Scammer of Silicon Valley

 The salon lights were way too bright, bleaching everyone’s flaws into 4K.

John sat in the spinning chair like he owned the place, the barber clipping the sides clean,  sharp fade, thick curls on top, just the kind of haircut every male engineer gets when he secretly wants a Silicon Valley trophy wife.

He adjusted his glasses, checked his reflection with a satisfied smirk, then jerked his chin toward Wang Hui:

“You’re up next. Trim that head bush. You’ll look less… defeated.”

Wang Hui slouched in the waiting chair like a veteran of disappointment, legs stretched out as if gravity owed him money.

“A grown man trying to look all pretty?” he scoffed.

“Trying to impress dudes or impress women? Pick a struggle.”

John turned to him slowly, the face of someone who sincerely couldn’t believe the trash he was hearing:

“Hui… wow. No one out there cares about you, huh?

Look at your belly. It’s rounder than your future.

Even if your wife tolerates your… shape , shouldn’t you worry she’ll stop eventually?”

Wang Hui sighed, eyes drifting upward like the ceiling might save him:

“She doesn’t care how I look.

She just hates my… career choices.

I tell her I’m doing investments now.

She looks at me like I’m a stray dog tracking mud indoors.”

John leaned in, lowering his voice to maximum gossip:

“No offense, but if a woman stays mad that long?

You must be failing her somewhere… important.”

He winked.

“Take Camilla for example. She’s fully trained. Sure, she has attitude, but she listens. Because everything she wants? She gets.”

Wang Hui snorted, rubbing his hairline like it was a last defense:

“Yeah yeah, you two little lovebirds. Stop showing off, okay?

Put her with me back in my prime, she’d be screaming thanks.”

John grabbed the nearest book and smacked him on the head, multiple times.

“She was in kindergarten during your prime, you creep.

Stop trying to pollinate national flowers!”

Wang Hui shielded his skull, yelling:

“Hey hey! Jealousy alert!”

A few stylists looked over, amused.

Wang Hui finally caught John’s wrist, cutting the comedy.

“Alright, stop, stop.

Let me ask you something real.”

He leaned in, voice lowered:

“You’re a LingedIn infra engineer, rare skills, major stock.

Why risk… moonlighting with us?

Even if no one throws you in jail, you’re spending emotional energy on strangers for money, and getting cursed in DMs as bonus.”

John paused.

He checked his phone,  the screen light flickered across his face.

He put it down and spoke quietly:

“First… LingedIn isn’t as profitable as people think.

A stable company means no new rocket rides.

Stocks just crawl sideways with the index.

That’s not… interesting.”

He inhaled once, then stared out the window ,not really seeing the street, but something decades away:

“Second…”

he said, “My childhood was basically a tutorial about how unstable ‘legal life’ really is.”

He spoke without drama, which somehow made it heavier:

“I came to New York when I was a kid.

From a tiny town in Fujian, the kind where even dogs want immigration letters.

My parents did cash jobs. It barely paid rent.

So they worked… other jobs in Flushing.

The kind you never write down on official forms.”

Wang Hui didn’t interrupt.

Some stories demand silence.

John continued, voice flat:

“I learned early , the side hustle feeds you. The main job just gives you a nametag.”

He turned his gaze to Wang Hui, a thin smile cutting across his face:

“And in a recession? Nametags get shredded first.”

He flicked his chin toward the mirror, toward his own reflection:

“People like us… we don’t survive because we’re polite.

We survive because we’re useful.”

He rolled his shoulders back, posture straightening:

“At Purdue University, I worked multiple jobs. GPA: still top-notch.

No pointless parties.

No dumb networking with loud idiots.

I have low stupidity tolerance, everyone knew.

My only goal was to pay off debts and not owe the world a damn thing.”

A breath. A shift.

“Then Indiana.

Nice salary.

Low cost of living.

A quiet life that tries to seduce you into staying mediocre.”

For the first time，there was something soft in his eyes:

“That’s where I met Camilla.

She’s from Halifax,  a place so boring Canada forgot to market it.

She studied business.

Wanted more.

So she chose the only two ways immigrants can actually stay in the U.S.:

Marriage… or computer science.”

He chuckled, proud and cynical at once:

“She wasn’t born talented in tech.

But she’s a natural in survival.

Volunteering. Networking.

Playing the game with a straight face.”

He pulled a breath through his teeth:

“And it worked.

She squeezed into big tech too.

