WRA CH69

Chapter 69: Manning & Engineer Shen: Selling Coffee at a Construction Site

In April, coffee beans in the Northern Hemisphere enter their latest harvest window.

Dou Manning was a coffee tree that had gained sentience. Originally dwelling in high mountain ranges, after attaining human form, he followed the guidance of destiny to Yao Spirit Village to undergo at least a year of socialization training.

Two years later, Dou Manning graduated smoothly, collected his ID card and startup capital, and was finally free to venture out into human society.

A coffee tree could survive purely on photosynthesis; in principle, Dou Manning could have simply coasted through life, eating and waiting to die. But how would that be any different from before he became a Yao?

Before cultivating a human form, he had already lived decades of such monotonous days—basking in the sun, blowing in the mountain breeze, day in and day out.

Labor separates humans from animals; labor defines the essence of mankind.

Therefore, a Yao becoming human must venture out into society and achieve prosperity through hard work.

Auntie Guihua had told him: master math, physics, and chemistry, and you can travel the world without fear; an uneducated Yao without credentials could start a small business.

Dou Manning wanted to open a coffee shop, so he went to the city for a field inspection.

The gorgeous youth with striking features stood before a coffee shop for a moment. He had slightly curly, coffee-colored long hair, fair white skin, an upturned nose, and ruby lips. Wearing a flax-colored linen shirt and trousers, he exuded a delicate aura of artistic youth.

Though his figure was slender, his tall 1.8-meter frame kept anyone from mistaking his gender.

Seizing a moment when no one was looking, the artistic youth swiftly fished a cup out of the trash can.

It had a franchise hotline printed on it!

How could a Yao understand how to run a coffee shop in human society? He had heard that franchise chains handled everything from A to Z; all you had to do was wait around as the boss and collect money.

Dou Manning humbly dialed the number, and after a while, hung up trembling slightly, gazing at the coffee shop before him with deep reverence.

Turns out a storefront of barely a dozen square meters required hundreds of thousands of yuan in rent, franchise fees, renovation costs, ingredient supplies, utilities, and labor.

Dou Manning had only thirty thousand yuan in his pocket and didn’t want to take out a loan from the Yao Foundation. Furthermore, all materials for a franchise had to be procured directly from headquarters.

In other words, he wouldn’t be able to use the coffee beans he had hoarded over the past ten years.

Abandoning the franchise idea, he turned his sights toward independent, no-name cafes.

Dou Manning stepped inside, glanced at the menu, and walked out with a curve on his lips.

Over forty yuan a cup—now that was how you earned back your capital fast!

He wanted to sell this exact kind of noble, premium-quality coffee. There would surely be plenty of repeat customers. “Fragrant coffee fears no deep alley”—that way, he wouldn’t have to pay extortionate rent.

First, he needed to complete some primitive capital accumulation.

He found a high mountain and continued setting beans.

His long, coffee-colored hair was actually coffee beans stored year after year.

Five years passed. Dou Manning harvested his final batch of coffee beans and descended the mountain to make his mark in the world.

He planned to open a shop. Consistent foot traffic, cheap rent, zero competing products nearby, creating differentiated competition… Looking around, the construction site met all these criteria to perfection.

On May 1st, Dou Manning signed a contract with the site, securing an abandoned corrugated-iron shack idling along the perimeter for dirt-cheap rent. The reason it was abandoned was water leakage.

Rain leaking, to a coffee Yao, was considered a perk.

Dou Manning purchased an espresso machine, an ice maker, a cot, and custom-ordered a red banner for grand opening publicity.

As long as he sold a single cup a day, he’d turn a profit.

In early May, cold and warm air currents collided violently across the Jianghuai region, bringing three consecutive days of torrential downpours to Haicheng.

Three days after opening, watching the rainwater outside slowly submerge the iron shack, Dou Manning unhurriedly flipped open a book he had scavenged on the construction site.

Titled Construction Project Management: National Level-1 Certified Constructor Qualification Examination Official Textbook.

He couldn’t understand a word.

Anyone who could understand this had to be a math and science genius.

He’d read whatever he scavenged; books were the stepping stones of human progress.

It was only normal that no one bought coffee on rainy days; it would be fine once the sky cleared.

When the sky cleared after the rain, after work on the “Wangxi No. 1” project site had been halted for three days, water seepage appeared in the basement of Building No. 8’s main structure.

The previous chief engineer had been investigated for taking kickbacks; after public backlash erupted, Wangxi No. 1 was labeled a tofu-dreg project.

To avoid jeopardizing the presale launch, the higher-ups dispatched the renowned engineer Shen Ku to be stationed on-site. At the time, he had just wrapped up his previous project.

Shen Ku lived directly on the site, pulling three straight days around the clock until he was dizzy with exhaustion.

Closing the blueprints on his computer, he strapped on a hard hat, preparing to inspect Building No. 8 in person.

“Did you hear? Someone opened a coffee shop outside the construction site. What were they thinking?”

“I actually wanted to try it, but damn, forty yuan a cup! You could buy twenty bottles of iced black tea with that.”

Two young workers in yellow hard hats chatted as they walked.

“Still, the owner is ridiculously good-looking. Tsk tsk, with looks like that, he should set up shop in a commercial district where bored rich folks would fawn over him. Counting on us to spend money? He’s bound to go bankrupt.”

“Hahaha, don’t say that, maybe this coffee stall will survive longer than the commercial ones. After all, he has almost zero overhead—he just needs to fleece one sucker a day.”

“Being that pretty, maybe some sucker really will bite.”

Shen Ku was no sucker, but right now, he needed a cup of coffee to wake up.

He walked outside, but saw no coffee shop in sight. Pausing, his gaze landed on a crude corrugated-iron shack.

