trct_57

Chapter 57: End of the Plum Rains

After many days of unbroken grey drizzle, the sky today was finally clear for miles.

But with the plum rains over, what followed close behind was the scorching heat of full summer.

Ji Qingzhou set out from the Jie residence at eight-forty as usual, and arrived at the shop around nine.

By then the sunlight was already searing hot, and even the yellow tabby cat from Tao's Restaurant, the one that always liked to nap on the wine jar by the doorway, had moved off into the shade of a tree.

"Morning, sir." Seeing Ji Qingzhou arrive, Zhu Renqing, broom in hand, greeted him with a smile.

The past couple of days had been so hot that long sleeves were nearly unbearable, so Zhu Renqing had on nothing but a sleeveless white front-buttoned top and a loose, thin pair of straight-legged ramie trousers.

Looking closely, the stitching at the collar and armholes of the top was a little uneven—Ji Qingzhou had drawn him the pattern, and Zhu Renqing had cut and hand-sewn it himself, using summer cloth from Wanzai, Jiangxi.

The knotted buttons on the short top were also his own work; though the finishing was a bit rough in places, it fit comfortably on him and, at a glance, looked quite presentable.

"Morning." Ji Qingzhou returned the greeting without much energy, pulling off his bag and setting it into the fabric box.

Once the heat set in, his nerves seemed to melt along with it—his whole body felt like cotton wool, and even talking felt like an effort.

As he swept, Zhu Renqing said, "Aunt Liu came by just now, said she'd found a technician she knows who'll come this afternoon to install the electrical outlet. But she said she's not covering the cost."

"Never expected her to." Ji Qingzhou shook his head, taking the apron off its hook and putting it on.

He then rolled up his sleeves, walked over to the ironing table, and plugged in the iron, saying, "Once the outlet's in, whether I'm here or not, feel free to plug in the fan whenever you're at the shop, no need to go out of your way to save power for my sake. And if anyone passing by wants to step in to cool off for a bit, that's fine too, let them enjoy the breeze."

"Oh, all right, sir." Zhu Renqing pressed his lips together and agreed, thinking to himself what a kind-hearted boss he had.

Though in truth, when he was alone in the shop during the early morning and evening hours, he mostly wouldn't need the fan anyway—electricity wasn't cheap, after all.

Having swept the floor briskly, Zhu Renqing carried the dustpan out to empty it at the mouth of the alley, then came back, set down his tools, and asked, "What should I work on today?"

"Hm, let me think... today, why don't you do the knotted buttons." Ji Qingzhou gestured up at the indigo-blue plain-weave ramie-silk blend fabric on the shelf—the main material for the plain qipao Shen Nanqi had ordered earlier.

"The straight one-stroke buttons, the kind you're best at, make nine pairs."

"Sure." With his task assigned, Zhu Renqing promptly took his tool basket and settled into a shaded corner of the shop to get to work.

Meanwhile, Ji Qingzhou busied himself giving the final pressing and finishing touches to Chen Mengyi's coin-pattern qipao.

Having made so many qipao by now, the work came easily to his hands—except that with the weather this hot, the iron kept releasing scorching heat, which spread into the surrounding air through the fabric it touched.

He'd been ironing for less than ten minutes before sweat had already soaked through the back of his shirt.

Ji Qingzhou pulled out his handkerchief to wipe the beads of sweat off his forehead, shaking his head with an inward sigh—ironing clothes in summer really was torment. This was truly money earned the hard way...

Hm, he really ought to raise his prices. From now on, every order would come with an extra fifty cents tacked on as a heat surcharge.

It took him the better part of half an hour to finish ironing the qipao. Once it had cooled, Ji Qingzhou folded it neatly, wrapped it in bamboo paper, tied it with a thin silk ribbon, labeled it with the Lu residence's address, and set it on the finished-goods shelf.

Seeing this, Zhu Renqing offered to take on the task, asking, "Should I deliver it later?"

"No rush. The client's address is over near Tianhou Temple, you can swing by on your way home from work today. The remaining balance on the piece is seven silver dollars, don't forget to collect it." With that, Ji Qingzhou couldn't wait to pull off his apron, loosen his shirt collar, plug in the electric fan, and turn it up to full blast.

As the breeze washed over him, he went on giving instructions. "I'm going to go place an order for some fabric in a bit. It's a fairly large batch this time, so have their staff deliver it straight to the shop; I won't be going myself. The technician's coming this afternoon to install the outlet, so keep an eye on that, pay the installation fee out of the loose change in the drawer."

Zhu Renqing lifted his eyes to watch his hair tossed into disarray by the fan, thinking that even with a thin sheen of sweat on his face, his boss looked especially vivid and handsome.

His thoughts wandered off for a moment before he remembered to ask, "You're not coming by in the afternoon, then?"

"Got things to see to this afternoon." Ji Qingzhou turned to the side, leaning against the edge of the table, and quirked the corner of his mouth at him. "You know I just rented that new studio space. It's a brand new place, completely empty, nothing in it yet. The furniture's arriving today, so I need to go be there for it."

