Chapter 140: Tea Stains and Bargaining Chips

The alarm went off at 5:40. Lin Chen turned it off. When he got up, a dull pain pulsed through his left knee, the swollen outline clearly visible beneath his pant leg. He sat on the edge of the bed and slowly rotated his ankle until most of the numbness faded, then braced himself against the wall and stood up. The main room was still gray with early light. There was no sound from the kitchen; his mother and Xiaoman were still asleep. He washed up quietly, pressed cold water against his knee, and pulled on his trousers. His computer bag was already packed, with a sheet of negotiation points tucked into the inner sleeve. He checked his flash drive to make sure the V3.0 source code, runtime logs, and exception list were all there. Before leaving, he fished the last three coins out of the drawer and stuffed them into his pocket. Bus fare was two and a half yuan. Two steamed buns cost one yuan. Five jiao left over.

The minibus at the village entrance left at six sharp. Diesel fumes mixed with the sour smell of sweat. Lin Chen sat in the last row with the computer bag hugged tight in his arms. Every jolt over the gravel road sent a twitch through his left leg. He closed his eyes and rehearsed the process in his mind. Old Zhao was not a technical man; he did not understand code, only results and cost. The value of V3.0 was not that it was "fast," but that it was stable and repeatable. He had to package a "script" as a "tool." If Old Zhao tried to drive the price down, the floor was 0.025 yuan per record. If he asked for a monthly package, there had to be a hard cap on data volume. He repeated these points again and again like memorizing a lesson. The mist outside the window gradually thinned, revealing the brick-and-concrete buildings at the edge of the county town. Late-1990s self-built houses, with faded mosaic tiles on the exterior walls and rows of work clothes hanging from the balconies. Lin Chen looked at those windows without much feeling. He knew he was still far from that kind of life. But now, at least, he could begin to calculate how far.

By 8:30 he was on the old street in town. The blue stone pavement shone under the crush of the morning market crowd. The old teahouse was hidden deep in an alley, its wooden door half open, with the smell of cheap tea leaves and dry tobacco drifting out. Lin Chen pushed the door open. Old Zhao was already seated in the corner. Early forties, wearing a worn Polo shirt, with two covered tea bowls and a bulky Lenovo laptop in front of him.

"You're here." Old Zhao glanced up and pointed at the bamboo chair opposite him. "Sit."

Lin Chen set down his bag and sat. He stretched out his left leg, trying not to make the limp obvious.

"I ran through the data last night," Old Zhao said, skipping any pleasantries and getting straight to the point. "The formatting is clean, and the exception list is clear. More efficient than those college kids I hired before." He paused, lifted his teacup, and blew the floating leaves aside. "In your email, you said settlement should be based on the actual number of valid records. You also mentioned tiered pricing."

"Boss Zhao," Lin Chen said in a low but steady voice, each word precise, "V2.0 was tuned by hand. V3.0 is packaged. For the same kind of data going forward, you can just import it and run it. What it saves is the time spent on manual checking. But if the raw data is missing fields or the encoding is scrambled, the script can only flag it, not make things up. If I fill it in wrong, that's on me. If the source file is wrong, deductions aren't reasonable."

Old Zhao did not answer immediately. He stared at Lin Chen for a few seconds, tapping the tabletop twice with his fingers. "You've got your rules laid out clearly. First time I've seen an outsourced worker start by talking responsibility."

"I'm not talking about responsibility. I'm talking about standards." Lin Chen took the folded sheet from his bag and pushed it over. "From one to five thousand records, 0.03. Above five thousand, 0.035. Exception data goes on a separate list and doesn't count against the valid total. Settlement within forty-eight hours. If the source files are standardized, I can lower the unit price to 0.025, but your side needs to provide a CSV template."

Old Zhao picked up the sheet and skimmed it. His brow tightened, then relaxed. "0.035 is too high. In the trade, average cleaning work doesn't even hit two fen."

"In the trade, it's manual entry, with an error rate above three percent and a three-day rework cycle," Lin Chen replied calmly. "V3.0 keeps the error rate below one in a thousand and delivers in two hours. What you're buying is certainty, not line count."

The teahouse was growing noisier. A server came by with a brass kettle to refill the tea. Old Zhao did not drink. He only folded the paper and set it back on the table. "0.03. Flat cap. Exception data handled according to the list, with no deduction. But the settlement cycle has to change. Weekly settlement. I have to reconcile with the upstream side too."

Lin Chen calculated quickly in his head. Weekly settlement was longer than forty-eight hours, but still manageable for cash flow. 0.03 was half a fen lower than he had hoped, but it preserved his floor and the exception clause. More importantly, Old Zhao had accepted the idea of "standards." That meant he was no longer a disposable temp worker who could be swapped out at any moment. He was a supplier with defined delivery rules.

"That works," Lin Chen said with a nod. "But if it's weekly settlement, we need a simple confirmation form. Every time I deliver, you sign it or confirm by email, and I settle against that confirmation."

Old Zhao smiled, the lines at the corners of his eyes deepening. "Kid, you leave a trail at every step. Fine. We'll do it your way. Let's settle the last batch today first."

He pulled a kraft-paper envelope out of his shoulder bag and pushed it across the table. Lin Chen opened it. Inside were eight one-hundred-yuan bills. Eight hundred yuan. Old Zhao said, "The remainder for the last three thousand records, plus this batch of eight thousand. At 0.03, that's three hundred and thirty-five. I rounded it up to eight hundred. Consider the rest an advance payment. I've got a new job next week, a bigger one."

