Suddenly Became a Boy – What Should I Do? - Chapter 76.1

Lin Xin stood frozen, his index finger hovering over the numbers on the check, momentarily speechless. Slowly, he counted the zeros after the digit, “Ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, hundred thousands, millions.” Six zeros—it really was five million RMB. The moment he realized this, the slightly crumpled piece of paper in his hand suddenly felt like a hot potato.

It wasn’t the sheer amount of money that overwhelmed him. Rather, it was the embarrassing realization of how unremarkable he must seem. His face flushed, and so did his palms. Just a brief meeting, a few hours of interaction, and somehow, he’d managed to earn five million yuan.

A wild thought popped into Lin Xin’s head. “What if I knock on Cheng Shiyin’s door again? Would her mother be so disgusted with me that she’d throw another five million my way, just to get rid of me?”

With this thought circling in his mind, Lin Xin decided to test the theory.

Clutching the five-million-yuan check in his hand, he felt an unexpected surge of confidence. Before knocking on the door, he even rapped out a sequence in Morse code, “.-../—/…-/.” Translated, it spelled, “LOVE.”

But the person who answered wasn’t Cheng Shiyin. So naturally, the “LOVE” didn’t reach its intended recipient. Instead, it was intercepted by Cheng Shiyin’s mother, the very same woman who had handed him the check mere moments ago.

To be fair, ‘handed’ was indeed the more accurate term. She had delivered the check politely into his hand, with not a single rude word. She hadn’t even so much as rolled her eyes, her manner impeccable from start to finish.

Still, upon seeing Lin Xin’s face again, she cut off his greeting before he could say, ‘Hello, Auntie!’ and slammed the door shut with a decisive bang. If not for the gust of air that rushed through the hallway, accompanied by swirling dust and the thunderous sound of the door closing, Lin Xin might’ve doubted it even happened. The speed of that door was almost too quick for the naked eye to catch.

Lin Xin sighed, carefully folded the check, and slid it into the back of his phone case. He’d return it later when the opportunity arose. It wasn’t that Lin Xin would trade five million yuan for his love for Cheng Shiyin. But if the check were lost and someone cashed it, there was no way his family could scrape together enough to cover it.

Lin Xin’s indifference toward the five million yuan was almost comical—like receiving an oversized red envelope from a distant relative during Lunar New Year and scrambling to give it back. The dilemma of choosing love or money didn’t even cross his mind.

Meanwhile, behind the curtains of the Cheng household, Cheng Shiyin was pinned down by her mother, peeking at Lin Xin as he left. Only after he was gone did she finally get the chance to confront her mother about her antics.

Her first question was straightforward. “Mom, do we even have five million in liquid assets?”

Cheng Shiyin was well aware of her family’s financial situation. They weren’t destitute, but they weren’t rolling in money either. Five million yuan was no small sum. Even if they included their real estate, it was questionable whether they could scrape together that much.

Sure enough, her mother was caught off guard. “Uh…” she stammered, unable to come up with a plausible explanation.

“‘Uh?’” Cheng Shiyin echoed skeptically. Her mother’s evasive attitude gave away her mischief, and she pressed on. “What bank issued the check?”

“Children’s Bank of China. Your cousin gave it to me three years ago when he was in first grade,” Cheng Shiyin’s mother admitted.

“So it was a prank,” she thought.

She added, “I’ve always wanted to say that line. When I found that fake check still sitting in my wallet, I figured it’d be the perfect prop. It looks pretty convincing, doesn’t it?”

However, Cheng Shiyin’s brows furrowed. Given Lin Xin’s occasional lack of skepticism, he might not realize it was a joke. While she wasn’t worried that he’d take the money and run, she knew it would weigh on him.

She pulled out her phone to clear things up with him, but her mother snatched it away. “Let’s tease him for a couple of days before explaining.”

And so, Lin Xin was left to untangle this blatantly obvious mystery on his own.

As Cheng Shiyin predicted, Lin Xin didn’t even think to question the check’s authenticity. He blindly trusted it, just as he trusted her mother. Thankfully, Lin Xin was no longer the impulsive young man he used to be. With years of bad decision-making under his belt, he had learned to consult others before acting.

This time, the first person he thought to call was his own mother. After all, his last solo decision—hiding his true identity—had spiraled into a 200,000-word ordeal.

“Beep… beep… beep—”

True to form, Lin Xin’s mother, who spent her days lounging at home binge-reading comics, picked up before the third ring. Holding a manga she had clearly never read before, she ignored the screen entirely. Annoyed that Lin Xin had interrupted her leisure time, she begrudgingly asked, “What do you want?”

“Here’s the thing…” Lin Xin began.