Chapter 62: If you can't park, stop hogging the stall and doing nothing!

"What, asking me out?" Gu Yin still felt rather pleased with himself.

After spending a day together, the unfamiliarity of not seeing each other for a week had completely vanished. Now, Gu Yin could casually crack jokes with Xia Qianyi without a care in the world.

"In your dreams!" The young girl rolled her eyes so hard they almost reached the heavens, yet she still avoided his gaze as she argued, "We were going to have dinner anyway..."

That being said, Xia Qianyi felt a bit perplexed herself as she uttered those words. I mean, she was a top-tier celebrity after all; normally, any man who received a personal invitation from her to share a meal would be overjoyed, but this guy Gu Yin—not only was he unimpressed, he was actually teasing her?

Where did he even get the confidence!

"Fine, let's grab a bite then." Gu Yin laughed heartily, considering that the female celebrity had been through so much over the past week, and even if he wasn't her coach anymore, having dinner and chatting as friends was perfectly normal.

Besides, he had other motives...

"My treat," he said. "Let's skip downtown. Let's go to that barbecue joint near us that I frequent. Downtown is crowded, messy, causes traffic jams, and charges parking fees—what a complete sucker's game."

Gu Yin thoroughly exhibited the typical petty, worldly traits of a small-town resident. Xia Qianyi, upon hearing this, couldn't help but look surprised. "Did the iron rooster finally pluck a feather?"

Gu Yin rolled his eyes, raised his hand, and gave her a light rap on the head that made her see stars. "Don't get any ideas," Gu Yin said. "It's a paid transaction."

"What?" Hearing the word "paid," Xia Qianyi was instantly startled, crossing her arms over her chest. "What on earth are you thinking?!"

No matter what, she was still a female celebrity. Even though they were quite familiar with each other, things hadn't reached *that* point yet. Were you seriously talking about a paid arrangement?!

"..."

Gu Yin was momentarily left speechless. He silently rubbed his forehead, wearing an expression of utter exasperation...

"My younger sister wants your autograph, specifically... that kind... the personalized kind with a special dedication," Gu Yin said. "Could you sign one if it's convenient?"

Hearing this, Xia Qianyi finally let out a sigh of relief and bluntly remarked, "My autograph is very expensive. Do you think a single meal is going to cover it?"

As a top-tier mainstream star whose recent popularity was soaring, even if she didn't sell her autograph for some astronomical price, it could easily fetch a few thousand or even tens of thousands.

"Oh, come on, we're buddies. Why split hairs over so much?" Gu Yin began to shamelessly thump his own chest. "Brothers for life, deep in the heart."

Anyone who didn't know better would think Xia Qianyi was a high-roller from a gaming guild...

"Then how about you refund the 30,000 yuan I paid you to dodge the paparazzi?" Xia Qianyi asked.

"Well... those are two entirely different matters. Let's not bring that up..." Gu Yin's eyes darted away evasively.

Xia Qianyi burst out laughing. To be honest, even though Gu Yin was stingy and had the typical temperament of an ordinary nobody, interacting with him was inexplicably and genuinely pleasant.

"Anyway, let me state this beforehand..." At this moment, Gu Yin pointed at the camera attached to his chest and said, "I started my livestream late this morning, so I might need to film a bit longer. You don't mind, right?"

Xia Qianyi glanced at the camera on Gu Yin's chest, hesitated for a moment, and gently nodded her exquisite head. "I don't mind."

With dinner agreed upon and her shift ended on time, Gu Yin punched out right on the dot, got into his "war chariot" BYD Qin, and drove toward the west side of the county town with Xia Qianyi and Mengmeng in tow.

It was past six o'clock, the familiar evening rush hour. Traffic was heavy, but fortunately, there was no female Cadillac driver blocking the road right outside a school gate like last time, so the journey went smoothly all the way.

Gu Yin drove the two women across the county town, arriving near the university town. Turning at the entrance of a vocational and technical school, a medium-to-small shopping mall-style building came into view.

"Where should I park..."

