My wife is in my arms

Chapter 743 Until the End of the World
The music that seemed to travel through time, coming through the headphones, drowned out the noise from the machines.

The night had long since deepened, but for many ordinary people, this was the most arduous time of their day.

Working day and night.

This has resulted in Wang Xiaoming's body already being in a sub-healthy state.

But he had no choice. He didn't have a high level of education or any outstanding family background. If he wanted to survive in this society, he could only find a job that required twelve hours a day and had to be reversed every two weeks.

now.

It was already 11:45.

Although night shifts are tough, the management system is relatively relaxed at night, and the inspections that often appear in various workshops during the day will not occur.

As the workshop foreman approached 11 o'clock, seeing that there was nothing to do in the workshop, he secretly went to find a place to sleep. Every time the foreman left, he would take advantage of the gaps in the normal operation of the machines to hide behind the machines and put on his headphones.

Ordinary people's lives are not about leisurely pursuits or romance; they only have the truest and most basic survival rule: "If you don't do it, someone else will."

Listening to the dreamy instrumental music coming through his headphones, his mind and body, which had been exhausted from working the night shift, seemed to relax. He really liked the instrumental music composed by Zhang You.

The song I'm listening to now, "Thoughts Across Time," is one of them, along with "Windy Hill," "Song of Remembrance," and "The Street Where the Wind Dwells."

Every time he listens to this music, besides feeling a sense of peace, he feels like a human being. People say the night is the world of ghosts, and that people should rest at night, so what are they?!

It should be a new type of creature that is neither human nor ghost.

Noticing the two people next to him arguing about who should watch one more machine and who should watch one less, Wang Xiaoming ignored them. Small people have their own fate. This seemingly small matter was actually a big deal to them.

Watching one more machine means someone has to walk over 10,000 more steps tonight, or carry an extra seven or eight pounds of weight from time to time. It's not a big deal, but it can be quite exhausting at the end of the night.

Fortunately, he wasn't working with the two tonight, but instead overseeing the machines they would use for the next process. He could clearly sense that everyone in the workshop carried a certain amount of "aggressiveness."

This is also a very normal thing.

The pressures of life.

Working with the day and night reversed.

To remain calm under such circumstances is the mark of a saint. Even a saint who repeats the same work every day like a machine would probably become irritable.

A good temper requires a good life to cultivate, but these kinds of people... well, let's just say they haven't done anything heinous and they've already contributed to society's tax revenue, which is already quite good.

Seeing the machine door open, Wang Xiaoming stepped forward, first removing the completed board, then reinstalling it, inputting the program, and clicking start. He listened to instrumental music while working on the next machine that was opened.

This is his daily work, which is not complicated. To put it bluntly, anyone with a brain could do it. But that's why the salary is not high. After deducting various expenses, he only gets about 4,700 or 4,800 yuan a month. Even for such a job, the company still rejects some of the people who come for interviews.

The main problem is that it's getting harder and harder to find work.

Just like the workshop next door, where the work that originally required four people can now be done by only one person after a machine is introduced, and that one person also has to operate the other machines.

Besides the mechanization of the factory, the sluggish real estate industry in recent years has forced people of his age who used to work on construction sites to also work in factories. This has led to extreme competition.

The company realized this too. "If you don't do it, someone else will," they figured. So they increased the machine speed and set high daily output targets. Team leaders who used to sneak off to sleep after 10 PM would appear by 3 AM at the latest. If the output was good, they could continue sleeping; if it was significantly below target, they would stay in the workshop to oversee production. After removing another board from the machine, Wang Xiaoming checked the time and realized it was already midnight. He said goodbye to another colleague who was also looking at the same machine model and went to eat.

The machines can't stop even when people stop, so they take turns eating, with each meal lasting forty-five minutes. After leaving the workshop, Wang Xiaoming didn't go to eat. Instead, he went downstairs, bought a bottle of carbonated drink, and returned to the cabinet where he kept his shoes. He found a corner and leaned against it.

It wasn't that he was stingy with the money for dinner; it was mainly because the dinner was just leftovers from lunch, with soup and water, which didn't look appetizing at all.

There are many people like him.

However, compared to the men who just bought a bottle of drink to tide them over, the women were much more sophisticated. They didn't eat dinner at night, but instead brought fruit, spicy snacks, and cookies.

The instrumental music that had been playing without him taking off his headphones had been replaced with "Song of Remembrance" composed by Zhang You. As the poignant melody began, Wang Xiaoming couldn't help but think of his father.

He is in his early thirties.

Not married yet.

It's not that he didn't want to get married... He almost got married last year, but in the end, he didn't. It was because his girlfriend suddenly asked for an extra 100,000 yuan in dowry on the wedding day. 100,000 yuan doesn't seem like much, but he simply couldn't afford it. He had already spent all his savings accumulated over the years on this wedding.

I originally thought that after getting married, if the two of us worked hard together, things would get better.

But reality dealt him a heavy blow.

If his father were still alive, perhaps taking out 100,000 yuan wouldn't have been difficult, but his father left when he was young, and his mother raised him alone, exhausting all her strength.

Seeing his mother's immense distress at not being able to come up with 100,000 yuan, he ultimately disregarded her objections and took the initiative to cancel the ongoing marriage.

Life doesn't always follow the beautiful path people imagine, but days still go by. Actually, what does it matter whether he gets married or not? There are several people in the workshop who are older than him and they are not married.

Anyway, there's no throne to inherit.

Why should one suffering person drag another innocent suffering person down just to reproduce?

With these thoughts in mind, Wang Xiaoming unscrewed the bottle of beverage and took a sip. It wasn't that he liked drinking carbonated drinks, but anyone who has worked the night shift knows that after a certain period of time, your mouth will taste bitter, and at that time you'll want to drink something sweet to relieve the bitterness.

He wasn't a fan of celebrities, but Zhang You was an exception.

The main reason is that his instrumental music has always been free, but... it doesn't bring him any income, so he doesn't create one song after another like he does with other songs.

He took out his phone and opened the iMusic app.

People who work the night shift have two main hobbies: listening to audiobooks or listening to music.

He is primarily interested in music. Whenever he hears good music, his heart rises and falls with the music, and a series of associations follow... If his father were still alive, and he had studied harder when he was young, even if his talent was limited and he couldn't get into a prestigious university, he could only get a junior college diploma.

Perhaps I would be on a different life path now.

That kind of life might not be very good either, but it would certainly be much better than what he is experiencing now.

　I bet some people will say this is just filler; writing a satisfactory answer isn't easy.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)