With friends by his side, his heart felt full and secure.
Shedding his old self-doubt and awkwardness, Yang Zheng stuck close to Liu Dabao’s heels, carefully observing the furnace temperatures. Whenever they ran into something neither of them understood, they would humbly seek out the veteran masters for guidance.
At mealtime, whenever Liu Dabao brought meat from home, he always made sure to share more than half of it with Yang Zheng.
Since Liu Dabao was the foreman of Heating Furnace Team One, the rest of the crew naturally treated Yang Zheng with warmth and kindness.
Life was full of vigor and joy. Having grown up doing farmwork in the village, Yang Zheng possessed an endless well of energy and eagerly volunteered for the heaviest tasks in the shop.
Aside from his shifts, Yang Zheng borrowed the plant’s internal technical reference manuals from Liu Dabao and studied them meticulously. He looked toward his future with a quiet, burning sense of hope.
Half a month flew by in a flash. Coming off the early shift one afternoon with his freshly washed clothes in hand, Yang Zheng returned to the dormitory to find he was finally meeting his elusive roommate, Lu Han, for the very first time.
Pushing the door open, he saw Lu Han bent over the desk, deeply engrossed in drafting a blueprint.
“Y-you must be Lu Han?”
Lifting his eyes, Lu Han gave Yang Zheng a cold, indifferent stare. “I go away on business for just a few days, and my room gets taken over.”
“I…” Desperate to keep things harmonious with his roommates and colleagues, Yang Zheng felt like everyone except Liu Dabao viewed him as an eyesore.
Without another word, Lu Han turned back to his drafting board.
Walking on tiptoes, Yang Zheng quietly closed the door, stepped out onto the open-air balcony to hang up his laundry, and then tiptoed back to his own bed to pick up his reference book.
He knew Lu Han was a university graduate and a senior engineer at the plant; naturally, a man of such caliber wouldn’t deign to look twice at a greenhorn like him.
The room fell into a heavy silence, broken only by the scratching of a pencil and the rustle of turning pages, until a sudden knock shattered the quiet.
“Lu Han, are you back?”
It was the girl named Kong Xiange. Ignoring Lu Han entirely, she marched straight to his desk and blurted, “When did you get back?”
“Comrade Kong Xiange, is there something you need?” Lu Han asked, forced to put down his pencil with a cold, impatient air.
“Jufeng Restaurant has added a bunch of new dishes. Let me treat you.”
Unfazed by his glacial attitude, Kong Xiange extended the invitation with eager warmth.
“No thank you.”
“Why do you always have to push people away?” she asked with a slight pout of feminine grievance.
“I just got back from Shanghai and I have a mountain of official work to handle. I must ask Comrade Kong Xiange not to interrupt my work,” Lu Han declared harshly.
He really doesn’t like her at all, Yang Zheng thought with a twinge of pity.
“Even people working need to eat, right? It’ll only take an hour, please?” she pleaded with quiet desperation.
A dark shadow crossed Lu Han’s face. Pulling open his drawer, he dropped a mealbox and a few meal tickets onto the table. “Yang Zheng, go down to the canteen and buy me four liang of rice, one meat dish, and one vegetable dish. Here’s ninety cents.”
“Oh…” Yang Zheng took the mealbox awkwardly, completely bewildered by what Lu Han was playing at.
“Lu Han, do you hate me that much?” Kong Xiange’s eyes welled with tears.
“Comrade Kong Xiange, we’re just ordinary colleagues—there’s no ‘hate’ or ‘not hate.’ I’m simply asking you not to come here and disrupt my work anymore.”
“You… you—” Mortified to her core, her face blazing scarlet, Kong Xiange still showed no sign of leaving despite his brutal words.
Yang Zheng longed to step in and mediate. Even if you didn’t care for someone, there was no need to be so utterly ruthless.
Before he could open his mouth, Lu Han snapped, “Yang Zheng, did you not hear me? Go buy the food!”
Startled, Yang Zheng hastily grabbed his own mealbox and bolted from the room as if escaping a fire.
