Chapter 10

Parsed with an automated reader. The content accuracy is not guranteed.

The summer after sophomore year, the pressure came all at once.

After all, during our high school years, every path led to one exit—the gaokao. You say it’s unreasonable, but still, you have to admit that it was the most reasonable of all the options available at the time.

Of course, you couldn’t tell a high school student that they couldn’t do much even if they went to Tsinghua-Peking. There was too much of this kind of negativity now.

You had to tell them that Tsinghua students had the quality that actions spoke louder than words, and Peking University had elegant brothers and sisters.

In any case, only people with dreams were happy.

After the first mock exam, Chen Ruobing’s total score surpassed the person in second place by over thirty points. Although our school would have twenty or thirty people that got into Tsinghua-Peking every year, there had never been anyone as outstanding as Chen Ruobing. Our school had always anticipated having a top scorer, so she became the entire school’s hope that year and would be called into the teacher’s office after school to do extra exams.

With my grades, there was no chance I would get into Tsinghua-Peking, and the other schools in Beijing didn’t make much of a difference to me. In actuality, there were big differences between the admissions standards of different majors, but I was ignorant at the time and couldn’t figure out a path to follow, at a loss when it came to my dreams. Thus, in this quandary, I had little motivation to study.

During that time, Chen Ruobing and I would only eat lunch together. There would always be an indescribably strange atmosphere. Maybe it was that I wasn’t in the right frame of mind, so it was really only me that thought it was strange.

Then as soon as the afternoon bell rang, I would run to the schoolyard with Liu Yufei to play basketball while the teacher hadn’t come in yet. At the time, I seemed to be against everyone and had suddenly become a rebellious junior high student. A month passed by like this, and I was scolded by the teacher many times.

Of course, I couldn’t say this first relationship I had with a boy was unpleasant.

Girls and boys were a completely different species. He would argue with you over who was the best center in the NBA or repeatedly teach you a passing move until it put you in a bad mood. Then when you would put on a stern expression and said you were tired, he would say, “Then take a break.”

Our conversations basically revolved around basketball. Compared to my sensitive and delicate self, he could be described as someone with no nerves, someone who didn’t experience human worries. Or rather, he spent every day in happiness and felt that life was infinitely beautiful, and of course if there was no gaokao, then everything would be perfect. It was difficult to talk to him about the trivial disappointments or joys that popped up in my head. Even if I did, he wouldn’t give me the response I wanted, so I wouldn’t say anything.

It was likely that I had been with Chen Ruobing for too long that led me to believe if I had any little thought—such as a dream I had, something I imagined, or unhappiness I felt as a result of a remark someone made—I could spill all of it.

That wasn’t the case. It wasn’t everyone in this world that I could share all of my thoughts with.

On the contrary, I had only met one such person so far, which was Chen Ruobing.

One day after I finished playing basketball, it was already past six o’clock, and Liu Yufei and I were sitting to the side of the court to rest. Liu Yufei was talking endlessly to me about yesterday’s NBA match, and I looked up as I echoed him.

I suddenly found that Chen Ruobing was sitting in that familiar seat in the corridor on the third floor of the teaching and laboratory buildings. She seemed to glance our way before lowering her head again and seemed to be writing something.

I couldn’t hear a word of what Liu Yufei said. My mind was only filled with that indistinct figure in the distance.

I wondered what was she doing. Was she doing her homework? Lately, hadn’t she been going to the office to do practice problems as soon as school ended?

For some reason, my heart suddenly softened, as if someone had poked an acupuncture point, and an ache welled up within me. The inexplicable conflict I felt until now disappeared without a trace. I simply didn’t know why I was sitting there at that moment. I clearly should have been at Chen Ruobing’s side, idly chatting with her, or simply not talking at all, just watching the sunset together.

Translator’s Notes

1. Tsinghua-Peking is the combination of the first characters of Tsinghua and Peking University to refer to both of them (that isn’t the actual transliteration, but it’s how they’re usually called in English). Back

2. “Actions speak louder than words” (行胜于言) is an idiom that is seen as the embodiment of the spirit of Tsinghua University, in which there is an emphasis on hard work/getting things done. Back

3. A famous saying (腹有诗书气自华) is used here, and it means that people who are knowledgeable and diligent at reading will always have a kind of elegance about them that makes them stand out. (Another side-note, the “brothers and sisters” is referring to other students). Back

Like this:Like Loading...