WRA CH72

Work resumed at three in the afternoon. The sun beat straight down on the work zone; hauling bricks wasn’t nearly as pleasant as it had been in the morning.

Dou Manning had spent the entire morning trying to figure out what trade Shen Ku belonged to, but without seeing him in person, his curiosity got the better of him. He asked Master Zhang, “Master, there’s a guy here who often goes out to buy coffee. Do you know who he is?”

How could Master Zhang not know? The coffee served in the canteen was bought by Engineer Shen; ask anyone around and they would know. “You mean Engineer Shen!”

“Is he just called Engineer Shen?”

Dou Manning looked at Master Zhang’s expression. So his surname is Shen. Even Master Zhang knew about him, which meant the tale of the sucker who constantly bought coffee had spread across the entire construction site.

Truly a naive big guy.

Master Zhang: “His name seems to be Shen Ku? Ku as in warehouse. But everyone calls him Engineer Shen, so I don’t remember too clearly either.”

“Shen… Ku.” Dou Manning and Master Zhang teamed up to hoist a bundle of rebar. Manning took the rear and held it a bit lower so most of the weight shifted onto him.

Why call him Engineer Shen? Was it to emphasize his identity as a laborer, using it to tease him for blowing forty yuan every day on coffee as a blue-collar worker?

And it wasn’t just forty yuan anymore. Dou Manning now suspected that the “friends” Shen Ku claimed to buy for were just himself all along. Everyone probably thought spending 160 yuan a day on coffee was foolish, right?

Master Zhang suddenly recalled something amusing. “Engineer Shen is a famous paycheck-to-paycheck spender, a thoroughly good man. Earns on the site, spends on the site.”

Dou Manning’s suspicion was fully confirmed.

As they worked, Master Zhang noticed the little fellow worker’s spirits were a bit low, figuring he was tired.

Right then, someone called out Dou Manning’s name. Master Zhang hurriedly said, “Someone over there is calling for you.”

Dou Manning put down the rebar and walked over, only to find it was Shen Ku.

Shen Ku was wearing a white safety helmet, his forehead dripping with sweat. “Man… Manning.”

Calling Dou Manning by his name for the first time made Shen Ku stammer, and the rest of his words caught in his throat.

Dou Manning was no longer in the mood to surprise him. He looked at Shen Ku calmly: “Don’t buy four cups of coffee from now on.”

Shen Ku: “W-why?”

Dou Manning didn’t say outright that he wanted to save Shen Ku money. “Because making coffee is exhausting.”

Could it be more exhausting than the construction site?

Shen Ku: “Do you find it too boring looking after the coffee shop by yourself? Is that why you came to work on the site?”

He was sorry. He had been too selfish, only thinking about being Dou Manning’s sole customer without considering the shop owner’s feelings.

Dou Manning: “It’s not boring.”

Shen Ku: “Then do you want to… focus on preparing for the exam?”

Knowing the engineering book belonged to Zhao Qing, Shen Ku wasn’t sure anymore whether Dou Manning was actually preparing for an exam.

Dou Manning was puzzled: “Preparing for what exam?”

Shen Ku: “The First-Class Constructor Exam.”

Dou Manning said with regret, “I don’t think I meet the eligibility requirements.”

Shen Ku: “In the worst-case scenario, having five years of construction management experience makes you eligible to sit for it.”

For example, having an associate degree in a non-engineering major required five years of practical experience.

If Manning wanted to take it, he could personally mentor him by his side as a technician for five years—suddenly, the construction site didn’t seem bitter or exhausting at all.

Engineer Shen’s heart swelled with ambition.

Dou Manning asked innocently, “Can someone who didn’t finish primary school take it too?”

Shen Ku was silent for a long time.

He felt deeply ashamed of his high-and-mighty, self-assured attitude earlier.

He had judged a book by its cover and made assumptions about someone’s education.

Engineer Shen’s tan face flushed bright red, wishing a crack would open in the ground so he could crawl right in. How could he have taken it upon himself to preach past exam problems to Dou Manning without asking a single question first?

