Song Yaozu had thought he was in luck when he spotted a Super Thunderbolt Order: enough food for eight people, all going to the same address. With quick eyes and quicker fingers, he had snatched up that gem from the order pool.
The delivery fee alone would net him over twenty yuan.
No wonder his parents always said big cities offered more opportunities. In the half month or so he had spent doing crowdsourced deliveries in urban Beijing, his monthly earnings were already nearing three thousand. He would have to get Guangzong to come over and do deliveries with him.
His delivery earnings plus his salary only came to a little over ten thousand. If he worked a bit harder, perhaps his delivery income could even catch up to his salary.
"Get in here."
Without another word, Gao Jian grabbed his arm and pulled him inside, but Song Yaozu immediately panicked. "Hey, wait, wait! There's a new order. Lemme take a look first."
Song Yaozu pulled out his phone with one hand. The moment he heard, [A new recommended order is available. Please check it], his thumb sprang into action. When he saw the thirty-six-yuan Thunderbolt Delivery Fee, his eyes went round.
Who knew where he found the strength, but he actually broke free of a Foundation Establishment cultivator's grip and snatched up the new order.
Gao Jian reacted even faster, taking his phone and examining it carefully.
"No, no! I ain't marked this one delivered yet. I've gotta go do the new one..."
Gao Jian sneered. "Yaozu, that's twelve six-packs of beer. Seventy-two bottles in all, four big cases, and you have to deliver them over ten kilometers away. Are you sure you want to do it?"
With that, Gao Jian canceled the order and let it return to the order pool.
Song Yaozu stared blankly at him. "You... you done this before too?"
Gao Jian flatly denied it.
He was never going to admit that, right after transmigrating, he had not known how to order takeout. He had downloaded a delivery app, fiddled with it for half an hour, successfully registered as a rider, and accidentally accepted two orders. Then, afraid of being found out, he had actually delivered both orders to their destinations.
"What's with that outfit?" Gao Jian set the takeout on the table and looked Song Yaozu up and down, demanding an explanation.
"My work uniform. My station manager gave it to me." Song Yaozu gave him a visibly sleep-deprived smile.
Gao Jian frowned. "You still have your day job. Where do you find time to deliver food?"
With enormous dark circles under his eyes, Song Yaozu grinned foolishly at him.
Gao Jian rapped his fingers on the table, making a knocking sound.
Song Yaozu immediately turned around. "Who-who's knocking?"
Gao Jian: "..."
Only after noticing that the door was wide open, not closed at all, did he catch on. Then he looked at the pile of takeout and sniffed.
"This is your place? It's huge... Why'd you order food here? I was wondering who could eat so much in the middle of the night." Song Yaozu looked around the brightly lit apartment.
For convenience while cultivating, Gao Jian had indeed rented an apartment near the Space Administration rather than staying in its dormitories... but it really was not large, only a little over seventy square meters.
"Wake up. You've fried your brain staying up all night. And speak standard Mandarin to me." Gao Jian sent a streak of spiritual light into his body, instantly dispelling most of the fatigue from Song Yaozu's all-night deliveries. Song Yaozu felt his mind clear; even the outline of the man before him looked much sharper.
Including the packaging, Gao Jian's takeout weighed at least ten kilograms. He had chosen this place for its proximity, but it was on the sixth floor of an old residential building without even an elevator. Whenever he ordered food, he always stressed that the delivery rider could leave it downstairs and did not need to climb the stairs. Yet this young man had carried the whole lot up without a word.
"What's going on? Are you short on money?" Gao Jian pulled over a chair and pushed it toward him. "Sit down and rest. Those dark circles are practically hanging down to your cheeks."
Song Yaozu did not sit. He cast a longing glance at Gao Jian's tableful of takeout before saying quietly, "Nothing special. I just want to earn a little more."
"I remember the research and development positions pay pretty well, don't they? I make over twenty thousand a month. You should be getting about the same?"
"You're a senior engineer. It's different for you. I only take home twelve thousand, and there's so much to spend it on... My parents are pushing me to buy a place and get married, too. They say stability matters most for girls. I figure I'm pretty stable-I work at a public institution, after all. I'm just a little poor..."
