Chapter 362 - 236: Winter Family Day
"A winter parent-child program? A family day event?" Li Wei considered it. "Am I allowed to go?"
"Of course you can! Besides, you’re a huge star," Lily said, clasping her hands together and blinking her big eyes with a pitiful look of entreaty. "Please, Brother Li Wei? If I don’t bring a parent to this ’Winter Family Day,’ it’ll be miserable. I’ll get bullied."
Seeing the hopeful expression on Lily’s face, Li Wei smiled and ruffled her hair.
"Hey!" Lily protested, smoothing down her hair.
"It’s no problem," Li Wei readily agreed. "Saturday morning?"
"Yes! You’re the best, Brother Li Wei!" Lily cheered, then happily followed Chen Haisheng out the door to school.
Li Wei returned to his apartment and poured himself a glass of water. Just as he was about to lie down on the sofa for a bit, his phone, which was sitting on the coffee table, began to vibrate urgently.
Elizabeth Mellon.
’A call from Liz?’
Li Wei casually swiped to answer. On the other end of the line, Elizabeth said excitedly,
"Li Wei!" she chirped. "Guess who just secured a one-billion-USD capital injection?"
"Let me guess, someone from the Mellon Family?" Li Wei replied, playing along.
"That’s right!" Elizabeth chuckled. "Uncle Richard’s funding channel was just opened to me! Charlie’s access has been completely revoked, and the money is now officially under my foundation’s name. We won!"
"That sounds like fantastic news," Li Wei said, leaning back on the sofa and taking a sip of his cold water. "Congratulations, Liz. I guess now you can finally focus on your finals."
Even with a last name like Mellon, Elizabeth couldn’t escape finals week. She’d been studying around the clock for them lately.
"Oh my God, thanks for the reminder," Elizabeth huffed. "Anyway, thanks for your help with this."
"For what?" Li Wei asked. "Maybe it was just destiny."
"Hmph... alright," Elizabeth’s voice softened. "So, when are you free? I’ll set something up. Tonight? Tomorrow?"
"I was planning to take it easy tonight," Li Wei said after a moment’s thought. "And tomorrow probably won’t work either."
"Huh? Doesn’t the team have the day off tomorrow?" Elizabeth asked, surprised.
"I have to go to Lily’s junior high tomorrow in place of Uncle Don Quixote," Li Wei explained. "It’s for some parent-child event called ’Winter Family Day.’ The kid is worried she’ll be embarrassed if she goes alone, so she roped me into going with her."
On the other end of the line, Elizabeth paused.
’Don Quixote is away? Lily’s school event? And Li Wei is going?’
’Time completely alone with him, with no Anya around!’
’Perfect!’
"Which school does Lily go to again? Is it in Manhattan or on the Upper East Side?" Elizabeth asked suddenly.
"Uh... Leman Manhattan Preparatory School, not far from Fortress City," Li Wei said, a bit taken aback. "Why?"
"I don’t really have anything to do tomorrow," Elizabeth said abruptly. "What if I came with you?"
"Is... that a good idea?" Li Wei asked. "I mean, I can at least claim to be related to Lily, but you... what would your reason for being there be?"
"You don’t need to worry about that. Besides, I seriously doubt you’ll be able to handle it," she said, her tone turning serious. "The mothers at these things have a very strict pecking order. You’re Asian, so if you go in place of Don Quixote, people will gossip about Lily, and she’ll be ostracized."
Li Wei rubbed his chin. He wasn’t afraid of being ostracized himself, but Elizabeth had a point. That kind of social cold shoulder at a private school could be a real problem for a thirteen-year-old girl.
"Hmm... I’ll go ask Lily," he said, standing up. "Hang on a sec."
He walked to the window and saw the Cadillac Escalade just turning the corner, so he called her phone.
"What is it, Brother Li Wei? Did something come up for Saturday?" Lily’s voice sounded a little nervous.
"No," Li Wei said. "I just wanted to ask if I could bring a friend with me."
"A friend? Who?"
"Elizabeth Mellon, you’ve met her a few times, the one who—"
"The one who’s super-rich, super-pretty, and has that really powerful presence?" Lily asked excitedly. "Of course! A hundred times yes!"
"Then it’s a date." After hanging up, Li Wei called Elizabeth back. "She said ’the super-rich, super-pretty older sister with the really powerful presence’ can come, and she’s ’a hundred times yes’ on it."
"Hmph, did she really say that?" Elizabeth made no effort to hide her delight. "Alright then. Saturday, 8:30 a.m., at the school entrance."
「Saturday morning. Lower Manhattan, in front of Leman Manhattan Preparatory School.」
The early winter wind was cold and carried flurries of lingering snow, but that did nothing to dampen the bustling atmosphere in front of the top-tier private school.
The streets on both sides were lined with a variety of luxury cars, executive vans, and high-end SUVs, looking like a small-scale auto show.
Wearing a dark cashmere overcoat, Li Wei stepped out of a Cullinan with Lily, who was dressed in her winter school uniform. His height, just shy of six-foot-three, and his distinctly handsome face had already caused many of the other parents to do a double-take.
Some middle-aged men clearly recognized Li Wei and smiled and nodded at him from a distance.
Some of the mothers who had brought their children discreetly pulled out their phones to take pictures of him.
Lily was beaming, looking incredibly proud of herself. She scanned the area for her classmates and friends, practically bursting to let the whole world know that her superstar brother was here for the family event.
Just then, a black Range Rover SV pulled to a smooth stop at the curb.
