Chapter 3 Cosmos (2) I took the high school entrance exam and ranked first in the city...
Lin Xia had been afraid of her grandfather since she was little. His family had so many rules: early mornings and early evenings, no talking while eating or sleeping, no picky eating, and no leftovers. It was incredibly demanding. He was also incredibly serious, always stern and unsmiling. Although retired, he still had the air of a professor with a certain authority. He never scolded anyone, but a cold glare would make Lin Xia burst into tears.
If she had a choice, Lin Xia would definitely spend her summer vacation at her grandparents' house. Her grandfather cooked delicious food and her grandmother would sew beautiful little skirts for her dolls. But after her grandfather passed away the year before last, her grandmother was taken back to her hometown in Shandong by her uncle. It was really a long way to go to visit her.
Lin Haisheng, He Ping, He Chuan, and Lin Xia, four of them sat at one table. The dishes served were all ones that Lin Xia didn't like. No one was talking at the table. There was only the sound of dishes and chopsticks colliding and light chewing sounds. Lin Xia felt particularly depressed during this dinner.
After dinner, Lin Haisheng called Lin Xia over to question her.
"Still studying art?"
Lin Xia nodded: "Yeah."
"Learning art is good for cultivating one's sentiments and improving one's character. One must persevere."
Although Lin Haisheng had many complaints about Zhao Qianyi, he still approved of her sending her child to learn painting.
"What grade is the first semester of school?"
Lin Xia corrected him quietly, "The high school entrance exam is over, and it's time to start freshman year."
Lin Haisheng was stunned for a moment, as if he didn't expect her to be so big.
"Which high school did you get into?"
"Experimental High School."
This is a key high school in the city.
Lin Haisheng nodded:
"High school is a heavy workload, so you must study hard and never fall behind. Only by getting into a good university and having a high degree can you have a bright future."
The elders repeated the same old things over and over again, and Lin Xia nodded perfunctorily:
"oh."
After saying these words, Lin Haisheng seemed to have nothing to say. He and his son had nothing to say, let alone his teenage granddaughter.
"Go back to your room and rest. Tell Xiao He if you need anything."
Xiao He, now has another nickname.
There are two Xiao He's in this family, but you can tell he is talking about He Ping, not He Chuan.
This is good and avoids any awkwardness in addressing others.
Lin Xia took a deep breath and said silently in his heart:
Dad, you have to coax Mom back as soon as possible, I can’t hold on any longer!
.
Lin Haisheng's family's rule was to go to bed at 8pm and get up at 6am, which was absolute torture for the sleepy Lin Xia. She had been a TV kid since she was little, and she wouldn't stop watching prime-time TV series every night until they finished watching them.
At that time, the Internet had not yet become popular on a large scale. It was the era of the most prosperous development of Chinese TV programs. Talent shows, variety shows, cartoons, and TV dramas, whether they were Hong Kong dramas, Taiwanese dramas, Japanese dramas, Korean dramas, Thai dramas, or American dramas, could all be watched directly on TV. Various channels competed with each other, and new programs emerged one after another, competing fiercely for ratings.
I won't be able to watch "Happy Camp" this week. Who was the guest in the last preview? Will Princess Nora choose her beloved guard or the throne? Can the little witch Mona and her friends defeat the evil demon king in the comic strip? She will never know the answers to these questions, Lin Xia thought sadly as she lay in bed.
But what was even sadder was that she realized she had forgotten to bring Poof.
Pu Pu is a teddy bear stuffed animal, her favorite toy. When she was little, she always had to hold it in her arms while sleeping. Now that she has grown up, she doesn’t need to do that anymore, but every time she goes to a new place, she still has to hold Pu Pu in her arms to feel at ease.
She tossed and turned in bed and couldn't fall asleep. She looked at the clock and it was only 8:31 PM.
How about finding a book to read? She remembered that there were many large and profound books in her grandfather's study. When she was tired from reading them, she would definitely fall asleep!
She got out of bed and tiptoed out the door.
There were two bedrooms, a study, a bathroom and a kitchen in the house. Lin Xia came to the study which was diagonally opposite her room. She saw through the blurry frosted glass on the door that the light inside was still on, so she knocked on the door.
I didn't dare knock loudly for fear of waking up grandpa.
But she knocked many times and there was no response from the door. Just as she turned around in disappointment and was about to go back, the door suddenly opened.
He Chuan stood at the door, facing the backlight, so his expression couldn't be seen clearly.
The two looked at each other for a moment. He Chuan looked at the little girl in pink nightgown who looked a little bit bewildered and asked softly:
"What's up?"
