Chapter 75: Ledger and Remaining Balance

Wind poured in from the far end of the corridor, carrying the dry chill peculiar to early autumn. Lin Chen hitched up the strap of his canvas bag, tightening it against his collarbone. When his left foot came down on the step, the cardboard insole rubbed against the edge of the wound, sending up a dull throb of pain. He shifted his weight, keeping his stride to twenty-five centimeters. No stepping in puddles. No stepping on loose stones.

Twenty-one days. Seven hundred and ninety-six yuan. An average of thirty-eight a day. The ledger in his head had already split itself into parts. Applications for work-study jobs had closed yesterday; the library and cafeteria routes were blocked. That left only three options: off-campus appliance repair, used-book recovery, and managing laboratory consumables for others. The last required his advisor’s signature, and the process would take at least three days. The time cost was too high. He crossed it out. His eyes fixed on the first two.

He headed toward the west gate along the tree-lined avenue. As he passed the bulletin board, his gaze swept over the newly posted club recruitment flyers and part-time job ads. The smell of fresh ink mixed with the sourness of cheap glue. He stopped and circled a slip that read, “Urgently hiring apprentice computer assemblers, paid daily, thirty yuan.” But assembly work meant sitting for long periods, which would be bad for blood circulation in his left foot; the risk of varicose swelling would slow the healing. He crossed it out. His gaze dropped lower and stopped on another notice: “Buying scrap appliances, paid by the item.” Beside it was a handwritten landline number. He took out a ballpoint pen and copied the number onto the back of a sheet of graph paper. The pen tip paused for half a second. Next to it he added: must bring own multimeter and insulated tools. Supply costs to be deducted.

The old street outside the west gate was being demolished. Bulldozer treads crushed broken bricks and kicked up yellow dust. Lin Chen avoided the main road and cut through a side alley. At the end stood a shop with a sign reading “Old Chen Appliance Repair.” The rolling shutter was half lowered, and from inside came the static-laced noise of a radio being tuned. He walked in. Behind the counter sat a middle-aged man in reading glasses, soldering a circuit board with an iron. The smell of rosin filled the air, mixed with the faint bitterness of old plastic heating up.

“What needs fixing?” the man asked without looking up.

“Nothing. I’m here for work.” Lin Chen set his canvas bag on the edge of the counter, pulled open the zipper, and took out his notebook of wrong answers. He flipped to a blank page and pushed it over. “Multimeter calibration, oscilloscope probe compensation, Walkman head cleaning. Paid by the item. Three-day warranty.”

Old Chen set down the soldering iron and picked up the notebook. The handwriting was neat, the derivations rigorous, and in the margins were circuit traces and impedance-matching curves. “Student?”

“Qualified for the provincial competition. Short on the reporting deposit.” Lin Chen’s tone remained calm, without extra explanation. “How many jobs I can take in a day depends on your customer flow here. I bring my own tools. Supplies go through your books. Seventy-thirty split. Seventy to me.”

Old Chen narrowed his eyes and sized him up for two seconds. His gaze dropped to the slight outward angle of Lin Chen’s left foot as he stood, then returned to the notebook. “Hands steady?”

“Steady.”

“Start with three units. Walkman cassette players, bad contact. Fix one and you get fifteen. Break one and I dock you twenty. You taking it or not?”

“I’m taking it.” Lin Chen did not hesitate. He took the insulated case from his bag and removed tweezers, anhydrous alcohol wipes, and a precision screwdriver. With practiced movements he opened the back cover of the first machine. The head was oxidized; the pinch roller had aged. He dabbed alcohol onto a wipe and gently cleaned the surface of the head. As the alcohol evaporated, it carried away the heat, leaving a faint coolness on his fingertips. He adjusted the spring tension on the pinch roller and checked continuity with the multimeter. Beep. The green light came on. He put the back cover on again and pressed play. The tape turned, the hiss ran steadily, and music flowed out. No static.

Old Chen nodded, counted out fifteen yuan from the drawer, and slapped it onto the counter. “Come again tomorrow. I open at eight in the morning.”

