At four in the morning, the injection molding workshop roared, the noise making her eardrums ache.
A Li crouched beside "Old Nine" (a Huaji 90T machine), her callused fingertips brushing the scorching mold core. She had just fixed a flash defect that had plagued her team for half a day when she looked up and met a pair of eyes as cold as ice.
Shen Yizhen, president of the Chenyu Group, should have been a man standing at the peak of the capitalist pyramid. Instead, he stared at her worn-out safety gloves, his voice broken up by the machines. "The way you adjust the machine... it's like playing the piano."
No one believed she could make it on her skills alone:
Her coworkers gossiped that she was "climbing the social ladder" and deliberately broke her wrench.
A rich man's wife shoved a check at her and told her to "stop dreaming."
Even her team leader subtly warned her to "be careful of appearances."
She tore the check to shreds and crouched back down beside "Old Nine." "I don't rely on anyone. I rely on these hands."
But the cold-faced CEO kept appearing in the roaring workshop, again and again:
- On a stormy night, he drove her back to her shabby rental, listening as she told him about her stubborn journey from Yunxi County to Huazhou City.
- Before the skills competition, he quietly stayed up late to practice with her, watching with reddened eyes as she worked on the machine until dawn.
- When his family threatened him with his inheritance, he stood in front of her. "I don't want the throne. I only want my machine adjuster, A Li."
As the roar of the machines drowned out every rumor, he pulled her worn safety glove onto his own hand.
"From now on, I'll protect your machines, and I'll cherish you."
Who could have imagined that the CEO who dominated the business world would end up as the workshop's most eager wrench-fetching assistant?
