I've Been Waiting for You All Along

Everyday Life, One Heroine.

A coin? It doubles?

Amid the bustle of graduation season, he found a worn-out old wallet in a corner of campus. No one could have imagined that this chance encounter would completely rewrite his life: the money inside the wallet doubled every single day.

From a few dozen yuan at first to astronomical sums later, the wealth arrived out of nowhere. He quit the internship he'd just landed, moved out of his shared rental, and into a luxury penthouse overlooking the river. The limited editions and luxury cars he'd once envied soon filled his collection. Flattery at business dinners and envious looks from others became part of everyday life, but whenever he found himself alone in a room full of luxury goods late at night, he would stare blankly into the empty space. The "perfect life" he'd built with money only made everything feel emptier.

Everything changed at a neighborhood bookstore. One day, while wandering aimlessly, he knocked an art book off a shelf. A young woman in a cotton dress reached out to catch it, then smiled and handed him a copy of Plants of the Human World. "The little joys hidden in ordinary days are the rarest treasures," she said softly. The clarity and conviction in her eyes were like a beam of light, illuminating the life that money had filled but left utterly cold.

After that, he became a regular at the bookstore. He watched her organize books and read picture books to children, and listened as she shared her dream of saving up to open a little bookstore of her own. He stopped trying to fill the void with shopping and began helping her prepare to open the store. He went with her to help elderly people in the neighborhood, and ate steaming hot wontons with her at the end of an alley. He used to think wealth could solve every problem. It wasn't until he met her that he understood: money that doubles can buy material abundance, but it cannot buy a fulfilled heart. That's what true happiness is.