Sun Kaicheng led Qian Xiao to the food window without looking at her. Qian Xiao didn't have time to think about anything else. When she saw the food inside, she sighed. She shouldn't have had any expectations. She guessed that all the canteens were pretty much the same now.
It was already good enough to have something to eat, so the two of them didn't say much. They just took whatever food others took, mainly following the crowd.
After sitting down, Qian Xiao took a bite of the dish. It was very good; there wasn't a drop of oil in it, it was just boiled in water. Although it wasn't tasty, Qian Xiao didn't leave any. These days, every grain of food is precious, and if she dared to throw it away, someone would stand up and yell at her.
Qian Xiao strained his ears, trying to hear what these people were saying. Perhaps because it was a machinery factory, most of the work was suitable for men. There were women, though not as many as in other factories.
There are even fewer young women here. It seems I won't make any friends here. I was hoping to make a couple of friends around my age and hear some factory gossip.
At a table a little further away from the two of them sat a few of the factory's young women. Perhaps because they were few in number, they often acted together.
One of the girls, with darker skin and big eyes, nudged the girl next to her who had fairer skin: "Could the woman that Comrade Sun brought be the new college student?"
Those of them who work in offices are much more well-informed than ordinary workers. They had already heard that a college student was coming, and that it was a woman. They were all waiting to see what kind of person this person was.
But this is not what they guessed. Shouldn't he look like a bookworm and be the kind of person who looks very ordinary?
The girl being questioned absentmindedly picked at the food in her lunchbox: "Right? I've never seen this person before."
A short-haired girl across from me swallowed her food: "That's her. I saw her yesterday when I came to do the paperwork. She's so tall, almost as tall as a man. She's also quite pretty, and her aura is different from ours."
"I heard that the machine in Workshop 4 broke down yesterday, and that girl fixed it. She said her skills are even better than the master craftsmen, and she's a truly talented person."
"The people in the workshop all speak of her with great admiration." In this day and age, people with skills and craftsmanship are always looked up to.
The person next to the short-haired girl nudged her, telling her to stop talking, saying she hadn't seen Jiang Siyu's expression and that this was just offending someone.
The short-haired girl glanced at Jiang Siyu, who was staring at her with a poor appetite, and rolled her eyes inwardly. Did she think that just because she called out a guy, he would fawn over her? Just because she took a fancy to someone doesn't mean he has to be nice to her.
She wasn't afraid of Jiang Siyu at all. So what if she had a director uncle? Her father was the factory director. Her eyes darted around as she remembered what she had overheard on her way home yesterday.
"I also heard that the new comrade Qian Xiao and comrade Sun grew up together as childhood sweethearts and went to the same university. It's just that Qian Xiao graduated a year later than comrade Sun, and they were even assigned to the same jobs after graduation."
"You don't know yet, do you? They bought houses together, they live next door, and they go to get off work together. I heard from their parents that if they weren't so young, they probably would have already settled down and were just waiting for them to get older to officially become a couple."
They've been childhood sweethearts, don't even think about it, Jiang Siyu. They don't even want to talk to you, are you blind? She just doesn't like Jiang Siyu's opportunistic ways. If you don't like her, just say so, what's the point of stringing her along all the time?
Even the boy she had always liked was staring at Jiang Siyu all day long. If she hadn't been so easygoing, she would have been disgusted long ago.
Jiang Siyu suddenly looked up: "Who told you that?" Her tone was full of accusation.
The short-haired girl rolled her eyes and said, "What do I care who told me? Everyone in that neighborhood knows about this."
"Anyway, I feel that the two of them are quite a good match. They are both tall, both college students, have known each other since childhood and understand each other well, and they are both good-looking."
Jiang Siyu's hand, gripping the chopsticks so tightly, turned white. How dare that woman try to steal the man she had her eye on? No, she wouldn't give up. With that thought, she threw down her chopsticks and ran away.
The short-haired girl curled her lip: "She really thinks she's something special, that whatever she likes is hers. She doesn't even know what she's worth."
The round-faced girl next to him looked around and said, "You'd better keep your voice down, or people will say you're bullying Jiang Siyu again."
Hearing this, the short-haired girl pouted: "Do you think these people are all blind? Can't they see that Jiang Siyu is faking it?"
The round-faced girl rested her chin on her hand, pretending to be deep in thought: "I guess guys might like this kind of girl, the one who cries all the time?"
The short-haired girl rolled her eyes: "You bet they're all seriously ill."
"Oh my god, when will the food be back to normal? I really have no appetite at all."
"What are you thinking? It's good enough to have something to eat. I heard that the glass factory has run out of food and they've sent everyone home to eat their own food."
"Oh! It's that serious?"
"That's for sure. Luckily, we all work in a machine factory. I can't even imagine what it would be like if we were working in a glass factory. Wouldn't we be starving three times a day?"
The short-haired girl nodded: "Eat quickly, having something to eat is better than having nothing to eat." With the contrast of something worse, her complaints vanished instantly.
Even while eating, Qian Xiao's eyes were restless, looking around as if she wanted to make sure everyone was familiar with her. Sun Kaicheng knew Qian Xiao's nature very well, so he didn't say anything and let her look around to her heart's content.
Qian Xiao wasn't really interested; she was just curious. She had watched period dramas before, and most of them were set in a factory. She wanted to see how well the dramas reflected reality.
It has a certain flavor, though it's even more rustic than what you see. The characteristic of this era is that everything is gray and dusty, as if there's no color at all. Maybe it's because the harvest hasn't been good these past two years, and the food hasn't kept up, so people's spirits have also declined a lot.
Most of them had a sallow complexion and were extremely thin. In fact, Qian Xiao could count the number of fat people he had ever seen on one hand. People like this would never have any body image anxiety.
She was engrossed in watching when a fair-skinned girl ran over from a distance, glaring at her fiercely as she reached them.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com