After spending Thanksgiving with Hopper and Eleven, Richard returned home. The house, which hadn't been cleaned for two days, was still tidy, thanks to his habit of doing daily chores.
He lay on the sofa and relaxed for a while. In the quiet house, even the slightest sounds became impossible to escape Richard's ears. Richard yawned and stood up, walking straight to the vent above his private room's door. He pried open the external cover, and a strange device flashing a red light with a faint ticking sound appeared before him.
Richard grinned. Without saying a word, he directly removed the device's battery.
Afterward, Richard did another round of searching. He found listening or surveillance devices under the trash can and inside the room's alarm clock. Without exception, he dismantled every single one of them.
As Richard cleared out one hidden device after another, both the intelligence personnel from Hawkins Lab and the military's intelligence thieves fell silent. One by one, their faces turned awkward, their eyes as dark as water.
"Which useless idiot installed these things? They were all cleared out in an instant!"
He placed the dozen or so collected listening and surveillance devices on his work desk. After a moment's thought, Richard dismantled the parts of the listening devices. He modified and combined those parts with the cameras, recoded the camera probe's software, and slightly altered the paint and casing. Before long, these spy devices had completely turned into home security cameras.
Richard kept two for home use, and for the rest, he planned to give them to that guy Eddie to fence later. That guy had many connections.
Perhaps the intelligence team members monitoring Richard's house never dreamed that their sophisticated espionage equipment would be so poorly hidden in the eyes of a high school senior. Not only were they discovered instantly, but what was even more outrageous was that he dismantled them, repurposed them for himself, and even planned to sell them on the black market. It was no different from adding insult to injury.
After a "simple" cleaning of the house, Richard originally wanted to stay in and spend the day leisurely. But around three in the afternoon, a noblewoman who looked a bit haggard but was dressed exquisitely and flamboyantly came to visit. She was wearing expensive mink fur and sparkling, luxurious jewelry. Seeing Richard come to open the door, the lady was moved and thanked him gratefully.
It turned out this lady was the mother of the unlucky youth, Troy. She came this time to thank Richard for saving her child's life, bringing many gifts. The most valuable was probably a check for twenty thousand dollars, which Richard could cash at the corresponding bank at any time.
Richard accepted it readily. Before his and Steve's "Heihe Tea" officially opened for business, he didn't have a stable income. Besides, he felt no guilt in taking this money.
Richard didn't pay special attention to Troy's current condition, appearing neither particularly warm nor cold. Perhaps sensing Richard's attitude, and having her own matters to handle plus a weak son to care for, Troy's mother soon took her leave.
In the afternoon, Robin, who didn't have to work, came over with food and drinks to visit the recovered Richard. The two buddies spent the whole day cooped up at home just watching movies and chatting. Robin didn't leave until near work time the next morning.
Richard and Robin left together because he also happened to need to go to town to first exchange the twenty-thousand-dollar check from Troy's mother into cash.
After successfully exchanging the check for cash and depositing it into his bank account, Richard ran into Steve, who had specifically come looking for him, just as he stepped out of the bank.
"Chade, are you going to the party Jones is hosting tonight?" Steve took off his sunglasses with a face full of smiles. He leaned one shoulder out of the car window, lightly tapping the door of his precious sports car. "Nancy, Jonathan, and Barbara will all be there."
"A party?" Richard considered it for a moment and nodded in agreement. "Sure."
Even though he had cleared out all the surveillance and listening devices in the house, Richard had still heard some movement coming from outside when he went to the bathroom in the middle of the night. He guessed these people were likely intelligence personnel from The Lab. They had given up on mechanical device reconnaissance and switched to primitive human surveillance.
Since that was the case, he might as well put on more of an act and behave more in line with the style of young people nowadays, so they would drop their surveillance of him sooner.
"Hey, then let's go, get in!" Steve was even happier. In the past, whenever he invited Richard to join an activity, Richard almost always refused. Although he didn't say it openly, he actually felt a bit of regret and sadness, wondering if Richard truly considered him a friend. Now, all his unhappiness and doubts vanished.
Richard vaulted over and flipped into the back seat of the car, asking, "The party is tonight, right? Where are we going now?"
"Our shop is finished being renovated. Aren't you going to take a look?"
"Oh? So fast?" Richard's interest was immediately piqued.
Arriving again at the beverage shop he and Steve had taken over, compared to last time, the shop was now completely renovated. Even the displays and the shop's mascot doll were placed at the entrance to welcome guests. All that was missing were the machines for the counter and the shop's sign above the door.
"Brother, I have to say, the renovation design you suggested is really good. It has a great vibe." Steve was very satisfied with the results of the renovation.
Richard also nodded in approval. The renovators were quite reliable, having restored about seventy to eighty percent of the feeling he wanted. He asked, "Roughly when can we open?"
"The 20th of next month," Steve replied.
Richard looked thoughtful. "The 20th? That's almost Christmas. Maybe we can take advantage of that and launch a 'Grand Opening + Christmas' double celebration event to rake it in."
Steve stood by, silently listening to his brother's mutterings. Every time he heard a good idea, he couldn't help but marvel, but as he heard more and more marketing tactics that were increasingly ruthless, he couldn't help but feel a bit alarmed.
As expected, was this good brother of his more suited to be born into his own family?
If his old man could have a "black-hearted" son like Richard, that old capitalist father wouldn't even know how to contain his joy.
"How much money do we have left?" Richard calculated briefly, silently deciding on a feasible opening plan, and then asked Steve.
"Over thirty thousand left," Steve replied.
Richard nodded, squinting his eyes and grinning. "Not bad. I have twenty thousand here. Let's each take a portion of the money out to promote our shop."
"Uh, how do you plan to do that?"
"Let me ask you, are there any abandoned mansions in this town? The kind that looks like only rich people could live there."
"Uh... there should be some, I guess." Steve was a bit uncertain. In his memory, there were quite a few uninhabited abandoned houses in town, but abandoned grand mansions were rare. He hadn't paid much attention to them.
Richard thought for a moment. "No matter. We can check the town library later."
Steve nodded and asked with a strange look, "Even though I support you unconditionally, you have to tell me what you want to do, right?"
"Make a movie," Richard said seriously.
Steve realized, "Oh... so it's making a movie... WTF!?"