September 18th, Thursday, four ten in the afternoon. Shunde, Foshan, Guanda Electric, third floor of the admin building, Human Resources. I printed out the layoff list. A4 paper, one page, seven people.
Number seven is me. Chen Man, HR manager, nine years with the company, monthly salary 18,500, contract expiry: September 30, 2026. In the remarks column I typed four words myself: high paid, replaceable.
The list was mine to make. At the weekly meeting last month the boss lady said profits were down thirty percent this year, that the Vietnamese had taken half our air-fryer orders. “Any veteran on more than fifteen thousand a month, contract expires, no renewal, one by one. You draw it up.”
So I drew it up. I stopped for two minutes at number six, then typed myself in anyway. My salary is the seventh highest in the whole factory, and I wrote the standard into the policy myself. I cannot apply it to other people and not to myself.
While the printer was feeding paper I glanced out through the glass door. The three young women in my department all earn under eight thousand; none of them were on the list. A-Wen was scrolling Xiaohongshu, and when she saw me looking she flipped her phone face down.
My name is Chen Man, thirty-four, born and raised in Shunde. Married seven years. My husband Qin Hao is thirty-six, a life insurance salesman. Last month he closed two policies, commission 4,200.
Mortgage is 8,600 a month, the three-bedroom in Country Garden, in my name, paid out of my card. For nine years the money in this house has run on my salary, and the 18,500 is something I negotiated up year by year. Now that number sits on line seven.
My phone buzzed. WeChat from Qin Hao: “Wifey, client stood me up again today. What are we eating tonight?” I sent back “talk when I get home,” then laid the phone face down on the desk. It took three tries to set it down steady.
Four thirty, the internal line rang. VP Cui’s assistant, Xiao Zhou: “Manager Chen, VP Cui wants you to bring him a copy of the list.”
Cui Tao, forty, vice president, the boss lady’s younger brother. As of this year his is the last signature on every contract. He signs in the final box, in very small characters, as if afraid of taking up room.
His office is at the far end of the third floor, sixty square meters, bigger than the boss lady’s. I pushed the door open, and the first thing I saw was not the desk but the pull-up bar by the door. Stainless steel, braced between two walls, a ring of white chalk on the bar.
He was hanging from it. White shirt off, grey tank top, the muscle in his shoulders moving in separate slabs. “Manager Chen, give me three.” He finished three pull-ups, dropped down, took a towel to his neck.
“The list.” He put his hand out. I passed it over. He read down it, stopped his finger on line seven, looked up at me. “You typed yourself in too?”
“I wrote the policy. Everyone over fifteen thousand goes on it.”
“Then you wait for my sister to speak.” He put the list on the desk. “That list is hers to decide. I just sign the last box. Whatever she does not cross out, I do not touch; whatever she crosses out, I sign for that too. Whether your line ever comes down to my nod, you know perfectly well yourself.”
“I know,” I said. People in this factory think the one who signs is the one who decides. Only people in HR know that box is procedure.
“Then what are you still standing here for.” He hung the towel on the bar.
“Waiting for a word from you.”
“I have no word.” He came around, around behind me. I thought he was going for something; he did not, he just stood a step behind my back. I could smell the sweat on him, and a faint mint of mouthwash.
“Manager Chen, do you train?”
“What?”
“Gym.” He poked a finger into my calf, through the stocking. “That muscle does not come from sitting in an office.”
My leg tightened. “Three times a week, Super Monkey. Squat sixty kilos.” I regretted it as soon as it was out. It sounded like I was reading him my physical results.
“Sixty?” He came around to the front, looked me over top to bottom, from collarbone to hem and back up. “That gym in the factory, I spent four hundred thousand fitting it out last year. B1. Have you ever been?”
“No. A staff card is 300 a month. I never got one.”
“You are a manager, you do not need a card.” He sat back down. “Go whenever you want, badge the door open.”
“VP Cui, I may not be a manager on October 1st.”
“All the more reason to go, then.” He raised his eyes. “People out of work need leg day most.”
