Hazelnuts (Part 2)
The little girl was fourteen years old that year, and she won the gold medal in the women's singles at the World Junior Championships right after she debuted.
She may indeed have talent and good luck, having met some like-minded partners and a coach who taught her carefully. She also endured the most arduous and tedious long training period. It was all of this that allowed her to quickly show her talent at a speed that ordinary people could not imagine.
So the media singled her out from the group of children her age, calling her a genius. Many people thought she was a genius, and over time, the little girl began to believe that she might actually be a genius.
Such a high-level title certainly has its advantages. The little girl is very confident. She is happy to compete and enjoy the seemingly insurmountable victory under the control of her talent, and naturally accept the envy and praise of others.
For a time, she was almost riding high, especially when she easily won the World Championships. She felt that she had lived up to the word "genius," after all, her career started at an unbelievably high level.
Even though the eighteen-year-old prodigy stood on the world's highest podium, she couldn't see herself two years later. She could never have imagined that she would be the lifeless wooden figure lying in a hospital bed.
...
Zhou Zeyu woke up very early; she was abruptly woken up by loud noise.
During nearly a year of insomnia, her sensitivity to sound increased dramatically, to the point that she would be awakened by almost any sound. The hospital ward was too noisy, and she opened her eyes almost the instant the first coughing sound was heard.
She glanced at the deathly white ceiling and then closed her eyes again. The doctor had probably given her anesthesia, because not only could she not feel her right knee, but she couldn't even feel her entire right leg.
The medical equipment made a mechanical sound, and there was a strong smell of disinfectant in the air. She was all alone in the ward, but she could hear a clear argument coming from outside the door, and she immediately recognized the voices of Coach Xu and Coach Huang.
However, given her current situation, perhaps Coach Xu's overprotectiveness was actually quite appropriate, she thought to herself with a self-deprecating smile.
The argument between the two lasted for a long time, so long that Zhou Zeyu was about to fall asleep with her eyes closed. However, just as she was about to lose consciousness, the door creaked open.
More than losing the game, Zhou Zeyu seemed to be more annoyed by the disruption to her hard-won sleep. She kept her eyes tightly closed, but her brows were furrowed.
"Awake?" It was a completely unfamiliar voice asking her in very clear English.
Zhou Zeyu immediately pretended to have just woken up, mumbled an "uh-huh" in a daze, and rubbed her eyes to try to open them. However, what she saw was a completely unfamiliar, bookish Eastern European man in his forties or fifties.
“I am Professor Elberlint,” the man said again. “Please don’t misunderstand, your coach told me you seem to be experiencing anxiety. May I have the honor of listening to your troubles?”
"Oh, a psychologist," Zhou Zeyu unconsciously raised her eyebrows. Although she knew that Coach Xu had long suspected that she had psychological problems, at this moment, lying defenseless on the hospital bed, being stared at by a professor who looked very knowledgeable, she still felt an inexplicable resistance.
There was a psychologist at her former sports school, but that old man just talked on and on with his thermos, simply coasting through his easy job. He would misinterpret students' normal anxiety as mere whining, which led her to subconsciously reject any psychologist.
However, she had to admit that the professor did have a very approachable, chubby face. He looked at her with the kind and encouraging gaze typical of an elder, and she often saw the shadow of her parents in that face, so she naturally relaxed her mouth.
“I’m in so much pain,” she said after a moment’s thought, in somewhat broken English. “My injuries, my mental state, are all terrible.”
It seemed to be evening, and the twilight cast a hazy glow on the sun, which floated faintly in the empty ward. Zhou Zeyu looked at the fine dust floating in the air for a while, and then continued, "I think there might really be something wrong with my mind. I'm so afraid that one day I'll hate playing ping-pong."
"But you love it, haven't you, since you were four years old?"
Of course, when she was just a little kid, her mother gave her a ping-pong paddle that was uniquely hers. She would go to the park with her grandfather to watch the games all day long, and she would squat in front of the TV with her rice bowl to watch the live broadcast of the Olympics. Later, she started playing on her own, and she has been playing since kindergarten.
She couldn't deny that, and she also couldn't deny that love and hate could coexist in the same thing.
“You have to try to stay away from ping-pong, in whatever way you can, and forget everything about it.” Professor Elberlint paused for a moment, then looked at her with loving eyes and spoke gently.
Zhou Zeyu sat up abruptly, her eyes wide, and raised her voice in disbelief, "What?! Forever?"
