I bought a prison in the United States.

Lin Ge rubbed his eyes, repeatedly confirming that this was not a hallucination. There were indeed two black characters floating above Mrs. Martha's head, and they were in Chinese.

What does "sorrow" mean?

"Mrs. Martha, are you feeling troubled?"

While staring at those two words, Lin Ge asked casually.

"Sorrow? When am I not sorrowful!"

Mrs. Martha couldn't help but complain after hearing Ringo's words:

"I am raising three children on my own now. The youngest is only six years old, and the eldest is also a handful. I can only afford to send one of them to school."

"I need a job, and this prison is the only place willing to hire me."

Lin Ge asked curiously:

"Only prisons would hire you?"

"Because nobody wants to come."

Mrs. Martha gave a bitter smile:

"The county officials said, 'Mrs. Martha, would you be willing to cook in prison?'"

I said, "How much are you willing to pay me?"

"They said, 'It's the federal minimum wage, and there are no benefits.'"

"So I came, after all, I had debts and loans on my back, and if I didn't come, the children would have nowhere to live."

Seeing that Mrs. Martha's worry was deepening, Ringo asked:

Do you hate this job?

Mrs. Martha stopped what she was doing and turned to look at him.

Her eyes were filled with complex emotions, as if a thousand words were stuck in her throat, and in the end, only one sentence could be squeezed out:

"What I hate is that this job is the only thing that allows me to support my children."

She turned back to continue cutting the bread, and Lin Ge's attention shifted elsewhere. A voice popped into his head:

[Gained: 10% Sorrow]

At the same time, he noticed that the two words above Mrs. Martha's head had faded a bit, and he had some subtle guesses in his mind.

"Mrs. Martha, you will get help."

Lin Ge stood up and said.

……

At 6:30 a.m., the prison guards arrived at their posts one after another.

The changing room is at the end of the corridor on the first floor, a room of about twenty square meters.

Two rows of hooks were nailed to the wall, and several pairs of mud-covered boots were placed on the ground.

The air was filled with the smells of coffee, tobacco, and cheap aftershave.

When Ringo pushed the door open, Wade was tying his shoelaces.

He looked up at Lingo, but didn't say anything, and continued tying his shoelaces.

Coffey stood in front of the mirror, combing his thick brown hair with his hands, humming a country song that Ringo had never heard before.

Tommy sat on a bench with a medical textbook open in front of him.

Jackson wasn't there; it seems he'd already gone to inspect the cells.

"Good morning."

Lin Ge greeted them and glanced at the tops of the three people's heads, but he didn't see any text. It seemed that it would only appear under certain circumstances.

Kofi stopped humming, turned around and looked at him with an expression that said, "This guy is interesting."

"Boss, you didn't go home last night?"

"no."

Tommy asked:

"So where did you sleep?"

"Office chairs."

Kofi let out a laugh:

"You're better than the last boss. That guy came for ten minutes on his first day and left, telling us the place was hopeless, even though we thought so too."

"What's his name?" Lin Ge asked.

"I forgot."

Coffey shrugged. "It doesn't matter, he didn't accomplish anything anyway."

Lingo sat down on the bench, facing the three people.

Wade had already tied his shoelaces, but showed no sign of leaving.

He leaned against the wall, arms crossed, looking at Lingo with an ambiguous expression:

"Boss, is there anything else?"

"I want your evaluations."

Ringo got straight to the point:

"I need to know which prisoners are obedient, which are disobedient, which can work, and which only cause trouble."

"Also, the prison guards' evaluations: who's doing a good job, who's slacking off, and who's stealing."

The expressions of the three people became somewhat serious.

Coffey's smile vanished, and even Tommy closed his textbook.

Wade's eyes sharpened because Ringo had asked a very crucial question.

At that moment, Lin Ge vaguely saw words appear above their heads, very faintly, that read: [Disgust]

He became increasingly certain of his suspicions that he possessed some ability to see into the inner emotions and thoughts of others, and perhaps more than just that.

Kofi slowly walked up to Ringo, his voice slightly low:

"Boss, you're new here, so there are some rules you might not know."

"What other rules are there here?"

The word Lin Ge heard most these past two days was repeated by both prisoners and outsiders.

"Prison guards don't snitch; it's standard procedure."

Tommy answered Ringo's question.

"If you start letting the guards report on each other, the team will fall apart; nobody likes being watched."

Lin Ge had anticipated this reaction.

He thought about this last night: how to obtain information without offending anyone.

Asking the prison guards directly who is stealing won't work, because that would cross their professional line.

Lin Ge had no choice but to explain:

"I don't want you to expose each other's shortcomings; I just want you to help me find out the truth about this prison."

"I'm new here, I can't see what you're seeing."

"You've been working here for so long, you should know where the leaks are, where the drafts are, and where people are being let in, right?"

Lin Ge saw the words above their heads disappear, and at the same time he heard the voice in his mind:

[Gain: 5% Dislike]

Sure enough, he could extract some people's emotions and thoughts.

The three looked at each other in silence for a moment before Wade spoke:

"On the second floor of Block D, in cell number three, there's a crack in the weld of the window bars."

"If the prisoner wants to escape, that's the most likely point of entry."

Lin Ge remembered this information.

"Is there anything else?"

Wade continued:

"The belt on the dryer in the laundry room needs to be replaced."

"It's been making strange noises for two weeks now. If we don't change it, it'll stop working one day, and then no one in the prison will be able to wash their clothes."

"Are you a repairman?" Ringo asked.

"I'm a prison guard and the boss, but here, everyone has to know something else, because there are no maintenance workers, and if you don't find a way to be self-sufficient, you'll starve."

Kofi sighed and spoke up:

"The cafeteria's freezer has been leaking Freon, and Mrs. Martha has reported it to the county government for months but no one has paid any attention to her."

"If the freezer breaks down completely, everything inside the refrigerator will be ruined."

"What else?"

Lingo looked at Tommy, who hesitated for a moment, but couldn't help but say:

"Leaving aside the lack of doctors, as I've mentioned many times, there's a severe shortage of medical supplies in prisons!"

"Our first aid kit hasn't been replenished for three months. We've run out of bandages, and we're almost out of disinfectant alcohol."

"If someone is seriously injured, all I can do is put a band-aid on them."

Lin Ge memorized all this information and said:

"Great. This afternoon, I will give each of you a new shift schedule and job description, and your salaries will also be increased."

"Starting tomorrow, this prison will operate differently. If anyone wants to resign, please let me know two weeks in advance."

"I won't stop anyone, but if you stay, I want you to know that I won't let you work for nothing."

After saying that, he left the locker room, leaving the three of them looking at each other in bewilderment.

"This boss seems to be a bit different."

"I hope he keeps his word..."