The early shift let out at four, and it was only five o’clock now; the cafeteria wouldn’t open its evening doors until five-thirty—he still had half an hour to kill.
Left with no choice, Yang Zheng wandered around the sports field until, shortly after, he caught sight of Kong Xiange running past, tears streaming down her face.
Sigh, it seemed Lu Han’s towering intellect came with an impossible, unapproachable temperament.
The thought of having to face him day in and day out gave Yang Zheng a mild headache.
Collecting the two boxes of food, Yang Zheng slipped back into the dorm as quietly as possible.
Living with such an arrogant university student meant walking on eggshells around the clock.
Accepting his mealbox, Lu Han muttered a brief, “Thanks.”
As they sat eating in silence, Lu Han suddenly spoke up. “Yang Zheng, from now on, if Kong Xiange comes looking for me, don’t let her in.”
So he does know my name. “Got it.”
“Also, since we’re sharing a room, don’t bring outsiders inside, and no loud talking.”
“Understood.”
“You are not allowed to touch any of my blueprints.”
“Mm.”
“Do you snore in your sleep?”
Good grief—even the unequal treaties signed at the end of the Qing dynasty weren’t this petty.
“I… I don’t think so?” Back home, sharing a kang with his grandfather, he had never once been accused of snoring.
With the unequal treaty successfully ratified, Lu Han went right back to reading blueprints while eating his meal, offering not another word to Yang Zheng for the rest of the evening.
Thank goodness Yang Zheng had the technical manuals from Liu Dabao and the machinery books sent by his younger sister, or else he never would have survived these long, dreary nights.
The next morning, waking up for another early shift, Yang Zheng was astonished to find that Lu Han hadn’t slept a single wink all night.
“You… you didn’t sleep at all?” Yang Zheng stammered.
“Oh, it’s already dawn. While I was in Shanghai, I saw some advanced techniques—I had a few ideas I needed to sketch out immediately before I forgot them,” Lu Han replied, his voice raspy with fatigue.
“Can our plant actually use those methods?” Yang Zheng asked timidly.
“Times are moving forward, and our plant has to keep pace with the era. If we don’t advance, we fall behind. The nation’s construction needs massive amounts of high-quality steel, and we have to stay right on the cutting edge so we aren’t eliminated.”
Wasn’t he thinking a bit too grandly? Huailin Machinery Plant was already buried under a mountain of orders, rushing day and night just to keep up with production.
“Do you want me to pick up some breakfast for you?”
“No need. I have to head to the office anyway, I’ll grab something at the canteen on the way.” Stretching his back, Lu Han stood up to wash up.
His temper was atrocious, but his dedication to his craft was absolute.
Back at the workshop, Yang Zheng felt completely at ease. After enduring a whole night of suffocation, being back with Liu Dabao felt like a breath of fresh air.
“Say, I heard your roommate’s back?” Liu Dabao asked casually.
“Yeah, his name is Lu Han. Impossible to deal with—not only is he an icicle to me, but he acts like a demon toward girls, too,” Yang Zheng complained.
“Is it Kong Xiange?”
“How’d you know it was Kong Xiange? Do you know her?” Yang Zheng asked in surprise.
“Everyone in the plant knows Kong Xiange has a crush on Lu Han, but Lu Han couldn’t care less,” Liu Dabao chuckled.
“Brother Liu, what kind of girl does Lu Han like? Kong Xiange is so pretty and bends over backward for him, yet he just yells at her and chases her off.”
While Yang Zheng admired Lu Han’s work ethic, he couldn’t endorse his treatment of women.
“Did he yell at Kong Xiange?” Liu Dabao pressed.
“You bet he did! Even if you’re a genius, there’s no need to trample on someone’s dignity like that. Kong Xiange is gorgeous—plenty of guys must be chasing her, so why on earth does she insist on torturing herself over an ice block like Lu Han?” Yang Zheng shook his head in utter incomprehension.
Giving an awkward, wry smile, Liu Dabao muttered, “Maybe it’s just an unresolved debt from a past life.”