The sun of July was blazing on the earth and the sound of the air conditioner whirring outside the window overpowered the hysterical chirping of the cicadas. The temperature in the spacious room was cool and comfortable, and there were chilled watermelons placed on the short table. On the laptop was the page for inquiring about the results of the college entrance examination.
After seeing the results of the college entrance exam, Jiang Yi felt his last bit of luck vanishing. At the same time, his whole person was like falling into an ice cellar. His eyes were hazy, and he didn’t know if they were wet from the cold sweat on his forehead, or if his eyelashes were stained with dust. He even heard an illusionary buzzing sound in his ears. It’s over. It’s really over. This result was clearly worse than living all the way to the age of thirty in his previous life, with a handsome and good-looking boyfriend. Were the God eyes not good? Threw him back to the age of eighteen, moreover even failed him in his college entrance exam.
His dad who wasn’t much educated, but made a lot of money, was still gently comforting him, “It’s all right, it’s all right. Isn’t it just a failure? If you can’t go to a good university in China. Dad will send you abroad.” Jiang Yi gave his father a deep look but said nothing. He had his memory of 30 years, and he was not a young man who cannot stand the ups and downs of life. But he could only hold it back and couldn’t say it.
Jiang Yi loved to play when he was in high school, and his science teachers all praised him for being a little clever. Only if he could use it in his study, it couldn’t be better. It’s just that the class teacher talked back and forth so many times, not to mention Jiang Yi himself, his father too didn’t care much about the teacher’s persuasion.
The class teacher can only give up and let him continue to play. While in private, he shook his head and complained to his colleagues that Jiang Yi was really spoiled. He said that he would regret it sooner or later. However, he didn’t expect that Jiang Yi suddenly immersed himself in studying in the second semester of senior high school and rushed up all the way to the top and finally got into the famous A university in China. Father Jiang knew better about his son’s temperament and once asked him whether the class teacher pressured him for the enrollment rate of the school, but he got a negative answer.
Jiang Yi still remembers vividly after living for 30 years. In his sophomore year of high school, he once placed an unnamed love letter in the desk of the vice president of the next class. He didn’t expect the other party to respond. Jiang Yi even mentioned on the love letter that he was a boy. When he came back to take the exam in the afternoon, the piece of paper was still lying intact inside the drawer of the other party’s desk, but there was an extra line written in beautiful characters on the letter that did not belong to him– “I guess no girl would have written such ugly words. If you get enrolled in A University, I will consider it. After all, I don’t like long-distance relationships.” Jiang Yi read the piece of paper carefully for three times, and his heart seemed to be on fire.
The eighteen-year-old Jiang Yi’s grades weren’t bad, but the thirty-year-old Jiang Yi’s grades were a disaster. His college entrance exam results were a full one hundred marks behind the A University’s admission line for the year. Jiang Yi unconsciously chewed the watermelon in his warm mouth. He seemed to have seen that the butterfly carrying his fate was flapping its wings and taking off slowly. In the future, the tracks of him and Chu Chuan would be like two parallel lines that never intersect. Or worse, he’ll be on the opposite track all the way. God, he wanted to go back so badly. There were still two of the new flavored condoms he’d bought last month that hadn’t run out.