Chapter 120: Impersonation to Swipe the Card

This story is purely fictional.

"You want me to pay it all back? You mean to say you’re just going to wash your hands of this debt? The responsibility for today lies mostly with you. If you hadn't told me that the match was fixed—that Dahe wouldn't win—I wouldn't have lost so miserably. I might have bet on their opponents, Seahorse, and I would have already cleared the sixty thousand I owed from last week. I could have been somewhere nice, relaxing and having a good time right now." Wang Yifa said, sounding quite disgruntled.

"Enough, enough. Let’s not talk about this now. Let’s go back and get some sleep." The teacher and student parted ways, each heading to their own home.

The next day, Wang Yifa and Zhang Chi contacted the debt collector’s henchman directly and told him to bring a credit card machine.

The henchman was fast. Within two hours of the call, he arrived at Wang Yifa's office at Hexi Vocational College.

Once inside, the henchman grinned and said, "Oh, did you strike it rich somewhere? Making an early repayment for once, eh?" As usual, he sat right on the desk.

Seeing the man’s rudeness, Wang Yifa said, "Please, don't do that. Don't sit on the desk. The principal warned me last time not to associate with people like you. If he catches you again, I'm done for. Absolutely finished." Wang Yifa tugged at the henchman’s sleeve as he spoke.

"Stop tugging at me! What kind of behavior is that?" the henchman barked.

"Yeah, is the boss's sleeve something you can just pull on?" the lackey standing nearby chimed in.

One of the henchmen produced a wireless POS terminal, checked the signal, and said, "Alright, it’s 163,200 in total."

"Isn't it exactly 160,000? Where did this extra 3,200 come from?" Wang Yifa asked.

"You’re paying by card. There’s a two-percent transaction fee. You want me to cover it out of my own pocket?" the henchman roared.

"Why is the fee so high? Can you lower it a bit? We’re already buried in debt. 3,200 is too much. I’d rather go to the bank, withdraw the cash, and pay you that way." Wang Yifa was clearly reluctant to pay the fee.

"Fine. We’ll go to the bank with you. Just bring the cardholder’s ID," the henchman said, losing patience.

"The cardholder’s ID?" Wang Yifa looked at Zhang Chi.

"Where would I get that? They gave me the card in such a rush, I don't even know where they are now," Zhang Chi replied.

"Without an ID, you can't make large transactions at the bank. That means you’d have to withdraw it in small chunks—five thousand a day. It would take a month to pay us back. We don't have the time to wait for you. Besides, you’ll be charged interest for every day you're late," the henchman reminded him.

Zhang Chi realized that things had reached a point where he couldn't go back to ask the head coach for the ID, and in any case, people don't just hand out their IDs to strangers. "Fine, 3,200 it is. Just swipe it and be done with it."

"What do you mean 'be done with it'? You’re acting generous now, pretending to be a big spender just because you have a little money. No, we wait until we get the ID," Wang Yifa said, trying to stop Zhang Chi from handing over the card.

"Forget it. We've already swallowed the river; why worry about this little sip?" Zhang Chi whispered into Wang Yifa’s ear. Wang Yifa nodded in agreement.

The henchman quickly swiped the card and entered the amount. "Come on, enter the PIN."

Zhang Chi keyed in the six-digit number he had memorized. The transaction went through. "Sign your name," the henchman said.

Zhang Chi fluently signed the name "Nian Weier."

"Nian Weier? Is that Nian Weiyi, the head coach of Dahe?" the henchman asked, looking confused and shaking his head. "How are you connected to him?"

"Look closely. Did I sign Nian Weiyi? It’s 'Er' (Two). We don't know anyone from the Dahe Club," Zhang Chi denied, not wanting the collector to know the card was linked to Nian Weiyi.

"Fair enough. If you actually knew him, you wouldn't have lost so badly. A piece of inside information could have solved everything, but instead, you lost a hundred thousand on a single match. You’ve got guts," the henchman said, eyeing them with contempt.

After paying the debt, Zhang Chi and Wang Yifa felt a wave of relief. "There’s still fifty thousand left on the card. Let's go have a proper meal. This whole ordeal has been exhausting. That bastard actually took three thousand from us—that’s not a small sum, it’s truly heartless." He then asked Wang Yifa, "Where to? A barbecue place opened near my house a few days ago. We could drink a few cases of beer and then go to KTV. What do you think?"

