Chapter 3

Liu Jin had saved Song Yao.

The villagers had plenty to say.

“That girl’s impressive. A beauty saving a hero!”

“He’s lucky. Without her, he’d be dead.”

Bigmouth Zhao visited again.

Not to matchmake. To gossip.

“Xu Heng, did you hear? When that Song boy woke and saw Liu Jin, he went red immediately!”

“Mm.”

“Isn’t that fate?”

“Yes.”

“Why aren’t you reacting? Your Uncle Zhao was going to introduce him to you.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

She pursed her lips. “Such a cold girl.”

After she left, I split the rest of the courtyard’s wood.

Then I began considering what mattered.

It was 1974. I had no money, but fifty years of knowledge in my head.

In my first life, I’d spent my working days inside a machinery factory. After the accident, nothing remained.

I wouldn’t follow that road again.

I would make another.

First, money.

Money gave a person the means to stand firm.

The right to silence those who looked down on her.

**Part 3**

In the autumn of 1974, I went to the county town.

Not to the machinery factory.

That wretched place had gone bankrupt in 1986 in my first life. Joining it would be putting a noose around my own neck.

I sought out the bicycle-repair shop beside the county supply and marketing cooperative.

Its owner, Old Mrs. Chen, was over sixty. She’d repaired bicycles all her life and was exceptionally skilled, but she had no children and was growing too frail to continue.

I’d heard about the shop before.

After she died, the grocer next door took the premises. Later, redevelopment brought a large compensation payment.

I wasn’t after compensation.

I wanted her craft.

In the late seventies, a bicycle was a major possession. Owning a Forever or Phoenix was as impressive as owning a Mercedes later.

Bicycle repair could feed me for ten years.

After that, I had other plans.

When I arrived, she was struggling with a bolt on an old twenty-eight-inch roadster. Her reading glasses had slipped to her nose. The bolt wouldn’t turn, and her hands shook.

“Auntie, need a hand?”

She looked up. “Who are you?”

“Xu Heng. I’ve come from the village. I’d like to learn bicycle repair from you.”

“Repair bicycles?”

She inspected me.

“Show me your hands.”

I held them out. She felt my fingers and palms.

“Not bad. They aren’t clumsy.”

She pushed the wrench into my hand.

“Undo that bolt.”

I took it, applied force, and the bolt came free with a crack.

Her eyebrows twitched.

“Strong enough too. Five yuan a month. Meals included, lodging isn’t. Interested?”

“Yes.”

That was how I took root in her shop.

I repaired bicycles by day. At night, I obtained permission to sleep in the cooperative’s rear storeroom. A mat on the floor made my bed.

Master Chen had a sharp tongue, but held nothing back in teaching.

Once she discovered how quickly I learned, she occasionally said more.

“Xu Heng, that head of yours doesn’t belong to an ordinary laborer. Why didn’t you stay in school?”

“I did. My family couldn’t afford more.”

True. I’d left after junior middle school.

“A pity,” she sighed.

I said nothing.

Education offered one road. Without it, there were others.

Last time, mine had narrowed to a dead end.

This time, I’d cut myself a broad one.

The days passed quickly.

Before winter, I knew the repair work inside out. Master Chen began letting me serve customers alone.

One day, a middle-aged woman in a Lenin-style jacket wheeled in a twenty-eight-inch roadster.

The front tire was flat, and the chain had come off.

“Can you fix it, young woman?”

“Yes. Please sit for a moment.”

I crouched, patched the inner tube, and replaced the chain. Ten minutes.

She glanced at me.

“Quick hands.”

“If they weren’t, I’d starve in this trade.”

She smiled.

“What’s your name?”

“Xu Heng.”

“Fang Zhiguo. I’m deputy director of the county machinery factory.”

My hands paused.

The county machinery factory.

In my first life, she’d indeed been deputy director, then director.

In 1982, she’d taken over its operation under a contracting reform and made her first fortune. In the nineties, she ventured into business, joining the area’s earliest ten-thousand-yuan households. Eventually, she was worth tens of millions.

A capable woman.

We’d had no dealings before. I’d been a bottom-rung machine operator.

This life would be different.