No wonder Dou Manning had never said a word while he was explaining the problems.

Hearing Shen Ku’s deafening silence, Dou Manning’s lips curled up slightly. Sprites were peculiar creatures; even the Heavenly King himself couldn’t coach a sprite in human academia.

Shen Ku realized he didn’t truly understand Dou Manning. They weren’t even close enough to be called friends.

Just as he was about to say something, his phone rang. He picked it up and answered with an “Understood.”

“Manning, work is suspended for today. You’ll still get your full day’s pay. You can head back.”

Dou Manning: “What happened?”

Shen Ku: “The Education Bureau called. They said the construction site is disturbing the rest of the college entrance exam students, so they ordered an immediate halt to all work.”

Today was June 5th, with the Gaokao starting the day after tomorrow. For these two days, the candidates were staying home rather than going to school, and parents from the residential compound across the road had complained about the site being too noisy and disrupting revision.

In truth, across an eight-lane avenue and two green belts, without pile drivers or heavy machinery running, the sounds reaching them were negligible. Nevertheless, Shen Ku was more than willing to make way for the exam.

He was even grateful for this phone call—it gave him an excuse to let Dou Manning rest early.

Otherwise, what position was he in to say anything?

He certainly couldn’t fire Dou Manning.

Dou Manning nodded. So that’s how it is. The Gaokao is very important.

Then he wouldn’t haul rebar and make noise for now!

Seeing Dou Manning coated in cement dust, Shen Ku couldn’t control the heartache showing in his eyes. “Do you want to come to my dorm and take a shower?”

Dou Manning: “No need, I have water at my place.”

Dou Manning took off the reflective vest and safety helmet. His face was weathered with dust, yet the hair protected under the helmet was still soft and clean. A stray lock fell from his temple, swaying gently in front of his earlobe.

It was enough to set one’s heart fluttering.

He handed them to Engineer Shen: “Please return these to the foreman for me. Thank you.”

Shen Ku watched Dou Manning walk away, tightening his grip on the safety helmet in his hands.

Taking advantage of getting off work early, Dou Manning had one urgent errand.

He needed to retrieve his phone from the repair shop, because the foreman said payments had to be made via bank card.

He had to check the incoming deposit alert on his account.

The shop was ten kilometers away. Dou Manning jogged the entire distance.

Because it had been left there for so many days, the owner had originally planned to gouge him a bit. But seeing Dou Manning’s disheveled state straight from the construction site and glancing at the five-year-old phone model—worth less than a hundred yuan in scrap—his heart softened. “Fifty.”

Dou Manning pulled a crumpled fifty-yuan bill from his pocket. “Thank you, boss.”

He inserted his SIM card, powered it on, and recovered his WeChat account. His contacts only had Auntie Guihua and a few elementary school kids he had met in Yaoling Village. Five years had passed; the elementary schoolers were high schoolers now, and he wondered how Auntie Guihua was doing.

If he contacted Auntie Guihua, she would definitely ask where he was, but Dou Manning was preparing to move.

Once he settled down, he would let Auntie Guihua know he had come down from the mountains.

That evening, Dou Manning used his phone to search for tips on running a shop, only to discover that five years later—the market for independent coffee shops had gotten even worse!

“‘Owner-curator’? What does that mean?” Dou Manning researched it for a while. A forty-yuan cup of coffee might really be too expensive; it required high-end interior decor to match the price tag.

His current savings were only enough to set up a street stall selling to university students cramming for final exams.

Dou Manning had an idea for his next business venture.

The next day.

Dou Manning prepared the coffee in advance as usual, waiting for Shen Ku to come by.

He sat on the lounge chair, leisurely reading Construction Engineering Regulations and Related Knowledge. This book had no formulas or foreign letters, consisting almost entirely of Chinese characters. He had nearly memorized it all.

“Hello, I’d like an Americano.”

A polite, pleasant voice sounded. Dou Manning snapped his head up—he had another customer.

The moment he saw the other person, Dou Manning froze. A sprite!

