Chapter 130 Time waits for no one. Even though he's successful, he still thinks Jiang Yueming…
On the night the college entrance exam results were released, before midnight, Zhang Fang called urgently, saying, "Leshan, Leshan, do you have a computer? Remember to check your score, it's exactly midnight..."
Li Leshan glanced around at the dozens of computers, somewhat silent, unsure whether to answer or not. Zhang Fang would be utterly shocked if she knew where he was.
Shocking! The flowers of our motherland have fallen to such a low point. Is it the loss of humanity or the decline of morality...? I'm getting a bit off-topic.
"Can you answer this phone for me?" Li Leshan patted Liu Yang on the shoulder.
"Who is it?" Liu Yang answered the phone, his tone slightly teasing. "Your lover?"
“My teacher.” Li Leshan said expressionlessly.
Would he let Liu Yang answer the phone if he was with his lover? He wouldn't let anyone else answer, afraid of missing a single word from Jiang Yueming.
"Damn it," Liu Yang said in a low voice, "No way, I was terrified of teachers when I was in school, I don't want to..."
"Hello? Hello? Leshan? Do you have anyone with you?" The phone rang again.
"Hello, teacher," Liu Yang said with the excitement of someone about to go to war. "I am Leshan's brother." He came up with a title naturally, without even asking the person's consent, changing the title from "friend" to "brother".
"Hey, hey, hello, hello." Zhang Fang was very happy and quickly said, "Leshan is over there next to you, right? Remember to tell him to check the scores, and call me as soon as he gets them..."
"Okay." Liu Yang quickly hung up the phone.
"I told you to check your scores, did you hear me?" Liu Yang handed him the phone. Sure enough, it wasn't the one he had given to Li Leshan. It seemed he really had given it to his girlfriend. It turned out that Li Leshan was henpecked.
Li Leshan nodded. He glanced at the time; there were still ten minutes left. He felt inexplicably nervous. It was impossible not to be nervous, but he wasn't completely nervous either; ultimately, he was also a little expectant.
Liu Yang didn't realize the seriousness of the matter. After all, with his qualifications, he would have been running around having fun long before the college entrance exam results came out. Youth has no price, and the train goes straight to Lhasa. Who would remember to check their scores?
"What score are you checking..." Liu Yang belatedly realized, raising his voice in surprise, "High school...college entrance exam score?"
"You're only just realizing this?" Li Leshan looked a little speechless. So he had been going along with it for so long, and had no idea that it was about checking college entrance exam scores?
"Why didn't you say so earlier?" Liu Yang said, his voice slightly agitated.
"What are you going to do?" Li Leshan asked, looking puzzled.
“If you had told me you were checking your scores tonight, I would have cleared this place out. Nobody has a fast internet connection here. Do you know how laggy that thing is?” Liu Yang said.
"It's not that serious, it's just a college entrance exam score." Li Leshan was glad he didn't say that; he had no intention of interfering with Liu Yang's business.
“You know what,” Liu Yang said, recalling, “I’m still a little nervous. It’s been seven or eight years since my college entrance exam.”
"Why are you so nervous?" Li Leshan asked him.
“That’s the problem,” Liu Yang laughed. “Why would I be nervous? I wasn’t even this nervous when I checked my own scores.”
It's definitely easier to join in other people's fun; the sense of immersion is incredibly strong, making me feel like I've gone back seven or eight years, returning to being eighteen again.
Around midnight, Liu Yang skillfully started refreshing the page, asking as he did so, "Are you nervous?" "I'm telling you, you'll definitely do it. Do you think I don't know how well you've been studying every day?" "Tell me about showing me your Tsinghua or Peking University acceptance letters first..."
"Don't look yet, I have a surprise for you." Liu Yang continued to refresh the page. He looked at Li Leshan in front of him. Although the kid's face was expressionless, his slightly trembling hands betrayed his nervousness.
The moment the score was announced, Liu Yang gasped.
"What's the maximum score?" Liu Yang asked a really stupid question. "How many points is considered high? Is over 700 considered high?"
Li Leshan's breath hitched. He leaned over to look at the score, and a three-digit number starting with seven caught his eye.
Three years, a full three years, countless exams, big and small, sometimes he was so tired of doing so many questions he felt like throwing up. Of all the test questions he had done that could be piled up to a wall, he had never scored so high.
Liu Yang's voice, asking "Is it considered high?", gradually faded away, and the surroundings became strangely quiet; no sound could be heard at all.
A tear fell unexpectedly, landing on the keyboard, startling Liu Yang so much that he didn't dare utter a word. He quickly pulled out his phone and started searching on Baidu, earnestly asking: Has the college entrance exam been reformed? What's the maximum score now? Is a score of 700+ considered high or low?
Before the Baidu results appeared, Liu Yang kept praying silently. He even considered turning around and searching for a collection of comforting quotes, until the words "750 out of 100 in the college entrance examination" jumped in front of him.
He stood there stunned for a long time, looking at "750" and then at Li Leshan's college entrance examination score. The two scores looked like twins when put together.
