A Book Dedicated to Our Youth - Volume 3 - Chapter 9.3

V3C9.3
I bought myself a most expensive three-scoop ice cream with chocolate filling as a treat.

In this world, no-one needed to love me, but I have to love myself, pity myself, and treat myself well. That was what Xiao Bo had taught me, and though I wanted to cry when I thought about him, the only thing I should do when thinking of him was to smile.

I walked as I ate, humming hard. The only person in charge of my happiness was myself, it definitely didn’t rely on the actions of others. I wanted to be happy, so of course I was happy!

After finishing my ice cream, I walked by myself on the sidewalk, singing a song, holding my hands behind my back and hopping along in a lattice at one point, swinging my hands and bouncing around at another, happy regardless of what I didーI wasn’t allowed to be unhappy!

A man riding a bicycle passed by my side, then looked back at me. By the time I recognized that it was Chen Jing, he had already stopped his bike.

“Hey!” He got off his bicycle. “Is it just you, alone? Are you walking?”

“Yes.” I made myself comment cheerfully, “This morning, I went and saw the rankings, congratulations.”

He smiled indifferently. “I saw your results last semester. It was a hard hit, am I right? Are you still holding on?”

He seemed to be the only one who understood my bemoaning of “good grades”. I nodded heavily. “Yes, I’m holding on. But it’s so difficult, sometimes I don’t even know what exactly I’m holding on to.”

“When you’ve reached the mountaintop, then you’ll understand, but if you give up halfway, you’ll never understand it.” He stopped, then continued, “Don’t ever give up! If you give up once, you’ll become used to retreating when facing difficulties, but if you overcome the difficulty, you’ll become used to walking forwards no matter what. It looks like an easy choice to make, but the impact on you will be huge, and it’ll lead you down two completely different paths.”

I didn’t completely understand what he was saying, but in the face of a genius, I was used to it. “Right, I wanted to ask you a question. I heard that you could have entered Peking University, why didn’t you go? Isn’t Peking University bigger than Tsinghua?” 

His father was an official from the Bureau of Education so I thought he had insider information.

“If you go to Peking University, you can only study Physics or Chemistry. I don’t like either of these two majors, and I want to study architecture, so of course I chose Tsinghua University.”

“It’s like that then… No wonder you learnt art.” It turned out there wasn’t some secret plot behind it all, just a simple life choice, but letting go of a guaranteed entry to choose an entrance exam where the results weren’t certain wasn’t easy either.

“Where’s your house? You don’t live close by, do you, and you’re still insisting on walking back?”

“I like walking.”

He laughed and said, “Then you walk along slowly, I need to get back home.” He got onto his bike and asked again, “You’re sure you want to walk back home?”

I just said I liked walking, so how could I go back on my word now? “No need, thank you,” I answered.

“Bye!” He left, riding on his bicycle.

“I hope you have a happy time in University!” I shouted.

He turned around and waved at me with a smile. “I’ll be waiting for you in Tsinghua.”

My face was smiling, but I heaved a deep sigh. He believed in me, but I only felt that I was being crushed by a black cloud, the battlefield of love already lost.

I walked another half an hour or so before arriving home and I just entered the house when someone grabbed my arm. I was just about to scream when I saw that it was Zhang Jun.

He shouted at me, “Where did you go?! Did you know how worried everyone was? Everyone was looking for you at the skating rink- why do you only think about yourself and never about how your actions affect others?”

His nails dug painfully into my arm, but my heart hurt even more. I pushed him off forcefully, walking upstairs without a sound. 

“Qiqi.”

I pretended not to hear, running upstairs in a single breath. Back at home, my sister immediately pounced, carefully examining her skirt and sandals, and saying angrily to our mother and father, “Did you see that? She stole my skirt and shoes! Ah! She got my skirt dirty, what is this? Why did you steal my clothes? What are you doing, wearing someone else’s stuff without their permission? Who gave you permission…”

I thought I was very laughable, stealing someone else’s dress and shoes to please the mercurial heart of someone who had never liked me.

“I won’t ever wear your clothes again in the future.”

“Hey! You stole my pearl hairpin as well!”

My mom hurriedly butted in. “It was I who gave it to your sister, your sister wasn’t the one who took it.”

My father also entered the conversation. “Okay guys, she just wore your dress once, don’t be so stingy, just wash it and it’ll be fine.”

