Chapter 1: Summer Construction Site

  At noon, the scorching sun was baking the land of Jiangnan. On a construction site in the suburbs, on a three-story building, a young worker was pushing a small cart loaded with neatly stacked bricks on a bamboo scaffold. Sweat droplets as big as beans slid down his face and onto his yellowed white shirt with two large holes, as he shouted "Hei yo!" and dumped the bricks from the cart onto the top floor of the building.

  "Tiger! Stop messing around, take a rest first, and wait till this afternoon when it's cooler to continue! Wash your hands, let's get ready for dinner!" A middle-aged man in his fifties said to the young man.

  The young man took off the worn-out gloves that had been polished by his hands and casually threw them onto the car. He picked up two bricks from a pile of bricks on the side and walked over to a man in his fifties, placing them under his buttocks as he sat down: "Old Qi! What delicious food has the boss's wife prepared today? You've been waiting here so early!"

  "You little scoundrel, you speak as if your uncle has never eaten anything before! You've forgotten that today is payday, and I'm preparing to boost my spirits. Tonight, I'll take you out for a stroll? The newspaper said it's not good for young people to suppress their desires all the time!" Mr. Qi said with a chuckle, looking at the young man beside him.

  Next to a man in his thirties wearing tattered camouflage clothes laughed and said, "Old Qi! Are you going to make it or not? Don't end up like that time when someone else took off their pants and you stood there stupidly for half a day!" Before he even finished speaking, the workers sitting around him in shabby clothes burst into loud laughter.

  Lao Qi didn't get angry, but instead smiled and scolded the group of people: "You bunch of bastards, bringing up something that happened over ten years ago! You're not allowed to go out tonight! And you, dog egg!" Lao Qi pointed at the man in his thirties who had spoken earlier: "All night long, you were messing around with your wife's haystack like a cat in heat. Can't you just be quiet and let everyone get some sleep? Did you bite your tongue last night? Your wife's voice is like killing pigs!"

  The young man had just walked to the water pot and took a sip of water, immediately spitting it out. The crowd next to him naturally burst into laughter again, and a group of people immediately began to surround the woman, opening up the topic, and the small room of twenty or thirty square meters suddenly became noisy.

  "You bunch of good-for-nothings! Are you all done yet? Come over and help out, always thinking about that thing in your pants! Hurry up and finish eating, take a break this afternoon, work's stopped, it's like having half a day off. Where are you going tonight?! So I won't have to see you and get annoyed!" A slightly rough woman's voice came from the empty doorway. Everyone looked up at the doorway in stunned silence. As soon as she finished speaking, a fat figure flashed out of the doorway.

  The woman who came in had a round face with a pair of small eyes that looked around, her half-yellow hair was fixed with hair gel into a cow-like shape standing upright on her forehead, it's said this hairstyle is the most popular among old ladies in the city nowadays. Her neck on her shoulders was almost invisible, surrounded by several circles of fat. A white T-shirt with a monkey head painted on it covered her bucket-like waist, she wore light-colored jeans below, and had a pair of slippers with small blue flowers on each foot, one hand held a red plastic bag containing a dish, the other hand held a basket with bowls and chopsticks inside. The whole person was like a standing egg, moving steadily into the house.

  Behind the woman, two young men with bare upper bodies followed, their pants were basically the same color as the seated person and could hardly be seen. They were carrying an iron bucket filled with white rice.

  "Boss's wife! You're looking quite fashionable today!" Old Qi saw the boss's wife approaching, got up from the brick and helped take over the plastic bag and basket in her hands, putting them on the ground. The people in the house immediately gathered around, some holding bowls, others scooping rice, bustling about.

  The boss's wife looked at Old Qi with a smile and scolded: "You're just a country bumpkin, you don't know what's fashionable! You spend all your money on women's bellies!" Then she turned her head to the young man next to Old Qi and said: "Jin Hu, don't follow these country bumpkins' example! Save some money properly, and in two years, I'll help you find a good match for marriage."

  The young man, Jin Hu, who had just finished pushing the bricks, smiled at the boss's wife without saying a word. He took out a bowl and chopsticks from the basket and stood by the iron bucket waiting for his turn to get rice. When it was his turn, he filled up a full bowl of white rice, carried the bowl with the white rice to the side of the dish basin, ladled a spoonful of meat soup over the rice, then piled a piece of oily meat on top of the rice and added a small spoonful of pickles. He sat back down on the brick he had been sitting on earlier, stretched out his neck and started eating from the bowl.

  "Why don't you introduce your niece to Little Tiger? Such a big girl still doesn't have a man!" Dog Egg said, scraping the rice from his bowl as he spoke to the landlady.

  The boss's wife sighed and said, "Doggie, I've thought about this before, but now this girl, even if she were my own daughter, you can't control her. Everyone's standards are high, they all want to find a city boy with a house and a car, someone like Little Tiger who is hardworking and thrifty isn't attractive anymore, it's a pity! If only he could finish university..."

