Seizing Dreams

Ch114.1 – Phone Call

Yu Hao felt bad for a moment and avoided Zhou Sheng’s gaze. He took a deep breath; he wanted to tell Zhou Sheng the truth. But when he saw Zhou Sheng entertaining himself and his expectant eyes, he couldn’t say it no matter what.

But Zhou Sheng thought Yu Hao was feeling moved, so he smiled as he asked, “Like it?”

Yu Hao nodded; all sorts of feelings really had welled up in his heart. He picked up the camera and took a picture of Zhou Sheng. Looking at the display screen, this was the second photo in the camera; the first photo was taken by Zhou Sheng from the balcony of Yu Hao at the area downstairs.

Zhou Sheng reached out and held Yu Hao in his arms. The two of them took a selfie. This was the third photo, and Yu Hao was ready to let it remain in this Hasselblad camera forever.

“Both of you have already found what you guys wanna do.” Zhou Sheng lay in bed and muttered to himself, “But I haven’t figured out what to do yet.”

“That’s alright, I’ll raise you.” Yu Hao smiled, “You just need to cook for me everyday at home.”

Zhou Sheng suddenly said, “Why don’t I open a small restaurant and deliver lunch to office buildings?”

Yu Hao immediately rejected, “No way! I won’t let anyone else eat what you cook.”

Zhou Sheng laughed happily. Yu Hao thought about it for a bit, “I’ll help you send your resume tomorrow ba.”

Zhou Sheng said, “Send to those related to food and beverage services?”

“Okay.”

Yu Hao brought up the camera to take another picture of him. At this moment, he decided not to worry Zhou Sheng with his affairs. After all, even if he did say anything, Zhou Sheng wouldn’t be able to help him resolve the problem and would instead just feel more gloomy. Also, Zhou Sheng was already bothered about where he should be interning.

Yu Hao planned to send both his and Zhou Sheng’s resumes out, and if that really doesn’t work out, he would wait until Chen Yekai came back before asking him for help. And if that doesn’t work out either, there would still be arranged internships by Xue Long, although those would either involve selling insurance or the sales office.

The next morning, Fu Liqun held a meeting for three students in their living room.

Two boys from the sports classes were Xia Lie and Bian Qiang, as well as their roommate, Li Yangming. After Fu Liqun received his first ever investment in his life, his efficiency in execution was quite high– he had already called his partners over at 9am to start their discussion.

Yu Hao and Zhou Sheng had porridge at the dining table and didn’t express a single opinion the whole time while Fu Liqun and the rest were having their meeting. Fu Liqun had evidently already conceived a plan last night and discussed it with Xia Lei and the rest beforehand; everyone was optimistic about his gym and were all willing to work together with him.

Zhou Sheng yawned. He sat at the dining table and looked at Yu Hao, bored stiff.

“Check your resume again.” Yu Hao said to Zhou Sheng, “If there’s no issues with it I’ll start throwing it out to the sea.”

This was Zhou Sheng and Yu Hao’s first time watching an entrepreneurship team earnestly conduct a meeting, and both of them thought it was quite interesting. As a bystander, Yu Hao felt that rather than describing them as entrepreneurs, it was more appropriate to say that they were acting —— everyone was trying their best to play the role they should have, or at least the role they think they should be playing right now.

Just like a group of students who were trying to learn how to be adults.

Of course, Yu Hao wasn’t much better himself. At the very least, Fu Liqun had already found the direction he wanted to strive towards in the future.

“No it can’t be written like this……” After Zhou Sheng looked through his resume, his face flushed red straight away. “You didn’t write a resume, this is a press release for the entertainment circle! It’s even written through the lens of a fan, there’s too much bragging in this.”

Yu Hao said, “But you are like that, you are a male god. Okay don’t feel conflicted anymore, I’m sending it.”

“There are wrong words too……wait!” Zhou Sheng was about to stop Yu Hao, who filled in all the email addresses he had sorted out the other day and sent them all out, while sending his own resume to several media companies in Ying City as well.

Within one morning, Fu Liqun’s team had reached an agreement on the distribution of shares and the responsibilities they each would hold. When they had a break in the middle, Zhou Sheng fried up a huge pot of rice for the six of them. Fu Liqun asked Yu Hao, “When will Young Madam start work?”

