Why it never ends

Chapter 1225 No!
The other three people in the room did not answer immediately; they were all exhausted and looked as if they had just finished a battle.

Hazel was the first to recover; he went to the sink and washed his hands with soap.

“A small exhaust fan in the basement broke down,” the old man explained. “The fan wasn’t turning, it just kept humming. When I first checked, I found a relay that was tripped, so I thought it was due to overload. But after cleaning off the dust and restarting it, I realized it wasn’t just a simple overload…”

The old man carefully cleaned the black dirt from under his fingernails, turned off the faucet, and casually wiped the remaining water stains on his body.

"Actually, it's because one of the capacitors on top failed, causing only the main winding of the motor to be energized. A single-phase motor usually needs two forces to be offset by half a beat to start turning. The role of the capacitor is to slow down the current in the secondary winding a little, so that the two forces act at different times, and then the fan can form a 'rotation' effect."

As Hazel spoke, she tidied her toolbox. It was a bright red hard plastic box, worn pale pink in many places. Unlike the neat and organized toolbox Chloe had imagined, Hazel's box was a mess, with pliers and screwdrivers of various sizes piled together, each tool's handle or metal part more or less stained with dark brown grease.

"When the capacitor fails, the secondary winding synchronizes with the primary winding. The motor stops turning but draws a lot of current, so the thermal relay trips." Hazel chuckled involuntarily as she said this, as if she had just told a funny joke.

Chloe was completely confused. Not wanting Hazel to realize she hadn't understood, she looked at the old man's profile with an air of self-righteousness and loudly replied, "Oh."

Then she looked at Eucalyptus and asked, "What are you doing?"

“The inspection window here is old and dilapidated,” Eucalyptus rubbed his arm. “The panel is almost falling off, but we can’t take it off. It takes two of us, Tissot and me, to prop it up so that Hazel can work.”

"When we were halfway through the repairs, the metal frame on top suddenly came off," Tie Xi continued, "so I had to quickly move a ladder over and go up to hold it up."

They both sighed at the same time.

"It's a good thing you came," Tie Xi said, "otherwise we would have really been stuck."

Chloe tilted her head, wanting to ask why Hazel didn't get the capacitor himself, but none of the four people in the room spoke—Eucaly sat down on the deck chair by the window, Tin went to the bar to get water, and Hazel continued to squat on the floor tidying up his toolbox. They all looked so relaxed and carefree. Chloe suddenly felt very wronged. She didn't want to do anything and just wanted to turn her face to the other side.

"Here, have some water." Tiexi placed a glass of lemonade next to Chloe. "Are you here to see someone?"

"No, I'm just browsing." Chloe took the water glass.

“It’s almost nine o’clock,” Hazel suddenly said to Tess, “the speech is about to start, turn on that radio—”

Chloe suddenly jumped up like a cat that had been kicked, and shrieked, "I don't listen to Hershta's speech!"

The other three people in the room looked at her with some strange expressions.

Chloe's voice dropped a little: "...Weren't you talking about Hersta's speech?"

"You went to that speech too?" Tie Xi asked.

Chloe frowned: "What's the point of going?"

Tie Xi spread his hands and looked at his two companions: "Guess who here wasn't invited?"

Hazel stuck out her tongue and made an awkward "slur." Eucalyptus looked down and chuckled: "...She definitely wasn't targeting you. I guess she just forgot."

Tie Xi's uneven eyebrows became even more noticeable. "I wasn't invited by her," Chloe puffed out her chest, "it was my friends—Gahodorei and Lü Qizhen—who gave me the invitation."

“Oh,” Tess looked at Chloe, “thank you for the finishing blow, little girl.”

Chloe originally intended to state that she wouldn't go if it were Hester's invitation, but seeing Tess's expression, she realized that her words seemed to have been interpreted as mocking her for having no friends, and she couldn't help but burst out laughing.

“So what if I didn’t go!” Chloe said. “There are plenty of fun and interesting things in this world. What does it matter if I missed that one speech? I’d rather be here watching you guys fix the generator than give that kind of speech!”

"Hmm?" Tie Xi put his hand on Chloe's shoulder. "I didn't realize you were so interested in repairing electric machines?"

“Iron and tin…” Eucalyptus began hesitantly, “Actually…”

“Don’t worry about it,” Tie Xi said, looking at Eucalyptus. “I wasn’t really interested in that speech either. It’s not the first time I’ve fallen asleep at a conference like this.”

"Do you often participate in these kinds of activities?" Chloe asked curiously.

“Back in District 3,” Tie Xi replied, “you’re right, it was really boring.”

Chloe cleared her throat, recalling her conversation with her mother at the dinner table that morning. She adjusted her posture slightly, attempting to comment in a more mature and objective tone: "Not entirely. After all, politicians' games also have their own unique appeal."

Tie Xi looked at the girl who had suddenly put on airs with great interest: "Oh? How so?"

“Politics makes people young, doesn’t it?” Chloe raised her chin. “A candidate in his thirties will also be considered ‘young’.”

“That’s because people need time to accumulate social experience, and politicians are precisely the people who need social experience the most,” Tie Xi said. “A fifty-year-old scoundrel has eaten twenty more years’ worth of food than a thirty-year-old young scoundrel… What does that have to do with being young?”

"..." Chloe was momentarily speechless. "Anyway, this unique trait—"

“No,” Tie Xi said, one hand on his hip and the other on the coffee table beside him. “How is it unique? A thirty-year-old doctor is generally considered ‘young’—I mean, not so mature and reliable; a thirty-year-old sailor is obviously not as experienced as a fifty-year-old sailor.”

As she spoke, she looked at Hazel.

"Clearly, our sixty-something Hazel is more reliable than a thirty-year-old rookie electrician, huh?"

“I had been in this business for over a decade when I was thirty,” Hazel corrected, “so I wasn’t exactly a newbie.”

Tiexi smiled, shrugged, and looked back at Chloe.

"In short, this applies to all industries—except for those that rely on youth."

Chloe blushed slightly, picked up her glass again, and continued drinking water, pretending that the conversation had never happened.

Hazel started tuning the radio—it turned out that this morning, the 12th District Labor Association was holding a strike briefing for workers over 40, which seemed to be related to retirement benefits for self-employed workers.

Eucalyptus and Thermite began clearing the clutter from the basement, and Chloe joined in to help. Only then did she feel the knot in her heart that had been there all night and all morning begin to melt away.