"Barbecue? We have tens of thousands of dollars today, why eat that trash? Barbecue is carcinogenic, better to avoid it. Let’s go to the Zhizhen Bar. They have everything—fine liquor, beautiful women, it’s a blast," Wang Yifa said, embodying the "eat, drink, and be merry" philosophy.

"Teacher, you really aren't setting a good example. You’re doing all the things you shouldn't—bars, women, you don't miss a thing. I’m being corrupted by you!" Zhang Chi criticized him with a straight face.

"What do you mean I corrupted you? I can't take that blame. If one day you go down a path of no return and put all the blame on me, claiming I taught you everything, I wouldn't even know who taught me! You’re being incredibly disloyal, you little rascal!" Wang Yifa sounded nothing like a vocational college teacher.

They arrived at the Zhizhen Bar, ordered a bottle of imported liquor, and sat on a diamond-shaped sofa with the coffee table covered in snacks.

The music was deafening. Wang Yifa couldn't hear what Zhang Chi was saying. "What? Speak up!"

"I said, let's call over some beauties! Tonight, we don't stop until we're drunk!" Zhang Chi shouted.

Wang Yifa snapped his fingers, and within moments, a few elaborately dressed dancers came over to sit on the sofa with them.

One dancer, wearing a sexy strap dress, wrapped her arms around Wang Yifa’s waist and began sliding her slender hands down toward his lap.

Another dancer sat next to Zhang Chi. Seeing how fair-skinned and delicate he looked, she said, "Oh my, this young man is so handsome. A real fresh piece of meat—I could just gobble you up!"

Zhang Chi, unaccustomed to such seduction, felt an immediate reaction; his "little friend" became restless, causing a noticeable bulge in his trousers.

"Oh my, look at that! If you like, we can go out and have some fun after we finish here," one of the dancers teased.

"Hey, no fair playing like that. My little brother here is young, he’s still a virgin. Don't go putting ideas in his head; you’ll scare him," Wang Yifa said, raising his glass to toast the dancers.

"What? A virgin? That doesn't matter, as long as he’s not a minor. Are people still that conservative these days? You think he knows less than you do? I doubt it. Isn't that right, handsome?" The dancer laughed, touching the bulging area of his pants.

Zhang Chi’s face turned bright red with shyness. He had never seen such a scene before and could only reach for a bottle of beer to gulp down.

Wang Yifa ignored everything else, his arms around the women, his lecherous eyes fixed on their chests.

Wang Yifa had drunk too much and started singing, his voice completely off-key, drawing laughter from the dancers. "Your songs are so dated! Come on, let our 'fresh meat' sing one. How about Jay Chou's 'Yuhuatai'?" The dancer handed the microphone to Zhang Chi.

Zhang Chi took the mic and sang along to the melody: "Who is it, singing softly... your smile has already faded..."

His singing was disjointed, prompting the dancers to burst into wild laughter.

He didn't know how much time had passed before Zhang Chi finally woke from his stupor.

When he came to, Wang Yifa was nowhere to be found. The beer bottles were scattered, and the room was a mess. Zhang Chi felt dazed; he vaguely remembered singing "Yuhuatai," but his memory after that was a blank.

However, he remembered a terrifying dream: his childhood friend, Fan Wei, had been murdered. Not only that, but Fan Wei’s aunt had been killed too.

The thought of the scene in the dream—Fan Wei dead on the streets of Dahe with his hamstrings severed, a bloody, gruesome sight—made Zhang Chi’s heart pound. Fan Aunt had died at home, looking undisturbed.

A strong premonition took hold of him; he feared that the dream was reality. He desperately hoped it wasn't.

He asked at the front desk, and the clerk said that the person who had come with him had already checked out at midnight. The card used for payment was the same one Nian Weiyi had given to Fan Aunt to pass on to Zhang Chi.

He left the KTV and went straight to Fan Aunt’s house, determined to see if his dream was true. He kept muttering along the way, "Amitabha, it’s not true, it’s not true..."

When he arrived at Fan Aunt’s house, he saw her in the distance, hanging out laundry. "Fan Aunt, why are you up so early?"

Seeing Zhang Chi, she stopped what she was doing to talk to him. "Yes, we old folks don't sleep like you young ones. I’m used to sleeping early and rising early. But why are you up so early? Wouldn't it be better to sleep in?"

"I had some things on my mind, I couldn't sleep. That's why I'm up," Zhang Chi replied.

(To be continued)