“Waiting for the notice.” Yu Hao said.

Li Yangming asked Zhou Sheng if he was going to intern at his father’s company, and the answer he got was quite unexpected — Zhou Sheng said, “Nope, I’ll find a company myself.”

“Young Master, why don’t the two of you come over too?” Bian Qiang asked, “Won’t starting up your own small business be better than working outside?”

Zhou Sheng laughed and diverted the conversation. Yu Hao said to Li Yangming, “Didn’t you plan to work in HR? Changed your mind?”

Li Yangming said, “I’m only here to offer Gege some ideas, you can consider me as an external staff.”

Yu Hao felt that Li Yangming’s ideas weren’t very reliable; they were novel, but difficult to execute. But since Fu Liqun trusted him, Yu Hao wouldn’t say anything about it. After all, the most difficult thing for entrepreneurship teams to deal with was input by investors. Zhou Sheng and Yu Hao had already discussed this beforehand, and neither of them would try giving Fu Liqun advice lest he finds himself at his wits’ end.

In the afternoon, Li Yangming started drafting up a contract while Fu Liqun, Bian Qiang, and Xia Lei began brainstorming on how to attract their first batch of users and how to convince their target group to sign up for a fitness card. At present, they had categorised potential customers as “private”, “high-end” and those requiring “customised services”. As Yu Hao listened to them, he started changing his views of Fu Liqun; they might actually be able to earn money from this.

Zhou Sheng was a little surprised as well. He looked at Yu Hao, smiled without saying anything, and nodded.

Xia Lei’s family dabbled in the intermediary loan business, so he had some strings he could pull, and he could help with promotion through his parents’ help. Bian Qiang’s family was a demolition household and had some money, so he could contact the boss who makes equipment to rent some equipment that don’t require a down payment. Fu Liqun had worked in a gym for a few months and could roughly understand the operation process. He could even get his dad, who was a consultant in a biomedical company, to contact several companies that sold health products, protein powder, and weight-loss capsules, to allow them to sell these products and collect a commission from them.

After listening for a whole day, Yu Hao realised that no matter how much they brainstormed over and over, in the end they would still slowly wind back to how they could rationally and effectively make full use of the resources from their families. Also, Xia Lei and Fu Liqun’s visions were completely different from the employees that Yu Hao had gotten acquainted with when he was working — it was like the time when they had just moved out, and Zhou Sheng’s first thought was to buy this two-bedroom apartment.

Perhaps, this was the difference between stratas. Xia Lei’s proposal was to get a loan to buy a flat in the community and renovate it to simply use as the front of the gym. That way, if they ended up making a loss afterwards, they could still sell off the house and even end up making a profit after discounting the cost.

Everyone was interested at first, but what they got stuck at was the problem of their company’s property purchase and capital allocation ratio. They ended up deciding to rent a place for now.

There was too large of a discrepancy in how they viewed things, and a lot of their concerns had never even crossed Yu Hao’s mind before.

Zhou Sheng put on his earphones and watched a ball game for the entire afternoon at the dining table. Meanwhile, Yu Hao listened to Fu Liqun’s start-up meeting the entire time and managed to learn a lot. Now, he was more and more convinced that Fu Liqun’s project may really be profitable and was a bit tempted to persuade Zhou Sheng to join them as well.

“Look at your email?” Zhou Sheng said to Yu Hao.

“There’s nothing, wait till tomorrow ba.” Yu Hao had sent out his resume countless times when he looked for part-time jobs and knew that replies wouldn’t come back so quickly. It lasted until ten o’clock at night before Fu Liqun and the rest concluded their meeting, all of them thoroughly spent. They arranged to continue at nine o’clock in the morning the next day.

Aomori Gym’s entrepreneurship team held meetings for three days straight at home. On the fourth day, Li Yangming went to his company to become part of their HR personnel. Bian Qiang arranged a meet up with someone to design their logo, while Fu Liqun and Xia Lei went to register their company. Since Yu Hao had nothing else to do, he helped the gym make leaflets at home.

As the days passed, no reply came from the resumes they had thrown out to sea. Yu Hao kept his and Zhou Sheng’s phone turned on at all times; there were a few calls they didn’t pick up in the meantime, but when they called back, the callers were either insurance agents or small-time companies who wanted to offer them loans. It made him quite depressed for a while.

