Chapter 21: There’s a Mole
As the old saying goes, when it rains, it pours.
Not only was the competition fiercer today, but there were also fewer workers coming out to buy food. Foot traffic was just over half of what it usually was.
With so many shops across the street and the neighboring stall siphoning off customers, Xu An had only sold thirty-two box lunches by one o’clock, leaving him with eight left over.
Xu Heping grew anxious seeing so many unsold meals. He grabbed Xu Kang and Xu Le to help him attract customers, but their usually foolproof method barely worked today.
After half an hour, they managed to bring in three people. Combined with the four who came on their own, there was still one box lunch left.
It was already two o’clock. Anyone who was going to buy lunch had already done so. The rest had eaten at the factory cafeteria and wouldn’t be coming out. It was about time to pack up.
Thankfully, they had made a last-minute decision yesterday to prepare ten fewer meals. Otherwise, they’d be stuck with eleven leftovers, which would have been a disaster and wiped out the whole day’s earnings.
But what comforted Xu An was that even with so many new competitors, his stall still had the most foot traffic. Many of his regulars had remained loyal.
They had only been open for a little over a week, so the number of regulars was still quite limited. He could survive on their business alone, but he needed to find new sales channels to truly thrive.
After all, he had that twenty-thousand-yuan agreement with his grandmother, and he’d never fulfill it relying only on regulars.
Perhaps because of the increased competition, Xu Heping didn’t chat about everything under the sun with Xu An on the way back as he usually did. Instead, he was very quiet, his eyes filled with worry as he looked at Xu An, as if afraid he wouldn’t be able to handle the setback.
"Heping, do I really seem that fragile?" Xu An asked leisurely after Xu Heping glanced back at him yet again.
"Huh?" Xu Heping was a bit lost.
"You’ve looked back at me a hundred times on this trip. Even that dog lying by the road probably knows you’re worried about me."
"The competition suddenly got so intense. How could I not be worried?"
"On our first day, you thought selling thirty meals was incredible. Now you’re not satisfied with selling thirty-nine. Your standards have really gotten higher, huh?" Xu An teased.
"How about we just make thirty tomorrow?" Xu Heping suggested, ignoring the teasing.
"No. Tomorrow, I’m planning to make sixty," Xu An said, shaking his head.
SCREECH!
With a long screech of brakes, Xu Heping stopped his bicycle sideways in front of Xu An’s tricycle, staring at him in disbelief. "Are you insane?"
Fortunately, Xu An had been watching the road and hit the brakes just in time, avoiding a situation where he would have sent Xu Heping flying.
"I think you’re the one who’s insane, stopping sideways in the middle of the road! If a motorcycle had been behind us, we’d all be goners!" Xu An cursed irritably.
"I was just so surprised," Xu Heping said with an apologetic smile. His expression then turned serious as he asked gravely, "Were you joking just now about making sixty tomorrow, or were you serious?"
"I’m serious. I’m making sixty box lunches tomorrow, but they won’t all be sold at the Zijing Garden construction site."
???
Xu Heping was utterly confused. It felt like he couldn’t understand a word Xu An was saying anymore.
"My plan is to split up tomorrow. You’ll take thirty box lunches to sell at the Zijing Garden site, and I’ll take the remaining thirty to sell at other sites."
"Other sites? Which one are you thinking of?"
"The first site we checked out—the Hai City Library construction site. There are two smaller sites next to it and a residential area nearby. The competition is tough there too, but the foot traffic is much higher. It has potential."
"What if our box lunches aren’t popular over there?"
"Then I’ll just switch to another site," Xu An said, kicking Xu Heping’s bicycle. "Are you going to move or not? Stop blocking the way."
"I still think the Zijing Garden site is good enough. Selling thirty a day is decent," Xu Heping muttered as he started pedaling, still not quite understanding Xu An’s choice.
If it weren’t for his agreement with his grandmother, Xu An wouldn’t have minded just coasting along at this construction site.
But that agreement determined whether his younger brother and sister could stay with him, so he couldn’t afford to be a slacker.
He couldn’t very well tell Xu Heping about the agreement. If Heping got worked up, he was the type of person who would go and steal fish from his own family’s pond just to scrape together the twenty thousand yuan for him.
Today, any worker who stepped into the cafeteria felt like banging gongs and beating drums to express their joy.
For the first time in half a month, there was steamed rice in the cafeteria. And the dishes were twice-cooked pork and stir-fried sour long beans with minced pork—both perfect for pairing with rice.
Even more surprisingly, there was even a daily soup! Seaweed and egg drop soup!
As usual, Qiao Guoxing first went to Xu An’s stall at the site entrance to buy a box lunch before heading toward the cafeteria.
He hadn’t even reached the cafeteria door when the fragrant aroma of food wafted out from inside.
When he got to the window, he saw that today’s meal was indeed twice-cooked pork and stir-fried sour long beans with minced pork.
After seeing the cafeteria’s food, Qiao Guoxing glanced down at the box lunch in his hand and suddenly felt a bit annoyed. If he had known the cafeteria was serving such a great meal today, why would he have spent another eight yuan on a box lunch?
’Tomorrow after work, I’ll check the cafeteria’s menu first before deciding whether to buy a box lunch!’
After getting his food and waiting for his wife to join him, they both started by taking a bite of the cafeteria’s meal.
How to put it? It wasn’t bad, but it felt like something was missing from the flavor.
Then he took a bite of the food from Xu An’s stall. That was it. This was the taste!
Their chopsticks moved toward the box lunch more and more frequently, until they both landed on the last piece of braised pork at the same time. Neither was willing to let go.
In the end, Qiao Guoxing yielded under his wife’s death glare and lost his claim to the piece of meat.
Watching his wife enjoy her food, Qiao Guoxing picked up a piece of the cafeteria’s twice-cooked pork and tossed it into his mouth. It tasted like chewing wax.
’A box lunch is eight yuan. If two people share it, that’s only four yuan each. That’s a pretty good deal. Maybe I should keep buying one?’
While the workers were silently digging into their food, a few people in travel-stained clothes also walked into the cafeteria and got in line with them to get food.
The four of them found a corner to sit down in and carefully observed the workers’ expressions as they ate.
Their task for the day was to inspect the quality of the cafeteria contractor’s food and gauge the workers’ satisfaction with them.
There would be three inspections in total. If a contractor received a failing grade twice in a row, they would be replaced with a new one.
"There are vegetables, meat, and soup. It passes on the variety category."
"Both dishes are heavy on oil and salt, and they go well with rice. That meets the standards for construction site meals. It passes."
"I talked to some of the workers. They said for the first half of the month, it was mostly noodle dishes, and the toppings were pretty skimpy."
The four of them exchanged a look, a hint of suspicion in their eyes.
"If they’ve been eating noodles for half a month, how could they so coincidentally make a proper meal on the day of our inspection?"
"Did word get out?"
"Impossible. It’s only been an hour since we received the assignment this morning. The four of us have been together the whole time, and our phones were put away. There was no opportunity for a leak."
Their gazes met again. All four of them thought of the same person—their supervisor, who also knew about the assignment.
Could it have been their supervisor?
"Let’s just do our job and report what we found truthfully."
"Agreed."
The other three agreed.