"I, I can't sleep, so I want to find a book to read."
He Chuan didn't say anything, but just stepped aside to let her in.
The study is not big. Two walls are filled with bookcases, and a few paintings and calligraphy are hung on the other wall. There is a large desk piled with pens, ink, paper and inkstone. The only remaining space in the room is occupied by an iron bed, which is small and narrow and looks very sad.
Lin Xia suddenly felt guilty about having suddenly occupied his room, so she looked at him secretly.
After He Chuan let her in, he opened the half-open door completely and pulled the stool in front of the table to the door to make it easier for her to move back and forth. He sat on the stool, not looking at her, nor continuing to do his own thing and ignoring her, but just waiting silently.
He Chuan's personality was completely different from his writing style. He was very quiet and silent, but not gloomy or rebellious. Today, apart from greeting her after being introduced by their elders, they hadn't spoken again. However, the way he looked at her was peaceful, without any hostility.
He was three years older than her, not much, but he was different from the flamboyant teenage boys in her class, and also different from her nerdy cousin from her uncle's family.
She glanced at an open English book on the corner of the desk and a Walkman playing a tape with headphones plugged into it.
No wonder he didn't hear her knocking just now, but -
"Are you listening to English?" Lin Xia couldn't help but ask, "Didn't you just finish the college entrance examination?"
She is the type of person who will never look at the book a second time after the exam. She is too lazy to even sort out the wrong questions. The exam is over. Life and death are predestined, and wealth is in the hands of God. Let's talk about next semester next semester!
He Chuan simply said, "You have to learn English in college, too."
"Which university did you get into?"
“The Chinese University of Hong Kong.”
This answer was completely beyond Lin Xia's expectations. She was very surprised:
"Can I apply to a university in Hong Kong?"
She had seen movies and TV series on television and was no stranger to Hong Kong. In her mind, Hong Kong was a vibrant, colorful city, more developed than Beijing and Shanghai, yet also much more remote. With the exception of Zhao Qianyi, a junior high school classmate who was doing business in Guangzhou, she had rarely heard of anyone around her having been to Hong Kong.
Is this person in front of me going to Hong Kong to study at university in a few months?
In other words, Hong Kong also has universities!
He Chuan explained: "Yes, there are several universities in Hong Kong that have been recruiting students from the mainland for several years. Some recruit students independently, while others can be directly registered during the college entrance examination, but the score requirements are very high."
"How many points did you get on the test?"
He Chuan said a number.
Lin Xia had no idea what the Gaokao was, only vaguely knowing it was a high score. She remembered Zhao Qianyi saying he was a good student and had used that to motivate her.
She suddenly felt a little dissatisfied:
"Did you get first place in the city?"
He Chuan was stunned: "No."
"I ranked first in the city," Lin Xia raised her chin slightly, "I ranked first in the city in the high school entrance exam and the arts exam."
She's not bragging. She scored 195 out of 200 in the art exam for both sketching and gouache, with almost no deductions. She started studying art at age nine and studied for seven years, from oil pastels to black and white lines to color, and has always been talented.
However, she added, "Don't look down on art students. Even if we only focus on literature, I have passed the admission score for Experimental High School. I can still get in without taking the art exam!"
Her grades are average in the class, not outstanding, but she performed exceptionally well in this high school entrance exam and can show off with peace of mind.
At the age of sixteen, she doesn't have much idea about the future. Her world is pure and simple. Whether she is a little naive and proud, or a childish and unyielding competitive spirit, she is cute in He Chuan's eyes.
So he smiled softly: "It's very impressive."
Sincerely, without any sarcasm or ridicule.
His smile was shallow, but gentle, and his features seemed to relax, no longer as cold and unfamiliar. Although he had no hostility towards her, he was too quiet when he didn't speak, silent and silent, as if he was in a different world from everyone else.
Lin Xia suddenly felt a little embarrassed, thinking that what she had just said was too childish. She was about to go to high school at the beginning of the school year, and she was already half an adult. She couldn't do such childish things anymore.
She finally remembered that her original purpose of coming here was to find books, so she hurried to the bookshelf to continue her work.
The books on the bookshelf were all written by Lin Haisheng. They were quite old and included classics, Mao's Selected Works, Party History, ancient Chinese prose, calligraphy copybooks... The contents were varied. She wanted to read something more profound, but she couldn't understand any of them!
"There's nothing I like," she said dejectedly.
"what do you like?"
“I love comic books.”
"...There are no comic books here."
Of course Lin Xia also knew this.
After choosing for a long time, she finally picked up a book in the corner that interested her. The cover was a picture of the stars in the universe, and the title was "Thirty Thousand Years of Earth".