“Aren’t you waiting for Junjun jie to inform you?” Zhou Sheng began to notice that something was wrong, so he asked, “You sent resumes out too?”

Yu Hao didn’t dare say that everything had already fallen through on Xiao Yujun’s side, so he said, “Since I’ve nothing to do anyway, I just sent my resume out along with yours.”

Zhou Sheng felt a bit irascible from waiting for replies too, and was immersed in his animes for a while. After he finished watching the shows and their extras, he felt like a useless good-for-nothing and couldn’t even control himself from being a bit noisy when chopping up ingredients and throwing the ladle around when he cooked for them. Yu Hao knew that he had been holding back his annoyance all this time and was really afraid of arguing just for the sake of arguing, so he was trying his best to not add to his worries on top of that.

After Fu Liqun registered his company, he took a shareholder contract over for Zhou Sheng to sign. Zhou Sheng and Yu Hao pushed it back and forth between them until Zhou Sheng signed it in the end. When signing the contract, Zhou Sheng was rather quiet for a while. Yu Hao suddenly realised that he and Zhou Sheng had become the most idle people in the house, as if they were just getting by while waiting for death.

Zhou Sheng said, “Gege, we might just have to depend on you to support us from now on.”

Fu Liqun laughed, “As long as I have something to eat, the both of you will have something to eat as well.”

Xia Lei was waiting at the door. Fu Liqun and Xia Lei went out to discuss the rental of their equipment.

Yu Hao and Zhou Sheng looked at each other, and both of them felt helpless for a while.

“There still hasn’t been any news today?” Zhou Sheng asked.

“No.” Yu Hao said, “Send another wave out this Sunday ba.”

Zhou Sheng could only nod and say, “What are those HR people thinking about?”

Yu Hao thought about it for a bit, then said, “A lot of companies don’t hire interns. At the end of the year, there will be campus talks and recruitment fairs, we can go take a look then?”

Chen Yekai’s meeting lasted for more than a month, during which he especially gave Yu Hao a call to ask if their internship had been settled. If they couldn’t find an internship, they didn’t need to worry. When the campus talks and recruitment fairs started, he would recommend Yu Hao and Zhou Sheng’s resumes in his capacity as an academic advisor.

“Don’t get too impatient.” Chen Yekai specifically advised, “Finding a job is like getting married, while sending out your resumes are the blind dates. Don’t just try to get by; your first job is very important, and your mentality has to be good.”

If it wasn’t for Chen Yekai, Yu Hao really might have collapsed by now. While he searched for companies to send his resume to again, he reflected on whether his standards were too high or if he wasn’t competent enough.

“Actually, I want to go to this company, try sending it to them?” Zhou Sheng laid next to Yu Hao and watched Yu Hao search for the email addresses of companies in their city.

“Your father can easily buy it over with a bit of the money he has on hand.” Yu Hao looked at Zhou Sheng.

Zhou Sheng smiled like a child and said, “When we get rich, we’ll buy it over.”

Yu Hao could reliably judge which companies hired interns and which didn’t, and had basically sent Zhou Sheng’s resume to most of them. Zhou Sheng’s results were considered really good at college, but why couldn’t he find a company to intern at? Was it because it didn’t match well with his sports major?

“Xue Long has a junior high school P.E. teacher internship opportunity, will you go?” Yu Hao asked Zhou Sheng.

Zhou Sheng, “I won’t, there are a lot of problematic students in that school. I might not be able to hold myself back from kicking a few of the brats there, then they’d start crying for their mommies and daddies.”

Yu Hao, “That’s my junior high school alma mater……”

Zhou Sheng, “……”

Zhou Sheng could continue sending out his resume, but Yu Hao had no other way out. He had already sent his resume to all of the media companies in the city, but none of them replied to him. If he were to continue sending his resume out, he could only send them to publishing houses from now on.

“Why hasn’t Junjun Jie called you yet?” Zhou Sheng asked Yu Hao, “It couldn’t have fallen through ba?”

Yu Hao didn’t answer. While he made leaflets for Fu Liqun’s gym, he thought about the problem of where Zhou Sheng could go for his internship.