Chapter 2#

“Doudou! Get up!”

Awakened by a rough shove, Chen Yuanming was stunned for a moment before realizing someone was calling his nickname. Cold wind rushed in through the open door, making him shiver as he climbed out of bed.

He quickly put on his slightly damp underwear, then pulled on a thick sweater and jacket. Turning to look beside him, a small round table was already set up in the middle of the room. On it were a few bowls, rice soup so thin it could reflect a person’s shadow, and only 3 or 4 pieces of salted vegetables, homemade radish strips. A man was huddled at the table slurping porridge and taking big bites of a steamed bun. Noticing Chen Yuanming’s gaze, he glared and shouted, “What are you staring at! Hurry up, wash your face and eat!”

“Go quickly.” The woman beside him also gave him a push, placing a boiled egg on the table. “The egg will get cold soon.”

Chen Yuanming picked up a towel without a word and walked out the door. Turning right outside the door, at the end of the corridor were the public toilet and sink. It was past the morning rush hour for the toilet, so without much effort, he finished his personal hygiene, turned on the rusty faucet, and splashed a handful of water on his face.

The water in winter was freezing cold. There were burn marks on the pitch-black water pipe, obviously frozen again during the night and thawed out by some neighbor. Washing his face took only a few seconds, but his hands were frozen red, and the chilblains on his little finger and the back of his hand began to throb and itch. In the long and narrow corridor beside him, a smell of wood smoke mixed with the aroma of food hit him in the face. Every household in the stairwell was noisy. This was the staff dormitory of the city’s largest state-owned enterprise, L City Bearing Factory. With eight households per floor and a total of three floors, the dormitory building was a scene of chaos every morning. He had lived in this place for a full 21 years and was familiar with everything here.

But now… wringing the towel hard, he moved his frozen hands and looked up. But now, he was only 15 years old.

“So slow just washing your face, want to be late again?”

As he walked into the room, a scolding hit him in the face. Chen Yuanming silently put down the towel and sat at the table. A steamed bun was stuffed into his hand.

“Eat quickly, it’s already 6:30!” Two hands deftly peeled the eggshell and threw the tender white boiled egg into the rice soup, splashing a small spray of water. “Don’t be listless all day, final exams are coming up, right?”

“One week left.” Taking a bite of the steamed bun, the choking taste of alkali stimulated his taste buds. Homemade steamed buns always tasted like this. Poking the egg in the bowl with chopsticks, Chen Yuanming suddenly felt a sting in his eyes. “Mom, don’t boil eggs anymore, I’m all better…”

“What nonsense are you talking about.” The woman deftly collected several empty bowls and soaked them in the pot. “Our family isn’t short of this little money.”

This time the man didn’t say anything, just let out a cold snort, strode out the door, and slammed it shut with a loud bang. Chen Yuanming’s chopsticks paused slightly, picked up a piece of radish strip, and ate it with the rice porridge.

Looking at the father and son still in a cold war, Wang Juan couldn’t help sighing, put on her coat, slung her bag, and greeted her son, “I’m going to work, you hurry up and finish eating and go to school, remember to lock the door when you leave.”

Chewing vigorously on the food in his mouth, Chen Yuanming nodded. The door was closed, but it couldn’t block the noise outside. Students arrived at school at 6:45, and the factory started work at 7:00 sharp. These two time points destined the morning to be chaotic and busy. The ding-dong of bicycle bells, the shouting and noise of children, and the angry scolding of some parents echoed in the narrow corridor. Year after year, day after day.

Accompanied by these sounds, Chen Yuanming finished his breakfast, put the bowl in the pot, picked up his schoolbag, and walked out the door. The nights were long in January, and it was still pitch black outside. The cold wind scraped his face like a knife, and the woolen coat couldn’t block the biting chill. He sniffled, put his hands in his pockets, and walked quickly towards the school.

After a few days of confusion, his memory was now like a mirror wiped clean of dust, slowly becoming clear. From home to school was a gentle downhill dirt road, uneven and potholed, so muddy when it rained that shoes couldn’t be pulled out. There wasn’t even a street lamp on the entire road. A few years ago, corn and vegetables were planted by the roadside, but later they were squeezed out completely by privately expanded houses. Some people were careless and threw garbage directly on the roadside, making this small road smell rotten all year round.

It was this dirt road with complex conditions that Chen Yuanming walked without stumbling. Simply because he was too familiar with it. From elementary school to junior high school, two points and a line every day, a 15-minute walk, just walking down the slope. Around the corner at the bottom of the slope were the factory’s Fifth Primary School and Third Middle School. In these two schools, he spent his entire boyhood.

As a large state-owned enterprise in the early years, L City Bearing Factory had a population of over 100,000 employees and their families, with more than a dozen staff dormitory areas, schools, hospitals, clubs, bathhouses, and other auxiliary facilities. The Third Middle School he attended was a well-known key middle school far and near. Since the implementation of 9-year compulsory education and district-based school selection, cross-district students who paid high school selection fees to squeeze in became a major scene in the Third Middle School.

However, this scene became Chen Yuanming’s initial childhood shadow.

When he stepped into the school gate, the first class bell had already rung. Chen Yuanming didn’t speed up, just glanced at the teacher’s office on the second floor, then turned and went upstairs. Class 1 of Grade 3 was at the west end of the third floor of the new teaching building, right next to the corridor. When he pushed open the classroom door, dozens of eyes shot at him in unison.

