Hormones That Can't Be Hidden - Chapter 2

Dong Junhao had been standing by the peeling gray wall of the labor market for three full days.

The brutal summer heat of the previous week had quietly receded, and as the sun began to dip, the wind in the shadows bared its teeth. The breeze felt like it was covered in burrs, pricking its way into collars and cuffs, seeping into the marrow of his bones with a damp, cold stickiness.

He was surrounded by people in the same predicament. Their faces were rendered into a uniform, dusty gray by the sun and grime, but their eyes were sharp with a parched intensity. Like fish gasping for water, they stared fixedly at any contractor or small-business owner who happened to wander by. Those eyes burned with anxious hope, but beneath it lay a thick layer of numbness the result of being repeatedly scrutinized and then discarded.

The air was stagnant, a heavy mix of acrid smoke from low-grade tobacco, the sour tang of fermented sweat, and the dust kicked up by countless soles. Somewhere, the lingering scent of cheap food drifted through, coating the nasal passages and making it hard to breathe.

Three days, and not a single person had even asked for his price.

The construction industry was like a giant that had suddenly been drained of blood, collapsing silently. In the settling dust, the first to be buried were those who had nothing to sell but their physical strength.

“Dammit!”

The low curse escaped through Junhao’s gritted teeth like the whimpering of a trapped beast. His thick knuckles unconsciously ground a flake of peeling wall paint into fine dust. Construction work had dried up overnight; the winds of the market changed faster than a child’s mood. His immense strength, once his pride, had become a useless burden weighing heavily on his chest.

The few coins in his pocket clinked together with a hollow sound that made his heart sink. He had to mentally debate whether dinner should be three steamed buns or two bowls of watery porridge with pickles. He stared blankly at a jagged piece of a concrete brick on the ground, wondering if he should move to the distant docks or freight stations to try his luck.

Just as he was about to make up his mind, a pair of shoes stopped in his line of sight—brown leather shoes, slightly dusty but clearly high-quality and well-polished.

Junhao snapped his head up.

Standing before him was a middle-aged man, slightly stout, wearing a sharp dark jacket. He had the calculating, worldly smile of a typical businessman. However, his gaze was different from the other bosses; it wasn’t dismissive or picky. Instead, his eyes were like two suddenly ignited searchlights, burning with intensity.

He scrutinized Junhao without apology. His gaze lingered excessively on Junhao’s wide shoulders, which nearly strained the seams of his washed-out work clothes the bulge of his chest, and the powerful lines of his arms visible even through the thick fabric. He was evaluating him like a rare piece of fine timber or stone.

“Brother,” the man spoke, his voice carrying the smooth, polished tone of a street-smart merchant, yet it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. “Looking for work?”

Junhao’s throat was dry, as if filled with sand. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing sharply, before forcing out a gravelly response: “Yeah. I can do anything. I’ve got plenty of strength.”

As he spoke, he instinctively straightened his stiff back and puffed out his chest, presenting his only real “capital” as clearly as possible.

The man nodded, a cryptic smile playing at the corners of his mouth. His gaze was that of a man who had accidentally stumbled upon a dust-covered gold nugget in a pile of gravel.

“Strength is good,” he said slowly, appraising Junhao like a piece of merchandise. “In our world, strength is the hardest currency there is.”

He pulled out a business card but didn’t hand it over immediately, letting it dangle between his fingertips. “My name is Xu Jun. I’m the boss of the ‘Bihai Yuntian’ Bathhouse. I’m currently looking for a bath scrubber. Looking at your build.”

He scanned him again, from broad shoulders to narrow waist. “Heh, you’re a natural for this line of work! What do you say? Room and board included, base salary plus commission. If you do well, you’ll earn more than you ever did shivering or sweating on a construction site.”

A bathhouse? A scrubber?

Junhao’s brain felt like it had been struck by a heavy club; his vision blurred for a moment. In all his life, he could count the number of times he had entered a public bathhouse on one hand. Scrubbing people? Did that mean, standing before naked strangers, serving them by rubbing their backs and massaging them?

A mixture of shame and disbelief rushed to his head. His dark skin flushed hot with embarrassment, and he wished he could bury his face in the cracked earth beneath his feet. His lips moved for a long time before he finally squeezed out a fractured sentence: “I, I’m clumsy. My hands are rough, covered in calluses.  I’m afraid I’ll be too rough and tear someone’s skin off.”

Xu Jun had been waiting for this. He laughed heartily, the sound startlingly loud in the anxious labor market.

“Rough hands? Rough hands have more grip! Brother, trust me!”

He leaned in closer, lowering his voice with certainty. “Nowadays, those places are full of soft-skinned scrubbers who work like they haven’t eaten in a week. Customers are sick of it! What they want is your honesty, your raw power!”

“With a physique like yours standing there, you’re a walking advertisement! Don’t worry, the work is simple. You’ll pick it up in no time. We provide full training. So, how about it?”

Xu Jun’s words didn’t feel like a negotiation; they felt like heavy drumbeats hitting Junhao’s empty, aching stomach and his fluttering heart. He looked up at Xu Jun’s confident face which seemed to scream ‘I never misjudge a person’ and then looked down at his own hands. They were large-knuckled, covered in thick, yellowish-brown calluses, seemingly born only to wrestle with steel and cement.

Finally, his fingers brushed the cold, thin coins in his pocket.

That deep-seated, rugged shame of a construction worker groaned under the weight of cold reality. It was slowly flattened, crushed, and ground into the dust beneath his feet. He took a deep breath. The dusty, sour air rushed into his lungs, bringing a sense of suffocation but also a desperate kind of resolve.

“Are the room and board, truly included?” he asked hoarsely, his voice emerging from deep within his chest.

“Truer than gold!” Xu Jun slapped his thigh with finality.

Junhao didn’t hesitate any longer. He couldn’t afford to. He bent down, grabbed his old snakeskin bag worn until the dirty threads showed and swung his entire life’s possessions over his broad shoulder. The heavy bag pressed into his shoulder muscles, leaving a deep mark and pinning down his last fluttering doubt.

“Let’s go.”

The men’s locker room at the “Bihai Yuntian” Bathhouse was noticeably warmer than the outside, filled with a dizzyingly complex scent. The sharp, chemical smell of disinfectant tried to mask everything, but it couldn’t quite cover the sour tang of old sweat soaked into the wooden tiles, nor the cloying sweetness of various cheap and expensive soaps and shampoos. All of this, steamed and stirred by the omnipresent humid air, created a thick, tangible atmosphere that hijacked the senses.

Junhao stood awkwardly in a corner of the locker room like a large wild animal suddenly locked in a strange cage. His new uniform a soft, light-blue short-sleeved shirt printed with “Bihai Yuntian” in artistic script wrapped snugly around his powerful frame.

The soft texture against his skin, which was used to being either bare or rubbed raw by coarse work clothes, felt strange. It caused a faint, unfamiliar itch that made him feel restrained, as if he didn’t know where to put his hands or feet.

This feeling was ten times more awkward than the first time he had donned his stiff construction gear to walk across a swaying scaffold dozens of meters in the air. On the site, no matter how hard or dangerous it was, when you used your strength and poured out your sweat, you got a visible brick wall in return. It was real.

But here, amidst the thick mist and moving shadows, everything felt vaguely blurred in a way he couldn’t understand.