I stood there holding the folder. He stopped looking at me, looked at his screen. As I turned to go I heard him say behind me, “Manager Chen, your ass is better looking than your face.”
I did not turn around. The corridor is long. My five-centimeter heels went off on the floor one strike at a time, all the way to the elevator, and I noticed I was walking faster than usual, and clenching tighter than usual too.
Off at five thirty. Twenty-five minutes driving back to Country Garden. Qin Hao was already home, white shirt on, tie not loosened, sitting on the couch on his phone. The stove was cold, the morning bowls still in the sink.
“That client today says he will decide next week.” He did not look up. “Next week for sure.”
“You said that last week too.” I changed my shoes. “How many did you sign in September?”
“Two.” He put the phone down. “Man-Man, is that list at your factory done?”
“Done. Number seven is me.”
He blanked for three seconds. “No way. You are the manager.”
“A manager is also a person on eighteen thousand.” I dropped my bag on the dining table.
“Then… then what do we do?”
“Nothing,” I said. “If I go, I go.”
He did not answer that. He never answers that kind of thing. Seven years, and his talent for ducking things is bigger than his talent for closing them. He got up, said “I will make noodles,” and the fridge door opened and shut, shut and opened, unable to find the eggs.
The noodles took ten minutes. He washed up, and I sat on the couch doing the arithmetic. Mortgage 8,600, car loan 2,300, his mother 2,000 a month, utilities and building fees 900. That makes 13,800. He made 4,200 last month.
September 19th, Friday, nine twenty in the morning. The boss lady came up to the third floor. Fifty-two, short hair, jade bangle, my page of the list in her hand.
She slapped the list down on my desk, pulled a red pen out of my pen cup and, right in front of me, drew a line through line seven, straight through my name, and wrote beside it: renew three years, negotiate at 20,000. She signed it with a single character, Chen. Her surname. Also mine.
“Xiao Chen, you work out the severance for these seven better than Finance does.” She stuck the pen back. “The first six leave next month, you stay. There is exactly one person in this factory who can send six people out in a month without anything blowing up, and it is you.”
“Thank you, Chairwoman.”
“Do not thank me, thank your own mouth.” She took two steps, then turned back. “I crossed your line out, so you do not need to go running to Tao-Tao. He only signs the last box.”
“I know.”
She left. All that was left in the office was the sound of the printer. A-Wen sidled over. “Man-jie, is it not you any more?” “Not me any more.” “That is wonderful.”
I said “mm,” sat down, and looked at that red line. Nine years, twelve salary adjustment rounds, over four hundred contracts, three workplace-injury negotiations, one line-wide walkout. What is left on paper in the end is this: one red stroke, and the names of six people leaving next month.
I skipped lunch. Badged my way down to B1. The lights came on rank by rank. Rubber matting and disinfectant, one entire wall of mirror, a squat rack facing the mirror, four treadmills beside the rack.
I got on the third one. The workout pants were something I had shoved in my bag on the way out that morning, black leggings, the kind I had only ever worn at Super Monkey. I wore them once to pick Qin Hao up from work and he said, “Too tight, do not wear those out.”
Six an hour, eight, ten. Twenty minutes, thirty. My ponytail slapped at my shoulders, sweat ran down from the back of my neck, the quick-dry tee stuck to my back.
At minute forty I stared at the woman in the mirror. Thirty-four, one sixty-eight, fifty-two kilos, twenty-one percent body fat, seventh highest salary in the factory, name struck through in red pen.
Nine years, and apart from that list I have nothing to show. The flat is in my name and comes out of my card; my husband’s commission does not cover his own mother’s allowance; six people leave next month because of a table I calculated; and I myself was kept by one red pen.
At minute forty-two I stopped. Badly out of breath, hands braced on the rails, and on the heart-rate pad on the rail a number came up: 162.
My phone buzzed in the treadmill’s cup holder. Cui Tao: “You are in B1? You are on the door log.”
I wrote back: “Running.”
He wrote: “Monday, twelve thirty. I am doing legs. My knees cave in. Keep an eye on me.”
I wiped my face with the towel, looked at the message for twenty seconds, and typed two words: “I am there.”