Dou Manning closed the book and stood up. Hearing the other person ask, “Did Auntie Guihua send you zongzi?”, he nodded repeatedly. It was a secret code; he caught it right away.

Xiang Zhen was an enthusiastic sunflower sprite, and the two easily found common ground.

The coffee sprite was delighted. Shen Ku rarely talked, but fellow sprites were wonderfully chatty.

Xiang Zhen had previously worked in customer service at a nut company, and because he did so well, he was hired by a bank through a special recruitment. Today he was here at the development project to perform a post-loan audit.

Xiang Zhen: “Manager Fan said the previous chief engineer of this development was arrested, so we need to conduct a thorough review today.”

Seeing how much responsibility had been placed on Xiang Zhen, Dou Manning shared some of his own observations: “I don’t know about before, but this batch of rebar and cement is of very high quality.”

Although he lacked formal education, he had been reading engineering books for a month and had picked up quite a bit. Combined with his casual chats with Master Zhang—who had worked on construction sites for twenty years and claimed he could tell the quality of rebar with a single touch—it proved reliable.

Dou Manning lowered his voice: “Though the plumbing in Building 7 doesn’t seem very good.”

Xiang Zhen hurriedly jotted down the crucial information. “You’re amazing.”

“I know someone who works in there,” Dou Manning added offhandedly. “He’s a very upright person. I think as long as he’s around, there shouldn’t be any other problems.”

Xiang Zhen: “Why do you say that?”

Dou Manning: “Because he never says anything bad about this development.”

Xiang Zhen thought for a moment and placed full trust in him: “I believe you.”

The power of sprites was simply overwhelming. Before even stepping onto the construction site, Xiang Zhen had already grasped most of its actual conditions.

Dou Manning glanced not far away and introduced him to Xiang Zhen: “Look, that’s the one I was talking about. He’s my only customer.”

From a distance, Shen Ku saw Dou Manning laughing and chatting animatedly with a blonde youth. The two looked like the closest friends in the world, leaning their heads together in secret conversation.

That kind of intimacy was something Dou Manning had never shown him.

A friend?

With a single glance, Shen Ku could tell that the clothes and shoes on Xiang Zhen were extraordinarily expensive; he clearly came from immense wealth. Connecting it with the SUV parked at the entrance of the construction site, he guessed the man was from Zhoufu Bank.

Dou Manning was dressed very nicely today as well, wearing a dark green shirt that brought out the vivid red of his lips and the fair tone of his skin. Paired with his lively expressions as he spoke and laughed, he looked just like an elf stepped out of the wilderness.

Two pristine, gorgeous youths standing shoulder to shoulder, shining like pearls and jade.

Shen Ku looked down at his cargo pants, splattered with gunk from a concrete mixer, and his dust-caked hands. Having spent so long on the site, he often forgot to mind his appearance.

He walked over to the coffee shack and said to Dou Manning, “One room-temperature Americano.”

Having noticed that Dou Manning prepared the coffee in advance, Shen Ku had taken to only ordering it at room temperature to spare him the worry of the ice melting.

Sure enough, Dou Manning pulled a ready-made cup from beneath the counter.

Shen Ku took it, meeting two pairs of wide, round eyes.

He parted his lips, then closed them again.

Looking so disheveled today, he shouldn’t impose himself and act familiar with Dou Manning in front of the man’s glamorous, high-class friend.

Feeling a dull stuffiness in his chest, Shen Ku frowned and took a sip of the coffee.

He turned and walked away, catching out of the corner of his eye the two of them huddling together again to whisper.

Shen Ku felt his back burning, his cargo pants heavy and sticky. Had he known Manning had a friend visiting, he would have changed into a suit before stepping out; then he could have smoothly joined the conversation and naturally asked about their relationship.

Were they gossiping about him?

Dou Manning: “That’s him.”

Xiang Zhen said to Dou Manning: “He looks like a very honest worker.”

Dou Manning’s eyes curved into crescents: “Workers have a hard time. This development will turn out very well.”

Since Xiang Zhen had business to attend to, the two exchanged WeChat contacts, agreeing to chat more in the evening.