Near the mall, Gu Yin subconsciously wanted to park the car on the auxiliary lane alongside the road.

For locals, the concept of "parking" didn't involve entering a proper parking lot at all. If you could wedge your car onto the auxiliary lane, you did; if you couldn't, you just pulled over to the side of the road.

At worst, you kept an eye on your phone notifications, and if you got a text message from the traffic police, you simply moved the car temporarily. Anyway, as long as you drove away within ten minutes of receiving the text, you wouldn't get fined.

However, remembering a few days ago when he took his mother to the county hospital for a CT scan of her heel spurs—parking on a roadside where cars were normally never ticketed, only to be hit with a text from the traffic police and fined despite driving away in seven minutes...

"Forget it, forget it. It's not worth tangling with these idiots," Gu Yin muttered, shaking his head.

Sometimes you look at a spot with no surveillance cameras and think it's fine to park, but the traffic police will suddenly show up sniffing around like hounds to take photos of your car...

Traffic police in small towns never do proper work. You can find them wandering around everywhere looking for cars to ticket, but when an actual emergency happens, they just brush it off and muddy the waters.

The area around the university town was a high-risk zone for traffic police patrols. Around the Chinese New Year when students had just returned to school, Gu Yin parked twice when coming to buy things and got fined both times—100 yuan each time. Damn it, 200 yuan could have paid for 100 hours of parking in this local parking garage!

Today he was treating people to dinner, and in this freezing weather, it wouldn't be appropriate to leave the car outside and make them walk. So, Gu Yin decisively turned the steering wheel and headed down into the underground parking garage of the mall.

This mall was the only slightly larger shopping center in Gu Yin's small county town. Backed by the university town, it never lacked foot traffic. Today being the weekend, the underground garage was bustling with people during this evening dinner hour. The relatively small underground garage on the first basement level simply couldn't handle such a massive load, and after circling twice upon entering, Gu Yin couldn't find a single parking spot...

"What absolute bloody nonsense," Gu Yin couldn't help cursing.

Normally, when you don't drive in here, the underground garage is practically empty whenever you happen to come down...

And now that the iron rooster Gu Yin had finally decided to pluck a feather and pay for parking, damn it, there were no spots left?

What kind of piece-of-trash mall is this? It covers quite a large area, yet the underground garage only has a single level?

Figures, it's just a small county town after all...

When he finally spotted a parking spot against the wall, damn it, a gray BMW backed its rear end right in to squeeze past him...

Squeeze if it wanted to; since he was far away and it wasn't his spot anyway, it wouldn't be right to fight someone for it, so Gu Yin waited for the other driver to pull in.

The problem was, the driver of that gray BMW seemed to have terrible driving skills. After backing up multiple times, the car still hadn't managed to get into that narrow space.

It was a standard reverse park, but the car was parked far too close to the parking space boundary without leaving enough clearance. As a result, when reversing, before the front of the car could straighten out, the side scraped against the front of the neighboring vehicle.

This kind of situation was actually very easy to resolve. You just drive forward a couple of meters to create some clearance and then back in again.

Yet, as if afraid that moving forward two meters would cause Gu Yin to steal his parking spot, this driver refused to budge forward. He just stubbornly ground away against the parking garage wall over and over again, as if by repeating the reversing motion countless times, iron pestles would grind into needles and the parking garage would magically swallow his car up for him.

What an absolute moron.

"Oh dear, seriously... Is this going to work or not?" Gu Yin felt a headache coming on just watching. He shouted out loud, "If you can't park, get the hell out of the way! Stop hogging the toilet if you're not going to shit!"

When you're desperately looking for a parking spot, there is nothing more infuriating than running into someone who insists on taking a particular space yet fails to back into it for ages...

...

Ps: I hope everyone can keep up with the daily updates. During the new book period, the readership metrics are extremely important. Also, I'm begging for recommendation tickets and monthly votes, sob. Please take pity on this poor author...

Once the book officially goes on pay-to-read, I will definitely release massive updates!