Chapter 51: The Tears of the iPod Era
Seeing this scene, Ye Yuying keenly realized something, but she didn't even allow her inner thoughts to voice their guesses.
She clearly felt that as long as she didn't verify it, she might still see the house lit up late tonight, and even see that carefree and languid figure under the eaves of the courtyard, his slender fingers holding a bottle of water, strolling leisurely and casually through the corridor.
Just as she withdrew her gaze and stubbornly headed towards her attic...
Aunt Zhang hurriedly came out of the duty room and called out to her.
"Xiao Ye, wait a moment." Aunt Zhang held a small item in a velvet bag in her hand. "This is something Mr. Cheng specifically asked me to give you personally after your competition before he left."
Is it a gift?
Ye Yuying was momentarily stunned and subconsciously reached out to take it. Her hand touched a somewhat cool, smooth metal shell.
She pulled open the drawstring of the velvet bag, and inside lay a brand new silver iPod.
“The gentleman said,” Aunt Zhang tried hard to recall Cheng Mingdu’s words at the time, and relayed them word by word.
"He said... he knows your English isn't good, so here's the original soundtrack and audiobook of 'Forrest Gump' that he prepared for you. You don't have to treat it as a study task. Just listen to it with your headphones whenever you're tired from training or feeling down, like you're listening to music."
Aunt Zhang paused, then added, "He also said that he's far away overseas and can't help you with anything about the track. But ultimately... as long as you can support yourself, that's fine, although it's too early to say that for you."
Aunt Zhang solemnly repeated this weighty instruction word by word, afraid of omitting even a trace of that guilt and profound meaning.
Through her expression, Ye Yuying could almost reconstruct the expression on Cheng Mingdu's face when he said those words.
After saying that, Aunt Zhang looked at Ye Yuying's thoughtful face, sighed silently, and then turned back to the duty room without disturbing her any further. She left this quiet yet turbulent night to the girl who had just won glory but was now being cruelly thrown into another trial by reality.
Ye Yuying stood alone in the deserted courtyard, the evening breeze ruffling her hair and bringing a chill to her bones.
"settle down……"
She gently savored the pronunciation of those four words between her lips and teeth, over and over again.
This doesn't sound like an older brother encouraging his younger sister, nor does it sound like a guardian's expectations for their child. It's a... deeper, and more distant blessing.
Ye Yuying gripped the small player tightly, her fingertips able to feel the cool texture of its metal casing; that coolness seemed to seep deep into her skin.
All her hopes, all her fantasies, all the ecstasy that arose from the resolution of the misunderstanding, were shattered by these overly heavy and sobering words.
She silently turned around and walked back to her attic step by step.
Back in her room, she locked the door and went to her desk to examine the electronic device she had owned early in her life, studying the instruction manual to figure out how to turn it on.
There should be traces of Cheng Mingdu's fingerprints on it, but they will soon be completely covered by her fingerprints.
As she listened to the beginning of "Forrest Gump" through her headphones, the familiar voice was carried by a better and more delicate sound quality. When she looked up, it was as if the whole room was playing "Forrest Gump".
Even though he had clearly left this time, she didn't cry.
Because immense, incomprehensible grief leaves no room for tears. She just felt cold and empty, as if a pillar within her had been completely removed, leaving a void where she couldn't think of crying.
Everything now has a completely new, and even more heartbreaking, interpretation.
Everything he did may have stemmed from the best he could do to take care of his pitiful stepsister who needed guidance.
He taught her to grow and hoped she would become independent, with the ultimate goal of being able to peacefully and completely withdraw from her life one day.
Cheng Mingdu had long seen through her mother, knowing that her mother was destined to cruelly leave her in the world, regardless of her future or whether she lived or died...
He saw through everything. He saw through that if no one interfered with her life, there might be another weak and ignorant woman in this world, whose marriage and life were completely manipulated by mediocre people, who suffered domestic violence and was exploited by her family, and who had nowhere to turn for help...
She looked at the small, metallic-looking player in her hand, her heart filled with mixed emotions.
Little did she know that this old object, which would be labeled with nostalgia and called a "tear of the times" years later, would become another turning point in her destiny tonight, on this night of glory and farewell in her life.
Compared to those two gold medals, the content in this player is the language he uses for scientific research and daily life, and it is her true channel to the outside world.
In the quiet, empty room, she answered silently, facing the air and the distance.
I will.
I will rely on myself to make a living.
*
Ye Yuying didn't have time to dwell on Cheng Mingdu's departure.
The city-level training camp for outstanding athletes has begun, and at the same time, the school has started comprehensive review and weekend make-up classes in order to improve the college entrance examination pass rate.
Her life was divided into two distinct halves: one half belonged to the track and field where she poured out her sweat, and the other half belonged to the classroom where there was no battle.
Everyone in the training camp is a highly talented individual selected from schools across the city. The coaches are professionals from the city's sports school, and the training plans are detailed down to every breath and every calorie intake, far surpassing the intensity and scientific rigor of school teams.
Here, she is just a promising newcomer.
For the first time, she realized that there was a much wider world beyond her talent.
Every training session is an extreme test of physical and mental endurance. Strategy and effort must achieve a delicate balance in order to achieve results while avoiding excessive physical strain.
