Chapter 101 Prudence

No problem. Since you said that, we’ll continue. I hope we’ll see the remaining payment within the agreed time.

After saying that, Qin Miaoyu headed off to the right front.

The people standing there saw her coming and hurried over to ask whether they should keep setting things up.

“You can keep going. I’ve already spoken with them.”

Just as the studio staff were about to scatter back to their tasks, Qin Miaoyu called them over again.

She stopped them for another reason: she wanted to find out the family’s true circumstances.

“Boss Qin, I know this one! This family really knows how to put on an act. At first I thought they must be pretty well off, but they...”

“Boss Qin, I noticed it too...”

From the chatter that burst out all at once, Qin Miaoyu confirmed one thing: this family was not well off.

Not well off, yet they had come to their studio—and it was clearly not the bride who had sought them out. On the first day of reception, the bride’s surprise and delight had been obvious.

They had hired the studio and then gone on to book a hotel that was plainly shabby.

Could it be that they had done all this just to marry a bride from a better background?

Everything about the matter gave off a strange air.

She instructed the studio staff to contact her immediately if anything came up, then took a car back to the studio.

Xu Xiaoqi and Pei Yixue were both there, and after hearing what she said, both of them wore grim expressions.

“They’re definitely doing this on purpose. I told Xiao Sun before that we don’t make money by deliberately withholding money people are properly entitled to when they cancel, so when she drew up the contract she had to stress the refund terms. I was there when this contract was signed, and I heard Xiao Sun negotiating exactly as I asked.” Xu Xiaoqi’s face turned cold.

Pei Yixue was even more furious. “If you ask me, Miaoyu, you should’ve stood your ground just now and simply told the studio staff to come back. We shouldn’t take this order at all!”

Qin Miaoyu did not want to take it either, but this was not the kind of thing one could simply declare over and done with.

Xu Xiaoqi tapped Pei Yixue on the head. “They already said they’d continue with the setup. If we’d taken our people away, then they’d really have a reason to demand a refund!”

Pei Yixue heard that and realized it made sense, though she still pouted.

“So that’s it? We just swallow this humiliation?”

Qin Miaoyu said calmly, “The urgent thing now is to figure out what this family is really after.”

Xu Xiaoqi asked, “Do you have a guess?”

Qin Miaoyu briefly explained what she had noticed and the possibility she had thought of.

After listening, Xu Xiaoqi fell into thought for a moment, then said, “I have the bride’s contact information. She seems like a very decent person. I’ll see if I can find out something from her. If things really are as you suspect, then she ought to know.”

Xu Xiaoqi went to contact the bride, while Qin Miaoyu and Pei Yixue sat by the desk and continued analyzing the matter.

But no matter how they looked at it, they could not find a more reasonable explanation, so the two of them had no choice but to stop and wait quietly for word from Xu Xiaoqi.

When Xu Xiaoqi returned after hanging up, her expression had not improved in the slightest, which immediately made Pei Yixue tense up.

“How is it? What did they say?”

“That Miss Zhou doesn’t know anything about this. She said they’ll take care of it.”

“Is that why you look like this?”

Xu Xiaoqi shook her head. “No. It’s just that, from what she said, I have a feeling this wedding probably won’t happen. Which means all our work over this period may have been for nothing!”

“It’s fine, it’s fine. A hard lesson is still a lesson. Once Miss Zhou sorts it out, we’ll just pay more attention next time and avoid this sort of thing.”

“Exactly. Besides, we still have another order in progress, don’t we? We won’t starve!”

Speak of the devil—before long, the front desk came to say that the client from their other order had arrived to discuss the wedding arrangements.

That order had originally been under Pei Yixue’s charge, but thinking of what had happened today, Qin Miaoyu pulled Xu Xiaoqi along as well.

“We’ll all go and keep an eye on it. Let’s not run into anything like that again.”

Fortunately, this client seemed quite decent, though a little changeable in her ideas. After the renderings came out, she felt the style was still a little different from what she had imagined and asked the studio to revise it a bit more.

That was within the scope of the contract they had drafted, so the studio naturally continued making changes according to her wishes.

After the client left, Pei Yixue sighed. “This is already the second revision. We’ve done a major overhaul once before too. I’m a little tired!”

“Want me to help?” Qin Miaoyu asked.

Pei Yixue shook her head and refused. “No, no. You should get some proper rest. The next order will definitely be yours to handle.”

Qin Miaoyu smiled helplessly. There was still no sign of the next order, after all.

The order that had demanded a refund was ultimately lost.

Qin Miaoyu learned the rough sequence of events from Xu Xiaoqi.

In short, this family wanted to marry a daughter-in-law from a better background, so they were putting on airs far beyond their means.

The bride’s family was well off, so naturally they wanted to see sincerity from the groom’s side.

The groom’s family put their “sincerity” into paying for the wedding planner, but they also booked such a low-rank hotel, and they never told the bride’s side about that.

As for the matter of asking the studio for a refund, the bride had known nothing about it at all.

At any rate, the information they had gathered so far was all hearsay, but when pieced together, it amounted to this: the groom’s family wanted to satisfy the bride’s family, and while they were pretending to be wealthier than they were, they also wanted to claw back every bit of advantage they could.

“There are really families like that? I’m speechless,” Pei Yixue said.

Xu Xiaoqi did not look pleased either. “That’s not all. What made Miss Zhou angriest was that the groom even said it was all because of her; otherwise they wouldn’t have done something like this. If you can’t meet someone’s requirements, then don’t marry into the family at all. With the bride’s background, finding someone who fits the bill would be as easy as turning over one’s hand!”

Qin Miaoyu was silent for a while, then asked, “Given the standard of hotel they booked, they probably shouldn’t have been willing to spend the deposit on hiring our studio in the first place, should they?”

Xu Xiaoqi and Pei Yixue exchanged a look and could not help nodding.

If they had truly only wanted to put on airs, then both the wedding planner and the hotel ought to have been chosen at the higher end, so the bride’s family would be more satisfied.

And yet the groom’s family had deliberately chosen their studio.

“I’ll contact Miss Zhou again and see whether I can learn more about the groom’s family,” Xu Xiaoqi said immediately, pulling out her phone to call Miss Zhou. But Miss Zhou was busy, and the call did not go through.

“No matter. We can look for her later. She’s there anyway; it’s not as though she can run off.”

Qin Miaoyu left Xu Xiaoqi’s office, and after only a few steps she saw Chen Xuanyu.

Chen Xuanyu came over and asked, “Boss Qin, have you seen President Pei? I need to find her about something. A coworker said she came over to President Xu’s office.”