My sister glared at me. I went inside my room and changed my skirt and clothes, taking off the two pearl hairpins, and gave them all back to her. She humphed hard, raised her head, then carried her clothes off to give to my mother to wash.

I sat blankly, the image of Guan He and Zhang Jun turning in front of my eyes over and over.

“I want to be happy- I don’t want others to dictate that happiness!” I said those same words to myself, but my body seemed to have lost all its strength, lying there softly on the table.

Under the glass board of my desk was a sheet of snow white paper; my summer holiday plans. 

Luo Qiqi, you still haven’t recited your words and read through your grammar today.

Even though I understood, I didn’t want to do it a bit, void of a single scrap of interest in reading.

My finger touched the vague imprint of where there was a signature.

On this earth, others would abandon the promises they made to you. Did it turn out that even you would abandon the promises you made to yourself?

I sat up, opened my English book, forced myself to sweep aside all of my thoughts, and started doing grammar exercises. When I was done, I recited ten more words, before crawling into bed to sleep.

On the morning of the second day, I exited the house early in the morning and went to find Yang Jun.

“Do you have time?”

“For what?”

“Let’s go find a set of maths papers to do, and see who gets the better score.”

This really was catering to Yang Jun’s desires, it wasn’t a bad proposal at all. Yang Jun immediately flipped over a paper, placed it in the middle, along with a stack of working out papers, then set the alarm clock and began!

Maths was the subject best at quieting one’s mind, especially test papers, designed to begin simple and then grow harder gradually, slowly capturing the reader’s focus.

I wrote and calculated and wrote, shutting out the outside world. Yang Jun was able to complete practically the whole paper by the first hour and a half and had started attacking the last question. I, on the other hand, didn’t finish until the last ten minutes. We swapped our papers and started marking the other’s. I won.

Yang Jun was unsatisfied. “But I was faster than you. You didn’t even have time to do the last question.”

I didn’t bother replying. The moment we opened the paper, both of us went straight to the last question, but after seeing it, we made two completely different choices. I decided that the last question would require too much time, so I gave it up to ensure that I wouldn’t lose marks on the other questions, thus my slow speed and high accuracy; Yang Jun saw the last question and decided to finish the rest of the paper as fast as possible to spare time for the last question. The result was that even though he had something figured out for the last question, he had made too many errors in the previous questions, resulting in me getting a higher mark. 

Our choices were tied indefinitely to our personalities. I was a realist, a utilitarian, and placed the focus on the end result; he liked math so he not only wanted a good mark, but also the sense of accomplishment after finishing a hard question, which was why even now, I had already thrown away the paper to the side, not caring at all about how to solve that question, but he was still slouched over the paper, thinking and working.  

“Luo Qiqi, don’t just sit there.” He placed a paper and pen in front of me.

I had nothing else better to do so I picked up the pen and started tackling the question. Following Yang Jun’s thought process, I was able to write down the solution very soon and chucked it to him. He glanced through it, picked out a few mistakes, and finally put down his pen, satisfied.

“Luo Qiqi, I heard about you and the Class Captain of Class 4, Zhang Jun?”

I cut him off. “How has your attempt to chase Tong Yunzhe been?”

He became depressed immediately. “She doesn’t answer me a lot, and she always hangs out with other people…”

“What kind of person is your rival?”

“He’s older than me by a couple of years. I heard that he dropped out of school in the second grade of middle school and his family helped him start a video hall or something; a complete delinquent. I just can’t understand it. I’m so much better than him in so many ways, yet Tong Yunzhe only likes to hang out with him.”

“I told you, you two are from entirely different worlds,” I laughed. “From when you were small up until to now, you were always your parents’ good kid, the teacher’s pet- there are so many things that you can’t possibly understand.”

“Of course I understand, it’s that girls like bad boys right? Like Zhang Jun, apart from his good looks, what part of him is trustworthy? His girlfriends are a dime a dozen, but you people still flock around him.” Yang Jun grabbed my arm and rubbed it. “You’re not that stupid, right?”

I smiled thinly. “Of course not.”

Yang Jun nodded his head, satisfied, then suddenly asked mysteriously, “Would you like your fortune read? I just learnt it from a college student and I heard it’s very accurate. It’s popular in Beijing and Shanghai, so let’s see when you’ll meet your one true love.”

