I arrived at school around two o'clock. It was still early; Sunday evening study hall didn't start until eight.
Before coming here, I had already loaded my meal card with enough money for a week's living expenses.
This school was known as a famous "GaoKao factory," operating under a fully enclosed management system where the meal card was sufficient for all spending. Though it was a key city school, I felt it was no different from any other: the cafeteria food was mediocre, and the prices at the small store were generally inflated. But this was the only place to spend money; apart from a single small store near the cafeteria, there were no other options—consumption was confined within these walls.
When I walked into the classroom with my backpack, a few people were already there: some doing homework, others playing on their phones. They looked at me with a slight surprise. I didn't find the astonishment strange, as I usually timed my return to the classroom just right. Coming this early was probably a first this semester.
I ignored them and went back to my seat alone. I pulled out the assignments the teachers had given and tried to start working on them.
But, predictably, I was too far behind. I struggled for a while, realizing I couldn't do the problems at all.
I sighed and chose to pull out my phone to search for answers. The teachers' questions were almost never original, so finding the solutions was easy.
However, this time I didn't just copy; I tried to understand the steps. I frowned, staring at the explanation for a long time, but finally shook my head. Damn it, it's too hard. I couldn't understand it at all.
Finally, I sighed and quickly copied the answers down. After all, if I didn't hand in the homework, the teacher would call me out. I had to get the assignments done first.
It took about an hour to copy all the assignments for various subjects. Meanwhile, more students had gradually returned.
The classroom was getting lively. Since it was Sunday, and everyone was fresh from home, many had bought snacks or brought back homemade food. Almost everyone's backpack was bulging; for boarding students, this was a week's worth of fuel for non-class time.
I had brought my freshman textbooks and was looking through them.
"Yo, Fatty, what's with you? Why are you pretending to read? You okay?" Someone reached out to pat my head.
The gesture annoyed me. I quickly dodged the hand, turned my head, and saw a student about five feet seven, with a weird haircut and average looks. He was one of the last-place students in the class, but that didn't mean we were close. In fact, Wang Hua was annoying, full of bad habits, and a notorious troublemaker. Probably few people in the class liked him. Perhaps because of my passive nature, he liked to pick on me. I was fed up with him. I've often wondered if my mom taught me too well, making me too polite and well-mannered, which resulted in my current disposition.
Actually, a large part of my timid personality stems from the profound shadow my mother cast on me when I was little. Her discipline was too strict, especially for me, the only boy in the family. Even coming home a little late would earn me a scolding and an interrogation about my whereabouts. When I was younger, my mother had hit me many times. It was hard not to be obedient.
"Wang Hua, leave me alone," I said with a frown.
"Oh, Fatty, what are you playing at? When did you start pretending to be a good student? Do you look like someone who can study?" Wang Hua reached out, flipped through my textbook, and laughed.
I hated that laugh; it made all my efforts feel worthless. But this guy was like chewing gum on the sole of my shoe. I ignored him, turning back to my book.
"Stop acting tough, you failure. So boring," Wang Hua's dismissive voice drifted from behind, sparking a flicker of anger in me. But the thought of arguing with him and getting red-faced made me feel embarrassed, so I retreated into my shell and ignored him.
Seeing my lack of reaction, Wang Hua lost interest and went to tease some of the girls in the class.
"Lin Nan, what are you doing?" A gentle voice came from behind me as I was scratching my head over a problem.
"Liu Xiaoyu?" I turned to look at the student, who was short, about five feet two. His features were clean, his face delicate, and his skin pale. Paired with his name and light blue-pink clothes, one would mistake him for a girl if they didn't know he was a boy.
"Heh, I'm reading." This guy and I were on good terms, mainly because I felt he was similar to me: polite and well-behaved to everyone, but a personality like that was bound to let us be taken advantage of. Maybe for this reason, we were close and often played games together.
"Why haven't you been logging on recently?" Liu Xiaoyu asked me. Honestly, I thought his eyes were very clean, with a hint of blue, like the sky—very beautiful.
"I've been a bit busy lately, and my old phone broke," I smiled. I couldn't exactly tell him my mom kicked my phone to pieces, so I offered an excuse. Liu Xiaoyu and I often played games, with him usually playing Support and me playing AD Carry.
"Is that so?" Liu Xiaoyu sat in the seat next to me. He was my deskmate, one of my few strokes of luck. His grades were also generally poor. We were permanent occupants of the class's last and second-to-last places: me at the bottom, and him right above me. We were fellow sufferers, so relying on him for academic help was unrealistic.