Because in nature, the creature that adapts fastest wins,

not the one with the prettiest morality.”

His shoulders relaxed, like he had finally said a truth he respected.

“Then I pushed myself too.

UIUC Machine Learning Master’s, while working full-time.

A year of hell.

But I won my jump ticket: Amozon.

Boom, from Midwest ghost town to Silicon Valley.”

His eyes sharpened again, excitement resurfacing:

“And here?

Here it’s clean.

You’re smart, you eat.

You’re slow, you starve.

No sentimental bullshit.”

He smirked , like confessing a crime he’s proud of:

“But once you climb near the top…

you realize being ‘the best employee’

still makes you someone else’s pawn.”

Wang Hui’s breathing paused.

John leaned forward, elbows on his knees:

“Frontend engineers? Replaceable.

Product people? Just PowerPoint with eyebrows.

Entrepreneurs? They starve for years for a maybe.”

Then he dropped his voice to a razor:

“But me?

I do the work that keeps the empire running.

Critical infrastructure.

The kind only a handful can build.”

He tapped his temple:

“I earned this status.

And I don’t plan to ever lose it.”

He paused, that dangerous glint returning:

“But brilliance gets boring.

So I looked for… velocity.”

He let a coin roll between his fingers, metal flashing like a bad decision:

“My first Bitcoin meeting,

a basement full of guys whose shoes cost more than their conscience.

I thought we were building the future.”

He exhaled a dry laugh:

“No.

Some build the future.

Some buy it from the fools.”

The coin slipped and hit the tile with a sharp ting,

like punctuation.

“I almost got robbed.

Almost got my whole stack drained.

Almost learned depression the expensive way.”

A smile ,cruel and triumphant:

“But that night I understood something pure:

Where rules blur,

wealth accelerates.”

Then he said it ,  the thesis of his whole life:

“In the legal world, money crawls.

In the gray world, money flies.”

Wang Hui swallowed. Loud.

Because he suddenly understood why John wasn’t scared of losing his job.

John kept staring forward, voice low and final:

“Capital respects results.

Not methods.

I figured that out before puberty.”

He turned his head slightly, studying Wang Hui:

“You think this is some hero-turning-villain story?”

Wang Hui snapped up the line he needed:

“No.

It’s called being smart. And that’s why I like you.”

"Like me? How about liking just me, drop the wife from the equation.”

John’s eyes narrowed:

“Relax, old man.

You’re not my type, Camilla has standards.”

Wang Hui went home still replaying John's whole life-philosophy TED talk in his head.

He looked almost inspired, which was rare for a guy who mainly lives off doomscrolling and nicotine gum.

Xiaoman came down from upstairs, hair tied high, pajama top half tucked like she couldn’t care less.

She saw him standing there in the living room doing nothing, just staring into space like a crashed software process.

She paused one step above ground level, eyes half-lidded -

not annoyed, not worried, just… zero emotional bandwidth allocated.

She didn’t speak.

She didn’t need to.

That silent “Ugh, why is this man still functioning?” was loud enough.

Wang Hui suddenly snapped back to life, trotting over like a kid who just discovered a fun fact at school:

“Babe babe listen, I found out John and Camilla are actually super inspiring! They both have amazing stories! Really amazing!”

Xiaoman brushed away his hand on her arm, like flicking off lint that dared to touch her,

and gave a tiny snort from her nose:

“Oh that camellia-girl, the tea-flavored one?

What’s so inspiring? Show me. I’ll take notes.”

Wang Hui looked serious in the dumbest way:

“Come on, having men like you is not ‘tea’.

Why you always jealous of her?”

Xiaoman crossed her arms, chin raised just enough to stab:

“Jealous?

Please.

I do not need to be a…  bitch to get attention.

If I want men, they line up.

Me.

As I am.”

She paused, then the blade twisted with elegance:

“But clearly I must be losing vision like Jiang Taigong in his late years.

Otherwise how the hell did I end up getting hooked by you-

a muddy little loach pretending to be a dragon?”

Wang Hui dramatically dropped onto the couch, arms open wide:

“What’s going on with us?

Our little friendship-boat,  overturned just like that!”

Xiaoman already turned, stepping back upstairs without even looking at him:

“A friendship boat? Between us?

There is no friendship.

Only… naked adultery.”

“Like me? How about liking just me — drop the wife from the equation.”

John’s eyes narrowed:

“Relax, old man.

You’re not my type — Camilla has standards.”