I stood and readied myself to leave. “You have an issue, I’m not going to play these mysterious spirituality games- if it’s meant to be yours, it will be, and if it’s not, it won’t.”

He walked with me outside, joining me to eat wontons outside in a booth.

He sighed as he ate. “It’s so boring. Please let school start soon, at least then I’ll get to bully you everyday.”

For the first time, Yang Jun and I were in complete agreement. 

After I parted with Yang Jun, I cycled by myself to the river and sat there in a daze. The more I thought, the sadder I became, so I took out my English textbook and forced myself to read. At first, my eyes were filled with the silhouette of Zhang Jun, but I ignored him, forcing myself to take in the information word by word. 

After reading about an hour of English, I decided to go home. 

I had yet to arrive at the entrance of the apartment when I saw Zhang Jun leaning against the side of the building, silently watching the road.

I didn’t want to see him, so I hid. 

But, even though I hid for a long time, he remained in that same position. Glancing at the time, I realised that my parents were about to come back from work so I could only walk out from my hiding place.

His features were very haggard. “Are you avoiding me?”

“No.”

“I was at your house by eight in the morning, and the minute your parents left I went looking for you, but your sister said you had already left the house.”

I didn’t say anything. Even though my heart was already softening, my face was still hard.

“Guan He doesn’t know how to skate, so someone has to guide her. Master Zhen and Master Jia aren’t bad people, but they’re both very self-centred, so I had to teach her myself first before asking them to take over. By the time I managed to convince those two and went back to find you, you were already gone. I went around the rink so many times looking for you and I was so worried, but when I turned around, you were having fun under the spotlight with someone else. Master Zhen, they laughed at me, saying I was getting worked up for no reason, so that was why I was a little testy yesterday.”

I couldn’t understand what I was feeling. Yesterday, I thought that the whole fiasco was so important but now, I thought that I was a bit selfish. It was hard enough for Guan He to find an opportunity to hang out with us, but instead of helping her, I was too busy feeling jealous of her; even though I knew she didn’t know how to skate, I didn’t think of her at all. I felt ashamed.

“Can we make up? If I did something wrong, tell me, I’ll change,” he said.

Zhang Jun wasn’t the type to say such words, but he said them regardless, so he must like me, right?

I lowered my voice and said, “I’m going home now. At eight, let’s meet at the bridge.”

He smiled happily. “I’ll be waiting.”

At that moment, I felt that nothing mattered anymore apart from him. He controlled my mood so easily, whether it be like a thunderstorm or a sunny day, he was able to change it with only a sentence.

During dinner, my sister was complaining about how all her friends had installed telephones in their house and that for the ease of doing homework, she insisted on having one in our house as well.

Back then, the installation fee for a telephone was $1500, about the same as my mother’s monthly wage. Being the frugal person she was, she refused to spend it on something like that, but it was obvious that my dad was thinking about it so my sister tugged at me to help her cause. I didn’t want to help her. After all, homework didn’t complete itself by calling people. But, my thoughts suddenly turned to Zhang Jun. When we were about to get off the train, Master Zhen, Huang Wei, Shen Yuanzhe and the group were swapping their home phone numbers. Zhang Jun wrote down his phone number for me and asked me happily for mine, but I could only bow my head in embarrassment. “I don’t have a telephone.”

My heart skipped a beat and I immediately joined my sister in begging my father to install a telephone.

Under the united attacks of my sister and I, they agreed to our request on the condition that I would keep my current ranking and that my sister would get into the top ten of her class. Without thinking, she agreed. Before the temptation of a telephone, she had transformed into an omnipotent superwoman.

When the main engine of the telephone had been installed, my dad got a telephone from his workplace and announced that whoever was able to complete their homework first would get an extension installed in their bedroom. My sister tried to bribe my dad into installing it for her first but before she was able to win him over, I took advantage of them not being at home, did the wiring myself and successfully installed the phone in my bedroom.

My parents were surprised and praised me for my crafting abilities but my sister was on the verge of tears from anger.

“And here is a lesson to you, your own self will always be more reliable than others.” I mocked.

My mother comforted her, promising that as long as she gets into the top ten of her class, they would install an extension for her but if my grades fell, then they would immediately take away mine.

Now that I thought about it, our generation had never been through many struggles, but we also never lived in luxury and understood how everything came at a price which is why later on, we felt so endeared to our parents.