Lin Chen put the money away in the pocket against his body. The edges of the bills were rough, tinged with the smell of sweat. He swung the bag onto his shoulder and stepped out of the shop. By then night had fully fallen. The streetlights had come on, and their dim yellow halos stretched his shadow long. Twenty-five-centimeter strides. The swelling pain in his left foot worsened. He stopped, leaned against a brick wall, took out an iodine swab from his bag, and pressed lightly against his ankle through the fabric of his trousers. The skin had not broken, but the soft tissue was already swollen. He needed ice. But an ice pack cost money. Instead, he used a towel rinsed in cold water, wrung it out, and laid it over the top of his shoe. The coolness seeped through the cardboard, temporarily suppressing the throbbing in his nerve endings.

By the time he got back to the dorm, it was already half past nine. Someone was playing cards in the corridor, laughter carrying through the door panels. He pushed open his door without turning on the main light. In the dark, he made his way to the desk and switched on the lamp. Warm yellow light spread across the desktop. He unfolded the graph paper and wrote: Day one. Income: 15. Expenses: 0. Balance: 15. Remaining to target: 781.

He opened his notebook of wrong answers and added the derivation for the phase-slip compensation formula from today’s practical work. The pen scratched softly over the paper. He wrote very slowly, insisting on accuracy in every stroke. When he finished, he closed the notebook. Then he pulled a plastic basin out from under the bed and filled it halfway with cold water. He held his left foot above it, letting the chill from the damp towel slowly sink in. The swollen ache gradually gave way to numbness. He closed his eyes and ran through tomorrow’s route in his head: up at seven. Out the door at seven-twenty. At the shop by seven-fifty. Eight to twelve, likely four units finished. One to four in the afternoon, theory review. After four, go to the used-book market to collect copper wire. The timeline meshed into place. No slack.

Eleven o’clock. He was getting ready to turn out the light when footsteps came from outside and stopped at the door. A knock followed. Two raps. Neither light nor heavy.

Lin Chen got up and opened the door. Standing outside was the department’s teaching clerk, holding a stack of notices stamped with red seals.

“Lin Chen? Notice of an additional test before provincial competition registration.” The clerk handed him a sheet of paper. “Tomorrow morning at eight, Room 204, Teaching Building Three. Closed-book theory exam. Counts for thirty percent of the school’s recommendation score. Anyone absent will have their recommendation qualification passed to the next person.”

Lin Chen took the notice. The paper was thin, the ink printed dark. He scanned the time: tomorrow, 08:00–10:00.

Eight o’clock. Exactly when the repair shop opened. Old Chen’s customers were concentrated in the morning. Miss the first shift, and the afternoon workload would fall off a cliff. He would lose at least twenty yuan in a day. Over twenty-one days, that was four hundred and twenty. The gap would split open again.

“Received.” He folded the notice and slipped it into his pocket.

The clerk nodded and headed downstairs. The footsteps faded.

Lin Chen shut the door. He returned to the desk and laid the notice beside the graph paper. On the left: the extra exam. On the right: cash flow. The two lines crossed at eight o’clock. There was no third road.

He picked up his pen and crossed out “eight o’clock, shop” on the graph paper. Then he wrote again: leave at seven. Reach Teaching Building Three by seven-forty. Enter twenty minutes early. Bring the notebook of wrong answers. Use the twenty minutes before the exam to write out the RF attenuation formulas from memory. Exam ends at ten-thirty. Reach the shop by eleven. Afternoon volume compressed, but two urgent repairs possible. Estimated daily income: twenty-five. Gap widens to: seven hundred and ninety-six minus fifteen minus twenty-five equals seven hundred and fifty-six.

He finished the calculation. The pen hovered over the paper. It did not stop. He turned to the next page and began listing a review plan for the additional test. The key was not new problems, but the phase-compensation material and cold-start thermal drift coefficients in the notebook of wrong answers. He needed to carve those formulas into muscle memory so that in the exam room he would not need to think, only write.

Outside the window, the clouds gathered again and covered the moon. The smell of diesel in the wind had faded, replaced by the greasy scent drifting from the cafeteria in the distance. He took a drink of cool water. It had gone completely cold. He screwed the cap back on. Slung the canvas bag over his shoulder. The strap bit into his collarbone. He walked to the door and stopped. Looked back once at the notebook of wrong answers and the insulated case on the desk. Then he pulled the door open and walked out.

The window at the end of the corridor stood open. Wind poured in. He drew a deep breath. The air smelled of dust. He stepped forward. Ahead. Twenty-five-centimeter strides. No stepping in puddles.