Chapter 318

After receiving Ms. Zhu’s letter, Yoshiko Hirata was very happy to change her clothes and re-brush her hair before going to see Saburo Suzuki.

Without this reason, she might not have seen Mr. Suzuki all day today.

Although Mr. Suzuki would occasionally spend dinner with her, this little bit of time together was far from enough for an unmarried couple.

Hirata Yoshiko didn’t dare to complain, she was just worried that because she was too young and didn’t have the charms of a mature woman, it would result in not being able to win Mr. Suzuki’s heart. Since Mr. Suzuki was already a grown man, would he find her boring?

Although she and Mr. Suzuki would meet at night, the night would pass and they would be separated again. She couldn’t feel Mr. Suzuki’s love for her, he was sometimes too calm and made her feel that he didn’t actually love her.

Yoshiko Hirata appeared at the door of the main house and was informed by a servant before finally meeting Saburo Suzuki in his study.

Suzuki Saburo picked up the cordially worded invitation and said, “In that case, of course you may go as a guest. You must form a closer friendship with Ms. Zhu, you must make her think of you as her closest friend, you must be someone she can listen to, you must speak in her ear and make her do whatever we say.”

Hirata Yoshiko said excitedly, “Yes! Miroku, I will do it!”

In order to accomplish this, Hirata Yoshiko spent some rare extra time in front of the mirror, carefully selecting the right clothes.

Instead of a kimono, she changed into a western dress. Japanese women in China preferred to go out in Japanese clothes because it was easier to distinguish them from Chinese women. In the Japanese Concession, it was believed that a Japanese woman wore a kimono, and a woman in a dress was not a real Japanese woman.

But in both the Hirata and Suzuki families, the men learned to wear suits and the women learned to wear dresses. Yoshiko Hirata preferred the dresses a little more, because they were more beautiful.

She wore glass stockings, her skirt around her knees, just a bow on her head, and her long hair draped over her shoulders. She carried a silk kimono bag with a bamboo handle, which contained some dollars and a few silver dollars, a cigarette case with a few cigarettes that Saburo Suzuki liked to smoke, and of course the matchbook. In addition to that, there was a handkerchief, lipstick and powder case.

Before she left the house, she asked the florist in the garden to cut a few sprigs of hydrangeas as a gift for today’s visit.

Yoshiko Hirata drove out of the Japanese Concession in an automobile. The automobile had the Japanese flag on it, of course. But the car was still inspected by two guard posts, and Yoshiko Hirata got a small scare. After leaving the guard post, she whispered, “Stupid fool!

The road seemed emptier and more chaotic after leaving the concession, cars honked their horns and crossed the street nonchalantly, not yielding to pedestrians or other vehicles.

Yoshiko Hirata looked carefully at the stores on both sides of the street, noticing that only one or two were sporadically open while the rest were still closed.

She thought that when she met Miss Zhu, she could properly urge her husband, Mr. Su, to hurry up and get all these Chinese stores to open their doors so that they could all sell Japanese products; Mr. Suzuki would be very happy if she could do this.

When I came to the street of Zhu Jia Lou, there were high buildings on both sides of the road, and the street was wide. The Zhu family building was the most elegant one among them.

Hirata Yoshiko couldn’t help but be a little misty-eyed. It was said that the Zhu family had fallen into ruin, but Ms. Zhu still lived in one of the most beautiful houses on this street.

In front of the house stood four gendarmes, they stood without appearance, twisted, uniforms are not properly worn, the only scary thing is that they are carrying a “gun”.

When Hirata Yoshiko’s car pulled up in front of Zhu’s house, one of the gendarmes immediately rushed up to her and asked with a smile, “Ms. Hirata, is it right? Our wife had told us that you were coming, so please come in.”

When Hirata Yoshiko saw that the gate was already open, that the gendarmes had already notified the listener, and that the listener, glancing here, had turned back and immediately gone to report the news, she purposely refrained from getting out of the car, wanting to let Miss Zhu greet her in person.

She thought that she had been a little too amiable in her previous dealings with Miss Zhu, and that she ought to have been a little more standoffish. Even Mr. Suzuki had a very equal attitude towards Mr. Su, as Mr. Suzuki’s fiancée, she couldn’t be too meek towards Miss Zhu, she had to make her respect her more before she could do so.

She waited for a while, and sure enough a few people came running out of the door. One woman did walk quickly down the steps towards the car, and she piled on a full smile, but it wasn’t Ms. Zhu.

Hirata Yoshiko froze, she looked up to see another woman holding Ms. Zhu, accompanied by Ms. Zhu standing inside the gate and looking up.

Ms. Zhu was smiling and waving at her.

On this side, the driver had also opened the door.

That woman reached in to help Hirata Yoshiko and said with a smile, “Miss Hirata, come out quickly, our Mrs. Su has been waiting for a long time.”

Hirata Yoshiko could not continue to take the stand, so she could only get out of the car, and was taken on by this woman’s arm, unknowingly walking over to the door before Miss Zhu smiled and took two steps forward, reaching out to take her hand and carry her through the door.

Miss Zhu introduced in Japanese: “These two are my friends, this Mrs. Cai is a graduate of a Japanese women’s university and can speak Japanese. I asked two more friends to come over and play with you today.”

Mrs. Cai’s Japanese was still very passable, though a bit dull, but she treated Hirata Yoshiko with the highest courtesy, all honorifics and salutations, which made Hirata Yoshiko very happy.

Zhu Yuyan took this last honored guest on her arm and returned to the small living room, where refreshments had been rearranged. Hirata Yoshiko saw the three-tiered fruit tower again, full of packed fruit pieces.

