Photocopied Lottery Tickets chapter 1

Five Million Dollars Disappears

Lucy is an accountant at a large enterprise. She has a habit of buying welfare lottery tickets every period. She only buys one ticket each time, and the numbers are always the same, which is the combination of the birthdays of her family of three. She has been buying for three years and has never won a prize. Those lottery tickets are clipped with a small clip and stored in the drawer of the bookcase. There is already a thick stack of them.

One day, Lucy was sitting in front of the TV watching the lottery draw as usual. Suddenly, her eyes lit up and her heart raced. She quickly called her husband, Tom: “Quick, take another look. Is it real?” After verification, both of them jumped up: Oh my god! They really won five million dollars!

The unexpected surprise kept the young couple excited until late at night. Tom took out the thick stack of lottery tickets that Lucy had saved and said he wanted to buy the most delicate box to collect them as a permanent souvenir. Lucy smiled and teased him: “This permanent souvenir is still missing one.” Tom immediately understood that the most important one was missing, which was the winning ticket. What should they do? This lottery ticket had to be taken to claim the prize and couldn’t stay in their hands. So they discussed: First, make a copy of this lottery ticket tomorrow, and then take it to claim the prize.

The next day, Lucy took the lottery ticket to a copy shop near her workplace. This copy shop also sold lottery tickets on the side. The owner of the copy shop was a young man. When he learned that Lucy wanted to copy the lottery ticket, he was stunned at first, and then calmly completed the copying.

When Lucy got the copy and was looking down at it, the young boss handed back the original lottery ticket to her. But as soon as Lucy took the “original”, she felt something was wrong: This lottery ticket was too new, while the winning one she had was already soft after being touched by her and Tom last night. Lucy quickly took a closer look. Oh my god! Even the numbers were wrong.

Lucy immediately said: “Boss, you gave me the wrong original. This isn’t mine.” The young boss stared at her: “Ma’am, you’re the only customer I’ve had this early in the morning. How could there be a mistake? Maybe you got it wrong yourself.” Lucy looked at the copy and then at the lottery ticket and said: “Boss, please look carefully. This isn’t the one I brought.” As she said that, Lucy lifted the cover of the copier, but it was empty inside. Lucy was immediately stunned: Where did her winning lottery ticket go? She started looking around the copier, front, back, left, and right, and then rummaged through the whole copy shop.

At this time, more and more people came into the copy shop. People were looking at this woman rummaging around with all kinds of looks. Under the inquiring looks of the people, the young boss couldn’t hold it in anymore: “Ma’am, I still have business to do. You’d better go home and look for it.” At this time, Lucy was also very excited: That was five million dollars! How could it disappear in the blink of an eye? It must be the young boss’s doing. He wanted to take her five – million – dollar jackpot.

But the lottery ticket was gone. Who could she reason with? This lottery ticket was unregistered and non – refundable. Thinking of this, Lucy couldn’t help breaking out in a cold sweat. But she quickly calmed down: Before the young boss transferred the lottery ticket, she had to get back the lottery ticket that belonged to her.