Chapter 1370: Zhang Lijuan

Zhang Lijuan (Ten)

This feeling was hard for me to describe. I simply held up a one-hundred yuan bill, intending to give it to her, but my hand was trembling almost imperceptibly, as if I were committing some unforgivable sin, and I was extremely nervous.

What would her reaction be? Would she say something like in the commercials, "This is an insult"? Or, like in TV dramas, have security escort me out? Maybe these big factories valued ability and education, not things like this. I remembered from elementary school textbooks that someone who picks up a crumpled piece of paper from the ground could impress the interviewer, while people like me, who try to cheat with clever tricks, usually end up badly. But my understanding of the world was still too limited; I had to learn through my own experiences.

She stared at the bill in my hand for a few seconds, then shifted her gaze to the door behind me.

“Ai... what are you going to do?” she murmured. “You're just causing me trouble...”

I had no idea what she meant, so I just kept the money held up in the air, not daring to move.

“The young people these days... ai...” She kept shaking her head, her eyes occasionally glancing at the money in my hand. “There's just no way around it.”

I wasn't even sure if she was accepting or refusing; I just listened to her rambling complaints. A few seconds later, she sighed and reached out to tear my registration form in half.

My heart nearly stopped in that moment. It seemed I was wrong to think that most problems in the world couldn't be solved with money. I should have been honest, using my abilities and sincerity to impress the interviewer, not this one-hundred yuan bill.

“I'm sorry,” I said, looking at the shredded form on the desk. “I've wasted your time.”

She knocked on the desk with her hand and said, under my puzzled gaze, “Why say sorry now? Just leave it here.”

“Leave... it here?”

I thought she meant the money, but I couldn't be entirely sure. Then she bent down, pulled out a new registration form from the drawer, and said, “Fill out a new one. The date is easy to adjust, but changing your name would be hard to explain.”

Hearing that, I froze for a couple of seconds, then quickly placed the money on the desk. The interviewer casually covered it with a stack of documents.

“Write it here,” she said without looking up. “You're almost an adult anyway—just keep your name the same and change the birth date on your ID number for now.”

“Okay! Okay! No problem!” I nodded gratefully and hurriedly took the pen to start writing.

“Remember, once you turn eighteen, go to the comprehensive management department. Tell them there was an error with your ID and you need to verify and correct it. That way, it'll be compliant and won't affect future awards or evaluations.”

“Thank you! Thank you!” I said while writing furiously. “I'm so grateful!”

“I'm telling you upfront—if you're caught faking your age in the next few months, that's on you. I don't know anything about it,” the interviewer said. “That's all the help I can give.”

“I understand! Thank you so much!”

I not only wanted to thank her but also Fang Zhuren and his wife. They had taught me the most valuable lesson in life.

And just like that, I successfully got into the electronic factory and was assigned to the assembly line. Although there were no hazardous subsidies for toxin exposure, this workshop was quite good—it had air conditioning in winter and summer, making the environment comfortable, and we still got low-temperature and high-temperature allowances.

There, I encountered something I'd never known before: the LED dianzi guanggao ping. On a dark background, red diodes lit up to display text. It was energy-efficient, durable, and stable, quickly becoming the go-to advertising signage for shops in town, with even banks ordering screens for number announcements.

In a short time, trendy stores started using LED displays, and our orders kept growing. In my first month on the job, I earned over five hundred yuan, and all I had to do was assemble the crystals onto the diodes.

Learning from my previous mistake, I began to completely shut myself off, avoiding communication with others as much as possible. After all, invisible walls always surrounded me. On the other side were colleagues with comfortable backgrounds, friends sharing jokes, and couples in love, while on my side, there was just me. Our sides were decided the moment we entered the electronic factory.

But at least here, I felt safer. Everyone just saw me as a quiet employee, not as some stranger leader's mistress, and they weren't aggressive toward someone like me.

After a while, I noticed that our assembly line's pass rate was lower than the rest of the workshop, affecting everyone's earnings. So, I started investigating the issues. I had to admit, the principles of the LED dianzi guanggao ping were too advanced for me. Even as the last step in the line, I couldn't figure out where the problem was occurring earlier.

That's why I began buying books to study on my own, and for anything I didn't understand, I'd pay the veteran workers in the factory for advice. No matter how unapproachable they seemed, a pack of cigarettes, a bottle of alcohol, or some cash would get them talking.

Gradually, I went from being seen as an aloof employee to a sensible and eager junior in their eyes. Using what I'd learned, I pinpointed the problems on our line and soon realized that this technology was just too complex for us village kids. Many made mistakes when assembling the diodes, and others wired the crystals wrong.

When those faulty parts reached me, I could only end up with defective displays. To boost our pay, I started using my free time to explain the assembly principles to everyone. Before long, our line's average wages rose from around five hundred yuan to seven hundred yuan, and the workers on the line looked at me with delight.

Once word spread, employees from other lines came to ask for my help. Seeing their smiles and kindness, I felt those invisible walls starting to crack. I wanted to cross over to their side, and they seemed to want to enter my world.

My life began to gain some color, and the scars from before started to heal. How long did this last?

It continued until my eighteenth birthday, when the electronic factory expanded due to booming business and started hiring more people. That day, Man Dun and his fiancée arrived at the workshop.