He slowly pulled out a pile of items from his bag: a water bottle, notebooks, a pencil case—everything. His small backpack was like Doraemon's pouch, carrying all sorts of things. I truly admired him; he could keep track of everything. Unlike me, if I bought an eraser, it would be gone after a few uses, and my pens were always misplaced. He naturally became my emergency supply store; he had everything, and I often borrowed from him.
"Want to copy the homework?" Liu Xiaoyu took out his completed homework and placed it on my desk. Although his grades were poor, he always completed his homework. I often copied from him.
"I finished it already." I had already searched for the answers on my phone and copied them.
"Oh, really?" Liu Xiaoyu was slightly surprised but said nothing, taking his notebook back.
He began tidying his desk, meticulously smoothing out the curled edges of his book pages, taking great care of his textbooks. I admired this about him. He was meticulous in his work, and everything he owned was clean and organized, a stark contrast to my own messy desk.
I continued reading, trying to solve a problem in my notebook, frowning. The problem was hard.
"Want some grapes?" Liu Xiaoyu took out grapes, already washed and separated into a container from his bag. I truly admired him. My goodness, he washed them before bringing them over. If it were me, I'd just rinse them quickly and start eating.
"Sure." I reached over, grabbed a few, and popped them into my mouth. They were super sweet.
This guy loved fruit; he brought a large supply every day. I reached out and hefted his backpack. Sure enough, it was heavy, as usual, packed with an unknown quantity of stuff. He ate fruit every day. No wonder his skin was so nice.
"Does your family run a fruit store?" I asked with a smile.
"Yes," Liu Xiaoyu blinked, nodding, and spat the grape seeds into a small trash bag.
"Oh, a rich kid, then," I chuckled. Actually, my family was by no means poor. Just the price of our house alone was high. But Mom always adhered to the philosophy of "poor boy, rich girl," and constantly stressed that a man must have good manners and sound morals. Consequently, she was always strict about my spending, so I never acted like I had money in class.
I was annoyed by my mother's philosophy but couldn't do anything about it. The emphasis on good manners and sound morals for a man was probably a lesson learned from my father.
Speaking of my parents, they met very early, in high school. Their courtship lasted throughout the three years of high school, and they started dating after graduation. They even went to the same university. Perhaps it was an accident, but my mother became pregnant with me during her freshman year. At the time, my parents were terrified. As freshmen, going to school with a baby would draw so much attention, so many strange looks and whispers.
So, my father decided to have the baby aborted. It was a logical decision. They were young and still dependent on their families for living expenses; how could they take care of a child when they could barely take care of themselves?
It seemed my fate was sealed to be aborted, but the fact that I'm alive and grown up shows that the situation dramatically reversed. My mother disagreed. She defied everyone, took a one-year leave of absence, returned home, and gave birth to me despite the pressure. Honestly, when I first heard the story, I thought she was telling a fairy tale. I couldn't understand where she found the resolve in that situation.
But later, when I once casually asked my father on WeChat, his silence spoke volumes.
While my mother was on leave to have me, my father continued his studies. After her year-long break, my mother returned to university with a baby. I can't imagine the kind of looks and judgment she must have endured while attending classes with a child.
I don't know the full story of how my sister came along. I only know that when my mother occasionally mentioned that period, her eyes were cold and filled with resentment. I faintly sensed that the hidden truth there might have laid the groundwork for their eventual separation.
In short, my parents got their marriage license after graduating from university, but their relationship was never good. After graduating, my mother took me and my sister and started working, while my father continued his advanced studies, often needing financial help from my mother to complete his degrees.
Later, after my father finished his master's degree, he kept asking my mother for money during his Ph.D. studies, and she kept giving it to him. But one time, my mother became suspicious of his frequent requests for money and quietly went to visit him. In his rented apartment, she found another woman in his bed. That's when she realized my father had been using her money to support another woman.
My mother said little. She simply took a photo, left without disturbing them, and immediately filed for divorce. My father naturally refused; my mother was his cash cow—who would he ask for money if she left? It wasn't until my mother showed him the photo and said, "If you don't want your Ph.D. studies to end immediately, and a permanent stain left on your integrity file, you can keep fighting me."
I can still recall the hatred and coldness in my mother's voice when she told me that line.
And so, they divorced. Because of that evidence, my father didn't dare to fight my mother for custody of me and my sister. My mother raised us by herself until now.