Lin Chen accepted it without pretending otherwise. He slid the money into the inner pocket of his jacket and zipped it shut. His balance jumped from 28.3 to 828.3. The moment the number changed, the constant tightness in his stomach eased slightly. He did not smile. He only flattened the envelope and tucked it into the very bottom of his computer bag. Money was cold, but it could buy medicine, pay for internet access, buy books. It could buy time.

"What kind of new job?" Lin Chen asked.

Old Zhao felt around beside the laptop and handed him a silver flash drive. "A company that does wholesale building materials. Every week they need to summarize sales details from all their stores. Excel sheets, format all over the place. They don't want cleaning. They want reports. Summaries by store, by category, by week. Can you do it?"

Lin Chen took the flash drive. The metal casing felt cool against his fingertips. Reports. That meant more than cleaning—pivoting data, formula calculations, format layout. The cleaning module in V3.0 would not be enough. He would need to learn aggregation logic or write a new batch process. But what about the time?

"When do I get the source files?"

"Every Friday afternoon," Old Zhao said, looking at him. "Need the results by Monday morning. The price is separate. But their boss wants to see how much labor this so-called automation really saves. If you do it well, they might put you on a monthly arrangement."

A monthly arrangement. Stable cash flow. And a higher technical threshold. Lin Chen knew that cleaning data was manual labor; reporting was brain work. If he crossed that line, he would be on a different step entirely. If he couldn't, he would still be doing odd jobs.

"I'll go back and look at the data structure," Lin Chen said, putting the flash drive away. "I'll give you a plan by Sunday night."

"Good." Old Zhao stood up and patted at his trouser leg. "I've paid the teahouse bill. Your leg's not in great shape—take it slow on the way back. Don't drop the computer."

Lin Chen nodded. When he rose, a sharp stab shot through his left knee again. He steadied himself against the table and said nothing.

When he stepped out of the teahouse, the sun was already high. The noise of the old street rushed at him—breakfast vendors shouting, bicycle bells ringing, motor tricycles sputtering. Lin Chen walked slowly along the roadside. The cash in his inner pocket rested against his chest, warm and heavy. He needed a computer capable of handling more complex calculations. The machines at the internet café would not do; the configuration was too weak, and large datasets would freeze them up. He needed a quiet place. The main room at home would not work—Xiaoman would make noise, and his mother would ask questions. He needed to rent a room. Even if it was only a single room.

He reached the bus stop. While waiting, he pulled out his ledger.

Date: August 9. Income: 800 (cash). Balance: 828.3. Leg injury: swelling in left knee worsened. Needs ice. Progress: settlement completed. Rules established. New requirement: weekly sales reports.

He stopped writing. Stared at the words "weekly sales reports." The logging module and class packaging in V3.0 were a foundation, but reports required a new technical stack. In his mind flashed the shelves of the library, the programming manuals he had worn nearly to pieces. He had only a day and a half.

The minibus pulled in. He tapped his card and got on, finding a seat by the window. The street scene slid backward outside. He closed his eyes, his fingers unconsciously tapping on his knee. Grouping. Aggregation. Pivoting. In the darkness, the logic of the code gradually took shape. But there was still another problem. The data on Old Zhao's flash drive might not be just a few thousand rows. If it exceeded fifty thousand, the memory on his old laptop would overflow. He needed to upgrade the hardware, or optimize the algorithm. Now he had some money. What he still did not have was time.

When the bus reached the village entrance, he got off. His steps were still slow. But his back was a little straighter than it had been yesterday.

When he pushed open the courtyard gate, Wang Guiying was hanging laundry in the yard. When she saw him, she paused. "You're back? Why is your face so pale?"

"It's nothing. I sat too long," Lin Chen said, putting the computer bag on the table without mentioning the money. He went to the water jar, scooped out a ladle of cold water, and pressed it against his left knee. The chill bit into the bone, but it dulled the pain.

Xiaoman ran over and leaned against the table to peer at his computer bag. "Ge, you went to town today. Did you buy the star candy?"

Lin Chen froze for a moment. He had forgotten. But he pulled out the folded negotiation sheet from his inner pocket. The back was blank. He tore off one corner, folded it into a crooked little paper star, and set it in Xiaoman's palm.

"Tomorrow," he said. "I'll buy it tomorrow."

Xiaoman grinned around the paper star and ran back into the house.

Lin Chen watched his brother's back. The water in the jar was slowly warming in the summer heat. He stood up, wiped the water from his leg, and walked into the main room to turn on the computer.

He plugged in the flash drive. Double-clicked. A folder popped open. Inside were three enormous Excel files. Total size: 42 MB.

He clicked the first one open. Dragged the scroll bar all the way down. Row count: 128,400.

One hundred twenty-eight thousand four hundred rows. Weekly summaries. Due Monday.

He drew in a slow breath. Rested his fingers on the keyboard. The cold white glow of the screen reflected on his face.

The road was still long. But the steps had already been laid beneath his feet. The next one, he had to place carefully.

He created a new script file. Named it: report_v1.py.

The first line of code he typed was: import csv.

Outside the window, the cicadas suddenly rose in pitch. Summer was at its height.