Major Heavy Industry: Starting with a Fake Marriage

Team Leader Zhao took the materials and flipped through them. He didn't flip through them quickly, taking several seconds to look at each page. Sometimes he would stop, point at a spot with his index finger, and his lips would move slightly, as if he were reading silently. When he came to the equipment drawings, he looked at them for a while longer. The drawings were cross-sectional views of the coating equipment, with densely packed dimensions. He didn't quite understand them, but he didn't ask and continued flipping through.

The woman next to me was scribbling something quickly in her notebook, the pen scratching like autumn leaves being blown around by the wind. She wrote very fast, her handwriting was messy, but after finishing each line she would pause for a second, read it over to make sure she hadn't missed anything, and then move on to the next line.

"The equipment wasn't recorded in the fixed assets book?"

"No. It was our oversight. But the equipment does belong to our center, not mine personally. The debt can be settled, as long as the equipment is there." Jiang Cheng looked him in the eyes without flinching. He knew that the most important thing at this moment was not to feel guilty, because if he did, he would lose everything.

Team Leader Zhao's finger paused on the document for a moment, the position between his index and middle fingers being the section for equipment cost accounting. The figure was estimated by Jiang Cheng himself, and there were no invoices.

"Second, the project's income and expenditure. What was the total funding? How much did you personally receive?"

Jiang Cheng hadn't expected to be asked this question. He fell silent, as if he were trying to bring back an answer from a very far place, and had even tripped and fallen along the way.

"There was no funding. The project was a task directly assigned by the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, not a commercial contract. All material costs, equipment costs, and travel expenses were borne by the research institute. I personally did not handle any funds, nor did I receive a single penny."

"Didn't take a single penny?"

"I didn't take a single penny. The research institute arranged all my food, lodging, and transportation. They issued all the invoices; I didn't even have to fill out any reimbursement forms."

Team Leader Zhao removed his hand from the documents and placed it on the table. His palm rested flat on the surface, fingers spread, as if he were feeling the temperature of the table. The silence in the meeting room was palpable.

The woman next to him stopped writing, the nib hovering less than a centimeter above the paper for two seconds before gently putting it down. She looked up at Jiang Cheng briefly.

But Jiang Cheng noticed that her gaze was different from when she looked at others—it wasn't scrutiny, but a kind of curiosity, as if she were looking at something she had never seen before.

Han Zhiguo added from the side, "Team Leader Zhao, Director Li from the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense can testify. Director Li said that if needed, he can come to Shenyang to explain the situation in person. He's not just being polite; he really will come. He never goes back on his word."

Team Leader Zhao didn't respond. He flipped to the last page of the document, glanced at it, closed it, took off his glasses, and placed them on the table with the temples facing upwards.

"We will take these materials for verification. Comrade Jiang Cheng, you are suspended from work until the results are available. You are not allowed to leave Shenyang. You need to be available at any time."

Jiang Cheng nodded. He didn't ask "how long," because it would be pointless. The standard answer to this kind of question is always "wait for notification," and if you wait too long, some people forget what they're waiting for and just keep waiting.

Team Leader Zhao stood up, pushing his chair back with another jarring creak. The other two men also stood up, their movements almost synchronized, as if rehearsed. He walked to the door, stopped, and turned around. The hem of his wool coat swayed slightly as he turned.

"Comrade Jiang Cheng, I have one last question for you. Just answer yes or no. No need to explain, because I can't take it with me even if I do."

Jiang Cheng looked at him.

Do you think you did something wrong?

The air in the conference room suddenly felt heavy. Sun Deming stood in the doorway, his knuckles white as he gripped a broom, the paint on the handle damp from his gripping. Han Zhiguo sat in his chair, leaning slightly forward as if he were about to spring off, then sat back down, rubbing his palms together on his knees.

Jiang Cheng looked into Team Leader Zhao's eyes. Those eyes were hidden behind glasses, the lenses reflecting the white light of the fluorescent lamp, obscuring their true nature, but their expression was one of waiting. He was waiting, not just a perfunctory wait, but genuinely waiting for an answer.

The one waiting isn't in a hurry; it's the one being waited for who knows the weight of time.

"I made a mistake in the procedure. But I did nothing wrong. The lifespan of the turbine blades was increased from 800 hours to 1200 hours, which means the engines in the military can be used for several more years. I did nothing wrong in this regard."

Team Leader Zhao twitched his chin and looked at him for a few seconds. For those few seconds, the meeting room was completely silent; even breathing seemed to have been sucked away. Then he turned and left. His leather shoes clattered on the concrete floor, the sound fading into the distance, disappearing as he turned the corner into the corridor. After his footsteps faded, the corridor was completely silent; even the sound of running water from the heating pipes stopped, as if it too were listening.

Sun Deming threw the broom on the ground. It bounced once, spun twice, and then leaned against the corner of the wall, broomhead up. "Brother Jiang, what right do they have to stop you from working? Based on a nameless letter? If whatever the letter says is true, then what's the point of having people?"

Han Zhiguo glared at him. "Shut up. If you say another word, you don't need to come to work tomorrow."

Jiang Cheng picked up the folder on the table, inspected the cover, and noticed that the corners were worn, revealing the cardboard inside, which was somewhat yellowed. He fastened the folder and handed it to Han Zhiguo. "Director Han, please take good care of things at the center. Let Sun Deming handle the training program; he's been teaching for a month and can lead a group independently now. Old Zhao will accompany him to help him keep things running smoothly. Old Zhao is meticulous, while Jiang Cheng is careless; the two of them work well together."

Han Zhiguo took the folder but didn't open it. "Don't worry. The investigation team won't find anything; it's just a formality. That's their procedure. They can't explain themselves without investigating, and if they find nothing, it's over. It's just that it's hard to say how long this formality will take."

Jiang Cheng didn't reply. He walked to the window and opened it. A cold wind rushed in, making the papers on the table rustle. A piece of white paper was blown up, tumbled a few times in the air, fell to the ground, and slid to the corner of the wall before stopping.

He took out a cigarette, put it in his mouth, but didn't light it. He just held it there, watching the snow outside the window. The snow was still falling, fine and dense, each flake small, but there was so much of it, so dense, that it blurred the distant factory buildings, as if through a veil. His lips moistened the cigarette holder, giving it a faint bitter taste—the bitterness of tobacco, and also the bitterness of waiting.

That evening, Jiang Cheng went to the hospital to see Huang Deqing.

The ward was small, with six beds, but only two people were staying there. The old man in the bed opposite was snoring loudly, one snort after another, like pulling a dull saw from one end to the other and back again, tirelessly. Huang Deqing lay in the bed by the window, the glass of which was covered with frost flowers, the patterns of which resembled the veins of a leaf, growing from the edge of the glass towards the center, like a white tree. The frost flowers blurred the streetlights outside, turning them into hazy, orange-yellow, fuzzy dots, like distant lanterns.