Hirata Yoshiko remembered the words of that Mr. Kobayashi and had to hold back from correcting Ms. Zhu’s false impression. She held out the hydrangea, “For you.”

Zhu Yuyan immediately said, “It’s beautiful! I’m going to put them up right away.”

The grannies immediately brought several vases, and Zhu Yuyan and Hirata Yoshiko arranged the flowers on the spot just like that. Zhu Yuyan also asked someone to bring the existing flowers in the house to match.

Mrs. Cai, who had also studied Japanese flower arrangement and knew Japanese, was able to intervene.

Mrs. Shao did not understand, but she sat aside to add tea to Ms. Hirata, pass the scissors, Hirata Yoshiko a head twisted over, Mrs. Shao with incomparably gentle love to look at her.

When the final insertion was finished, the four women in the room gently applauded and whispered, “Sikuni” and “Kawa”.

Mrs. Shaw, having learned these two phrases on the spot, drowned out Ms. Hirata with “Sikuni” and “Kawaii”.

So we all drank tea and ate fruits, admired the flower arrangement and chatted.

Zhu Yuyan first introduced the two poor women, Mrs. Shao and Mrs. Cai, to Hirata Yoshiko.

Mrs. Cai had lost her husband, and Mrs. Shao had lost her righteous brother – that is, Mayor Feng, both of them were very poor people.

Hirata Yoshiko of course wanted to express her sympathy.

Zhu Yuyan then said to her, “I want to organize a charity bazaar to support women. Do something for those women who lost their husbands in the war.”

Of course, the goods for the charity bazaar would have to be entrusted to Yoshiko Hirata and Mr. Suzuki’s Japanese Chamber of Commerce.

Not waiting for Hirata Yoshiko to figure it out, Zhu Yuyan increased her efforts and said, “For the sake of a street of Japanese stores, I want to open another street market at the other end of Nanjing Road. That way we can wrap up the entire Nanjing Road and let the whole city know that there are things for sale here, so everyone will come here to shop.”

Hirata Yoshiko knew that after returning from the wedding yesterday, Mr. Suzuki was very much looking at the Japanese street that Miss Zhu was talking about. Even if all the merchants in China were allowed to sell Japanese products, it wouldn’t be as impressive as a Japanese street, because many people didn’t care where the things they bought came from when they bought them.

Getting merchants from all over China to sell Japanese products is about making money. A Japanese street, on the other hand, is to make a name for Japanese goods.

Zhu Yuyan led with this carrot, and Hirata Yoshiko naturally took the bait. She also felt that another charity bazaar to help women was necessary, and a bigger street market was also necessary, and it didn’t matter where the women were helped, it was all just in name anyway.

And Zhu Yuyan went on to say, “In order to make this charity bazaar famous as soon as possible, I think we can sell some food at the bazaar. It doesn’t have to be too good, you can sell potatoes, those are cheap to buy from America now.” She leaned in and whispered in Hirata Yoshiko’s ear, “Just say they’re Japanese potatoes, no one will suspect a thing.”

Zhu Yuyan stopped speaking after she had spoken once, she would brainwash Hirata Yoshiko more often in the future as soon as she had the chance, and sooner or later, she would get Suzuki Saburo to smuggle American goods. Her purpose was to get Suzuki Saburo to smuggle grain from the United States or England or India to dump in China.

Saburo Suzuki was a family outcast, and it was impossible for him to sell his products back to Japan, so he had to find outside customers to sell to.

The best way to build a friendship with a businessman is to help him make money and help him make more money.

In the meantime, she only needed to get a little “favor”.

In the following time, they played a few more rounds of cards, Zhu Yuyan kept losing, Hirata Yoshiko kept winning.

Surprisingly, Hirata Yoshiko knew how to play mahjong, which made Mrs. Shao and Mrs. Cai’s game even easier. The only one who was happy to lose money was Zhu Yuyan.

They played until nine o’clock, spending only half an hour in between to eat the dinner prepared by the chef, and then returned to the card table.

If it wasn’t for Hirata Yoshiko’s driver coming in and urging her on, Hirata Yoshiko wouldn’t have been able to remember to go back.

Zhu Yuyan personally escorted Hirata Yoshiko out the door, promising to call her back tomorrow for another game of cards.

It was already 1:30 when Mr. Su came home, the listener opened the door for him, Mr. Su came in gently, looking upstairs while asking in a whisper, “Is Mrs. asleep?”

Ah ah, Mrs., his Mr. Su’s wife. What a delight.

The listener smiled and shook his head, also whispering, “Madam is waiting for you upstairs, she’s not asleep yet. Sir, Mistress has asked the kitchen to keep the night sky, would you like something to eat?”

Su Chunjun was unable to eat anything at VIP Jiang’s place, and now he was really hungry. The cook hurriedly pinched twelve small soup dumplings and steamed them in a moment on the cage, followed by a bowl of yellow fish noodles sent up.

Mr. Su ate his fill and deliberately rinsed his mouth downstairs before going upstairs.

He pushed open the door, want to do a strange, a probe inside, saw Mrs. Su Zhu second miss leaning on the noblewoman couch, already asleep. On the small table on the side was a half-calculated account book.

He gently walked over, gently turned off the lamp, gently picked up Mrs. Su, gently put her on the bed, covered her with a quilt, and gently went out.

The door was just closed, and Mrs. Su on the bed opened her eyes and let out a soft sigh of relief.

The …… thing that hurts so much is better to talk about it next time. She was tired all day today.