Chapter 9

Please, don’t break the wings of my dreams.

Please also look at me – ordinary but doing my best.

My younger sister cried.

“Mom, let my sister study. I can stop going to tutoring. I promise I’ll be first in my grade.”

My father, who had been silent, stubbed out his cigarette: “Just one year. If it doesn’t work out, you’ll obediently go to work and get married.”

At night, my sister and I squeezed together on a small bed.

She whispered, “Sis, I realize now that being first isn’t as easy as I thought.”

Because we are born as a point, and then become a circle.

The bigger the circle, the more unknowns you discover outside it.

That’s when you realize how small you really are.

Some people shrink back from then on, becoming a limited sphere.

But not me!

Even if I’m destined to be ordinary, I want to expand and expand.

Even if, in the end, I’m still just a speck of dust in the universe.

I did my best – I have no regrets.

For a whole week, I was surrounded by ridicule and scolding.

The scolding came from Grandma, who said I was a foolish troublemaker, said I was daydreaming, said I wasn’t meant to be a college student.

The ridicule came from many mouths in the village.

They had already decided I would fail, and told my parents not to waste money; better to save it for their old age.

In mid-July, I said goodbye to my sister and parents and went to the neighboring county to study.

My sister saw me off at the village entrance.

“Sis, you have to work hard!”

“Qiuqiu, if you don’t want to be stuck here forever, you can’t slack off either. You don’t know how much I envy your smart brain.”

That year, my sister was in eighth grade, and I was the equivalent of entering twelfth grade.

The Repeater Class was not easy.

Everyone had already been through high school and had a foundation, so the teachers focused on exercises in class.

Whether students like me, the underachievers, could keep up was not their concern.

I was a blank slate; at first it was like hearing something completely incomprehensible.

My parents only gave me enough for tuition.

Every day, I washed baskets of dishes for the cafeteria auntie so I could get three free meals.

Usually, I ate whatever was left over.

Later, the auntie saw how hard I worked and would specially save a chicken leg or some braised pork for me.

“You’re still growing. You can’t eat leftovers every day.”

I could eat half a pound of rice in one meal. I wasn’t afraid of getting fat at all; I just felt like I could never eat enough.

At 10:30 p.m., the dorm lights went out.

I took my books to the corridor to study.

The corridor lights were motion-sensor, and would go out after a while, so I had to keep pacing back and forth.

There were so many mosquitoes in summer that mosquito repellent was useless.

I didn’t dare slap loudly, afraid of disturbing the other students.

I could only keep kicking my legs.

By the end of the night, my legs were covered in bites.

The atmosphere at school was very oppressive.

Everyone buried themselves in their books, rarely talking.

I had so many things I didn’t understand, but everyone was pressed for time and unwilling to waste it helping someone with zero foundation.

Later, the class monitor, Jiang Xin, couldn’t stand it anymore: “I’ll teach you!”

I always brought her questions, and her tone was never very friendly.

It didn’t matter.

I’d already been toughened by society.

Was I still afraid of a little attitude?

But after spending more time together, I realized she was actually very kind.

She lent me her notes and exercise books from her first and second years of high school.

I was overusing my eyes, and my vision got much worse.

Words that used to be clear became blurry.

A pair of glasses cost over a hundred yuan; I couldn’t afford one, so I just gritted my teeth and endured it.

I struggled to climb up from the very bottom of the class.

No matter how much I begged, time never slowed down for me.

A semester passed quickly. In the last monthly exam before the New Year, I ranked eighteenth from the bottom in the class.

I looked at the report card and smiled, and as I smiled, I started to cry.

A score of just over 300 – maybe for an average high school student, it’s something they could get with their eyes closed.

But only I knew how hard it was.

On New Year’s Eve, my father pushed open my door and asked, “Aren’t you coming out to watch the Spring Festival Gala?”

I bit my pen and didn’t look up: “In a bit, after I finish this set of problems.”

My father stood at the door in silence for a long time, then turned and quietly closed the door.

The TV outside was turned down much lower.

When I finally finished and went out, the big TV in the room was playing “Unforgettable Tonight.”

On the second day of the New Year, Grandma and Aunt brought up the old topic again, wanting to arrange a marriage for me.

“This time, even though it’s a second marriage, they’re offering 80,000 yuan as a bride price. You won’t get another chance like this.”