Chapter 123: Chapter 119, Rebuilding the City_3
Ricky hesitated before taking the gloves, but he couldn’t help looking around and noticed that almost everyone had received a pair.
He began to reconsider his earlier thoughts.
The food in his hand, the gloves, it was as if they were telling him that the new adults who had arrived seemed willing to treat them as humans.
Otherwise, if all they wanted was work, wouldn’t just giving you food be enough? Why would they care if you might scratch your hands and give you gloves?
Collecting his thoughts, he nodded slightly in acknowledgment, took the food and gloves, and left.
After eating and drinking his fill, he lay down on the communal sleeping area, ready to sleep.
It was a bit noisy around him, as the construction crew was working through the night to build houses. The materials they used were the junk they had collected earlier, and the houses they were building were simple prefabricated ones.
In fact, some had already been erected that day. According to the man with the red hat, they were building temporary shelters for them, and everyone would move in first for resettlement, and later on more houses would be built, and distributed to everyone according to their contributions.
He still didn’t quite believe the latter part, but he had no doubts about the former. Although he hadn’t moved into one himself, that was because there simply weren’t enough of these prefabricated communal houses yet, not enough to go around; only a portion of people, focusing on the old, the young, and women, could be accommodated.
Where he was sleeping now was outdoors, with just a pile of waste material arbitrarily stacked to raise the ground a few dozen centimeters, encircled by makeshift shelters to avoid sleeping directly on the damp ground, and to provide some shelter from the wind.
But by tomorrow, when more of the resettlement houses were built, he should be able to sleep inside, and wouldn’t have to endure conditions like today’s.
Although living conditions were harsh, in truth everyone could bear this sort of hardship; it wasn’t a big deal.
He lay down, ready to quickly fall asleep, since tomorrow there would still be a lot of work to do.
Just then, he heard a loudspeaker calling from outside.
“Ricky! Ricky! Who is Ricky? Does anyone know Ricky?”
He sat up, his expression grave.
He didn’t know what had happened, but as a wasteland traveler by instinct, he assumed any unexpected event to be bad news.
He was already considering how to conceal his name, how to slip away quietly.
However, he wasn’t given the opportunity.
Having a reputation isn’t always a bad thing, and he was quickly identified. More than one person outside was saying, Ricky is right here.
He could only walk out reluctantly, glaring at those who had exposed him.
A young man who caught his glare spoke somewhat sheepishly, “Boss Ricky, these people looking for you don’t seem to have bad intentions, otherwise I wouldn’t have told them where you are, I’m not betraying you!”
After a rebuke, he could only resign himself to following the person with the loudspeaker and the red hat.
He got into a car—for the first time in his life—and arrived at a place that wasn’t much different from their temporary dwellings.
Here, too, the night was bright with lights, and many people were coming and going, seemingly very busy.
After waiting for a while, someone led him inside, to a girl in a blue shirt.
She seemed unaware of his arrival, still engrossed in her paperwork; her shoulders looked frail, as if a breeze could blow her over; her face was also very haggard, as though she’d been working hard for a long time.
But this person, Ricky knew.
He couldn’t quite believe his eyes, “Os… Osenia?”
Hearing his voice, the girl who had been looking down lifted her head, revealing a surprised smile:
“Uncle Ricky? I finally found you! Are you okay?”
Two chapters combined