17. Pressure

Alcohol and the long-awaited relaxation left a lingering warmth from last night's "accidental" indulgence, seemingly bridging the cold distance between Yi Yi and Zhuang Jia for the time being. In the morning, Yi Yi appeared at the restaurant looking radiant, only to find the atmosphere somewhat heavy. He Miao, Ding Xiaojuan, and even Gao Sheng and He Tian, ​​who had brought their children, were all huddled together, talking in hushed tones.

"What's wrong?" Yi Yi pulled out a chair and sat down.

He Miao pushed her phone over; the screen displayed a densely packed chat history from the neighborhood's residents' group, filled with panicked messages. "In our neighborhood... a child had an accident last night."

Yi Yi's heart tightened, and she quickly grabbed her phone to browse the messages. The messages were disorganized, but the core information was clear: a ninth-grade boy had fallen from the roof of his house and was found dead. The group chat was filled with various speculations, fear, and sighs. The boy's photo (probably from a previous class activity) was repeatedly forwarded, a young and innocent face forever frozen in time.

"How old is the child?" Yi Yi's voice was a little hoarse.

"I heard your grades are pretty good in your final year of junior high," Ding Xiaojuan said calmly, but her brows furrowed slightly. "I don't know the specific reason, but it seems like you just finished some kind of exam."

“He’s only a teenager,” Yi Yi looked up at him, her eyes showing disapproval. “What’s weighing on him might be heavier than we imagine.”

"Who doesn't experience pressure?" Zhuang Jia took a sip of coffee. "I was under the same pressure when I took the college entrance exam. The media is the same now, reporting on these things all the time, giving people unintentional hints."

“The competitive environment now is different from what it was back then,” Yi Yi retorted. “The pressure of getting into good schools, family expectations, social networks… they have nowhere to escape.”

"This world is inherently competitive," Zhuang Jia said dismissively. "There's nothing wrong with getting used to it sooner. Aren't there rankings in the middle school and college entrance exams? Aren't job applicants judged by resumes? Aren't we all competing? Even if parents don't compare, society will."

Their small group chat of three was also in turmoil. He Miao posted a screenshot of the group chat, which was a fragment of the child's mother's (who had been identified by the neighbors) nearly collapsing, incoherent crying and screaming. He Miao added: "I know this child, I've seen him a few times in the neighborhood, he's a pretty quiet boy. His mother is in the group...sigh."

Ding Xiaojuan sent a sighing emoji: "There are so many difficult things after you start working, how difficult can studying be?"

Yi Yi looked at the screen, typed a line of text, deleted it, and finally wrote: "He's probably been depressed for a long time. It's not that he's not afraid, it's that he's in too much pain and can't see any other way."

Ding Xiaojuan replied quickly, with her usual calm to the point of being coldly rational: "I'm a believer in the law of the jungle. People who choose this path, even if they don't choose it this time, will most likely still choose it when facing even more brutal competition and failure in society. To some extent, it's a matter of personality and resilience that determines elimination."

These words made Yi Yi very uncomfortable. Just as she was about to retort, Zhuang Jia, who was sitting next to her, leaned over to take a look and nodded: "The words are unpleasant to hear, but to some extent, they make sense. Survival of the fittest is the law of nature."

Yi Yi abruptly pulled her phone back, glanced at him, and didn't say anything, but the disappointment and coldness in her eyes were clearly visible.

Zhuang Jia realized he might have said something wrong and softened his tone: "We can't change other people's tragedies. Let's have breakfast first, then we still have to go to the next attraction as planned."

The journey ahead was overshadowed. The sun still shone brightly, and the waves still lapped at the beach, but the young life that had been lost hung like an invisible cloud over everyone's hearts, especially those of parents. Watching the three boys running and chasing each other carefree on the beach, the adults' eyes held a complex mix of emotions.

He Miao whispered to Yi Yi and Ding Xiaojuan, "When the baby was born, I asked the doctor if he was healthy and if he had all four limbs. When I got a positive answer, I was so grateful. At that time, I felt that as long as the baby was healthy and safe, that was the greatest blessing."

"And then?" Ding Xiaojuan interjected, "Then it started with 'insatiable greed.' They wanted good grades, lots of talents, and to be better than other kids..."

“Yes,” Yi Yi said, watching Kai Kai scream and laugh as he was chased by the waves, “and slowly, the original intention is lost.”

