened a lot. There were opportunists in government too. Residential allocation did come with real power.
Director Zhang was completely stunned. "How does she know the inner workings so well? Here, take my job."
"Fine. If it's outside your jurisdiction, you still want to meddle? And you want extra coins from me? I'll make sure you really do your job today! Damn it, I've kept a private stash my whole life, a hundred coins hidden carefully, and you think you can con me out of it?"
The sheepish temper of Jing An flipped in an instant. He swung fists the size of sandbags. One punch, spittle flew. Two punches, teeth went dancing. Three, even his parents wouldn't recognize him. Four, they were hugging their heads and running.
Everyone has a reverse scale.
Touch Jing An's private stash, and you're poking the softest part of his heart.
What man doesn't hide a little private money? If a wife seizes it, the husband deflates like a punctured ball. Getting scammed out of it is even worse.
Jing Shu hissed through her teeth. "So satisfying." Spirit Spring really was wonderful. Look how it had tuned up her father's temper.
None of the three could stand up to Jing An. At first they spat threats like, "Just you wait, I'll bring people," but by the end it was all whimpering. The two young men dragged Director Zhang off and fled.
"Sigh, looks like my virtual coins will end up in your mom's hands before I even get to warm them," Jing An said gloomily.
Honestly, if the transfer system never opened, just watching the numbers would be a kind of happiness.
…
As for offending that cushy-post allocation director, so be it. He had no real leverage over their family anyway. For people with crooked hearts, Jing Shu preferred civilized solutions.
Meaning, remove them from their seats, then let them watch her family eat well and live better. Jing Shu loved that look on a sworn enemy's face: hating her to death while helplessly watching her thrive.
"Guess I'm the big villain, huh?"
It was January 5, 2024, 16:00. Temperature, 36. For Jing Shu, it had been a long, complicated day.
She stared at the crowd boiling at the villa gate and muttered, "Son of a bitch, did you really bring a thousand people to make trouble? What is this?"