Shen Ku carried a heavy heart all afternoon, constantly turning things over in his mind.

The scene at noon had dealt him a head-on blow.

That suit-wearing blonde youth, about the same height as Manning, hadn’t even swapped out his handcrafted leather shoes worth hundreds of thousands when coming to a construction site, shoes that would be ruined after an afternoon’s walk.

Living through the exact same youth, Dou Manning was gritting his teeth on a construction site hauling cement and rebar, eating communal canteen food, and sleeping in an iron container.

Why? He had the power to let Manning live the life of a pampered young master too.

Just because he had no formal standing?

Did one truly need a formal standing? Couldn’t he simply act on impulse without rhyme or reason, doing as he pleased with brazen resolve?

Having fully reflected on this, Shen Ku called his older brother: “Brother, I want that 300-square-meter downtown commercial property you just bought.”

Elder Brother Shen: “What do you want it for? You’re going into business?”

Shen Ku: “Opening a coffee shop.”

Elder Brother Shen: “Ridiculous. Are you cut out for business?”

It sounded like a moment of hot-headed recklessness that would lose millions a year.

Shen Ku: “I don’t care.”

Elder Brother Shen: “…Who are you opening it for? Tell the truth, are you dating someone?”

Only someone blinded by love would act like this. He had just witnessed this exact symptom in the famous Zhou Sicheng.

“Not yet.”

Shen Ku hung up the phone and strode over to Dou Manning’s coffee shack with long strides, wanting to tell him that he had the means to invest in a downtown coffee shop for him.

He would even hire several servers; Dou Manning would only need to sit behind the counter and read books.

“Do you want to open a coffee shop downtown?”

Dou Manning shook his head. He had just discussed such blind store openings with Xiang Zhen: “You’d lose everything down to the shirt on your back. Only a fool would do that.”

Shen Ku: “…”

He paused. Before Dou Manning could look at him like he was looking at a fool, he blurted out: “There’s a torrential rainstorm tonight. Do you want to stay in my dorm?”

Dou Manning had seen the weather forecast as well. The iron shacks inside the construction site had lightning protection installed, making them much safer than his standalone cabin. Besides, if it thundered, sleeping with a friend around meant he wouldn’t be afraid.

“Then sorry to trouble you.”

Shen Ku stood frozen in disbelief. He agreed? Just like that? They’re going to sleep in the same room tonight?

“No trouble at all. It’s a bunk bed. Go pack your things; I’ll wait for you.”

Dou Manning grabbed a large tote bag, stuffing in a set of pajamas, a pair of slippers, and his toiletries. He tossed his phone in as well: “All set.”

Shen Ku carried the bag while Dou Manning locked up the coffee shack and followed Shen Ku into the site’s office quarters.

Shen Ku had a private rest room equipped with basic bathroom facilities. He put fresh sheets on the lower bunk. As he made the bed, he felt hopelessly clumsy, unable to smooth out the wrinkles no matter how hard he tried, looking as though he had Parkinson’s.

Sharing a room, he worried his sweat odor would smell unpleasant, his face flushing crimson as he asked, “Do you mind if I shower first?”

Dou Manning: “You go ahead.”

He sat on the bed Shen Ku had made. It was soft and warm, reminding him of the little room at Auntie Guihua’s house, and the idea of finding a proper rental sprouted in his mind. Dou Manning pulled out his phone to message Xiang Zhen: “Do you think I should rent an apartment?”

Xiang Zhen: “What a coincidence; my husband has an empty house. I can rent it to you, 200 a month.”

Dou Manning: “You have a husband?”

The sunflower sprite has a husband?

Xiang Zhen unreservedly shared the perks of having a husband.

A husband could cook, drive him to and from work, go on weekend dates together, share an apartment to save on rent…

In short, the benefits were endless.

What’s more, Xiang Zhen had only spent thirty thousand yuan to find his husband, and his husband had even brought a brand-new BYD as a dowry.

It sounded like finding a husband was quite simple.

Dou Manning blinked. Could he do that too?