Chapter 35
As night deepened and the city lights began to twinkle, Xu Chen trudged back to the new apartment on the third floor that the district government had allocated to Luo Mei. The apartment was small, a two-bedroom, one-living room unit, with little to no fancy decoration. Luo Mei and Xu Zhenguo were in the master bedroom, leaving Xu Chen a smaller one. Officially a secondary bedroom, it was actually quite small, barely enough for a single folding bed, a small, low bedside table, and a lamp. His changes of clothes had to be packed into several canvas bags…
Xu Chen opened the door very quietly, afraid of making a loud noise that would alert the people inside. He had been doing this almost every day for over a month since his release from prison.
He walked into the living room and saw his father, Xu Zhenguo, sitting on the sofa with a chessboard on the coffee table in front of him. Xu Zhenguo was deep in thought about his next move. The chaotic chess game on the board contrasted sharply with the quietness of the room.
"Dad, I've thought about it for a long time, and I think..."
Xu Chen's voice lacked confidence, even sounding somewhat timid. The decision to attend a junior college wasn't his father's, but Luo Mei's. She didn't want to bear the cost of several years of university tuition. Xu Chen knew better than anyone that his father had no income, and the entire family's expenses rested on Luo Mei's shoulders. So, getting him to say he wanted to repeat a year, to take the college entrance exam again, was truly difficult…
“Son, I know what you want to say even if you don’t say it. Isn’t it that you don’t want to go to a junior college? You want to go back to high school to repeat a year and then take the entrance exam for a regular university, right? Let me tell you the truth now, it was Aunt Luo’s idea to send you to a junior college, she…”
"Dad, don't say anymore, I understand. But don't worry, I can work to earn my tuition, I'll work part-time and study on my own, I won't take a single penny from her! Just promise me you won't force me to go to a junior college!"
“Good son, Dad knows you have high aspirations, and it's really unfair to you to go to a junior college. Dad also knows that I haven't fulfilled my responsibilities as a father for the past ten years or so, so I think I'll try my best to make it up to you in the future. Six months before you left, I took the test to get a truck driver's license. I'm just waiting for you to come out. As long as you tell me you want to go to university, Dad will go to work as a driver and support you!”
When Xu Zhenguo said these words, his tone finally sounded like that of a father.
Xu Zhenguo's words, which Xu Chen had waited more than a decade for, suddenly made his once dim eyes shine brightly again...
In September, Xu Chen returned to his old high school. It was the same familiar homeroom teacher and the same familiar classroom, only the classmates around him had changed. Occasionally, they would cast curious glances at him, but he didn't care about them. Now, he could only focus on studying hard, desperately trying to catch up with the lost time...
Xu Zhenguo drives a large truck to haul sand and soil to the construction site every day. He no longer exudes any of the air of a deputy factory director. Now he is just a father who works hard to earn money to support his son's education and college entrance exams, although this role of father came a little late.
Xu Chen also focused all his energy on repeating the year, and enrolled in several tutoring classes. He got up at five o'clock every morning to memorize his lessons, studied until midnight, and worked part-time on weekends to earn money. Xu Zhenguo looked at him like this, sighed, and said, "If only you hadn't made that mistake back then."
Amidst the relentless, intense studying, Xu Chen's mindset subtly shifted. He hesitated to make a long-distance call to Li Muxue, who lived far away by the sea, because he didn't know what to say. Her talk of French literature, campus activities, and beautiful French teachers seemed too distant from his life. Meanwhile, he faced the heavy workload of high school, the exhaustion of part-time jobs, and the subtle, almost imperceptible, discrimination from those around him…
Li Muxue was also deliberately reducing her phone calls with Xu Chen. This was partly because she worried she would affect his studies, partly because she couldn't think of a reasonable explanation for her parents to accept their seemingly "rebellious" relationship, and partly because her studies were just as demanding as Xu Chen's, leaving her little time to think about him. So, in this atmosphere, and across the hundreds of kilometers between them, their feelings grew increasingly faint and blurred…
(To be continued)
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