The next day, Shanquan and his friends got up very early. Their sleep was extremely sound. During these two weeks, every day, they looked for a new place to live. Although they had not found a suitable location, especially in terms of price, they found a place to store their belonging yesterday. Today's activity was moving goods to the goods storage area at the station. Yiren left first to take care of administrative matters. The four other residents were getting ready to pack their things.
They planned to move the goods gradually to make transporting those things to the warehouse easier. They didn't have a lot of stuff, so it's not that hard. As of today, each person only moved a few items. They put those items into boxes. Shanquan, Yixiong and Xinxiu, each brought one box. Zhengyi brought two boxes. The other box he brought was Qiuzhen's. So there were five boxes in total. Yiren had brought his own box earlier. All boxes measured 50 centimeters long and 30 centimeters wide. Because the boxes were not big, they could easily take the boxes to the station on foot.
The station was near to their house. There were several stations in this area, but this one was the closest to their home. Apart from its proximity, they deliberately chose that station because they already understood the station's ins and outs. They had been commuting from that station almost every day.
That station was a subway station. Subway was the most popular transportation in this gigantic city. People agreed it was reliable, comfortable, and cheap. Like other subway stations in the city, this station was also open twenty-four hours. So, transportation users could take the train at any time they need. There was no such thing as "last train" at any station in this city.
Arriving at the station, they headed straight to the Xindongchang warehouse, which was deep underground. This station was quite large; there were twelve railroad tracks. The first six tracks were at a depth of 100 meters. The second six tracks were in the layer below, 110 meters underground. They built the station this deep because the soil at that depth was very dense and consisted mostly of a layer of rock so that the ground conditions were very stable. Although the city was safe from the dangers of landslides and earthquakes, they needed to get additional security measures by building stations in hard and dense soil layers. The six tracks above served Line 15, and the six tracks below served Line 21. Each line only used four tracks. Two more tracks were backups for emergencies if they could not use the existing four tracks.
There was actually one more floor below the two floors. However, that floor is closed to the public. Officially, the government only said that the floor was a spare facility for the two above it. If, for some reason, the two floors above cannot function, then their role will be taken over by this reserve station. So even though each line already has a backup track, there are also backup stations. From the floor where Line 21's platform was located, people can only go straight down, either using the elevator or escalator, to the floor below the reserve station.
The only way to get to the reserve station was via the emergency stairs. But no one can just barge in there. According to rumors, the door leading to the emergency stairs was heavily guarded at the reserve station. Shanquan had heard that there really was another way to get down to it. But the path is still a secret. Because until now, there has never been an incident where the Line 21 and Line 15 platforms failed to function, so the secret passage has never been opened.
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There was a mall under the station. Many people entered this subway station to visit the mall instead of taking the train. The mall was quite large, as there were five levels. Below the five levels, there were still more layers. Xindongchang was one tenant at the lowest level. Including Yiren, who came earlier, they had never entered the lower part of the station. So today was the first time for all of them.
Wasting no time, they all headed there forthwith. It turned out the administrative matter was very smooth. When Shanquan and his friends arrived at Xindongchang, Yiren had already handled it very well. They could see that the lockers they got were quite large, just like Yiren explained to them yesterday, which was two by two by two meters. In addition to the keys, they had to use a PIN, fingerprint, and retina scan to open the lockers. So it was safe because only the tenant could open the locker. Yiren also gave them a surprise. Besides the lockers, Xindongchang also gave them a bonus for access to safe deposit box services. Got a discount, plus a bonus. Their luck was extraordinary this time. Because not all Xindongchang locations have safe deposit box services, they had to go to other Xindongchang locations to access it. They had not decided yet where to open the safe deposit box.
They happily put their belongings into the lockers. After that, they tried to lie down in it. Because it was still early in the morning, there weren't many people. According to Tsaehorng, customers rarely go to their lockers because this was a long-term storage locker, not a temporary storage locker. They usually only came when they wanted to pick up or store things. According to statistics, customers usually arrive after lunch.
Yiren had already told Tsaehorng that since they would use the locker to store their daily necessities like clothes and toiletries, they would likely come to their locker a lot. Yesterday, Tsaehorng said it didn't matter.
At 10 AM, they felt relieved after they had done everything. Currently, their focus was finding a place to live. Deep in his heart, Shanquan felt a bit sad. There was still a feeling of not being willing to leave the house he lived in for this one year. He already felt comfortable living there. Moving to a new place, he would have to adapt again. But he had to accept the fact that they had to move out of the house.
If he insisted on continuing to live there, of course, he could do that. He still had enough money to pay the rent for the house for the next year. Shanquan knew his other friends also had some money. But they had to save money because they were all unemployed right now. Not only was Shanquan unemployed, but his four friends were also unemployed. Somehow it happened like that. Since Shanquan had lost his job three months ago, the other four people had experienced the same thing in succession. This was difficult to explain logically. Maybe it was what people called a shared fate.
A few moments later, they went up and out of the station. After separating at the station exit, they split up. All want to find a place to live close to this station. Even though they had not succeeded in the last two weeks, they were still trying. Actually, last week they already had a suitable place. The place was small, there was only one room. The owner of the place objected to the fact that they crammed the small place with five adult men. They should also take this into account because it turned out that many owners had imposed a maximum limit on the number of residents.