Li Leshan himself didn't realize it until he saw the panicked Liu Yang with slightly reddened eyes, and then he finally came to his senses.
"Why are you crying?" Liu Yang quickly grabbed some tissues. "Is it because your score was too high?"
Li Leshan felt a tightness in his throat and his heart pounding wildly before he realized he was crying.
Why was he crying? Li Leshan didn't know either, but tears just kept welling up in his eyes.
Along the way... the computer screen in front of me gradually blurred, and past memories surfaced in my mind: those days of staying up all night to do practice problems, the cold winter, my frozen hands and fingertips that were a little deformed from holding a pen for a long time, all those pains and struggles, all came rushing back at once.
This journey has been incredibly difficult. Reaching this point has taken almost all of Li Leshan's strength.
Patience and perseverance are truly painful things. Day after day, in countless late nights, Li Leshan repeatedly told himself to persevere for just one more day.
Almost instantly, text messages from all sorts of people exploded onto my phone. Some were from my high school teachers and classmates; others were from distant sources, including Yin Guiying and Wu Jinzhong.
But he couldn't worry about that. He quickly opened his chat window with Jiang Yueming, and almost simultaneously, the two of them sent each other a message.
How did your exam go?
Jiang Yueming's score almost defied expectations, surpassing the first-tier university admission line. Keep in mind that during the mock exam, he was hovering around the second-tier university cutoff. Li Leshan knew this exceptional performance was the result of a tremendous amount of hard work.
Thank goodness... thank goodness. Only at this moment did he truly breathe a sigh of relief.
Before he could reply to each call, Zhang Fang called again, forcing Liu Yang to answer the phone once more.
"check……"
Liu Yang preemptively said, "I checked, it's over 700... Actually, that's just so-so. I think my brother didn't perform well. He's just too careless. He could have scored higher..."
Li Leshan kicked him.
Is this person addicted to talking about it?
A burst of enthusiastic cheers erupted on the other end of the phone. Li Leshan then realized that Zhang Fang wasn't the only one on the other end; there were probably four or five teachers waiting on the phone tonight when the scores were released.
"Um, your teacher seems to have gone mad." Liu Yang handed the phone to Li Leshan.
Li Leshan couldn't help but curl the corners of his mouth. Even he himself didn't expect that his strict homeroom teacher would have this appearance.
That night, Li Leshan didn't sleep a wink. Not because he was excited, but simply because he couldn't sleep. He wrote text messages to his homeroom teacher and all the teachers who had helped him, such as Tian Xiaoyun, Yin Guiying, Wu Jinzhong, Zhang Fang... to thank them for their teaching and guidance over the years. He couldn't have gotten to where he is today without the help of any of them.
Grandma's photo frame stands peacefully on the wooden table in the living room, her smile as kind as ever.
Li Leshan stood before her, finally daring to meet her gaze. After his grandmother passed away, Li Leshan didn't even dare to look at her photos for a long time. He knew he had let his grandmother down and had no way to repay her. Only now did he finally muster the courage to look up at her face.
Just like in his memory, she was looking at him with a beaming smile, as if she was about to say, "My dear grandson, Grandma saw it all. Grandma is so proud of you."
Finally, unable to hold back any longer, Li Leshan's shoulders trembled, and he lowered his head, letting his tears fall to the ground.
Grandma, I passed the exam! Did you see it? Li Leshan thought to himself, kneeling on the ground while holding the photo frame. "But I haven't given you a good life yet. I haven't done so many things. There are so many things I wanted to do but haven't done. I promised you I'd give you a good life..."
Those ordinary, uneventful days, free from arguments, worries about money, and illness... Li Leshan tried hard to think, to think of anything he might have missed. There were still good days that could make up his heart, the good days he longed for, but there was nothing left. That was it, just like that.
He bent over, his head hitting the cold floor, his spine bent heavily. Even in such times, he never spent a single day with his grandmother. Such days were so close, but time waits for no one for him to become successful.
The saying "one wishes to care for one's parents, but they are no longer there" is a very heavy topic, so heavy that it weighed on Li Leshan's shoulders for his entire life, so heavy that he could never let go of it. In this life, although he didn't have many relatives, his grandmother made him feel a lot of family affection, and no matter how much time has passed, that affection always lingered on him.
He didn't know what time it was when he sat there, surrounded by complete darkness. Li Leshan leaned against the cabinet, his phone screen silently lighting up, revealing Jiang Yueming's face—bright, confident, and flamboyant. Before meeting Jiang Yueming, Li Leshan couldn't even imagine that such a person existed in the world.
Looking at his photo over and over again, at his upturned lips and slightly raised eyebrows, Li Leshan closed his eyes, which were stinging from crying.
Through the long river of time and countless hardships, from 2006 to 2013, he still feels that Jiang Yueming is the best guide on his life's journey.
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Author's Note: Sorry for the long wait, my darlings! I've been so busy until now that I finally have time to revise. I'll definitely be there on time tonight! [laughing]
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