At this, Zhu Renqing felt an unexpected pang of wistfulness. It was certainly good news that his boss now had a new shop space, but over the time he'd worked here—arriving each morning, leaving each evening, spending the better part of the day at the shop alongside him—he'd grown a kind of particular attachment to this little place.

"So will you keep this shop running too?"

"What are you thinking? Of course I will, there's still five months left on the lease. Besides, people living around here won't necessarily want to travel that far to have clothes made, so this shop's obviously staying open."

As Ji Qingzhou spoke, he slung his satchel back over his shoulder, straightened his hair in front of the mirror, and on his way to the door, patted Zhu Renqing on the head, saying, "Off I go, mind the shop!"

Zhu Renqing stood there watching his figure disappear into the blazing sunlight outside, and after a moment, raised a hand to touch the spot on his head where he'd been patted.

It had been two months since his last haircut, and his hair had grown out quite a bit; being thick, it felt soft and fluffy to the touch.

Fortunately, he'd washed his hair that morning.

Thinking this to himself, and thinking of his boss touching his head, Zhu Renqing couldn't help the corners of his mouth curling up.

·

The fabric Ji Qingzhou went to buy was for two gowns—Chen Yanzhu's "Black Lotus" gown, and the ball gown Pan Yuling had ordered a few days prior.

Since that latter gown was covered all over with a rose-patterned motif, Ji Qingzhou had taken to calling it, for convenience, the "Black Rose."

The former he planned to make from a semi-transparent, dark grey georgette—not a hard fabric to find. The tricky part was the layered, crisscrossing black-to-grey gradient train at the back of the skirt.

There was certainly no way to buy, on the open market, fabric pre-dyed with a petal-shaped gradient wash—he'd have no choice but to use the base-color fabric for the skirt itself, cut it into pattern pieces, and then either have someone dye it or dye it himself.

Ji Qingzhou had experience with this sort of thing, and didn't find it especially troublesome.

Compared to the work of later adding sequins to every panel of the skirt, the dyeing was hardly worth mentioning.

As for the "Black Rose" gown, the main fabric he'd chosen was a silk printed chiffon, medium grey in base color, evenly patterned with black linear rose motifs.

Ji Qingzhou had chosen this particular pattern because he'd seen the fabric once before at the foreign goods shop, while buying material for Jin Bao'er's polka-dot dress.

At the time, he'd thought the pattern rather distinctive, but being busy with other orders, hadn't cut a sample or purchased any.

Now, nearly a month and a half had passed since that order for Jin Bao'er, and he had no idea whether any of that bolt of fabric remained, or if there was, whether the stock would be sufficient.

Still, fabrics sold exclusively at foreign goods shops were usually machine-produced in large batches, and likely to be well-stocked, so Ji Qingzhou wasn't too worried about not finding it.

Besides these two main fabrics, he'd also need silk material for the shawl, gloves, and hat.

For the Black Lotus gown's triangular shawl, he planned to use a plain medium-grey soft satin, while the hat and gloves would be made from black twill silk.

Of these fabrics, aside from the rose-print chiffon, which he'd need to get from the foreign goods shop, he'd seen all the others before at Boss Wang's silk shop—so once he stepped out of the alley, he headed straight for the "Wang Shanxing" Silk Shop on Tongfu Road.

When they arrived at the silk shop, there was already a customer inside.

She was a young woman dressed in a blue cloth blouse and a black pleated skirt, in the style of a student, with a roll of jade-blue fabric cradled in her arms. She stood by the counter holding a thin cardboard booklet, her expression intent as she picked her way through row after row of fabric swatches displayed inside.

Ji Qingzhou found nothing unusual in the scene before him—this was, after all, an idea he'd suggested to Boss Wang himself.

The silk shop was tall and spacious, and the finer, more expensive silks were typically kept up on high shelves, where ordinary customers could only look from a distance and name what they wanted before a clerk would bring it down to the counter for closer inspection—a real inconvenience, in his opinion.

So a couple of days earlier, when he'd come to buy fabric for Shen Nanqi's qipao, he'd suggested to Boss Wang that he put together a swatch book, so customers could handle and choose fabrics up close.

"After all, some fabrics have wonderful texture and pattern but a rather plain color, and people tend to just overlook them, wouldn't that be a shame, letting them go unnoticed?"

Hearing this, Boss Wang had apparently found it quite sensible, and had gone on to cut a narrow strip from every fabric, arranging them neatly by color into a blank booklet for customers to browse.

And sure enough, the method had proven quite effective, Boss Wang's silk sales had noticeably picked up these past two days.

So today, the moment he spotted Ji Qingzhou walking in, he lit up as though greeting the god of wealth himself, breaking into a warm smile. "Mr. Ji's here! Come have a look at what you need, pick out whatever you like!"

Ji Qingzhou wasted no time either, laying out his requirements clearly and quickly the moment he stepped in.

The fabric needed for the shawl, hat, and gloves was minimal—about three chi of each would do—but the dark grey georgette was another matter: the skirt alone required a large amount, and with the additional dyeing trials needed for the cut panels, he simply asked for a full bolt.

