Chapter Seventy

Ji Wanmei was lost in thought, feeling saddened to see her father, whom she considered tall and imposing, stumbling and chasing after a train.

Unexpectedly, Luo Chunyan nudged her arm. She wiped her slightly reddened eyes with a handkerchief and looked up, asking, "Who is it?"

Luo Chunyan still looked like she'd seen a ghost, staring at the opposite side of the carriage: "See for yourself."

Ji Wanmei looked up in the direction she was looking and saw Lei Tingjun standing there silently watching her.

Ji Wanmei was also taken aback!

Lei Tingjun? What's he doing on the train?

Lei Tingjun's appearance surprised both girls.

Ji Wanmei confirmed several times that she was not mistaken; it was indeed him.

He was standing by the aisle, probably because he hadn't been able to buy a seat ticket and had to stand. But his tall, imposing figure, which was more than half a head taller than the average man, and his rugged, wild demeanor made no one around him dare to approach him.

So the spot where he stood naturally became a small empty space, standing out from the crowded scenes elsewhere in the carriage.

Ji Wanmei and her group bought their tickets three days in advance, and presumably had connections at the station, so they booked seats that were adjacent to each other.

After boarding the bus, Ji Wanmei sat by the window, Luo Chunyan sat in the middle, and Officer Li sat on the outermost side, near the aisle, to take responsibility for protecting the two girls.

At this moment, Ji Wanmei wanted to go and talk to Lei Tingjun, but found that even the aisle was full of people. Many migrant workers with standing tickets put their woven bags of luggage on the ground and sat down, making it impossible for her to pass.

When Lei Tingjun saw that she had noticed him, he smiled at her and silently shook his head, as if to indicate that she didn't need to come over and that he could just watch her from there.

The story begins the day before yesterday.

That noon, after Lei Tingjun finished eating braised pork with preserved vegetables at Ji Wanmei's house, he did not return to the factory immediately.

He turned around and went to the county's train ticket counter.

Pingquan County is not very big. There are only two trains a day that go to the coastal area of ​​Zhejiang and arrive in Guangzhou. One train departs at 9:30 in the morning and the other departs at 4:00 in the afternoon.

However, when Lei Tingjun arrived, all the seats had already been sold out.

Lei Tingjun asked for a standing ticket; as long as he was on the same train as Ji Wanmei and the others, it didn't matter whether he sat or not.

Standing tickets are naturally cheaper than seated tickets. At this time, the green trains also had sleeper berths, but for a rough guy like Lei Tingjun, there was no need to sleep during the journey of more than ten hours.

After buying his train ticket, he returned to the factory and immediately went to find Director Wang to ask for three days' leave.

Director Wang was puzzled when he heard his request for leave and asked, "What do you, a single person, need to ask for three days off for?"

Lei Tingjun didn't mention anything else, only saying, "I have some personal matters to take care of. This is my leave request. Please remember to approve it."

After saying that, he turned and left the office without waiting for Director Wang's approval.

Anyway, on the morning of the 3rd, he got up early, took a cold shower, bought a few steamed buns from the canteen to fill his stomach, then stuffed all the money he had into his pocket and went to the train station.

As the train pulled into the station, Lei Tingjun, standing far away in the crowd, actually saw Ji Xingguo coming to see Ji Wanmei off.

However, he couldn't let Ji Xingguo know that he planned to go to Zhejiang with Ji Wanmei, so he never showed up.

Lei Tingjun waited until he saw Ji Wanmei and the others board the train and confirmed which carriage she was sitting in before quietly boarding from another carriage. Then, with his broad and tall stature, he squeezed into Ji Wanmei's carriage.

Ji Wanmei stared at Lei Tingjun, and gradually realized that he must have come to ask her at noon that day what day and what time her train was, and then secretly bought a ticket for the same train.

He didn't even tell her.

Ji Wanmei didn't know if Officer Li knew Lei Tingjun, but she figured that given Lei Tingjun's reputation in the factory, even if he didn't know him personally, he should have at least heard of him.

She was worried that after Officer Li saw Lei Tingjun, she didn't know how he would report this to her father.

Fortunately, after putting his luggage away on the bus, Officer Li took out a book from his briefcase and started reading.

If you're going to be sitting in a hard seat on a train for ten or more hours, you still need to find something to do to pass the time.

Luo Chunyan looked around for a while, then started a conversation, saying, "Meimei, I brought some eggs with me. If we get hungry at noon, we can use these to fill our stomachs."

Ji Wanmei withdrew her gaze, looked at Luo Chunyan, and smiled: "What a coincidence, I also brought boiled eggs and a box of glutinous rice cakes, enough for the three of us."

When Luo Chunyan heard her say that, she thought of her mother's petty and calculating manner and immediately felt ashamed: "It's okay, we can share the extra food together."

"Hmm." Although Ji Wanmei was chatting with Luo Chunyan, her gaze kept unconsciously drifting towards Lei Tingjun.

She saw that his hands were empty, as if he hadn't brought any luggage with him, and wondered if he had just gotten on the bus like this, or if he had brought any food.

The food on trains is expensive and unpalatable, so most people don't buy it on trains.

Because the carriage was so crowded, and it was July, the air was inevitably stuffy. Ji Wanmei, who was sitting by the window, rolled up the window to let in some fresh air.

The green train wasn't going very fast, and the breeze outside the window was quite refreshing. Most of the passengers near the window had their windows open.

Although Ji Wanmei was sitting at the very back, her face was so strikingly beautiful and radiant that she was like a delicate orchid blooming amidst thorns in the messy and smelly green train carriage.

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