"The Sixth Set of Radio Exercises now begins. Stretching exercise, ready, begin! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Two, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight..."
"Aimin, Aimin, wake up!"
"Teacher Han! Teacher Han!"
"Stop shouting! Hurry and get Teacher Han to the hospital!"
"Who knows whether he's broken any bones? We can't move him carelessly. We should call the hospital!"
Han Aimin was jolted awake by the overlapping shouts. Opening his eyes, he saw familiar yet unfamiliar faces gathered around him, every one of them more anxious than the last. Then a searing pain shot through his elbows and knees.
"Aimin's awake. Everyone, make some room." A man around forty breathed a sigh of relief and anxiously asked, "Aimin, are you all right?"
Unless he was dreaming, the man before him should have been Zhong Jianyu, once both his colleague and Big Brother. A military cadre transferred to 985 Factory after leaving the service, Zhong Jianyu knew nothing about technology, and the factory had no shortage of political cadres, so they assigned him to the Children's Middle School as a politics teacher.
The young woman in the floral plaid spring and autumn shirt behind Zhong Jianyu was surnamed Liu—Liu Pingping. She was both a 985 Factory descendant and third sister's classmate from kindergarten through middle school. After graduating high school, she had failed to get into college, so the factory assigned her to teach English at the Children's Middle School. But she was neither a cadre nor a formal employee. She was a "collective worker," whose salary and benefits were one grade below those of formal employees...
"Aimin, look at my hand!" Zhong Jianyu had no idea what Han Aimin was thinking. He raised a finger and moved it before Han Aimin's eyes.
The sharp pain in