Boss Wang's face lit up at this, and he quickly located the bolt in question, confirmed it with Ji Qingzhou, then had a clerk wrap it up properly.

"All together that comes to nine dollars and sixty-two cents. Let's just round it down, call it nine dollars even," Boss Wang said, clicking away at his abacus as he leaned against the counter, generous as ever.

That was a fairly substantial discount, though given how much Ji Qingzhou was buying, rounding down was really just a matter of earning a little more or a little less.

Business, after all, wasn't about squeezing out profit in the moment, keeping customers coming back was what kept a shop going in the long run.

"That's very kind of you, Boss Wang. I've got somewhere else to be after this. Once your clerk has it wrapped, would you mind having it delivered to my shop?"

"No trouble at all, don't you worry, I'll see it gets there!" Since it was only a couple hundred paces away, Boss Wang agreed readily.

Ji Qingzhou nodded, then counted out nine silver dollars from his bag and set them on the counter.

Shen Nanqi had just given him thirty yuan in pocket money the previous weekend, and though this fabric expense was coming out of the shop's business accounts, with money to spare in hand, he found himself paying out rather freely.

Boss Wang happily collected the coins, then glanced over at the young woman beside them and added, "Mr. Ji, if you'd wait just a moment—say, young miss, have you settled on your choice yet? What color are you after? If you're having trouble deciding, why not let this gentleman offer some advice, he runs a clothing shop himself, he's sure to have a good eye."

At this, Ji Qingzhou turned his gaze toward the girl with the two braids standing nearby.

She'd apparently been standing there deliberating for a while now, and looked a little embarrassed at being put on the spot. She glanced up quickly at Ji Qingzhou with her almond-shaped eyes and asked, "You're a tailor?"

"That's right." Ji Qingzhou glanced at the jade-blue fabric in her arms. "Looking to pair a trim color with that fabric? Would you like some help?"

"Um..." The girl considered for a few seconds before saying, "I'm planning to make a robe from this fabric. You probably know the kind, the narrow-sleeved qipao that's been in fashion lately, but I'm not sure what color to use for the trim. Using this pale blue or jade-green for a 'chive-leaf edge' would look nice enough, but it feels a bit plain, and other colors are hard to match with it..."

"How about red?"

"Red?" The girl pictured it in her mind for a moment, then shook her head slightly. "Wouldn't that steal the show from the main fabric?"

Ji Qingzhou stepped closer, glanced over the swatches in her hand, then tapped a jujube-red swatch tucked in the corner. "Skip the 'chive-leaf edge', do a thin incense-stick trim instead."

"You mean that very narrow piping?"

"Mm."

The girl immediately held her own fabric up beside the jujube-red one to compare, considered it a moment, then broke into a smile. "That does look rather good together, thank you for the advice. Where's your shop, exactly? Do you take on apprentices?"

"Just diagonally across the street, at the corner," Ji Qingzhou answered. "Thinking of learning tailoring? You look like a student."

"Mm... I'm still considering it." The girl's tone was hesitant, and she glanced up at Ji Qingzhou's face, seeming to notice only now just how young and handsome the tailor was, belatedly realizing how forward she must have seemed a moment ago.

She thanked him once more, then lowered her head and said nothing further.

Seeing this, Ji Qingzhou didn't press the matter, gave Boss Wang a nod, and walked out of the shop.

·

Having bought all the fabric he needed as planned, and arranged for the shop clerks to deliver it to his own store, Ji Qingzhou returned to the Jie residence.

The timing worked out well this time, he arrived home right at lunchtime.

After sharing a meal with Jie Yu'an and resting a while, the two of them got into the car, driven by A' You, and headed for the new house on Avenue Joffre.

As for Luo Mingxuan, he'd called that morning to say he'd be bringing two friends along to help move things, and given how eager he tended to be, Ji Qingzhou figured he'd probably already arrived.

Sure enough, by the time the three of them reached the intersection of Avenue Joffre and Route Ratard, they found a row of cars already parked along the street.

There were black Fords, as well as a good number of rickshaws loaded with cargo.

Not only had Luo Mingxuan and his friends arrived early, but Changfeng Furniture's delivery crew had gotten there ahead of schedule too.

So by the time they walked into the courtyard, one glance showed the ground floor doors and windows thrown wide open, with furniture piled up everywhere—under the corridor, inside every room.

Even with the actual owner nowhere in sight, this crowd of strangers was hard at work in full swing.

And there was Luo Mingxuan, looking very much like a cuckoo that had claimed someone else's nest, standing energetically on a chair in the entryway, waving his arms about as he directed the shop workers on where to carry each piece of furniture—already taking it upon himself to arrange the whole household.

It's true that a person can end up laughing when utterly at a loss for words—seeing this scene, Ji Qingzhou couldn't help but burst out laughing.

"What is it?" Jie Yu'an asked, turning his head, apparently catching the emotion in his laughter.

"What else," Ji Qingzhou clicked his tongue. "The monkey's crowned himself king."

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