Chapter 94
We all need to be well.
Since that night, Zhan Xinyue has never returned to school.
All the paperwork was handled by her parents at the school, and Zhan Wei even brought back all her belongings that she had left at the school.
Transferring schools sounds complicated, but once you make up your mind, it doesn't seem that difficult. All the procedures were completed before the weekend ended.
On Monday of the new week, Zhan Xinyue successfully moved into her new school.
The new school was a public school that Zhan Wei had arranged. There were nearly 70 students in each class. Standing at the classroom door, all you could see was a dark mass of people. Curious faces peered out from behind stacks of books.
"All girls in our school must have short hair. This is to save you more time for studying and to reduce your distractions." The new class teacher led her to the classroom door, looked at her waist-length hair, and reminded her.
Before Pang Yun could say anything, Zhan Xinyue stopped her, casually flicking a strand of hair, "Then let's cut it."
“You’ve always treasured your hair the most…” Pang Yun seemed even more distressed than she was.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Zhan Xinyue said. “My hair has been in bad condition lately, so it’s good to cut it short and let it grow back. I can grow it out again after the college entrance exam.”
Let everything from the past remain in the past.
Perhaps because there were too many people in the class, not many of her classmates were very curious about this quiet new student. Only a few people sitting next to her turned around and asked her a few questions out of curiosity.
Because the transfer was sudden, and there wasn't even an entrance exam, she was placed in a regular class. The girl in front of her asked about her previous school and excitedly said, "Then your grades must be very good, right?"
Zhan Xinyue frankly replied, "So-so, I'm not very good at math and science."
The other party continued to press for details: "How bad is 'not good'? What were your previous test scores?"
Zhan Xinyue thought for a moment: "I only got a little over ninety on the math test last time."
The girl paused for a few seconds, then said, "Perhaps you've ever seen a math test with a score of six?"
Her deskmate turned around and stared at her with wide eyes: "Ninety-something isn't good enough? In the last math exam, no more than ten people in our class scored over ninety."
Zhan Xinyue also fell silent.
Her new high school life began just like that, and she didn't inquire about the aftermath of Wang Zhiyi and Xu Shen's affair. In any case, she trusted Shi Ziqian to handle anything he promised.
In this unfamiliar school, Zhan Xinyue adapted even better than she had imagined. Her new deskmate was a boy who wore thick glasses and, like Shi Ziqian, always slept during breaks. The difference was that Shi Ziqian never slept in class, while Zhan Xinyue would often bury her head behind a towering stack of books from the start of morning classes, rarely waking up throughout the day.
Zhan Xinyue wasn't particularly curious about him, but she was quite satisfied with their independent existence. From the first day she transferred here, she stopped caring about anything other than studying.
Knowing she wasn't particularly gifted, her only reliable learning method was to spend countless hours repeating concepts over and over again. She struggled to grasp certain chapters of math, so she resorted to the most basic method: copying answer keys and memorizing example problems. This continued until one day a series of concepts suddenly clicked in her mind, making similar problems instantly easy to understand. Biology concepts were fragmented, so she made sure to quickly review her notebook every day until she knew exactly where each concept was written on which page and in what handwriting…
She filled her schedule so full that she had no extra time to think about the past.
A few weeks later, Zhan Xinyue ranked first in her class in the major exam. However, this didn't necessarily mean she had become exceptional. There were 27 science classes in the school, including 6 top-tier classes, and the gap between the top-tier classes and the regular classes was enormous. Zhan Xinyue, as the top student in her regular class, had only just broken into the top 200 in the entire grade.
After consistently ranking first in her class, a teacher from an honors class extended an offer to transfer her, but Zhan Xinyue declined. In the days that followed, she remained taciturn, her life becoming so monotonous that it consisted only of attending classes, doing practice problems, reviewing past work, and slowly but steadily climbing the ranks in her grade, like climbing a grid.
It wasn't without setbacks; occasionally, her grades would drop by dozens of places. But she never frowned. She would just silently review the test papers again and again, and then open her study guides to continue practicing. Since the school didn't have the habit of printing study materials, she bought a lot of study guides and exercises to supplement her own practice.
She knew her foundation wasn't solid yet, so these setbacks were inevitable. Fortunately, there was still plenty of time, enough for her to gradually fill in the gaps.
As the days went by, Zhan Xinyue gradually became familiar with the girl in the front row. Her name was Zhao Xiaohang. Her grades were always at the bottom of the class, but she was quite cheerful and lively, living a carefree life. Once, she touched her chin and commented on Zhan Xinyue: "Your personality is quite complicated. Although you are taciturn, you seem to be particularly open-minded and optimistic. I don't think I've ever seen you show any sadness or frustration."
Zhan Xinyue was momentarily stunned. Open-minded and optimistic? This was the first time someone had described her like that; such words were usually used to describe the person next to her.
An open-minded and optimistic attitude has always been the core of Xu Shen's personality. I remember in my previous life, right after graduating from university, Xu Shen had just found a job and was renting a place to live. On the day he received his first month's salary, the two of us went to his place to celebrate. Having never cooked before, the two of us fumbled around with recipes all day, finally managing to whip up a meal by evening.