The car door opened, and Elizabeth stepped out.
When Li Wei got a clear look at her outfit, he couldn’t help but raise his eyebrows.
She had completely shed her usual elite, professional attire and wasn’t wearing one of her power-aura trench coats. Instead, she had on a loose-fitting hoodie with the Yale University logo, a beige cashmere scarf wrapped casually around her neck, slim-fit jeans, and a pair of what looked like very warm snow boots.
She had even let down her long hair—which she usually wore in a meticulous bun—letting it fall casually over her shoulders.
Stripped of the icy shell of a conglomerate heiress, Elizabeth now had a youthful, bright aura that suited her age. She looked exactly like an Ivy League girl-next-door enjoying her weekend.
...If you ignored the three- to four-hundred-thousand-dollar Range Rover SV behind her, that is.
"Good morning."
Elizabeth walked over, her fair cheeks slightly flushed from the cold. She ruffled Lily’s hair with perfect ease. "You look so cute today, Lily."
"You look super pretty today, too, Elizabeth!" Lily replied sweetly.
Inside the school’s gymnasium, it became clear that the so-called ’Winter Family Day’ was really just a platform for displaying family resources and wealth.
Inside, Li Wei and Elizabeth received number tag 77.
The moment Lily got the number tag, she shot off like a wild pony broken free of its reins, darting all over and making a beeline for the most crowded spots.
"Hey! Have you met my brother, Li Wei? He’s a huge superstar with over ten million fans online!"
"He’s the Quarterback for the Giants... You don’t know who the Giants are? Your dad is probably a fan of my brother!"
Lily went around introducing Li Wei to everyone, parading him and Elizabeth around the gym as if she were patrolling her territory.
In reality, after just one lap around the event, Li Wei saw the so-called "Winter Family Day" for what it truly was.
This was no fun fair for the kids to relax and enjoy themselves. It was a "legalized robbery," a class-based fundraising gala masquerading as a heartwarming event.
Every activity, every single item—from ring toss and shooting games to a simple DIY gingerbread house station—required parents to use hard cash to buy so-called "charity vouchers."
A pitifully small cupcake was priced at 50 USD, and a chance to win a cheap stuffed toy in ring toss cost 100 USD.
Even an ordinary middle-class family, one that could afford the seventy or eighty thousand dollars in annual tuition, would likely struggle to keep up with all these overt and hidden expenses at the school.
From what Li Wei could tell, New York’s schools seemed to be divided into three tiers.
Schools like K. Lane High School, where he’d first enrolled, were on the bottom tier.
It didn’t matter what the students learned. The school’s only responsibility was to make sure they didn’t die on campus and managed to get a diploma.
And if they happened to die off-campus, well, that couldn’t be helped.
Then there were the public schools for the ordinary middle class, which centered on a philosophy of "happy learning." If you could get into college, great. If not, that was fine too.
But once you reached the level of the private schools attended by wealthy kids like Lily, Elizabeth, and Anya, it was a different world. On top of their coursework, students had to participate in all sorts of extracurriculars, hobbies, and sports—like equestrianism, golf, and tennis—all of which were outrageously expensive.
But the most draining part of these activities wasn’t the financial outlay. The biggest cost was time.
Li Wei was willing to bet that even a partner like Mark, who made millions of dollars a year, would have to go through hell to support a child in a single sport from a young age. Many of these activities required not only huge amounts of money but also constant parental involvement.
Some activities demanded both a huge financial outlay and parental presence—like this "Winter Family Day," which was basically fleecing the parents like fat sheep.
All the money went toward the school’s operating costs. A single family day like this could rake in several million dollars, at least.
"Is this water gun made of solid gold?" Li Wei muttered wryly to himself. With a deadpan expression, he pulled a few hundred-dollar bills from his overcoat pocket, handed them to the parent volunteer at the booth, and exchanged them for a few flimsy charity vouchers for Lily.
"Capitalism’s scythe is just as ruthless when it’s harvesting its own," he sighed while pulling out more cash. "We’ve barely made it halfway around, and somehow we’re already out over three thousand dollars."
"It’s all for the kids. What can you do?" Elizabeth said, watching Lily showing off her thick wad of charity vouchers. "Look how happy she is."
"Silly girl," Li Wei shook his head. "She has no idea that the social currency she’s earning today could have bought her that handbag she’s been dreaming about."
"You think this is over the top?" Elizabeth asked with a soft laugh, holding a cup of mulled wine. "The stuff that went on when I was at the Brielley Girls’ School, now *that* was crazy."
"How crazy?" Li Wei asked.
"They’d auction off things like an internship at a Wall Street investment bank, or a lunch with some New York real estate billionaire or a Senator," Elizabeth said, taking a sip of her mulled wine. "The opening bids started in the six or seven figures. A fifty-dollar cupcake is just the warm-up act."
Li Wei was speechless. Just as he was about to say something, he noticed that Lily had stopped in her tracks not far away.
She was standing next to a huge Christmas tree, and in front of her stood two other girls, also around thirteen, wearing light makeup.
Lily had clearly worked up the courage to go over and talk to them. "Good morning, Dasha, Bobby," she said, finally managing to greet them.
These were the two coolest, most fashionable girls in her class, the object of envy for all the other girls. Everyone wanted to hang out with them.
Dasha and Bobby were chatting, each holding a cup of bubble tea. When they saw Lily—the little girl whose mother never showed up to these things—coming over to talk, they exchanged a look. Then, they simply pretended she wasn’t there and carried on with their conversation.