  The boss's niece is an accountant on the construction site, who has just graduated from a vocational school and is now doing finance on the construction site. She always dreams of entering the high-rise office building and living a 9-to-5 life like those young girls who come and go in the building.

  After hearing the boss's wife, Jin Hu held his chopsticks and slightly shook them, then continued to eat. His mouth was eating rice, but his mind was scattered: Ah! If he had lowered his head a bit earlier, wouldn't he be sitting in one of this city's high-rise buildings now, enjoying air conditioning and looking elegant like his former classmates, instead of squatting on the construction site pushing cement bricks?

  Classmate? Jin Hu's mouth corners slightly curled up in a bitter smile. He thought of the time two months ago when he unintentionally passed by a nicely decorated restaurant, running into those people he had lived with for over a year. At that time, he just wanted to go up and say hello, but seeing them standing more than a meter away from him, their eyes filled with awkward smiles. They were wearing suits, while he was bare-chested in slippers, his pants unwashed for days with a hint of stench. Indeed, it was quite out of place. The "Old Tiger Brother" he used to loudly call out to had now become just a migrant worker.

  Uh-huh! In this city, there's only one person left who still likes to call himself that. Thinking of that taciturn kid, Jin Hu couldn't help but feel a little downhearted. Since childhood, he was timid and relied on his own protection to avoid being bullied in school. Apart from having good grades, he was like a quail every day, even afraid to speak loudly to others. Who knows how he'll survive in this dog-eat-dog city in the future?

  "What's on your mind? You're so absorbed." Old Qi elbowed Jin Hu: "Are you thinking of home? Are you thinking of the girls? If you're thinking of the girls, follow me tonight!"

  Jin Hu smiled and said: "Nothing! You go by yourself! I'm not in the mood" and continued eating the rice in his bowl.

  "Hey!" Old Qi shrunk his neck and turned his face to the boss's wife behind him, saying: "What are you hitting me for? Can't a grown man go out and have some fun? Where does it look like I'm a big shot? Are you taking a liking to Little Tiger and planning to break up with Li?"

  The boss's wife twisted her fat butt and walked towards the door, muttering: "I still liked Xiaohu, wait for our family's daughter to grow up and invite him back as a son-in-law!"

  "Hey, boss's wife! Don't go yet, make it clear, is it you who wants it or your husband? This can't be ambiguous!" Dog Egg shouted towards the doorway, and immediately a burst of laughter erupted around him.

  Jin Hu himself couldn't help but laugh along, he just liked the atmosphere here. When everyone took a break together, from time to time, coworkers would tell some outdated dirty jokes they heard elsewhere, or like today, steer the conversation towards someone and tease them for a bit of fun, triggering a burst of laughter. No one would say they'd already heard it, everyone always listened with glee. After working for several hours, being willing to talk at all was good enough, who cared about whether they'd heard it before or not?

  Don't look at the boss's wife, she has a bad mouth, but sometimes she can get things done quickly and efficiently. Especially when it comes to collecting debts, she is very skilled. It's said that several years ago, just before Chinese New Year, she even slept in the hallway of a debtor's house for two nights with only a quilt, until she finally got everyone's wages back. The couple works together to collect debts, the husband plays the "good cop" and the wife plays the "bad cop". After doing small engineering projects for so many years, it's said that they have less than 100,000 yuan in outstanding debts outside, which is a small miracle in today's era of rampant debt evasion. The boss's wife has made great efforts behind the scenes. People who know her say that Chen Cuimei, the boss's wife of Hongyun Construction Team, is not an ordinary woman.

  The wages are paid on time, the boss and his wife strictly control the quality, and the workers are basically all local villagers who do not cheat or slack off. Although they don't get many government projects with fat profits, their reputation has been established over the years, and they have received a lot of private house construction projects. Like Jin Hu, who works hard for a month, can earn more than 3,000 yuan, close to 4,000 yuan. New graduates in Jianglin City usually cannot earn this much.

  The seven young men who followed Jinhu into the place only had Jinhu left in the end, others couldn't bear such hardship, only Jinhu at that time because of emotional reasons, wanted to find a place to exhaust himself, so that his brain wouldn't think of anything. In short, he was looking for a place to torment himself, which is self-mortification. After more than a month, following these migrant workers, he had been numb for a long time, and the passionate feelings of his youth were erased from his heart. His mind was empty, every day was just pushing bricks, one after another, but in his heart, he gained what others called the state of no comparison, no dissatisfaction.

  Another benefit is that my body has become more robust than before, I can eat and sleep every day, my brain has cleared up, all the muscles in my body have grown, with a height of 1.75 meters, taking off my clothes reveals solid muscles all over my body, it's fair to say that there are gains and losses.

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