Both of them were starving. When they sat down at the table, Zhan Xinyue wanted to record this precious moment. However, when she stood up to take a picture, her leg accidentally hooked the cord of the rice cooker next to her. She stumbled and accidentally knocked over the thin table provided by the landlord. The pots and pans full of food on the table fell to the ground in an instant.
Looking at the mess, Zhan Xinyue felt a sudden urge to cry, whether from hunger, anger, or guilt.
As she remained silent with her head down, she heard Xu Shen's voice: "Want some rice?"
She looked at Xu Shen, who had already casually sat down on the ground in front of the mess, looking up at her: "I'm too hungry to clean up, how about we...?"
The two looked at each other for two seconds, and then burst out laughing at the same time, as if by unspoken agreement.
Zhan Xinyue rubbed her eyes, took the rice he handed her, and sat down on the ground with him.
"We're lucky today; some dishes haven't completely spilled and are still edible," Xu Shen said with a smile. "Let me see which dish is the best preserved."
"I made the braised pork, and there's still more than half left on the plate," Zhan Xinyue said.
"Okay, then let's celebrate earning my first paycheck and cooking my first meal with the person I love most today in the name of the God of Braised Pork."
"And the first time I sat on the ground eating leftovers," Zhan Xinyue said.
“Hey, hey, hey, what are you talking about? Leftovers?” Xu Shen corrected her. “Although it looks a bit shabby now, it’s all fresh.”
"Hey, hey, hey, what are you daydreaming about?" Zhao Xiaohang waved his hand in front of her.
Zhan Xinyue snapped out of her daze and smiled at her: "Really? Maybe."
Zhan Xinyue once heard a saying: "A person is shaped by everyone he meets." The people you meet and the paths you walk never completely disappear, but rather leave their marks on your life in various forms, constantly shaping you and helping you grow into who you are today.
Now, her personality is deeply influenced by Xu Shen. Her future will no longer include Xu Shen, but the traces he left behind have become an eternal part of her.
She still couldn't reconcile with Xu Shen, but she had already made peace with the past. Perhaps she could never forgive him, but she didn't want to be trapped in the past forever; she wanted to move forward step by step.
In the autumn after entering her senior year of high school, Zhan Xinyue took a weekend off to go shopping at the mall for the first time in a long time, to choose a birthday gift for Shi Qiyue. She had been remembering to return the favor and had already written down her birthday, which Shi Ziqian had mentioned, in her notes.
She wasn't sure what little girls her age liked, and after finally picking out something nice, she suddenly remembered something else.
Back home, Zhan Xinyue once again opened her long-forgotten diary.
She vaguely remembered that Shi Ziqian's birthday, which she had missed the previous year, was also recently, and she wanted to check the records in her diary to confirm. When she saw that date, her gaze paused, then shifted back to the birthday of Shi Qiyue that she had written down. What a coincidence—the brother and sister were born on the same day!
While pondering, she casually flipped through her diary again and inadvertently caught a glimpse of a passage she had scribbled down at some point. It was written in a very messy hand and she hadn't noticed it much when she looked at it before.
"I feel like I really don't have any talent for math. During evening class, I quietly asked Shi Ziqian about his learning experience. He said that there is only one logic to learning all knowledge, which is to keep repeating. Well, I thought he would have some easy learning methods. I can only try to go through today's worksheets a couple more times tomorrow and see if I can get the hang of it."
It turns out that long, long ago, even before Xu Shen, the traces left by Shi Ziqian had already been integrated into her habits and become an inseparable part of her personality.
She smiled at the diary and tucked it back into the depths of the cabinet.
That evening, she sent out two birthday gifts. They were unsigned.
The days that followed continued, busy yet uneventful. She had nothing else to think about now, spending her days with her head down, doing practice problems, and speaking very little. One day, after finishing a physics test, she looked up and suddenly had a strange feeling. She seemed to be becoming more and more like Shi Ziqian.
Even Zhao Xiaohang said, "I'm sitting behind a silent academic genius, the pressure is immense!"
Zhan Xinyue's grades gradually stabilized, and she began to consistently rank among the top ten in the grade, far ahead of her classmates.
As the saying goes, a timely snowfall promises a good harvest. A heavy snowfall fell during the second winter at the new school, turning the entire campus a silvery white. This was a good omen, Zhan Xinyue thought. And it was after this snowfall that Zhan Xinyue achieved her first-ever first place in her grade.
That noon, she stood downstairs looking at the grade rankings. A blanket of white snow weighed down the bare branches of the low trees in the greenbelts on either side. Snow symbolized desolation, but also new life. After the heavy snow, all life on this land would be revitalized in the coming year.
The shadow that Xu Shen left in her life seemed to have finally become a thing of the past at this moment.
An airplane flew overhead, leaving a long trail in the sky.
Zhan Xinyue looked at the plane, breathed on her hands which were a little stiff from the cold, and a wisp of white mist condensed in the cold air.
The college entrance exam is in six months, and Shi Ziqian will be going to study in the United States in six months. I guess we really won't see each other again.
She looked for a while, then turned around and walked back towards the teaching building.
We all need to live well, you and I alike.
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