“It’s not that you’re losing them, it’s that the environment is forcing you to increase your efforts,” Ding Xiaojuan analyzed rationally. “You can stick to your laid-back approach, but when the entire evaluation system changes, your child may be excluded from certain opportunities. What we can do is not to keep increasing our efforts endlessly, but to find that dangerous balance between providing support and setting bottom lines.”

Just then, Haha ran over, holding up a beautiful seashell: "Mommy! Look!"

Ding Xiaojuan immediately put on a bright smile and took the seashell: "It's so beautiful! Let's go back, wash it clean, and keep it as a keepsake." She kissed her son's sweaty forehead, and the calm rationality she had displayed while discussing the heavy topic was instantly replaced by tender maternal love.

Watching this scene, Yi Yi was touched. Perhaps Ding Xiaojuan was right; there are no black-and-white answers. The important thing is that, in the process of running, we shouldn't forget to stop occasionally, look at the smiles on the children's faces, and listen to their pure joy when they find a seashell.

Back at the hotel in the evening, the children were exhausted and went to bed early. The adults gathered in the suite's living room and opened a bottle of red wine. Somehow, the conversation circled back to education.

Ding Xiaojuan swirled her wine glass and suddenly asked, "Have you seriously considered sending your child to a secondary school elsewhere? To change their path?"

Yi Yi's heart skipped a beat. A more relaxed environment, less cutthroat competition? She glanced at Zhuang Jia.

“The pressure is relatively less,” Gao Sheng chimed in. “Grades are graded by level, so every single point is scrutinized. But the competition for top universities is just as fierce everywhere. Moreover, education abroad relies more on autonomy; if children aren’t self-disciplined, they’re more likely to fall behind.”

“It’s not about finding a permanent solution,” Ding Xiaojuan said. “It’s about giving them another way of looking at the world and themselves. Of course, that’s assuming they have the financial means and time to do so.”

The spark of hope in Yi Yi's heart was once again suppressed by practical considerations. Finances, time, the child's adaptability, family separation… each was a heavy weight. She realized that even the right to choose to "change tracks" seemed somewhat forced. This realization left her with a suffocating feeling in her chest.

As night deepened and people dispersed, Zhuang Jia finished washing up and came out to see Yi Yi standing in front of the French windows, gazing at the dark sea outside, where the sound of waves could be faintly heard, her back to him slender.

He walked over and gently wrapped his arms around her from behind. Yi Yi's body stiffened slightly, but she did not pull away.

"Still thinking about what happened during the day?" he asked in a low voice.

"I'm thinking about a lot of things," Yi Yi's voice drifted, "I'm thinking about that child, about Kai Kai's future, about us..." She stopped.

Zhuang Jia tightened his arms around her and rested his chin on the top of her head. "Don't overthink it. We have the ability to give Kai Kai a good life, and we will be there for him as he grows up. As for those extreme cases... they are rare occurrences."

His words of comfort were practical, but they failed to reach the deepest abyss churning within Yi Yi's heart. She was thinking not only about extreme events, but also about the pervasive, all-pervasive anxiety in the air, and her own sense of loss and powerlessness within that anxiety.

She gently pulled away from his embrace, turned around, and her face was now calm: "It's getting late, go to sleep. We have to drive tomorrow."

Lying in bed, Zhuang Jia soon began to breathe evenly. Yi Yi lay awake in the darkness.

Pressure. This word is like a boulder, weighing heavily on everyone's heart. Children face the pressure of getting into good schools, adults face the pressure of working to support their families, women face the pressure of balancing family and self, and men face the pressure of climbing the career ladder and avoiding being left behind... No one is exempt.

Between her and Zhuang Jia, the unspoken grievances, the efforts easily dismissed with "so what?", and the inferiority and resentment that arose from comparisons, themselves constituted a heavy burden on their relationship, gradually crushing their once intimate bond.

She turned to her side, looking at Zhuang Jia's sleeping silhouette. This man she had once deeply loved, with whom she had conceived a life, now felt so distant. They shared the same bed, yet it was as if they were separated by an invisible glass wall; they could see each other, but couldn't feel the true warmth of each other, nor could they hear the true voice of each other's hearts.

The sound of the ocean waves outside the window seemed to have turned into some kind of huge and ominous sob, which continued incessantly.

Yi Yi knew that some things had begun to crumble. Not in a sudden explosion, but in a silent, continuous disintegration, like a reef being eroded day and night by the waves.

She closed her eyes, and a single, icy tear silently slid down her temple, disappearing into the eternal sigh of the tide.