Chapter 362: A Brand New Look
Soon, they arrived. The wealthy woman tidied her hair.
"I’m going to get some real sleep, so I won’t be out for a while. You can take the car. I’ll call you when I wake up, and we can discuss everything else in detail then."
Damien was deeply grateful. After just a short while, the wealthy woman already trusted him enough to let him take the car and was willing to offer him a job.
But he didn’t have a phone, so he had no way to take her call.
As if she just realized, the wealthy woman pulled out a few bills and handed them to him.
"Here, go buy a phone."
"I don’t have an ID, so even if I buy a phone, it’ll be useless. I can’t get a SIM card. Why don’t you just give me a rough time? I’ll come find you then."
"That’s too much of a hassle. What if I need you for something...?"
The wealthy woman had two phones, so she simply gave him the one she rarely used.
"Here, use this for now. It’s really inconvenient to not have a phone these days."
Damien was taken aback by her generosity.
"Aren’t you afraid I’m a con man?"
The wealthy woman shrugged and patted his shoulder.
"After everything you’ve told me today, if it turns out you’re conning me, then so be it. At worst, the police can always track you down. I trust my gut."
With that, she walked away with an air of cool confidence.
Damien used the phone’s GPS to navigate back to the park.
The sky was growing brighter, and by the time he arrived at the park, many people were already out for their morning exercise.
Sherry had spent the entire night on a park bench with her mother. They were cold, tired, and filled with an indescribable weariness.
Suddenly, a sports car roared to a stop by the side of the road. A well-dressed, tall, and long-legged Damien got out, making her jump.
She knew he was no ordinary person from the moment she first saw him, but she never imagined he was this incredible.
In the span of a single night, he was suddenly driving a sports car and looked like a completely new man!
Damien, however, showed no sign of pride. He walked over with a calm expression and picked up their bags.
"Sorry to have kept you waiting so long. You must be exhausted. I’ll take you somewhere to rest now."
Sherry looked at him, so elegant and refined like a young gentleman from high society, and felt a pang of inadequacy.
"What did you do last night to change so much? Whose car is that?"
"It’s my employer’s. I found a job as a driver. This is what I earned last night."
Damien gave all the money to Sherry.
"First, take your mother and get a room somewhere to rest. When you’re rested, find a doctor to examine her properly. Her condition can’t be put off any longer."
Sherry counted the cash. He had made over 500 in a single night—as much as she earned washing dishes for an entire month.
"You can earn this much in one night just by being a driver?"
Damien looked at the shock in her eyes and smiled.
"I know it might sound like I’m bragging, but it’s the truth. Making money isn’t that hard if you find the right path. From now on, I’ll bring you 100 a day. Let’s go."
Damien took them to a nice guesthouse. He spun a lie for the owner, claiming they were tourists from out of town whose passports had been stolen right after they landed. He added that the police and the embassy were helping them, so they couldn’t provide ID at the moment, but would have it in a few days.
The owner had heard similar stories before and didn’t question it, promptly checking them in.
Sherry and her mother slept on the bed, while Damien slept on the floor.
After a few hours of rest, he got a call from the wealthy woman.
"I’m awake. Where are you? Come over now."
Damien said a quick word to Sherry, reminding them to eat a proper meal, and left the guesthouse.
Soon, he was at the villa entrance, where he saw the wealthy woman looking radiant.
She wore a blue camisole with light-colored jeans, her hair tied in a high ponytail, and a pair of sunglasses. She looked vibrant and youthful—it was obvious she had made up with her husband.
"Did you take the initiative and apologize? Was your husband pleasantly surprised?"
The wealthy woman got into the car, leaning back in her seat with a satisfied grin.
"I have to admit, you had a point. I promised him I wouldn’t fly off the handle anymore, and he was so happy he gave me another credit card."
The wealthy woman proudly took out the card and dangled it in front of him.
"I mean, I have all this money, more than I can ever spend. What’s the point?"
Damien said, "Ma’am, please, stop rubbing it in. Give the rest of us a reason to live."
The wealthy woman laughed happily and put the card away.
"Let’s just say I’m doing it to challenge myself. I don’t really care anymore if the startup is successful or not. So, handsome, where to?"
Damien drove slowly, his eyes constantly scanning the streets.
"It has to succeed. If not for yourself, then for my sake, you must succeed. Ma’am, where are you from?"
"I’m Korean. My name is Jean, and I’m twenty-nine."
"What line of work is your husband in?"
"Smart devices."
"And your parents?"
"They own a supermarket chain."
"And you don’t want to use their connections?"
"Nope. If I were going to use their connections, I might as well just go back and inherit the family business."
"In that case, are you interested in oriental culture?"
"Oriental culture? I don’t know much about it. I just know that a lot of oriental clothing is beautiful, and the jewelry is nice too, but it’s hard to find any of it here. I don’t know many oriental people, so it’s difficult to find a proxy shopper either."
"So, you’re saying that if someone were to specialize in selling those things, you would be a customer."
"Of course. It’s so boring wearing the same old styles every day. If someone were to run a business like that... wait, what are you getting at? You’re not suggesting I sell oriental-style clothing, are you?"
Damien slowly pulled the car over to the side of the road and pointed out the window.
"Look over there."
Outside the window was a small plaza where a young woman sat, dressed in an elegant, traditional costume of lotus-pink. She was plucking the strings of a guzheng.
A crowd had gathered around her, everyone holding up their phones to take pictures.
Jean said, "There have been a lot of people wearing oriental-style clothes to film videos these past few years. That’s actually how I came to love oriental attire. Why are you showing me this? Do you know her?"
"No. But judging by the crowd’s reaction, people aren’t opposed to oriental-style clothing. Let’s get out and ask around."
With that, Damien pushed open his door and got out of the car.
Jean hesitated. ’Isn’t it a bit silly to just go up and ask random strangers?’ Still, she followed him out of the car.
Damien went on to ask more than a dozen people—men and women, old and young—what they thought of the woman’s attire. Everyone agreed she looked beautiful, that she had a unique charm, that she looked like a celestial fairy.
"If there were a shop selling similar clothes, would you go and buy something?"
"Of course. If the price and quality were reasonable, I’d give it a shot. But the overall style of these clothes needs matching makeup, and we don’t really know how to do that."
"Do you know how?"
Damien turned and asked Jean.
Jean raised her eyebrows smugly.
"Of course I do. That’s what we Koreans are most famous for. Makeup. I do my own makeup every day."
Damien realized this was an untapped market. He made a decision on the spot.
"No time like the present. We’ll start with a low-cost test run. I’ll create the design sketches. You find someone to manufacture the clothing—twenty sets of each style, plus twenty sets of matching accessories. Then, find a few makeup artists. Once everything is ready, we’ll invite passersby to wear the outfits and hold a fashion show in the city’s biggest public square."