Curiosity, disdain, surprise, numbness… The boys and girls were far from the age where they could hide their inner feelings, making this natural attitude even more glaring. Chen Yuanming’s face was blank, not even lifting his eyelids, he walked straight to the empty seat in the seventh row and sat down. The girl at the same desk leaned away slightly, seeming to want to distance herself from him.

Stuffing his schoolbag into the drawer, taking out textbooks, paper, and pen, Chen Yuanming glanced at the little girl with a ponytail and a disdainful expression beside him. What was her name again, Wang Qian? Wang Ting? Couldn’t remember clearly. Not to mention his head was weird now, even before when he wasn’t crazy, he didn’t have much interaction with these classmates.

Just as he sat down, the crisp sound of high heels rang in the corridor, and a middle-aged woman walked into the classroom. High-heeled leather shoes, a black ankle-length wool skirt, a bright red short down jacket, a fashionable dress in the early 90s. However, her facial expression ruined everything. Her long hair was coiled high behind her head, and under the silver-rimmed glasses were a pair of sharp, narrow triangular eyes. A faint sneer hung on the corner of her mouth, complementing the arrogant aura emanating from her whole body.

The monitor sitting in the second row stood up abruptly. “Stand up!”

The sound of tables and chairs moving instantly rang out, and the whole class stood up.

“Good morning, teacher!”

The voices were neat and loud, a standard pre-class ritual. The woman standing on the podium nodded reservedly, “Good morning, students.”

Another clatter of tables and chairs, but this time it quieted down quickly. The head teacher of Class 1, Han Qian, was a Nazi-style control freak known throughout the school. In an era where teachers decided everything, no one dared to challenge her authority.

When the classroom quieted down again, looking at the students as obedient as quails below, Teacher Han swept her narrowed eyes over the back row and spoke unceremoniously, “Final exams are coming soon, I won’t waste words on what to do, but some people shouldn’t always think about being the rat droppings in the pot. If you don’t want to learn, get out quickly. Mucking around, arriving late and leaving early, fighting and causing trouble, making a mess of the class. It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to go to high school, if you’re not cut out for it, no one is forcing you, don’t hold others back!”

Several gazes secretly swept over. Chen Yuanming didn’t react at all, opening the English textbook in front of him.

Teacher Han let out a cold snort and threw the lesson plan in her hand onto the desk, “Now checking homework, recite the text from the last lesson, Chen Yuanming!”

Called by name, Chen Yuanming stood up. This classroom wasn’t big, with nine seats per row, a total of seven and a half rows, stuffed with a full 65 people like planting potatoes. Because family conditions hadn’t been good these past two years, Chen Yuanming’s height was still a line below the class average. He was somewhat partial to certain subjects, and his grades were decent, but now he was standing at the very back of the classroom, neighbors with those slackers at the bottom of the class…

Clenching his fists, Chen Yuanming looked expressionlessly at the teacher on the podium.

“What, can’t recite it? Spent all your energy on fighting and sleep…” Teacher Han opened her mouth to scold, but was abruptly interrupted by a sentence in English. The boy began to recite. His pronunciation wasn’t particularly standard, and he didn’t recite fast, but there were no errors in the content. Word by word, clear and loud, as if mocking her groundless scolding.

The classroom was instantly silent. Teacher Han’s face turned iron blue, glaring at the boy standing at the back of the classroom. A text was only a few hundred words, and it soon came to an end. After reciting, Chen Yuanming didn’t sit down immediately, but glanced at someone in the front row.

“I’ve finished reciting. Should the others who fought be treated equally? Teacher Han.”

The few people huddled in the front row immediately buried their heads in their textbooks, silent as cicadas in winter. The corner of Teacher Han’s mouth twitched, and she shouted, “Sit down! Start class!”

A rustling sound of turning pages rang out. Chen Yuanming revealed a self-mocking smile and sat back down. The wound on his head was still throbbing. He smoothed the curled corner of the book with his hand. These past two days, with stitches on his head, had been chaotic, but the extra things had changed him. Now junior high school textbooks were ridiculously simple to him, any subject, including English, which he used to be most partial against. At the same time, the changes were more than these. The questions that once puzzled and tormented him finally had answers.

Chen Yuanming raised his head and looked towards the front of the classroom. The first three rows, left and right, were all daughters of the factory director, sons of city leaders, and those top students with full marks in every subject, dividing up the prime seats. The middle few rows were well-behaved children of teachers and ordinary high-paying students, with mediocre grades, sitting in mediocre positions. The last two rows became the transfer students who were naughty beyond redemption, spending money, using connections, but their studies and personalities were a mess, all stuffed into the corner, left to fend for themselves.

In this special small society, there were only four types of people: the rich, the powerful, the connected, and the truly outstanding top students. And he did not belong to any of them. He was just a rooster that had mistakenly intruded into a flock of monkeys.

What a simple answer, but in that originally confused memory, his younger self had never understood. His family, the education he received since childhood, was not enough for him to discover this well-known secret. His parents took the teacher’s words as golden rules, only beating and scolding, thoroughly disappointed in his “stubbornness”…

The sound of neat reading came to his ears. Chen Yuanming lowered his head, looking at the hands covered with chilblains on the desk. Suddenly, the fear that had confused him for days disappeared, turning into something completely different. He began to accept the older, capable, but already dead self in his mind. If this was a chance to start over, why shouldn’t he try?

Chen Yuanming laughed silently, clenching his fists.