Li Jianghai walked home as if he were walking on cotton, and what he held in his arms was not money, but a hot gold brick.

He would touch his inner pocket every two steps, for fear that the camel banknote would grow wings and fly away.

"Old Li! Are you finishing work so early?" Old Wang, the gatekeeper at the firewood factory, asked in a hoarse voice.

"Ah? Ah!" Li Jianghai shuddered, almost making a hole in the money in his arms. "It's cold! Let's go home and warm up!"

Old Wang squinted his eyes as he watched him stumble away, then teased, "I've never seen such a cunning person. He's always late and leaves early!"

When Li Jianghai crouched down and sneaked into Guifangzhai, he looked like an underground party member.

He huddled beside the counter and winked at Li Guifang who was counting the goods.

"What are you doing? You're like a thief."

Li Guifang didn't even raise her head and continued to put bread into the tray.

Li Jianghai looked around and lowered his voice: "Let's go home and tell them. It's urgent."

"What can't be said here?" Li Guifang finally looked up and saw her old man with a mysterious look on his face.

"Go home! I must go home!" Li Jianghai stomped his feet anxiously, and his cotton shoes made a "squeaking" sound on the concrete floor.

Li Guifang was annoyed by him: "Okay, okay, wait until I finish ordering this batch of goods..."

"Go home now!" Li Jianghai was like a tape recorder, and he was just about to grab the person.

Xie Dazui poked his head out from the kitchen: "Hey, is Old Li possessed by an evil spirit?"

Li Guifang sighed, put down the tray, and took off her apron: "I'm really impressed by you!"

He turned to Xie Dazui and said, "You take care of the store. I'll go back and see what's wrong with this old man."

On the way home, Li Jianghai looked back every two steps, for he was terrified that someone was following him!

Li Guifang was uneasy about him: "You are messing with your mentality. Are there enemy spies following you?"

"Tell me when we get home! Tell me when we get home!" Li Jianghai chanted like a mantra.

As soon as he entered, Li Jianghai slammed the door shut and locked it twice.

Just as Li Guifang was about to curse, Li Jianghai pulled her into the inner room.

He was seen trembling as he took out a stack of things wrapped in newspaper from the inner pocket of his cotton-padded jacket.

"Snap!"

The newspapers fell apart, and a neatly bundled stack of banknotes lay on the table.

Li Guifang gasped: "How much...how much is this?"

"Three thousand two hundred and sixty!" Li Jianghai's voice cracked, "And there's an eighty yuan reward!"

The room suddenly became so quiet that the humming sound of the coal stove could be heard.

After a while, Li Guifang reached out to touch the banknotes, then suddenly pulled her hand back, as if she had been burned: "You can't be..."

"Buyout money!" Li Jianghai finally couldn't hold it in any longer. "Thank you, Baldy, for the top grade! And you gave me an extra eighty! You said it was a reward!"

The room suddenly became so quiet that the ticking of the wall clock could be heard.

Li Guifang stared at the stack of money and suddenly burst out laughing: "Great, Old Li, you've made it!"

The sunlight from outside the window shines in, and the Tiananmen Gate Tower on the Great Unity is shining.

The couple looked at each other and suddenly laughed out loud at the same time.

"Um..." Li Jianghai rubbed his hands and moved closer, "How about... going out to eat today?"

Li Guifang glared at him, then suddenly burst out laughing: "Okay, Old Li, let's go!"

——

In the firewood factory office, Director Xie crossed his legs and sipped the finely ground tea leaves in the teacup with great satisfaction.

The buyout agreement that Li Jianghai had just signed was spread out on the table. The more he looked at it, the more proud he became, and his fingers tapped the paper to the rhythm.

"Hey, that silly old Li..." He squinted his eyes and flicked his finger on the agreement. "He's so happy with just over three thousand yuan, he didn't even bargain!"

Snow was falling outside the window, but Director Xie felt warm inside.

He finally found a way to solve the problem of buying out seniority!

The toughest bone has been gnawed. With Li Jianghai's signing, the people behind him will definitely jump into the pit like dumplings!

Even though he spent too much money, it wasn't his own money, so there was no need to feel sad. At worst, he could just get it back from the deductions below!

Anyway, the money is paid by the factory, not from Director Xie’s pocket.

Give an extra hundred or eighty yuan, just as feeding the dog - feed this one, then it will be easier to deal with the rest!

Once the quota is reported, we can tamper with the accounts, deduct some seniority allowance here, reduce some resettlement expenses there, and this shortfall will be filled in minutes, right?

Thinking of this, he happily swallowed all the tea leaves, smacked his lips, opened the drawer and took out a yellowed roster.

A red pen drew a big circle around Li Jianghai's name, and the ink spread out, making it look like a stamp that said "Slaughtered".

"Next..." He licked his dry lips and tapped the three characters "Zhang Jianguo" with the tip of his pen. "Let's go with Lao Zhang!"

He could already picture Lao Zhang's honest self-image—last year, when the factory distributed benefits, he didn't even dare to complain when he was shortchanged by a barrel of oil. Giving him 2,800 yuan was a compliment!

"Old Wang!" he shouted out the door, "Go get Old Zhang from the first workshop! Just tell him..." His eyes rolled, "Just tell him there's something important we need to discuss about factory benefits!"

——

In the boiler room, coal dust flew in the air. Old Cui swung a shovel to feed coal into the furnace, his voice whirring, "Oh my goodness, has our great model worker Li finally quit today?"

Old Cui was so tired that he leaned on his shovel and panted heavily. When he had some free time, he looked towards the door for a long time: "Is Li Jianghai still slacking off? The work is not finished yet!"

Old Wang, who was standing next to him, wiped his blackened face and said sarcastically, "He has a wife who runs a shop now. How could he be interested in our black boiler?"

"They are so smart! They push all the work to us and then they just sit back and relax."

"Alas, we are so unlucky to have to be in the same group with such a person! He can do us a lot of harm!" Lao Cui kicked the coal pile.

"Yesterday he pretended to rush to work, and I thought he had regained his conscience, but I didn't expect his true colors to show up today!"

After saying that, he spat on the ground and said, "With the skills he had back then, if he hadn't been lucky enough to get into our factory at the bottom of the class, who knows where he'd be begging now!"

Old Liu squatted by the coal pile, smoking silently, and suddenly interrupted: "At noon, I saw Lao Liang from the second shift asking him to go to the factory office..."

"It was noon. I went there at noon. How many hours has it been? The ants have also crawled back! The director can still invite him to dinner!"

Even though the factory is not big, there are dozens of directors, big and small. He doesn’t know who to call, so you can always call him director!

"I wonder where you're slacking off?" Old Cui glared. "This old rascal, he acts like he sees a ghost when he sees work!"

He even poked Lao Wang next door and said, "You should learn from Lao Li and be lazy when you need to be lazy!"

Lao Wang shrank his neck and said, "I'm going to have a stomachache tomorrow..."

Inside the boiler room, someone burst out laughing.