Chapter 125

Chapter 125

Over the next few days, I threw myself entirely into my work.

It wasn’t that I loved working; I just needed to distract myself. Otherwise, my mind would constantly drift back to my father and grandfather. Every time I thought of them, I felt a desperate urge to join them.

Because the shop had been sued previously, the court held a hearing. Disputes like this tended to be settled quickly.

The apartment where Li Xiumei died was officially designated as a Stigmatized Property. As the brokers, we were found to have failed in our duty to inform the buyer, and thus, we were held liable for half of the damages.

Naturally, we felt wronged. We hadn’t known it was a Stigmatized Property ourselves until after the fact.

However, since we couldn’t prove our ignorance, the court ruled that the brokerage and the seller would each bear fifty percent of the responsibility.

Meng Yifan was ordered to pay 150,000 yuan.

He didn’t have much left in his savings, so I transferred 150,000 yuan to him directly to settle the compensation.

When we walked out of the court, he was like a mute, remaining silent for a long time with a grim expression.

I tried to comfort him, saying that money could always be earned back. Since the court had already passed judgment, the money had to be paid. We should just consider it a financial loss to ward off further misfortune.

“If it really warded off misfortune, I’d accept it. But ever since we got mixed up with that Stigmatized Property, we haven’t had a single good day,” Meng Yifan said, his eyes turning red.

I didn’t know what to say because he was right.

Ever since that Stigmatized Property entered our lives, he, Song Xiaotian, and I had all suffered one misfortune after another.

I had it the worst.

“Did you sell your car?” Meng Yifan suddenly asked.

I didn’t hide it and nodded. “I was thinking about saving the shop first. I didn’t expect it to get trashed anyway.”

Plans can’t keep up with changes. I never expected my grandfather and father to pass away so suddenly, leaving me that 500,000 yuan.

By selling that car, I had lost at least forty or fifty thousand yuan on the value.

Meng Yifan sighed but didn’t blame me. He patted my shoulder and said, “Once I get the business back on track and make some money, I’ll buy you a Porsche Cayenne.”

I smiled and told him it was a deal.

For the next half month, Meng Yifan and I stayed at the shop, determined to get the business running again.

Everything costs money these days, so earning it was our top priority. As long as Du Ruhai didn’t come looking for trouble, we didn’t want to focus on anything else.

But after two weeks, we hadn’t closed a single deal.

Meng Yifan was so anxious he couldn’t even eat.

I was in the same boat; I had no appetite either.

One day, a middle-aged woman walked into the shop.

Thinking business had finally come knocking, Meng Yifan and I personally attended to her, showing her more warmth than we would our own mothers.

But once we started talking, we realized she wasn’t there to buy. She wanted to sell a property and list it with our agency.

Upon hearing she wasn’t a buyer, our enthusiasm vanished instantly.

Our shop already had plenty of listings, but without any buyers, what was the point of adding another?

However, the woman’s next words piqued our interest.

“The apartment is over on Xingke Road. It’s 90 square meters. As long as someone is willing to buy it, I’ll sell it for 300,000 yuan,” the woman said.

Meng Yifan and I looked at each other in disbelief. A 90-square-meter apartment for only 300,000?

Properties on Xingke Road went for at least 11,000 or 12,000 yuan per square meter. A 90-square-meter place should sell for at least 900,000 yuan, even at a fire-sale price.

What was she thinking, selling it for 300,000?

I asked her, “Ma’am, did something… happen in this house?”

The woman’s eyes suddenly welled up. “My son… he had an accident at home last week and passed away. I know it’s hard to sell a house where someone died. Plus, the boy’s father has cancer, and the hospital needs money urgently. We talked it over and decided to sell it for 300,000.”
“But we don’t really understand how these things work. We don’t know if a house like this can even be sold, so we came to consult you agents.”

Another Stigmatized Property!

I was already traumatized by the very concept of a Stigmatized Property.

I was originally planning to dismiss this lady tactfully, but Meng Yifan held me back.

He asked, “Could you tell us in detail what happened to your son? If you want to list it with our office, we need to be clear on these matters.”

The woman’s expression was conflicted and a bit strange. It was hard to tell if she found it difficult to talk about or if there was some other reason.

Seeing this, Meng Yifan reminded her, “If you don’t explain clearly, you won’t be able to list this house with any agency, including ours.”

By now, the woman’s eyes were welling up with tears. She sniffled and said, “My son’s health had always been very good. He was a junior in college and even on the school’s basketball team. He just came back for the holidays last week. The first night was fine, but on the second night, he… he just passed away, out of nowhere.”

“When I went to wake him up for breakfast in the morning, I found that he was already gone.”

Meng Yifan and my first reaction was to wonder if the boy had died of sudden cardiac death.

Young people nowadays love staying up late. It wasn’t unheard of for someone to die suddenly from exhaustion due to staying up all night; I’d seen several reports about it in the news.

But the lady’s next words immediately made Meng Yifan and me tense up.

She said that when her son died, his expression was one of sheer terror, as if he had seen something horrifying. Later, the forensic doctor diagnosed it as sudden cardiac death.

It really was sudden death.

However, when a person dies suddenly, their face usually remains expressionless because they have already lost consciousness.

Even if there were an expression, it should be one of pain lingering on the face.

But if the expression at the time of death was extreme horror, wouldn’t that mean he was literally scared to death?

What could possibly scare a male college junior to death?

I hurriedly asked, “Was there anything unusual about him before the incident?”

The woman wiped her tears and said, “During that period, my son kept telling me that he would dream of a girl in a Red Wedding Dress. That girl said she was coming to take him away in a few days and told him to settle his affairs as soon as possible.”

Hearing the words ‘Red Wedding Dress,’ Meng Yifan and I practically bolted upright from the sofa, our expressions filled with shock.

A Red Wedding Dress… Du Yuwei!

But that was impossible. Why would Du Yuwei go around killing people?

“I’m sorry, did I scare you?” The woman quickly apologized when she saw our intense reaction.

We hurriedly sat back down and said, “No, please continue. Did your son ever tell you what that girl in the Red Wedding Dress looked like?”

The woman nodded. “He did. My son actually knew that girl in the Red Wedding Dress. About three months ago, a girl at his school was constantly pestering him, trying to get him to break up with his current girlfriend.”

“My son is a good boy with high integrity, so of course he didn’t agree. But that girl was very strange; she was always doing things that normal people couldn’t understand. Later, she even gathered a group of people to bully my son’s girlfriend.”

“It was on that day that an accident happened. That girl died. She was hit by a car.”

Meng Yifan and I bolted upright again, completely dumbfounded.

The person she was describing-wasn’t that Du Yuwei!