Chapter 52 Brother Tianqian, are you doing well in America?
That night, Ye Yuying lay in bed repeatedly examining her English test paper. Her mood remained unchanged, and her brain seemed not yet to have adjusted to the fact that she was not unintelligent in her studies.
She had to admit that she had used some tricks in the exam, and the score should have been higher than her usual level.
Unable to write decent English essays, she simply memorized the model essays that Lin Zhiyan showed her.
She memorized it by rote using such a rigid and clumsy method before she even learned how to break down sentences and grammar.
However, she still considers herself stupid. Stupidity is relative; she may not be so stupid when it comes to sports.
She doesn't seem so stupid in her current class.
But she knew that even if she was the top student in this school, she wouldn't be high enough to get into Rongcheng No. 1 High School. The gap in education was like climbing one mountain only to find that the distant mountain was even more majestic.
Thoughts on stupidity... Perhaps she was used to being a bad student. She was described as stupid by her teachers countless times, and she almost believed that she was stupid. This thought almost killed her.
The reason she particularly liked "Forrest Gump" was probably because she, like Forrest Gump, was considered a "stupid person" by others.
The irritation from that fool was so intense that her last shred of consciousness was drained away, and she turned her head and fell into a deep sleep.
Almost the instant my head touched the pillow, I fell into a floating, illusory, boundless dream.
She felt as if she were running barefoot on an endless highway shrouded in thick white fog.
The surface was warm, much like the red rubber track in the school. It was very uncomfortable to walk on, and every step was extremely painful.
She didn't know where she was running to, nor could she see the road ahead; she was simply driven by instinct, relentlessly moving forward.
The wind whistled past her ears, carrying with it many familiar yet distant sounds.
"Run, Forrest, run!"
The sound was sometimes a young girl's clear shout, and sometimes it became a grand chorus of countless people singing rhythmically, urging her on, pushing her forward, and making her dare not stop.
She knew that those people were calling out Forrest Gump's name, but in this scene, she felt as if she had become the person called "Forrest Gump".
She was exhausted and confused from running.
The highway stretched out endlessly, and she wanted to stop and ask herself, what was the purpose of running so recklessly?
I don't know who it was for, for myself, or... to catch up with that unattainable figure who has long since crossed the ocean?
She was afraid of the empty roads, afraid that a car would suddenly appear behind her and knock her over, and even more afraid that she would damage her legs and be unable to participate in the next training session.
Just as she was struggling with confusion and her steps slowed down, the scene around her changed in an instant.
The floor beneath her feet had become an indoor flat surface. She looked up abruptly and found herself sitting in the corner of her grandmother's kitchen.
A pair of wrinkled yet incredibly warm hands reached out from beside her and took her hand in theirs.
She couldn't see the person's face clearly, but she smelled a familiar scent, a blend of sunshine and soapberry aroma, that belonged to her grandmother.
Her grandmother's loving voice, tinged with her hometown accent, was like the gentlest breeze in her memory, dispelling the fog in her mind:
“Ah Ying, you must run, like Forrest Gump, run forward without hesitation.”
As soon as she finished speaking, Ye Yuying stood there, pausing to savor those words.
She couldn't wait to tell her grandmother that she was now actually running, had even participated in a training camp, and had won her first two gold medals.
When I watched the sports meet with my grandma before, we were both very curious about whether the gold medals were pure gold.
She can now reveal the secret to her grandmother: it's not pure gold. Even Olympic gold medals aren't pure gold; they're 925 silver plated with six grams of gold.
In her dream, she was like a child eager to show off a treasure. She turned her head, took her grandmother's wrinkled hands, looked up, and tried to speak in a clear voice filled with pride and a desire to share. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't utter a single word.
Everything around her disappeared again, and she found herself in a pure white mist.
Immediately afterwards, another gentle, slightly clumsy voice, belonging to Forrest Gump, seemed to come from all directions, softly echoing in her ears:
"I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is."
...
Ye Yuying suddenly woke up from her dream.
Before dawn, the view outside the window was a tranquil deep blue.
She lay motionless in bed, but the two sentences from her dream resonated deep within her soul like a morning bell and evening drum.
She had always felt confused, unsure of what her secret feelings for Cheng Mingdu were.
