18-year-old Jiang Ning is sensitive and insecure. Her relationship with Zhuang Yan is like a melodramatic coming-of-age novel, absurd yet real.
Jiang Ning comes from a single-parent family. Her father was abusive, and her mother accidentally killed someone and served three years in prison before being released.
Young Jiang Ning was called the child of a murderer, an orphan, a bastard child, a punishment, and an evil child.
Fortunately, she was still young at that time, and apart from feeling pain and hunger, she couldn't feel anything else. When she was five years old, her mother was released from prison and forcibly took her away from that small mountain village.
Her mother had worked all sorts of jobs: sanitation worker, restaurant waitress, dishwasher, and even jobs that men did, such as carrying bricks, hauling cement, and cleaning windows from high places. After earning some money, the mother and daughter moved from a small single room to a one-bedroom apartment in town and became neighbors with Zhuang Yan.
She was seven years old when she met Zhuang Yan, and Zhuang Yan was also seven years old.
The two children stood together, thin and malnourished, but thankfully one had a grandmother and the other a mother, and they grew rapidly under the nourishment of love.
They went to school together, ate together, sat in a row in the classroom to listen to lessons and do homework, and even got bullied together. One of them had no parents, and the other had no father. They were called wild children picked up from the trash can.
Upon hearing this, Zhuang Yan rushed forward and started hitting them, beating them relentlessly until they dared not speak again.
After entering junior high school, the teachers began to talk about the dangers of early romantic relationships, and Zhuang Yan and Jiang Ning inexplicably became the focus of attention.
Jiang Ning had her first period in the first year of junior high school. At that time, she was at school and didn't have any money to buy sanitary napkins. To make matters worse, her pants got stained.
She sat awkwardly on the stool, her eyes reddening with intense shame, and dared not ask anyone for help.
After Zhuang Yan noticed that something was wrong with her, he got up and went to the convenience store to buy a pack of sanitary napkins. He even knew to wrap them in his school uniform jacket and throw them to her.
At that moment, Zhuang Yan was like a god descending from heaven, as if his body was coated with a layer of golden light.
Zhuang Yan had kept the fact that he bought sanitary napkins for Jiang Ning a secret, but the class still found out. Someone reported that they were dating and that he was saying all sorts of dirty things to Jiang Ning. The teacher called the two of them to the office for a private interrogation.
During her adolescence, Jiang Ning would feel wronged and ashamed if someone said a few words to her. She started ignoring Zhuang Yan and wouldn't say a word to him at school, as if that would stop the rumors.
But Zhuang Yan didn't think so. He thought that the impetuous boy was not sensitive enough and did not understand the girl's sensitive sense of shame.
Back then, Zhuang Yan liked to call her "Jiang Xiaoning".
"Jiang Xiaoning, why are you ignoring me?"
"Jiang Xiaoning, why didn't you call me for lunch?"
"Wait for me after school, Jiang Xiaoning."
"Jiang Xiaoning, I want to eat your preserved egg and lean pork congee."
Zhuang Yan always seemed to have inexhaustible energy. In order to reconcile with her, he dragged her shopping and treated her to snacks. He ate his way through the entire food street near the school. He knew which shop had the best food and what Jiang Ning liked to eat the most.
He would also give Jiang Ning some small gifts, such as a hair tie with crystal beads, or a plush toy pendant or keychain to hang on her schoolbag.
Gradually, they returned to their previous relationship. Rumors still circulated, but Zhuang Yan would fight back, just like in elementary school.
This time, however, his parents were called in, he was made to write a self-criticism, and he was made to read it aloud to the whole school in the playground.
—"I, Zhuang Yan, do not advocate violence, but if you are bullied, please raise your fist and fight back. Violence against violence is the best way to solve bullying. Victims do not need to reflect on their actions. Fighting back is my pride. If there is a next time, I will fight back without hesitation. Reflection complete."
After Zhuang Yan finished reading, he folded the paper in his hand into a paper airplane and flew it down to the audience.
The paper airplane from that day flew into the hearts of countless people.
...
When Jiang Ning was in the second year of junior high school, her mother bought a food cart and started selling fried skewers as a late-night snack.
Jiang Ning would go to help after school, and Zhuang Yan would come along too, setting up tables, tidying up tables, and taking out the trash.
After that self-criticism, Zhuang Yan became famous at school. Knowing that he would come here to help after school, people would come in groups of three or five to line up and buy snacks, and business got better and better.
Life is tiring, but there is hope for the future. Mom said that when we have money, we will rent a shop near the school to sell snacks. That way, we won't have to push the cart around every day, and it will be convenient to go to school since it's close to the school.
In her second year of high school, rumors spread throughout the school that Jiang Ning's mother was a murderer.
The food cart was overturned, the tables and chairs were smashed, and a group of people claiming to be her relatives demanded that she return the money. Life is like a pile of mud; just when you think you can pull it up, it falls hard down again.
My mother was hospitalized, my grades dropped, I suddenly had a lot of debt, and people around me looked at me strangely. It turns out that fists can't solve all problems.
High school was too difficult for her. She was like a turtle covered in barnacles, her body getting heavier and heavier. Things that others could do easily were very difficult for her. She had to keep swimming and swimming non-stop to reach her destination.
She often felt like giving up when she was about to give up, but Zhuang Yan would pull her back in time.
If it weren't for Zhuang Yan, she might have died in her second year of high school.
She and Zhuang Yan were childhood sweethearts, inseparable since they were little. They grew up together, shared similar experiences, and were in the same environment; they were the same kind of people.
Falling in love is easy for them; staying together is difficult.
After the college entrance examination, the two naturally got together.
Zhuang Yan sent her a text message.
"The college entrance exam is over, so it should be time to start dating, right? After being slandered for so many years, it would be a shame not to be together with those people. Jiang Xiaoning, do you want to have a college romance with me? Let's apply to the same university."
Without any hesitation, she replied "Okay".
...
When Zhuang Yan heard that Jiang Ning had seen Zhuang Chongming after the college entrance examination, he was clearly taken aback: "Why have you never told me?"
How should she tell him? That his father humiliated her with money and told her to leave him, that he was a rich young master and that a poor student like her was not good enough for him, that his family had billions in assets and their businesses were everywhere, while her family was in debt, being bullied and cursed, unable to even afford a small shop and forced to set up a night market stall, covered in cooking fumes, how could she be worthy of him?
She originally thought that Zhuang Yan and she were from the same world, and that they were both pitiful.
But now? Someone told her that Zhuang Yan was born and raised in Rome and was a rich second-generation.
A once-popular supermarket in the county center went out of business, reportedly losing over 100 million yuan a year. The first time she went in, she felt out of place in the surrounding environment. Later, she found out that the supermarket building belonged to the Zhuang family.
What an ordinary person earns in several lifetimes is less than what someone else loses in a year. The disparity is too great. How can she possibly date Zhuang Yan?
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