Walking over in disbelief, he saw an even cruder setup inside: an espresso machine, an ice maker, a box of plastic cups and straws, and a small chalkboard hanging on the door reading: “Authentic Americano, 40/cup.”

This was called a coffee shop? This was an old lady’s roadside stall at best.

Shen Ku suspected drinking it would cause acute food poisoning.

Though life on a construction site was rough, when he wasn’t working, he was still the dignified Second Young Master Shen.

Just as he turned to leave, the white curtain inside parted, and a young man emerged.

Dou Manning had partitioned the iron box in two: shop in front, living quarters in the back, separated by a white curtain hung down the middle.

He had been sleeping when he heard footsteps outside, hurriedly stepping out to do business.

This was his very first customer.

Dou Manning wore an impeccably polite customer service smile: “Hello, sir, would you like some coffee?”

Shen Ku froze in his tracks, finding his voice: “I… one Americano.”

Dou Manning: “Alright, please wait a moment.”

Shen Ku looked around, only to realize there was no payment QR code. “Can I pay with WeChat?”

Dou Manning looked at him: “I don’t have WeChat. Cash only.”

His financial apps, including WeChat, had been locked because he hadn’t used them in five years, requiring him to unfreeze them one by one.

Dou Manning was too lazy to bother, taking his sweet time unfreezing them.

Shen Ku didn’t have a scrap of cash in his pocket—an unforgivable sin. He pressed his dry lips together: “I forgot to bring cash.”

Dou Manning was reluctant to let his first customer slip away, especially when this customer had such an imposing, dignified bearing. “It’s fine. The first cup is on the house. Just help me spread the word around the construction site later.”

For a moment, Shen Ku had the illusion that he was actually a penniless poor bloke—the wealthy young master of the past was an illusion, and only this broke Engineer Shen standing here unable to pay was real.

“I’ll go back and get the cash.”

What was forty yuan to Second Young Master Shen? Even if a friend treated him to a four-thousand-yuan meal, Shen Ku wouldn’t necessarily obsess over returning the favor.

Yet in this moment, Shen Ku felt he absolutely had to pay.

“Hey…” Dou Manning watched the worker sprint back toward the construction site to fetch money, shaking his head with an amused smile.

What a straightforward, stubborn human.

He twisted the lid onto the cup and set it aside—he hadn’t bought a cup sealer, so the seal was just a twist-on lid.

About five minutes later.

The worker sprinted back, drenched in sweat, his neck flushed, clutching a crumpled bundle of forty yuan.

One ten-yuan bill, one twenty-yuan bill, and two five-yuan bills.

That wad of bills had been scrounged from all over by Shen Ku. So few people used cash nowadays; the technicians he knew carried hundred-yuan bills at most, with no small change.

He was worried Dou Manning wouldn’t have change.

Smiling brightly, Dou Manning took the money: “Thank you.”

The state of these forty yuan looked as though they had been saved up for a very long time.

Fortunately, his coffee was worth forty yuan; it would not disappoint.

The moment Shen Ku took the coffee, he caught a refreshing, bitter fragrance—deep and rich. He must have used very expensive beans.

This shopkeeper was too honest; one couldn’t make money this way.

He was suited to opening an artsy cafe downtown, with the air conditioning blasting high so he wouldn’t get hot with hair that long.

He could invest.

Shen Ku twisted open the lid and took a sip amidst a swirl of scattered thoughts.

In that split second, a bitterness that shot straight to his brain wiped out every single stray thought.

Dou Manning looked at him expectantly: “How is it?”

Shen Ku swallowed, keeping a poker face: “Very refreshing.”

Forgetting whatever he had just been thinking, he walked back stiffly holding his cup of coffee.

Dou Manning walked out of the iron shack in delight, watching the customer off.

His first order since opening.

It was a wonderful start.

Because of this, Dou Manning didn’t succumb to laziness the next day, getting up at five in the morning to open shop.

He swung open the iron door, letting the scent of morning dew drift in, wiped down the two machines, and hung the rag outside to dry.

With no customers, he pulled out that construction engineering textbook and began studying it with a profoundly serious look.

It was a bit embarrassing to admit, but when no one was around, he would patrol the trash cans.

He had scavenged a black pen, and was making a big show of underlining and marking all the content he couldn’t understand.

Apart from Chinese characters, he couldn’t understand any of the formulas.

The coffee Yao read the book utterly horribly.

Hearing footsteps, Dou Manning looked up. Oh, a repeat customer.

“Hello.”

Shen Ku immediately noticed the book in his hands. So… is he preparing for the Level-1 Constructor exam? Selling coffee is just a side gig?

That explained why his coffee-making skills were so atrocious.

The passing rate for the Level-1 Certified Constructor exam was notoriously low. Given how harsh this young man’s study conditions were, his family probably couldn’t support him after college, leaving him unable to afford rent and forced into an iron shack, selling coffee on the side.

Civil engineering was indeed a way out for children of impoverished families.

Dou Manning: “What would you like?”

Shen Ku: “I have a Level-1 Constructor certificate.”

Dou Manning was slightly puzzled. What does that mean?

Shen Ku: “Passing all four subjects in one year—there are test-taking techniques.”

He was very busy, but he could offer tutoring; he had a few spare minutes.

Dou Manning realized what he was getting at and said apologetically, “You can’t get a discount with that certificate.”

He knew many shops ran promotions like discounts for National College Entrance Exam admission tickets or teacher certification cards.

But this was a small business.

After saying that, Dou Manning felt this was a bit too cold toward his first customer, amending: “Though I can give you a buy-one-get-one-free deal.”

He had plenty of coffee beans; he could give them away for free.

Shen Ku: “…”