She never dared to use the word "love" to describe it; the word was too lofty and sacred, she dared not.
She suppressed it, resisted it, and even tried to distract it with others.
But Forrest Gump seemed to suddenly find the answer in a dream.
But she still hated everything that separated this chaotic emotion into its pure and impure states.
Let it remain chaotic and murky; she didn't want to figure out what kind of emotion it was.
Once the truth is revealed, it means making choices, distinguishing right from wrong, and facing judgment. But she was just a thirteen-year-old girl who had just found a foothold on the track; she couldn't bear the potentially upheaval consequences that might follow the revelation.
She chose to be a coward.
After the overwhelming impact of the dream, she chose to close the door leading to the deepest part of her heart, the door inscribed with the word "love," again and sealed it with tape.
Because inside lay a truth she could not bear.
Ye Yuying slowly sat up. Outside the window, the light of day had changed from deep blue to dim.
She suddenly understood.
Since this emotion is so chaotic and turbulent, leaving her bewildered, why bother trying to discern or define it?
She could pack up all those feelings—sweet, sour, painful, resentful, humble, and proud—that arose because of Cheng Mingdu, and transform that longing to be close to him into the ultimate pursuit of higher, faster, and stronger goals.
She doesn't need to think about the meaning of running.
Even running itself was her complete sacrifice and final outlet for this chaotic emotion.
Does it still matter who changed it or why?
Those complicated reasons, which even she herself couldn't figure out, were no longer important at this moment.
The important thing is that she is changing. That's enough.
*
The first month after Cheng Mingdu left was the busiest and most frantic month of Ye Yuying's entire junior high school life.
It was also the most fulfilling time of her life so far.
Under professional guidance, they undergo rigorous physical and technical training that is almost inhumane.
She was exhausted from final exams and intensive training, and often dared not touch her pillow, because it felt as if her soul would be instantly sucked away and she would fall asleep.
The swaying bus was her only place to catch her breath, and the iPod given to her by Cheng Mingdu became her mental energy booster. Forrest Gump's voice and those English audio recordings were the accompaniment to her life before she learned to listen to music.
She was unusually relaxed during this final exam.
The homeroom teacher had finally found a promising athlete in her, so she didn't place too much emphasis on her studies, but instead hoped that she would participate in more competitions.
As Ye Yuying stared blankly at the sycamore tree outside the window, biting her pen, she suddenly realized—
When you have the opportunity to win honors in sports events, track and field is no longer considered "not doing your proper job" by your homeroom teacher.
Therefore, before this final exam, her homeroom teacher specifically told her not to feel pressured during the exam, and that it was understandable that the intensive training was too tiring and she didn't have much time to study.
This was probably a way of giving her the green light, but she still went all out. While other members of the training team were exempted from the final exams, she still took two days off to take them.
When the final bell rang, Ye Yuying walked out of the examination room, feeling as if she had just finished a war that lasted for months, and she felt a great sense of relief.
Without the distractions of her studies, she packed her bags, handed over her phone, and devoted herself entirely to training. This was the golden period for improving her professional skills.
For Ye Yuying, the next truly crucial competition that could determine her future should be the Provincial Youth Track and Field Championships held in late summer and early autumn.
This competition is the gateway for her to advance from an amateur player to the top level at the provincial level, and it is also a crucial battle for her to strive for the title of "National First-Class Athlete".
A few days later, the final grades were announced.
The whole grade was in an uproar.
Ye Yuying's name, once synonymous with "delinquent girl" and "poor student," was later embroiled in a "cheating" scandal. Then, she unexpectedly rose to prominence at the school sports meet and was selected by the school team to become a reserve player with an uncertain future...
This name has been the subject of much controversy and stories over the past year.
At this moment, this name appeared prominently at the top of the report card, ranking third in the class and eleventh in the grade.
Ye Yuying's total score: 685, grade ranking: 11
An eerie, deathly silence fell over the entire bulletin board area, lasting for several seconds.
Immediately following was an overwhelming uproar!
"Eleventh?! How is that possible! Isn't she a sports student? Doesn't she have to train every day?"
"Look at her individual subject scores... Math 118, two points short of a perfect score, that's not surprising... But look at English! 116! Didn't she just barely pass her English exam last month?!"
