He left, abandoning another hundred-yuan bill.
Five more minutes later…
“Another hundred?” Liu Ming had grown wise, seeing Hao Yunyang’s dead-faced expression, stood up and asked.
“…” Hao Yunyang was on the verge of tears, looked at Liu Ming, and silently nodded, contributing another hundred-yuan bill.
Five minutes after that…
“Bro, can I call you bro?” Liu Ming looked helplessly at Hao Yunyang, who had appeared again: “Can’t you top up all the credit at once? Going back and forth is so annoying!”
“…” Hao Yunyang, drained of all color, hesitated before placing two hundred-yuan bills on the counter, steeling himself and not looking at the bills before turning to leave.
“This guy’s brain must be fried,” Liu Ming returned to the mahjong table after topping up 200 yuan of credit, lit a cigarette, and said to his three card-playing friends, who just laughed in response.
“Your account balance is 99.37 yuan, valid until…” Looking at the text message, Hao Yunyang felt like he had just been pulled out of water, nearly collapsing.
Topping up 100 yuan of credit would deduct 100 yuan, with the expense notification coming in one second and a message about being out of credit when calling his mother the next, going back and forth several times. Just as Hao Yunyang was about to give up and treat the SIM card as a bottomless pit, the final 200 yuan of credit finally left him with ninety-nine.
“Son, your dad was almost driven crazy,” standing under a dim streetlight, Hao Yunyang sighed. Twenty-something minutes of calls had somehow cost him 650 yuan, and after being so ruthlessly charged, he didn’t have the courage to argue with the mobile company, choosing to accept his bad luck.
After this ordeal, Hao Yunyang finally understood that future calls aren’t something you can make casually. Heaven is watching while humans act; changing one’s fate isn’t as simple as a cheat code. Before that, you must pay a price, and only then can you receive something in return. In the real world, getting something for nothing is rare, even winning the lottery requires buying a ticket.
“Don’t let your dad down!” he muttered, finally dialing his mother’s number. Hearing the dialing tone, touching the 400 yuan left in his pocket, Hao Yunyang inwardly mourned, “Money!”
