Major Heavy Industry: Starting with a Fake Marriage

The old man called out, "Roasted sweet potatoes!" his voice hoarse, trailing off. The aroma of sweet potatoes mingled with the scent of fallen leaves, creating an indescribable sense of comfort. Jiang Cheng asked Zheng Yanxi if she wanted some, but she shook her head. He asked again, and she shook her head again.

He didn't buy it.

"Jiang Cheng, what if we don't pass the exam?"

"If you don't pass, try again next year."

What if you still don't pass the exam next year?

Jiang Cheng thought for a moment. "Then you haven't failed the exam, you just haven't passed it yet."

She glanced at him, her lips curving slightly, but she didn't smile. She lowered her head, looking at the tips of her shoes.

The shoes were old white sneakers with a shallow tear on the upper, sewn up with white thread, the stitches crooked and uneven. She had sewn it herself.

Jiang Cheng glanced down at it but didn't say anything.

When Zheng Yanxi reached her front door, she stopped and looked up at the fourth-floor window. The light was on, the curtains were half-drawn, and she could see her mother's shadow moving around inside. She stood there for a few seconds, then went upstairs.

When they got home, Zheng's mother had already prepared dinner. Jiang Yuan sat on a small chair, stirring the rice in his bowl with a spoon, splattering it everywhere—on the table, the floor, and even his bib. Seeing Jiang Cheng come in, he threw down the spoon, raised both hands, and tried to hug him. The spoon bounced on the table and fell to the floor with a crisp clinking sound.

Jiang Yuan looked down at the spoon, then looked up at Jiang Cheng, making "ah ah" noises.

"Dad—" His voice was clearer than before, and he said "Dad" without any pause. He had practiced those two words for a month and finally mastered them.

Jiang Cheng picked him up, and the little guy came over and kissed him on the cheek, covering his face with saliva. The saliva was sticky and tasted like rice cereal.

Jiang Cheng wiped his face with his sleeve. The little guy thought he was playing with him, so he leaned in and kissed him again, this time on the nose. Jiang Cheng smiled, and Jiang Yuan smiled too, revealing two little teeth.

When Zheng's mother came out of the kitchen with the dishes and saw this scene, she smiled. "When you weren't here, he pointed at your picture and called out 'Dad' every day. He did it for a month, and he could say it very clearly. The first thing he did when he woke up in the morning was to point at the picture and call out 'Dad,' and he would call out a few times before going to bed at night. Sometimes he would wake up in the middle of the night and call out a few times, and then go back to sleep."

Jiang Cheng, holding Jiang Yuan, sat down at the dining table. Zheng Yanxi went to the kitchen to help serve the dishes. Steam rose from the stove, and the sound of the spatula hitting the iron pot rang crisply, like a melody without sheet music. Jiang Cheng heard Zheng's mother say in the kitchen, "This dish is too salty." Zheng Yanxi said, "I tasted it, it's just right." Zheng's mother said, "You tasted the dish, try the soup too."

After dinner, Jiang Cheng helped Zheng Yanxi pack her luggage. She was going back to work at the city hospital the next day, and he was going back to Beijing in a few days. Their luggage was packed together: a canvas bag and an old leather suitcase. The canvas bag contained a change of clothes and medical books, while the old suitcase contained notebooks and blueprints. There were several notebooks, some new, some old. The older ones had frayed edges, yellowed pages, and were densely covered with writing. The oldest one was the one he used when he first started working at the factory; the words on the cover were illegible, but he remembered every single word inside.

"When are you leaving?" she asked.

"Monday. The people from the Automation Institute arrive on Monday, and I have to be there."

She nodded and didn't ask any more questions. She took the medical book out of her canvas bag, flipped through it, and put it back. The page she had turned to was "Cardiovascular System," and the corner of the book was folded—a mark she had made. She read a few lines, closed the book, and stuffed it into her bag.

That night, after Jiang Yuan fell asleep, Jiang Cheng sat at his desk and continued writing the equipment modification plan. The light from the desk lamp shone brightly on the paper. He wrote a few lines, paused, then wrote a few more. Outside the window, insects chirped intermittently, like someone playing a tuneless erhu in the distance—creaking and groaning, not harsh, but persistent. He stopped listening for a while, unable to identify what kind of insect it was.

Zheng Yanxi sat down next to him and opened a book on internal medicine. The pages were old, the edges curled up, and there were annotations in some places written in pencil, the handwriting small, dense, and crammed together. Her fingers lightly traced the pages, reading slowly and carefully, line by line. When she reached the section on "heart failure," she paused, then flipped back to read it again.

"Yanxi".

"Um?"

When will the results be released?

"Next month. They said November 15th. I called the admissions office, and they said I could check after the 15th, either by phone or by letter."

Jiang Cheng nodded, then lowered his head and continued writing.

The two sat under the lamp for nearly two hours without speaking. The clock on the wall clicked softly, the second hand clicking clearly with each tick. When the hour hand pointed to ten, Zheng Yanxi closed her book and stood up.

"I'm going to sleep now. You should go to bed early too."

"Um."

She went into the bedroom and closed the door. Jiang Cheng heard her say something to Jiang Yuan, but her voice was very soft and he couldn't hear it clearly. Then he heard the sound of the blanket being pulled back, followed by the sound of the faucet dripping—she had forgotten to turn it off and had gone back to turn it off.

Then there was silence.

Jiang Cheng continued writing until eleven o'clock, then put down his pen and rubbed his eyes. His eyes were a little sore, so he pressed his fingers against his temples, which helped. He stood up, walked to the window, and opened it.

A cool night breeze swept in, carrying the scent of earth and a faint smell of sulfur from the distant chemical plant. A few lights still shone in the factory grounds, and the faint hum of machinery drifted in, as if the factory had turned over in its sleep. He stood there for a while, then closed the window.

He went into the bedroom. Zheng Yanxi was already asleep, lying on her side with her face towards the crib. Her hair was spread out on the pillow, a strand hanging down to the edge of the bed like a piece of black silk. Jiang Yuan was also asleep in the crib, the blanket kicked up to his feet, revealing two little feet with five toes spread out like five small pebbles. He pulled the blanket up to cover the little one's feet, then lay down.

The bed was hard, with a thin mattress on the wooden planks. The bed creaked as he lay down. Zheng Yanxi stirred, but didn't wake up.

He closed his eyes, his mind still preoccupied with the equipment modification. The robotic arm's trajectory, the control system's precision, the matching of process parameters—everything required time, and time was what he lacked most. He rolled over, facing the wall. The moonlight on the wall was faint, like a layer of frost, shining on the surface and making the tiny cracks even clearer. The spiderweb in the corner shimmered silver in the moonlight, and a small spider lay motionless in the center of the web.

He fell asleep after an unknown amount of time.