Chapter 608 - 3: Resignation
At an age when he could eat a lot, and after being hungry for a whole day and night, Chen Zhou couldn’t stop eating.
The barbecue stall owner served only him and struggled to keep up with the pace at which Chen Zhou was eating.
As his stomach got fuller and the hunger eased, Chen Zhou finally slowed down his eating, and it didn’t look as terrifying.
After eating about seventy percent full, Chen Zhou remembered his phone was low on battery. Afraid he wouldn’t be able to pay later, he promptly stopped eating, took out his phone to get ready to pay.
By this time, the lady selling cold noodles and the man selling hand-held flatbread had packed up their stalls. Seeing things hadn’t turned bad, and Chen Zhou didn’t seem like a suddenly uncontrollable lunatic, they felt much more at ease and were about to leave.
After eating someone’s food, even if it’s cold or leftover, you shouldn’t skip paying.
Even though Chen Zhou seemed thick-skinned when he called the stall owner earlier, he was just desperately hungry to have resorted to such a tactic. Even if he were a billionaire now, or just an ordinary cement factory worker, he wouldn’t be greedy for such small benefits.
The most crucial thing is —
Thinking of the real gold, silver, and gemstone crafts he brought back, Chen Zhou felt particularly confident.
"We’re not short of money!"
Seeing the man and the lady get off the vehicle, Chen Zhou quickly took out his phone and waved it around.
"Boss, where’s the QR code? I’ll scan it and pay you."
The two had originally not planned to take money from Chen Zhou, but seeing this young man insist on paying, with a stance of not letting them leave without taking the money, they reluctantly took out the QR code.
Upon scanning the code, Chen Zhou’s slow operation on his phone made them doubt his intelligence level —
Are there young people in the 21st century who don’t know how to use a phone? Why does it take so long to scan a code?
Thankfully, to make consumption convenient, the steps for QR code payment are much simpler than hailing a ride, and Chen Zhou eventually managed to pay the stall owner.
...
Leaving the park entrance, with his stomach full, Chen Zhou stuffed his phone back into his pocket and stood by the roadside, feeling a bit lost.
His 28 years of island life had abruptly ended, and modern society felt both familiar and foreign to him.
He certainly wouldn’t continue working at the cement factory. Even if he needed to make money, he basically lost his ability to work.
Those machines seemed like products from another world to him now. Digging out the knowledge he once learned from memory was both laborious and troublesome.
Furthermore, after returning, his physical condition was a bit of a problem, which would certainly affect his use of tools.
From any perspective, leaving the cement factory was a good choice.
As for what to do after resigning, Chen Zhou didn’t have a definite plan —
He ate and lived at the factory, usually had no expenses, and currently had over thirty thousand yuan in his account, enough to live on for a while.
Without making large expenditures, there was no rush to liquidate those gold and silver. He only needed to make sure he withdrew all the precious metals within the time limit.
At the early stages of the challenge, he thought about numerous ways to spend money, methods of consumption, had many things he wanted to buy, and places he wanted to visit.
By now, those desires had faded, and he suddenly felt lonelier than when he was on the island.
...
Standing dumbly under the streetlamp, he stared at his shadow for a long time, until there were almost no pedestrians on the street, a thought finally emerged in Chen Zhou’s mind —
Go home and take a look.
Having not seen his parents for a full 28 years, even merging the memories in his body, his impression of his relatives and friends was very vague.
Let alone those he didn’t often interact with, even for his closest family like his father and mother, it was particularly difficult to outline their appearances in his mind.
But Chen Zhou did remember his warm childhood and his grandma’s small yard, which was one of the motivations that kept him going on the island.
He thought, if he felt he didn’t belong to the 17th century nor the 21st century, then he should choose one world to live on.
At the very least, he should try to integrate into this world, after all, this was his home.
...
With his stomach full and no longer feeling the pressure in his heart, recalling the location of his own house, Chen Zhou took out his phone to call for a ride.
Unexpectedly, after several rounds of fiddling, his phone, which had long been low on battery, had shut down automatically.
Looking at the street with hardly any vehicles, Chen Zhou sighed helplessly, looked back at the cement factory behind him, and finally decided to go home tomorrow.
...
In the early morning of September 1st, Chen Zhou practiced walking on the street for two hours, until he felt that his walking was no different from that of a normal person before he returned to the dormitory.
After a sound sleep, he remembered to charge his phone. By 11:30 AM on September 1st, the phone woke him up, and he got out of bed.
Groggily, without checking the caller ID, he pressed the answer button.
As soon as the call connected, a rough-voiced male voice came through the phone.
"Engineer Chen, are you still going to work?
The crusher broke down, if you don’t come to fix it, where have you gone?"
The person’s voice was loud, with a tone of anger, and from his attitude, Chen Zhou feared he wished he could climb through the phone to grab Chen Zhou’s collar and question him.
Chen Zhou’s hearing was now much more acute than before, and upon hearing this voice, he couldn’t help but frown.
Even so, knowing that leaving the job without reason was indeed a problem, Chen Zhou was about to tell this superior about his resignation, but the person on the other end didn’t wait for him to speak and continued talking.
"I also heard, not only did you not come today, but you were absent yesterday too.