Rebirth 1990: The beginning is sweet and cool Bai Yueguang

Xiao Gao shouted at the top of his voice: "This girl in your family is a flower in the factory! If she becomes a bookkeeper, she will be promoted to a cadre position, which is much better than us."

Zhou Qi rubbed his knuckles and thought of his wife's hands. The calluses were finer than those made by the cocoon-boiling woman, but they were always soaked with a sour smell that could not be washed off.

Passing the three boiler rooms, the diesel-driven looms made the eardrums vibrate. Xiao Gao pointed at the low building with a tin roof and ran back as if escaping.

The moment the plastic door curtain was opened, a 40-degree heat wave wrapped in the fishy smell of rotting cocoons hit me in the face.

The cocoon-boiling pool was bubbling, and human figures were swaying in the white steam.

Zhou Qi was crouching down, looking for someone among the female workers, his blue work clothes completely soaked into a dark color by sweat.

There was a lame wooden stool in the corner - Lin Ruixue usually sat here to count the number of silk cocoons, and her three-year-old daughter Nuonuo was supposed to be playing with silkworm pupae at the foot of the stool.

The mist covered his glasses, and Zhou Qi opened his collar and breathed heavily.

If he had known that the workshop was like a steaming pot, he would never have let the mother and daughter stay here.

Nuo Nuo's cough hasn't been cured for half a month, maybe it's caused by the moldy steam.

After visiting several female workers, I finally found Lin Ruixue's workshop at the corner of the workshop.

In this small cubicle of ten square meters, her daily job is to check the quantity of raw materials and finished products entering and leaving the warehouse.

"Hey!"

As darkness suddenly came from behind, Lin Ruixue heard a deliberately low voice in her ear: "Guess who it is?"

"father!"

Zhou Qi let go of his hand because of his daughter Nuonuo's cheers.

Only then did he notice that his wife had her head down and the ballpoint pen in her hand had left a stain of ink on the form.

"Why are you looking so gloomy?"

Zhou Qi reached out and brushed away the loose hair on her forehead: "Are you not happy that I'm here to pick you up from get off work?"

Five-year-old Nuonuo suddenly grabbed the corner of his father's clothes and said, "Uncle Zeng just grabbed Mom's hand and wanted to kiss it!"

The air froze instantly at the child's careless words.

"Nono!" Lin Ruixue hurriedly covered her daughter's mouth, and the pen fell "click" on the ledger book.

Zhou Qi's temples were throbbing. He squatted down and looked at his daughter: "What else did that Zeng guy do?"

His suppressed angry voice made Nono shrink his neck.

"He always tells me not to touch anything..."

The child twisted the corner of his clothes in grievance: "I was just sitting on my desk and playing."

The red eyes made Zhou's chest tighten.

"What's that bastard's full name?"

The furious roar shook the metal cabinet: "I will break his arm today!"

Lin Ruixue suddenly grabbed her husband and said, "Keep your voice down! The regularization assessment will be this month..."

Before he finished speaking, Zhou Qi interrupted him: "Do I need to exchange my body for a permanent position?"

The words hit her like a slap in the face.

"Zhou Qi you bastard!"

She was trembling all over, tears welling up in her eyes: "I am innocent..." She suddenly fell silent halfway through her words.

The bell for the end of get off work just rang out on the workshop radio. She sniffed hard, took out a plaid handkerchief and quickly wiped her face.

"You can leave once you finish the work."

She turned her back and sorted the documents, her fingertips trembling slightly.

Nuonuo took the opportunity to crawl into his father's arms, his little face pressed against his sweaty work clothes as he muttered, "Daddy smells like the sun."

Zhou Qi wiped the sweat from his daughter's forehead with his sleeve and looked up at the rusty exhaust fan above his head.

In the workshop with a temperature of 40 degrees, the heat wave brought with it the smell of engine oil, and my daughter's neck was already covered with dense red rashes.

"This is fine. Once the door is closed, the noise from the machines outside basically disappears."

Lin Ruixue was busy organizing the reports on the table, her fingertips moving quickly on the calculator.

The metal folding chair suddenly creaked, and Zhou Qi stood up to close the iron door.

"The door is so tightly closed, if Director Zeng does something..."

