Chapter 9
Li Muyao’s laughs brought a lot of gossip and complaints from the other seven people in the room.
“Has Li Muyao gone crazy? She was laughing in her sleep and woke me up.”
“You think that’s crazy? I bet you didn’t hear her laughs at 4 am. It was in the middle of the night. Suddenly hearing Li Muyao’s laughs at that time is what’s truly terrifying!”
“If it wasn’t that the elderly said we can’t wake people who are sleepwalking, I would’ve beaten her up and ask her not to laugh so weirdly. She’s only woken you up now, but I’ve already been disturbed by her strange laughs all night.”
“I think Li Muyao may be dating that kid, Color Hair, right? They were out together last night and she still hadn’t returned when I slept!”
“Tut, a cradle snatcher?”
“What’s wrong with dating a younger boy? Color Hair and Li Muyao have the same hairstyle and wear similar make-up every day. They look so much like a couple!”
“Alright, stop dissing her over there. Muyao only treats Color Hair as a brother. Why are your thoughts so dirty?
“Don’t forget that Muyao was the one who took your shifts when you had something to do and had to take a day off.”
“You’re all ungrateful. If you always talk about Muyao behind her back, I’ll tell her about it and ask her not to help you when you’re on leave.”
The person who stepped up and refuted for Li Muyao was Li Muyao’s best friend and a beautician apprentice that started working at the salon at the same time as Li Muyao, Wu Lanqi.
“Ah, Sister Lanqi, we’re just joking. Hehe, don’t tell Muyao. We won’t say those things again next time.”
“Right, what are you and Muyao going to have for breakfast?
“It’s on us, okay?”
This apprentice was the one who said Li Muyao and Color Hair were dating. Her name was Lin Hong and she was twenty years old. She came here to be an apprentice a year earlier than Li Muyao and Wu Lanqi, but her heart wasn’t focused on learning cosmetology, so she always hung out with her boyfriend.
There were requirements for apprentices to take day-offs in beauty salons. An apprentice had only one day off every month. Other than this day, you must make sure that someone had to take your position if you wanted to leave early or come late during other days.
Even though Li Muyao and Wu Lanqi had only been apprentices in the salon for six months, they worked really hard and were eager to learn. They always worked even during their day off every month. Thus, they had less time and chances to go out. The other apprentices who came earlier than them, like Lin Hong, always used them being new apprentices as an excuse.
They would ask the two of them to take their shifts and work in the hourly position.
Everything was mutually beneficial. If they didn’t want to work or wanted to leave early while another person wanted to learn but had no place to, sure, they could give that person their time slot and the person would get all the customer bonuses she earned.
After all, the rules in a beauty salon were a bit strict. An apprentice could only become a beautician after learning for three years. Lin Hong and the others had already been here for more than a year or two, but the customer services they could handle were limited to facial care and hand care. The beauticians would never let them be involved in other deeper beauty care and body care services.
So, as Lin Hong and the others worked here for a long time, they also started to slack off eventually.
However, there are its benefits when they have learned to do beauty treatments for a longer time. Even if they were still apprentices, their basic salary would rise as time passed.
For example, Lin Hong had been an apprentice for one and a half years and her basic salary had reached eight hundred yuan. She also did a few facial care and hand care treatments with her teacher sometimes to get bonuses, so she could earn over a thousand yuan easily.
As for Li Muyao and Wu Lanqi, as they were new apprentices, they didn’t only need to learn all kinds of knowledge, including beauty and body treatments and manicures at the Beauty Department on the second floor, but also had to maintain the cleanliness of the beauty salon. Additionally, when the Hairdressing Department on the first floor was short of staff, both of them also had to go downstairs to help customers wash their hair.
This was why Li Muyao, an apprentice beautician would hang out with Color Hair, an apprentice hairdresser.
“Thank you, Lin Hong. Muyao and I want pork rice rolls with extra chili. I will not tell Muyao about what happened today. You guys should pay attention as well.”
After all, Wu Lanqi had gone through a year of a failed marriage and she was much older than these apprentices, so she knew she couldn’t hold on to this matter. Li Muyao was the one who was involved. She had already been awakened, but still pretended she didn’t hear anything. Wu Lanqi knew Li Muyao wouldn’t argue with them.
So, she naturally pushed the boat along with the current and put aside the bad things they said about Li Muyao behind her back.
“We promise. We promise we’ll definitely not talk nonsense next time! Hehe, then we’d like to go shopping and get something this afternoon. Will you and Muyao be alright?”
How would Lin Hong be so easy to take advantage of?
That was certainly impossible!
“Hm, I’ll talk to Muyao later. She has been on leave for several days. There shouldn’t be any problems.”
Wu Lanqi was quite confident that Li Muyao would agree to this. She knew Li Muyao wanted to work overtime every day before she was on leave. No matter if it was at the Beauty Department on the second floor or the Hairdressing Department on the first floor, Li Muyao would be thrilled as long as she had work to do since her brother was going to get married and he needed money to buy a house in Yang City.
As his sister, Li Muyao wanted to help with some of the finances.
However, Li Muyao had a really low salary as an apprentice, so she could only take up all kinds of small work that Lin Hong and the others weren’t willing to do and ran to the first floor to help customers wash their hair, to get more bonuses.
“I know Sister Lanqi and Muyao are the best. We’ll go get some breakfast then.”
When they left and shut the door, Wu Lanqi walked to Li Muyao’s metal bed, looked up, and pulled Li Muyao’s blanket off as she said with a smile, “You’re awake. Why didn’t you get up?”
“You were listening to our conversation on purpose, weren’t you?
“You’re usually not like this, but you didn’t say a word and wasn’t irritated today. That’s not easy!”
Li Muyao was young and usually easy-going!
However, she had quite a fiery temper. If someone said something bad about Li Muyao, she would directly strike back. Li Muyao always took up the shifts of the other apprentices like Lin Hong because she wanted more money. And yet, in Li Muyao’s perspective, her kindness didn’t imply that Lin Hong and the others could bully her and it wasn’t something they could use to order her about casually.
Li Muyao’s temper was famous in the Beauty Department and even the Hairdressing Department on the first floor!
The Hairdressing Department on the first floor served all kinds of customers every day. There were more male customers than female customers, so people that came here were a bit more complicated than those in the Beauty Department.
Li Muyao was quite good-looking, especially when she first came to Yang City, she was completely a pure and cute little girl.
Since she was a new apprentice, she was usually assigned to the first floor to wash people’s hair after the beauty foundation classes and the male customers would touch her hands and her bottom.