Chapter 2: The rest of my life begins with tragedy

"Help, I can't swim!!!"

Before the morning sun rose, a sudden terrified shout broke the silence before dawn.

"Fuck, I'm sick."

"It's only six o'clock, calling the soul!"

This is an old tube-shaped building facing the street. In the compact small rooms separated by wooden boards, people all live there, all of whom are workers with dreams in their hearts.

They were sleeping soundly, but were awakened by the sudden roar and started to yell and curse.

Fortunately, there was no more noise and the crowd stopped cursing for a while.

“Hoo, hoo~ hoo~~~~”

Li Zehua suddenly took a few deep breaths of air, which was a turbid air mixed with many indescribable gases.
At this moment, it seems so sweet!
There is nothing more joyful than being alive!!!

"Am I being rescued?"

"It doesn't look like it. Is this a hospital?"

"Why does it look so familiar?"

"Dream? What the hell?"

Li Zehua shook his head violently and pinched his arm hard. The piercing pain instantly brought him back to reality.
"It's impossible~right? Hallucination?"

The inexplicable ecstasy that came in an instant filled my whole body, and I couldn't stop trembling, "This, this is where I lived in the Magic City back then!"

Looking at this familiar scene!

Gradually from unfamiliar to familiar.

He simply lost all sleepiness and turned over. The chill of early spring could no longer stop the frenzy of heat at the moment.

The sense of familiarity and strangeness intertwined, and I subconsciously groped at the head of the bed and found a black lump.
"Walnut cracker, I never thought we'd meet again someday!"

Nokia keypad phone, a familiar yet unfamiliar word, seems to have been completely forgotten for a long time.

The keypad phone, which was completely outdated in the era of mobile intelligence and had become a phone for the elderly, now seemed so familiar in his eyes.

With a light click, the familiar interface comes into view again.
“Friday, April 2009, 4.”

"09? 24? I went back to fifteen years ago?"

He stared at the time, but his heart was filled with shock. "Although the Xiangjiang River and the Yangtze River are connected, this is too outrageous..."

I thought about it for a while and glanced around. A little light came in through the only small window on the door frame. It was dim, and I looked around in the weak light.

This is a small room of about 4 square meters. A single bed occupies half of the room on the right, and there is a stool on the left.
There is also a clothes drying area on the wall with two nails and a rope, and some clothes are hung neatly.

Nothing else.

"What was I doing in 09? Oh, that's right! I spent the 07 New Year in Dongguan, and in 08 in Suzhou. I first worked on the assembly line, then as a warehouse manager, and I lived and ate in the factory."

"In the second half of 08, that classmate, what was his name? He asked me to come to Shanghai to work for Zhongxin, a big company!"

"Yes, it is a big company, one of the Fortune 500! Unfortunately, I joined an outsourced sales company that sells credit cards."

He laughed at himself, and his thoughts became clearer and clearer. "It seems that I can't leave the sales industry in my life. Credit cards, second-hand houses, electronic products, building materials, fast-moving consumer goods, maternal and child products, milk powder, and I have trained my mouth."

"Then I paid off my debts in 15, saved some money in 18 to start a business, and when I was worth tens of millions, I became completely arrogant. I speculated in stocks and futures and had no time to take care of my business until someone took advantage of me and I went bankrupt."

Thinking of this, Li Zehua shook his head. "It's a pity that I still can't escape debt after living a new life. My family probably still owes more than 20 yuan. But it's okay. Only a small amount of the more than 600 million yuan is left. It won't take long to pay it off."

"Then next year, eh? Why do I remember that I was in debt of more than 50 yuan next year, and I had to sell the house because I couldn't pay it back." "This is not right? My habit of spending lavishly was acquired when I started my business in 18, right? Now I can't even afford to add sausage to my fried rice, how can I owe more and more?"

suddenly~
Li Zehua was startled and turned his head to stare at his phone.

"April 2009, 4! Friday!"

For most people, this is an ordinary day.

Friday is the weekend, and it’s a great day to slack off.

But for him, this was a dark beginning.

"So in 09, I became a glorified leek!"

Without thinking too much, I took the clothes from the clothesline, put them on quickly, picked up the cups on the stool and went out.

Although it was only a little after six o'clock, there were already people in the public restroom of the old pigeon house.

"Get up so early?"

This is a tube-shaped building in the city center, facing the Bund of the Huangpu River and across the river from the Oriental Pearl Tower. It has a first-class location.
It was just too shabby and small, and the rent was relatively low. I remember it was only 400 yuan a month at that time. People who lived here were either migrant workers from the neighborhood or small vendors in the surrounding alleys.

"Yeah." Li Zehua perfunctorily answered the middle-aged man in front of him. His memory was a little fuzzy. Who was this?

The middle-aged man washed up quickly and looked back at him, "Your eyes are so red, did you not sleep well?"

"Oh, really? Maybe."

Worried that he would ask more questions, she wiped her face and left quickly.

When he got back to the house, Li Zehua found his wallet from the pillowcase.

When I opened it, I saw a dozen cards.
"Not much money, but a lot of cards."

After counting, I found that I only had a few dozen scattered cash, not a single red note, but I had quite a few credit cards and bank cards.
"Overpackaging is deadly! With a salary of only 4,000 to 5,000 yuan a month, who would have thought that I have a credit card with a limit of 200,000 or 300,000 yuan?"

"This is Zhang Zhongxin's. He did it for his own performance. I think it's worth 6?"

"This is Zhang Mingsheng. A young lady begged me to do this in order to complete her sales performance. Is it worth 4?"

"He's from Pufa, and he got it for a box of cigarettes? 3 yuan,"

"This..."

As he flipped through the pictures one by one, Li Zehua's expression became increasingly serious.

"These cards have caused me so much trouble in my past life. If nothing unexpected happens, I will be busy cashing out and repaying my debts for the next year. I will have to borrow from Peter to pay Paul."

"Finally I entered the real estate agency industry and sold several houses in succession before I was able to pay off the debt completely."

Thinking back on his experiences in his previous life, he felt quite uncomfortable, but on second thought, who could say for sure?
If I hadn't persevered and persevered, how could I have the courage and determination to fight and persist until I hit the wall in the future?

"I don't want to think about it! Anyway, I have to live my life like a human being."

Shaking his head, his eyes gradually became firm, "The fortune teller said that in this life, I will either be rich and powerful, or poor and destitute and die in the wilderness. I was able to rise to prominence in that situation in my previous life, so there's no reason for me to be so wronged if I start over again."

"Qualified leeks? I don't believe it. You can still cut me in this life!"

I packed my backpack, stuffed everything I could into it, and then went out.

The Bund was about thirty to fifty meters away. Looking at the endlessly flowing river from afar, Li Zehua smiled...

(End of this chapter)