Before he could finish his words, he was interrupted by the sound of a pen falling on the table.

Lin Ruixue's hands, clutching the corner of her clothes, trembled slightly: "Zhou Qi, you said that again!"

She hurriedly picked up her daughter who was playing with abacus beads. The three-year-old Nono ignorantly grabbed her mother's hair.

Zhou Qi scratched his head in annoyance: "Don't be angry, my wife. You look like a daffodil. Which bachelor in the factory wouldn't be jealous of you?"

Seeing his wife's ears turn red, he smiled and leaned closer: "You can go home after the data is sorted. I bought your favorite sugar-roasted chestnuts."

"You are such a sweet talker." Lin Ruixue just raised the corner of her mouth when the iron gate was pushed open with a bang.

Director Zeng came in swinging his key chain, his greasy hair almost touching the door frame. "Xiao Liu, what's wrong with you? There is a difference of three rolls of silk between the loss of raw materials and the number of finished products. We must check it out tonight!"

Zhou Qi squinted his eyes and looked at the man with a beer belly - the "bad uncle" who Nuonuo said pulled his mother's hair last night.

Director Zeng's crocodile leather shoes stopped directly behind Lin Ruixue, and his fat palms suddenly supported the table: "The numbers in this column are obviously wrong..."

"Nono, go to daddy's place."

Zhou Qi picked up the child, and the wooden chair scraped against the ground with a harsh sound. Director Zeng jumped back as if he had been electrocuted, with a few strands of Lin Ruixue's hair still hanging on the tip of his nose.

"Which workshop are you from?"

Director Zeng took out a handkerchief to wipe his sweat, and when he saw Zhou Qi's muscular body with his sleeves rolled up, he suddenly raised his voice: "No outside personnel are allowed to enter or leave the factory! We are exporting silk to earn foreign exchange, can you afford to pay for less than half a piece of cloth?"

Zhou Qi held his daughter in one hand and placed his other hand on his wife's trembling shoulder: "I am the family member of technician Liu, and I am here to pick up my wife..."

He deliberately dragged out the last word: "After work, go back home."

The fact that Director Zeng was concerned about Lin Ruixue had already spread throughout the factory.

When he heard Zhou Qi claiming to be Ruixue's boyfriend, his face turned dark on the spot.

Just as Zhou Qi clenched his fist and was about to hit someone in the face, Lin Ruixue jumped up like a spring and stood in the way.

"Article 8 of the factory rules!" Ruixue was so anxious that her voice trembled.

If a beating incident happened at this critical juncture, the regularization target that she had been working hard for three years would definitely be ruined.

The girl grabbed Zhou Qi's sleeve tightly and shook her head at him eagerly.

He turned around and assured Director Zeng: "I will review the data overnight and will definitely have it on your desk tomorrow morning."

Seeing Zeng walking out the door with his hands behind his back, Zhou Qi shook off Ruixue and tried to chase after him. The girl was so anxious that she shouted at the top of her voice: "If you dare to do anything to me, these three years of my hard work will be in vain!"

"pee!"

When Zhou Qi slammed the door and went out, the corridor was already filled with female workers on the night shift.

Seven or eight girls blocked Director Zeng in the aisle. One said her sewing machine was stuck and asked for help, while another shouted that they wanted to have a dinner together at the weekend.

The girl in the red skirt deliberately tucked her hair behind her ears, and the man in overalls directly handed a cup of water to the person - everyone knew that Director Zeng held the quota for the quarterly performance evaluation.

Old Wang in the monitoring room smacked his lips while holding a cigarette in his mouth: "Wow, this is as busy as choosing a concubine."

Amid the humming sounds of machines in the workshop, Director Zeng walked out quickly with a sullen face, a half-smoked cigarette tucked into the pocket of his work clothes.

Several female workers were leaning against the assembly line, whispering to each other, with giggles drifting out from under their floral headscarves.

"Did Director Zeng eat gunpowder today?"

The short-haired female worker leaned against the conveyor belt, and the cloth in her hands rustled loudly.

The round-faced girl who was eating melon seeds in the corner suddenly got excited: "If I can become a regular employee, I will work like a slave for him!"

Before he could finish his words, the sister next to him hit him on the shoulder with a spool of thread.