The Crazy Bill

In the spring of 2025, Meng Xianjin is thirty-seven and delivering food.

He owes 2.147 million yuan. He's spent three years calculating the amount, but he can't make sense of it, let alone pay it back.

One afternoon, a truck hits him at an intersection. When he wakes up, he can see the bills above everyone's heads, line by line, item by item, stating who owes whom how much, and for how long.

This volume tells how he goes from someone who can only look at the numbers to someone who starts calculating them.

First, he works out his own accounts: the hospital refund, automatic subscriptions, and the three layers of fees charged on his food deliveries. After sorting out his own, he starts calculating other people's debts: a man selling his home to pay what he owes, a mother who has waited twenty years for a single bill, and a small factory under seizure.

The more he calculates, the more dangerous it gets. He's had two ribs broken, his account suspended, and been sued four times.

But in this volume, he also discovers for the first time: the numbers aren't afraid of being calculated. They're afraid no one will calculate them.

The main characters in this volume: Lin Xiu, his wife; his daughter; Lawyer He; Old Zhou; Chen Su, a mother who has waited twenty years; and Kuang Zhenbang, a man who pays the cremation fees for unidentified bodies every year.

The story runs from the spring of 2025 to the spring of 2026.

At the end of the volume, a line appears above his head: Guo Wanshan, 4.3 billion. The answer to this line won't come until the third volume.