The middle-aged man saw Gu’er and Sun Jiaming looking at him and said, "I didn’t mean anything by it. It just hit me—your wife’s name is Gu’er, right? Look at me, I’ve got such a one-track mind. It didn’t click earlier. I’m sorry about that. You two were just kidding around, weren’t you? And I had to go and spoil it. Honestly, why can’t I keep my mouth shut? Please don’t take it to heart."

The man even gave them a smile after he finished speaking.

Neither Gu’er nor Sun Jiaming had expected the man to call out to them just to apologize. They had thought he was going to say something else. It seemed the man was just blunt, but not a bad person.

"It’s alright, really. You don’t have to apologize, sir. You were just worried we didn’t know who the singer was and kindly told us. We won’t take it to heart."

Sun Jiaming replied politely. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

"Yes, that’s exactly what I was thinking. I was afraid you had the wrong person, so I spoke up. How was I to know you were just messing around? I’m just not very flexible. My wife has told me countless times. I even lost my job because of it, but I still haven’t learned my lesson. Ai."

The man sighed after he finished speaking.

Seeing the dejected look on the man’s face, Gu’er and Sun Jiaming glanced at each other. This man clearly had a story.

No longer in a hurry to leave, the two of them sat back down. Sun Jiaming began to chat with the man.

The man was talkative. He was blunt and spoke his mind. From his story, Gu’er and Sun Jiaming learned his name was Wang Shun and that he used to be the gatekeeper for a factory.

He took his work very seriously and was extremely strict. With him guarding the gate, no one could dream of taking anything out. Behind his back, everyone said he was pig-headed and that he had a knack for offending people.

One time, he stopped the factory director’s brother-in-law, who was trying to leave with a bunch of factory property without any paperwork or logging it out. Wang Shun refused to let him pass. The brother-in-law caused a huge scene. In the end, even though the director said Wang Shun had done the right thing and that’s how the job should be done, it wasn’t long before the factory found some supposed mistake and fired him.

He tried to explain to the factory that the mistake had nothing to do with him, but the management just said they would investigate. He waited at home for a month, but heard nothing. When he went back to see the factory leadership, they refused to meet with him. He tried to find someone to put in a good word for him, but no one would help. They all said he was too rigid and had offended everybody. They were actually glad he was gone, hoping for a more "flexible" replacement who would let them take a few things home from the factory.

Wang Shun was furious. He felt he had done nothing wrong; he was just being responsible. If everyone took things home, the factory would be the one to suffer the loss. But he was just an ordinary man, and no one would listen to him. He had no choice but to look for other work. Unfortunately, his personality made it easy for him to offend people, and the next two jobs he found didn’t last long either.

He had a few children, all still in school, and his wife didn’t earn much money. The whole family depended on him. With his unstable employment, life at home was difficult. Because of this, his wife argued with him all day, calling him useless. He’d get angry, but he also knew his wife was suffering because of him, so he just endured her scolding.

Today, for instance, he was hired to move some goods. But he discovered the boss’s products were shoddy and mixed with fakes to rip people off. He said a few words about it and was promptly kicked out by the boss, unpaid. When he got home, his wife chewed him out again. He felt awful but didn’t want to resort to drinking to let off steam. For some reason, he just ended up running all the way here to Sun Island. He just wanted to get far away and find a quiet place to sit; otherwise, he felt like he would explode from frustration. He never expected to overhear Gu’er and Sun Jiaming talking about the song and couldn’t stop himself from chiming in.

Gu’er believed everything Wang Shun said was true. Though they had only been talking for a short while, she could tell he was a straight-shooter.

Someone like Wang Shun could certainly rub people the wrong way. He was the type of person who spoke his mind and called out injustice when he saw it. But many employers were afraid of people like that. He wasn’t a bad person, though.

’Besides,’ Gu’er thought, ’even though his wife scorns and scolds him, and he gets angry, he never scolds her back or resorts to drunken rages. That’s actually pretty decent. Plenty of useless men drink and beat their wives.’

’A person like him isn’t unemployable; it just depends on who’s hiring and for what position. If we had him at the nursing home, either as a gatekeeper or just to keep an eye on things, we wouldn’t have to worry about anyone trying to pull a fast one. I’ve been so worried about finding trustworthy management once the nursing home is built. At the very least, he’d be great for guarding a warehouse. But... this man is from Harbin. Would he be willing to move to a small city for a job?’