"This score is even higher than our class's English representative... Is this even human?"
"Didn't she take leave to attend intensive training and be exempt from the exam? How come she actually came back to take the exam?"
The murmurs, gasps, and incredulous exclamations mingled together, creating a more complex cacophony of envy, awe, and disbelief.
They looked at that name as if they were looking at a monster that had fallen from the sky and could not be fathomed by common sense.
At this moment, Ye Yuying is fully preparing for the provincial competition, completely unaware that the outside world has undergone earth-shattering changes.
She was at a training base dozens of kilometers away, completing a set of 200-meter sprints. Sweat streamed down her face and neck, soaking her training vest. She supported herself on her knees, panting heavily, feeling the familiar soreness deep in her muscles.
It wasn't until the break that she picked up a towel, walked to the sidelines, and took out her phone, which had been switched off, from the locker.
As soon as she turned on her phone, countless messages and missed calls flooded in, most of them from Ji Zi. She clicked on the latest voice message, and Ji Zi's voice, slightly distorted with excitement, burst from the receiver:
"Yuying! Did you see that?! The results are out! You got eleventh in the grade! Eleventh! You're a legend in our school now, you know that?! You freak! Look at the photo I sent you!"
Ye Yuying opened the blurry, slightly tilted report card photo that Ji Zi had sent her. She zoomed in, and zoomed in again, until her gaze finally landed on her own entry.
She looked at the ranking, the total score, and the glaring English score, but felt no elation as she had expected.
Her mood was unusually calm, just like the tranquil and distant sky above the training field, dyed red by the setting sun.
When a miracle actually happens, people are not as excited as they imagined, because all the results are traceable.
She locked her phone, put it back in her bag, and tilted her head back to drink the last drop of water from the bottle.
*
Summer vacation ended, and the new semester bell rang again. When Ye Yuying stepped back into the familiar campus with her schoolbag, she clearly felt that something in the air was different.
She is no longer the invisible person who needs to deliberately hide in the corner of the crowd.
Walking down the corridor, the gazes that once held disdain, contempt, or pity now all transformed into a complex yet unified expression of inquiry and awe. Her classmates would instinctively make way for her, and then, after she had passed, they would gather together, excitedly discussing her in hushed voices.
"Look, it's Ye Yuying! The one who won two gold medals in her first city league match!"
"Doesn't that mean he's national team material? Who knows? Maybe our lousy school is going to produce some track and field champion."
"Come on, he's still a long way from the national team."
"My God, she's even thinner in person than she looks in photos... I really don't know where she gets such explosive power..."
Nowadays, school bullying seems to be the thing furthest away from her.
Because she received special attention from teachers and the school, the principal would occasionally stop by to say a few words of concern to her when he happened to pass by.
Only now does she realize that the teachers were aware of the bullying, but were powerless to intervene or responded passively.
They only really took it seriously when it concerned the school's honor.
However, the school could only protect her alone and did not eradicate school bullying.
Ge Jie, on the other hand, became nothing more than a background figure in her life. Occasionally, she would cast a resentful glance at Ge Jie in the crowd, but Ge Jie was often ignored by her.
The homeroom teacher's attitude towards her underwent a complete 180-degree turn. She no longer treated her as a "problem student" who needed constant discipline, but instead regarded her as the pride of the school and a "key protected student" who could bring honor to the school.
They would even use Ye Yuying's example in class meetings to motivate the whole class, saying how she managed to make rapid progress in her grades while maintaining high-intensity training.
Ye Yuying is enjoying this long-awaited double honor, which she won with her sweat and strength.
Her heartstrings were buried deep for a long time. The returned love letter was pressed to the bottom of her schoolbag and never touched again. It was as if it had become a rock sinking in her heart, and no gentle waves had stirred in it for a long time.
As the summer drew to a close, she gritted her teeth and used a portion of her prize money to buy herself a smartphone that could send emails.
She had never tried to email Cheng Mingdu before, but now that she felt calm, she carefully entered the email address she had memorized.
It felt strange, like a serious adventure.
She pondered the form of address for a long time. Calling him "Cheng Mingdu" directly seemed too formal and impolite; but leaving it out seemed inappropriate.