When he was not speaking his hometown dialect, his manner was already meek, his voice soft and delicate. Now, with the embarrassment and unease of being discovered by someone he knew, it grew even quieter.
"So you started doing crowdsourced deliveries?"
"You even know about crowdsourced delivery?! You've definitely done it!" Song Yaozu's eyes lit up.
"Stop changing the subject. Why are you short on money... Oh, I remember. When the director told me about you, he did mention that you had a younger sister in college. What was her name... Song Guangzong, right?"
Thinking of the sisters' names made Gao Jian shake his head, but now he really did remember that Yaozu's family was not particularly well-off. His parents both combined farm work with other jobs, unlike Gao Jian, who came from a family of government cadres.
Their ancestors had been poor for generations. Otherwise, they would not have named their children Guangzong and Yaozu-names expressing the hope that they would bring glory to the family.
The sisters really had brought glory to their family: one had earned a science and engineering master's degree from Tsinghua University and worked at the national Space Administration, while the other was studying for a bachelor's degree at Beihang University.
"I'm not that short. I just want to earn a bit more... Why are you asking so many questions? Do you want to join? I can tell my station manager. There's a referral bonus." Song Yaozu spoke delightedly.
"Shut up and sit down."
"Oh."
Gao Jian examined him closely, only now noticing how much weight the young man had lost. His cheeks had once been a little fleshy, but not anymore. The yellow delivery uniform hung loose on him. Dawn light streamed through the window onto his body, making even the sweat at his temples clearly visible. He carried that clammy chill peculiar to Beijing.
One seriously clammy kid from Henan.
He spent all day posting those bizarre little videos on Douyin. If he would just learn to switch to the front-facing camera and take a couple of shots of himself, wouldn't the views come rolling in? A couple of casual advertising deals would surely beat staying up every night delivering food and scrambling for big orders.
Gao Jian sighed.
Song Yaozu thought he was looking down on his work and immediately flushed red. "What do you know? I've made over three thousand in just over half a month doing deliveries. One night, I did three rainstorm orders, and the platform gave me an eighty-yuan bonus. I made over two hundred that night... It's way more satisfying than working at the bureau."
"All right. Come eat something."
Gao Jian briskly opened the takeout containers one by one and arranged them on the table. Steam from the assorted breakfast dishes rose beneath the lights. Song Yaozu was visibly tempted. He had been too tired to feel particularly hungry, but for some reason his appetite had suddenly returned. Gao Jian said nothing, simply fetching a bowl and a pair of chopsticks from the kitchen and setting them before him.
"I'm not hungry. I have breakfast..." Song Yaozu still stubbornly protested.
"Eat. I can't finish it." Gao Jian shoved the chopsticks into his hand.
"Then why'd you order so much?"
"I'm extravagant. When I eat, I like to have a whole tableful of dishes, taste a tiny bit of each, then throw everything away."
Song Yaozu's eyes widened again in shock. In ancient times, someone who wasted food like that would have been turned into a human sky lantern!
"What hours do you usually work?" Gao Jian asked.
"I leave the dorm at eight in the evening... Depends on the orders, but usually I only work until four. I was planning to head back to the bureau and sleep, but then I saw this big order, so I made one more trip."
"You only sleep two or three hours a day?"
"I get another two hours or so at lunch. Besides, you know I can catch a nap when I'm slacking off at work. Like this."
Song Yaozu propped himself up with one hand, then swept his bangs down, completely covering his brows and eyes. Only his long lashes showed faintly through the gaps in his hair.
"I thought you were just being lazy. I misjudged you," Gao Jian said, drinking his congee.
"We're both slackers. Why pretend you're any different? Anyway, what've you been doing with Old Li all day lately? I don't even see you in R&D anymore." Song Yaozu asked indistinctly as he dug into a bun.
"Studying some theory. Research into geomagnetic storms, for example. As you know, ever since the higher-ups decided to suspend launches, the whole bureau has had very little to do, so Old Li had me join him."
Song Yaozu gave a half-convinced "Oh."
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