But the daily sweat, muscle soreness, and fatigue became her most familiar daily sensations.
Her life was covered by an impenetrable net, and she could not relax for even a second.
The coach gave her special permission not to sleep at the training camp. From Monday to Friday, she attended classes and finished classes on time, just like any other student, and completed mountains of homework.
After school, while other students went home together, she had to rush to the bus stop and take a bus for more than an hour to the training base in the suburbs to complete three hours of high-intensity training.
Weekends are an even more intense battle where every second counts. In the morning, she's sitting in a bright classroom, listening to her English teacher explain complex clauses; in the afternoon, she's already changed into her sportswear and sprinting again and again on the track.
She became the busiest traveler in the city, either on the training field, in the classroom, or on the bus traveling between the two places.
The swaying bus became her temporary refuge. She would lean against the window, watching the street scenes rushing past outside, take out her silver iPod, and put on her headphones.
Forrest Gump's gentle voice, or those soothing English songs, can isolate her from the noise of the outside world and her physical fatigue. In this semi-empty state, she can silently digest the new knowledge she has learned during the day, or review the training movements that have just ended.
That little media player was her only and most reliable comfort during those arduous days.
She barely had time to think about Cheng Mingdu, yet he had become a part of her life—the spiked shoes that made her run faster, the iPod that whispered in her ear, and the most fundamental motivation for her to bury herself in her studies late at night and persevere through the night before dawn.
Once, in the training camp's canteen, she was quickly shoveling food into her mouth while spreading out her English test paper and correcting her mistakes by checking the answers.
A girl sitting next to her, who was practicing high jump, asked her curiously, "Ye Yuying, why are you working so hard? We're in sports, as long as our academic subjects are passable, that's enough. The cutoff scores for college entrance exams are very low."
Ye Yuying didn't look up, but simply circled a grammatical error on the test paper with a red pen, and calmly replied, "I haven't decided yet whether I want to specialize in sports."
She was a little greedy; she wanted to have two choices, each a broad road to success, and each decision leading to freedom.
Her mind was filled with those grand principles, which she never fully understood, but she always remembered them.
She didn't know what true freedom looked like; no one revealed the answer to her, so she had to see for herself.
If she is trapped by so-called talent, she will once again fall into that narrow, single-plank bridge with no choice. But if she can also develop her cultural knowledge, she will have many more academic paths to choose from.
This idea, like a deeply buried seed, began to stubbornly take root and sprout under the daily watering of sweat and fatigue.
The real turning point occurred on an ordinary bus ride back to the Cheng family home from the training base.
The training that night was extremely intense, and Ye Yuying was so exhausted that she almost fell asleep as soon as she got in the car. As usual, she put on her headphones, hoping to use Forrest Gump's voice to block out the outside noise. When that line, which she had heard countless times, played again, a miracle happened.
"My mom always said, life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."
Perhaps the extreme fatigue of the body reduced the brain's defense mechanisms to a minimum, or perhaps the countless unconscious repetitions finally reached the critical point of qualitative change.
This time, the string of syllables was no longer a blurry background sound, but a clear, emotional, and meaningful sound that entered her mind. She actually... understood it completely.
The feeling was like someone who had been walking in thick fog for a long time, and then a gust of wind suddenly blew away the fog, revealing a clear and real road.
This sudden, overwhelming intellectual joy struck her like an electric current, instantly dispelling all her fatigue.
For the first time, her incredibly sensitive brain to numbers and logic developed a strong desire to conquer the "mysterious" subject of English, a desire akin to solving a mathematical puzzle.
From that day on, the iPod was no longer just a source of emotional comfort; it became her most powerful weapon in conquering English.
Her learning style also underwent a complete change. She no longer listened passively, but began to actively and almost anatomically "decode" her learning.
She found the bilingual (Chinese and English) script of "Forrest Gump" online, printed it out, and worked on her "project" every day on the bus or under the lamp late at night.
She would first listen to an audio clip blindly, then pause it, and with her amazing memory, reconstruct the syllables in her mind. Then she would compare it with the English script to find the parts she had misheard or missed.
Next, she would use a red pen to circle every unfamiliar word, look up its meaning, and mark it next to it.
Finally, she would follow the audio, imitating and repeating it softly over and over again, until her tone and the emotion in the audio were very close.
She dissected the structure of every long English sentence by analyzing sprinting techniques; she used the logic of deriving mathematical formulas to understand those complex grammatical tenses.
In her eyes, English was no longer a jumble of symbols, but a sophisticated system with rules, logic, and that could be mastered.
The process was tedious and arduous, but Ye Yuying found it enjoyable. She knew that every breakthrough in English was adding another solid brick to her future foundation.
Change happens unexpectedly.
When the English test paper was handed out during the last mock exam before the end of the semester, Ye Yuying looked at the bright red "112" score (out of 120) and couldn't believe it for a moment.
When the English teacher was reviewing the test papers, she specifically praised her, her tone filled with undisguised surprise and satisfaction.
In the classroom, the excessive mockery directed at her for being about to become an "uncultured" physical education student fell silent; those people were breathing in a deathly, oppressive stillness...
-----------------------
Author's Note: A flashback to the modern era will be planned within five chapters.
50 red envelopes
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