“Until you stop resisting picking up a ping-pong paddle.” He ignored Zhou Zeyi’s shock, spoke calmly, and gestured for her to lie down again.
However, the seemingly good-natured professor interrupted her once again with firm conviction, "Your knees are not the biggest problem; the biggest problem is your mindset. As long as you have this negative mentality, there is no point in continuing your career."
She fell silent, staring intently at the pale gray ceiling, unable to utter a single word.
It's impossible for her to give up table tennis, even temporarily. For over a decade, she's become accustomed to her life being intertwined with that little plastic ball; whether healthy or injured, awake or asleep, she has dedicated almost everything to it.
"Is there no other way?" She closed her eyes, and for a moment even felt the urge to cry.
Even if he didn't answer, she knew the answer to the question. If there really was a solution, she and Coach Xu would have tried it long ago. Since they had already fallen to this point, they were truly at their wits' end.
After the professor left, she slept for a while, but her sleep was extremely restless. Sometimes she dreamed that her psychological problems were getting worse and worse, leading to depression. Other times she dreamed that she completely gave up table tennis and became completely lost in the crowd, drifting along with the tide, looking at the honors that she once had within her grasp, and living a mediocre life.
She trudged through one nightmare after another, feeling as if a century had passed in her hazy state, but when she suddenly awoke, she found that the clock had barely turned halfway.
Her clothes, soaked with sweat, clung stickily to her body. She struggled to get up and take a shower, but when she turned around, she saw a pile of bread and fruit on the bedside table, a jumble of all sorts of things. She smiled at the sight and grabbed an apple to take a bite.
Teammate relationships are neither particularly deep nor shallow. They are often competitive, but they have also weathered storms together. If you had to describe it, it would be a contradictory relationship of competing and supporting each other under the same roof.
She realized this very early on. After she became famous at a young age, her teammates who had spent every day with her quickly became distant from her, and the senior members of the team did not take her, a newcomer, seriously. Not to mention the common phenomenon of cliques and factional disputes among teammates from different coaches. All of these had a great impact on her when she was young.
But after she became extremely pessimistic, she discovered that things weren't entirely bad. Even two people with terrible relationships off the field would have great chemistry on the field. Everyone would let down their guard and work together to prepare for the competition. Seniors were willing to give juniors opportunities, and juniors were willing to be sparring partners with seniors. In times of peace, everyone was actually quite harmonious.
Sending food to injured teammates is a long-standing and unspoken rule in the team. If you're not close to them, you'll send a piece of bubble gum; if you're closer, you'll send a Lay's gift pack. Generally, everyone will give something, because it's the thought that counts.
It was completely dark. Looking down from the hospital, all that could be seen on the ground were faint stars. She stood by the window, scrolling through the notifications on her phone. Most of them were messages of condolence, with a few interspersed with the schedule for the World Championships the next day or the day after. She suddenly remembered what her professor had said and quickly deleted those messages.
Coach Xu received a phone call and chatted about various things, but both of them were clearly trying to avoid something, and suddenly they fell silent.
Coach Xu on the other end of the phone suddenly sighed almost imperceptibly, and Zhou Zeyi felt that his voice had suddenly aged a lot. "What have you thought about it?"
Zhou Zeyu didn't speak; she just felt a lump in her throat, because of herself, and also because of Coach Xu, who had worried so much about her all these years. She had been playing with him since she was ten, experiencing so many ups and downs over the years. Many times she had given up on herself, but Coach Xu had never given up on her; he had done everything he could for her.
“Just take a short break. You’re only in your twenties. Don’t let yourself be trapped for life,” he paused briefly. “Xiaoyu, find a place away from everything, get a good night’s sleep, and don’t worry about anything else. I’ll take care of everything.”
"Ideally, we can come back and still play. If that's not possible, let's retire happily, okay?"
After hanging up the phone, her phone returned to the home screen, where she saw the photo she had saved as her wallpaper. It was a picture of her with her parents in front of the National Stadium, with her holding a tennis racket high in her hand, and everyone smiling happily.
Give up, retire, forget.
She suddenly felt very tired, as if the exhaustion she had been holding on for many days had suddenly piled up on her. Perhaps in the past, she could fight like a warrior who would fight to the death, but now she just wanted to cover herself with the blanket and go to sleep.
In fact, she did just that, dragging her weary body and throwing herself heavily onto the bed. She even hoped that she could sleep longer, so long that when she opened her eyes again, everything would be over and a bright future would appear.
With such unrealistic desires, Zhou Zeyu quickly fell asleep. She didn't have a single dream and slept very soundly.
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