Carrying copies of the second issue of Heaven Origin Miscellany out of the publishing house, Little Lunatic led a dozen or so friends to the docks to sell them. The new magazine used a cover drawn by Lian Qu. Holding an oiled-paper umbrella, Jiu Wan looked graceful and beautiful, with a hazy, delicate air of motherhood. After helping arrange the books, the girl responsible for cleaning the port, selling tickets, making patrols, packing goods, and doing assorted odd jobs eighteen hours a day for just five hundred and fifty yuan a month wiped away her sweat. She sat down beside Little Lunatic and asked, "Brother Lunatic, how are we going to sell these?"
"When does your supervisor come to check on your work?"
"When there's a major accident."
"Well, that works. We've got over a hundred copies here, so selling them will take a while. Let's start by calling out."
He loosened his shoulders, stood amid the bustling crowd, and shouted at the top of his lungs, "The freshly printed second issue of Heaven Origin Miscellany! Come buy a copy!"
Hearing him, a security guard responsible for keeping order walked over.
The guard was about to tell them they couldn't set up a stall there, but when he recognized the person hawking the magazines, he asked in confusion, "Brother Lunatic, what are you doing here?" Little Lunatic was no longer surprised to find yet another acquaintance.
Confucian Grove's permanent staff had become set in their ways. They would rather die than come out and work, so they outsourced everything.
And probably because Rainy-Night Show-Off's recent killings had scared them, they were outsourcing even more of the jobs that required showing their faces in public. That had given the contract workers plenty more positions.
Their wages, however, remained just as low.