She asked He Chuan: "Have you read this book?"
He Chuan shook his head: "No."
It felt like a science fiction novel similar to "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea". Lin Xia flipped through it and decided that this was the one.
After saying good night to He Chuan, Lin Xia returned to her room.
It turned out to be the worst decision she made all holiday.
.
Due to various political, economic, and cultural factors, a wave of thought gained popularity around the turn of the millennium. This movement, primarily driven by amateur science enthusiasts with no formal education, was officially loosely referred to as "minke." These enthusiasts were widely published in journals, pirated books sold on street vendors, newly emerging internet forums, and featured on CCTV's "Approaching Science." Their research encompassed a wide range of topics, spanning ancient and modern times, China and the world, including but not limited to the search for the truth about aliens, the mysteries of time and space in the Bermuda Triangle, Mayan crystal skulls, the 2012 Doomsday prophecy, crop circles, and the Tianchi Lake monster. These theories fully capitalized on people's curiosity, using unfounded, enigmatic language to create an atmosphere of suspense that felt deeply plausible. Even years later, when much of this material was proven fabricated, a significant number of people still clung to it.
The book "30,000 Years of Earth" is the culmination of the above theories.
The author cited extensively, discussed the past and the present, listed a series of unsolved mysteries, and wrote more than 100,000 words, finally coming to the conclusion that there was a prehistoric human civilization on Earth 30,000 years ago, but it was destroyed, and today's human civilization will eventually be destroyed!
Lin Xia had originally planned to read two or three pages before going to sleep, but the more she read, the more alert she became. The more alert she became, the more scared she became. The more scared she became, the more she wanted to read. It was a vicious cycle that ultimately made it impossible to fall asleep. Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw all sorts of bizarre and fantastical things in the book. When she opened her eyes, the unfamiliar outlines of furniture in the darkness became terrifying. Worse still, she desperately needed to go to the bathroom, but she didn't dare leave the covers.
The time that flew by while she stayed up late watching TV now felt like years. She endured it again and again, almost reaching her physical limit, and finally couldn't bear it anymore. She ignored the midsummer heat, threw the quilt over her body, even covering her head, mustered her courage, and walked out the door trembling with fear.
Not daring to turn on the living room light or make any noise, she moved forward cautiously in the darkness, following the direction she remembered. After going through untold hardships, she finally reached the bathroom door. She reached out and groped on the wall repeatedly, extremely anxious. Where was the switch?
"What are you doing?"
Suddenly, a voice sounded behind me without warning, and at the same time, there was a slight click, and the correct position of the switch was found. In an instant, the whole world became bright.
Lin Xia's hair stood on end, her legs softened, and she slid down to sit against the wall.
Behind a door, Lin Xia, wrapped in a quilt, was lying limp on the ground, and He Chuan, wearing pajamas, was standing outside the door. The darkness of the living room and the light of the bathroom intertwined and collided. The two looked at each other in a daze. This strange space was silent for a moment, with only the ticking sound of the second hand of the clock on the wall.
He Chuan, a light sleeper, was awakened by the rustling sounds in the living room. He went out to check, only to see such an unexpected scene. Although he didn't know why she was covered with a quilt, he was also shocked to see her pale face, sweating profusely, and in a very bad state.
"Are you sick?"
He half-knelt down and asked as gently as possible.
Seeing that she didn't speak, he couldn't help but reach out and touch her sweaty forehead:
"Where does it hurt?"
Lin Xia was completely frightened, her soul had gone blank, and she couldn't even scream.
It was not until she felt something warm against her cold skin that she shuddered and slowly realized what was happening.
"No, it's okay..."
As soon as the words came out, they were hoarse and choked.
He Chuan also realized something:
"Did I scare you?"
"No......"
Lin Xia's heart was still pounding, her mind was in a mess, she wiped her tears and answered randomly.
"I just can't find the light..."
It would be so embarrassing to say that I couldn't sleep because I was scared by that book!
So He Chuan didn't ask any more questions. He just stood beside her, accompanying her silently.
He didn't know how long it took, until her tears stopped, her breathing finally calmed down, and her face was no longer so horribly pale, then he spoke:
"Can you stand up?"
Lin Xia nodded, then shook her head.
He Chuan hesitated for a moment, reached out and grabbed her exposed forearm, and pulled her up from the ground.
After Lin Xia stood firm, she felt very embarrassed and whispered:
"I'm fine, thank you..."
After He Chuan confirmed with his eyes that she was fine, he nodded, let go of her hand, and closed the bathroom door for her from the outside.
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