Finally, she typed out those two words, which were both true and carried countless hidden emotions of hers—brother.
Using this safest and most legitimate identity to address him is as if it allows me to temporarily lock away the turbulent, unspeakable emotions within me into the safest box.
She didn't even know what to say.
[Brother, I just finished training camp. I did well on my final exams. How are you doing in the US? Are you going back to China for vacation this fall?]
The moment she clicked send, her heart nearly leaped out of her chest.
The following days were filled with a bittersweet wait for a reply. During her daily training and study breaks, she would repeatedly unlock her phone and open the empty inbox, each time ending in a small disappointment.
She even started researching the time difference between the two countries, calculating whether it was day or night on his end, whether he was in class or resting, and whether... he was with someone.
Just when she was about to give up, thinking that the email would disappear into thin air like her restless thoughts, a reply arrived unexpectedly on an ordinary evening after training.
When she saw that familiar email address that belonged to him, she felt her breath catch in her throat.
She slipped away from her teammates and went to a deserted corner of the training field. With an almost reverential feeling, she opened the email.
The email was short, which was typical of him—calm, restrained, and without a single superfluous word.
Re: Recent Situation
Yu Ying:
I have received your report card and training progress report. Well done, keep it up!
My original plan to return to China in the fall has been cancelled. I have been selected for the school team to prepare for the ICPC Global Finals in Portugal next spring, which will require six months of intensive, closed-door training.
Don't worry, focus on the present moment.
Best wishes.
Cheng Mingdu
She thought that the days would continue in this peaceful and fulfilling glory until autumn, until his return.
She even mentally rehearsed countless times what his expression would be when she hung her provincial games medal in front of him.
However, this email shattered all her hopes.
Ye Yuying stared repeatedly at the words "Plan to return to China in the fall is cancelled," feeling as if the blood in her body had frozen. The autumn she had been silently looking forward to, the autumn of reunion, would not come.
ICPC Global Finals... What's that?
With a feeling of near bewilderment, she returned home and, for the first time, took the initiative to enter Cheng Mingdu's reading room, a place she had never dared to set foot in before.
She was allowed to enter, turned on his desktop computer, and tremblingly typed in those few unfamiliar letters into the search engine—ICPC.
The result that popped up on the screen made her feel, in an instant, that she had been cruelly abandoned by a larger and more distant world.
The International Collegiate Programming Contest, known as the "Olympics of Computer Programming," is the world's largest and most prestigious collegiate programming contest.
The contestants are the most brilliant minds from the world's top universities, such as MIT and Stanford.
He will be engaged in a battle of wits with the world's brightest minds on a battlefield without gunfire, using code, algorithms, and the most sophisticated logical thinking.
Ye Yuying saw photos of previous finals and saw those young faces, like Cheng Mingdu, standing at the top of the world.
At this moment, she finally saw clearly, and cruelly, what exactly the "chasm" that stood between them was.
It was a world she had never encountered before, a world comprised of perspectives, intellect, and competition at a higher level.
She thought that by running so hard and winning championships in the city and province, she was trying her best to catch up with him.
Little did she know that while she was struggling for 0.01 seconds in the 100-meter sprint, he had already launched his charge towards the finish line she could never have imagined on another track she had never heard of, a track leading to the top of the world.
Her two gold medals, her eleventh-place ranking in her grade, and the awe and glory she earned at school seemed so insignificant, so...naive, in the face of the world he lived in.
Although she knew that with Cheng Mingdu's refinement, he would certainly not think that way.
She remembered the spiked shoes he had given her, and the iPod.
I remembered his words: "From now on, every day you live is for yourself."
I remembered what he said: "As long as you can make a living on your own, that's enough."
She suddenly understood. He may have seen this insurmountable barrier all along, and he may have known all along that they lived in different worlds.
That's why he gave her the weapon and pointed her in that direction, then turned around without hesitation and rushed to his own battlefield, leaving her alone on this long and lonely track where she had to fight alone.
There were many moments when she knew that only when she became strong enough to create her own world would they be able to stand at their respective peaks, gazing at each other from afar.
But this path truly offers absolutely no possibility...
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Author's note: 50~
Is this chapter fat or not?! hhhh
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